Why isn't it a fully textured 3d model? It shouldn't be that hard to do that when you already have the points in 3d.
You might have answered your own question: since developing an algorithm like marching cubes is a solved problem, slapping it on as a post-processing step wouldn't really count as research. These academics are trying to make a cool demo to show off their research, not create a finished product. If they waste too much time polishing it, they risk not getting enough real research done and losing their funding.
Personally, I see no reason why these multifunction devices can't be improved to the point where they completely supplant "deck of cards"-size point-and-shoot cameras. Sure, they'll never replace SLRs, but I for one would love to carry around one "deck of cards" instead of two.
Yeah, but the downside is that those devices are often DRM-infested (TiVo, for example). In fact, Android is hardly the first popular Linux phone... it's noteworthy because it's the first popular Linux phone that's actually hackable.
You know, a few years ago every digital camcorder had Firewire (coincidentally, they all also tended to use MiniDV because flash/HDD-based ones hadn't been invented yet). If new ones don't have it, it's only because they switched to USB2. But that doesn't mean Firewire is "professional," it just means it lost (unfortunately, IMHO).
I cannot enjoy listening to synthesized music. It sounds cheap.
That could be because sometimes it is cheap -- as in, rendered using a cheap, crappy synthesizer (such as an older computer sound card). A good stand-alone sound module (or software with a good set of sound fonts nowadays, I suppose) can sound indistinguishable from a real instrument, in my opinion.
My 12" Thinkpad x60 tablet does 1400x1050 and is a few years old now. It's not all that hard to find reasonably high DPI laptop displays. What's hard is finding decent desktop displays. And speaking of desktop displays, why is it that even monstrous 17-plus-inch laptops manage to have quarter-inch-thick screens, but desktop LCDs are always at least an inch or two thick?
True, but it's possible that it doesn't support non-rectangular configurations (especially since it presents everything as one big virtual monitor to Windows).
The person doesn't have to be an asshole; he could just be terminally ignorant. After all, Windows is telling him the disk is blank/unformatted; why would you expect a random luser to know better?
This thread is not evidence of Linux being deficient compared to Windows; portable media doesn't usually have intact and correct permissions on Windows systems either! The difference here is that Linux users are pickier about the issue while Windows users, on average, don't care (if they even know about and understand the problem to begin with).
if you recieved a written request from your manager for a password to non personal equipment, you'd just fucking do it wouldn't you?
First of all, what makes you think he ever received such a thing? IIRC, he got called into a conference with a bunch of people, including ones who weren't authorized to know the password and unknown ones on the other end of a speakerphone, and was asked to convey it verbally. And since he was the top IT guy to begin with, did he even have a manager other than the mayor himself?
Second, this was a politically-motivated witch hunt: if he had disclosed the password sooner, they would have just jailed him for improperly disclosing it instead! Every course of action he could have taken would have resulted in them arresting him; at least this way he's not actually guilty of what they're accusing him of.
It also means that Childs reneged on that trust. Any sysadmin that keeps secret passwords, and won't divulge them to the actual owners, deserves at LEAST firing
There were no "actual owners" for Childs to divulge the passwords to! In fact, Childs was both fired and arrested because he insisted on following the documented password policy even though unqualified-but-politically-powerful assholes demanded that he break it. Agreeing to give the passwords to the mayor, a compromise he made while already in jail, was actually the only thing he did wrong (because, according to the policy, the mayor wasn't entitled to be given the passwords either)!
There are many TVs on the market that have cable card slots built in.
O RLY? Fine then; I challenge you to find one listed for sale at the website of a major national retailer (e.g. Fry's, Best Buy, Sears, etc.), and one which is a new model (as opposed to a discontinued or refurbished one).
No, seriously -- please do find one, because I've looked and looked and haven't been able to! And bonus points if you can find one at Sears, in the $1200-$1400 range (as I've actually got a warranty replacement credit that I need to use to buy a new TV...)
Well, no, since they aren't allowed to charge for extra outlets in your house. They can only charge a rental fee for digital boxes and such.
And introducing encryption is nothing more or less than a scheme to convert those pesky free-by-law extra outlets into fee-paying set-top box rentals. Greedy fuckers!
They are required to provide a cable card for free also.
So what? That's completely useless and irrelevant because the only current devices that support cable cards are TiVos and the cableco's set top boxes themselves!
I assume by "channel 40" you mean NTSC (SD analog) on EIA channel 40. It would appear that by "103.5" you mean MPEG program number 5 on a QAM (digital) carrier on EIA channel 103. But I can't be sure.
Yes, that's what I mean.
The information that tells your set top box where Discovery is is SCTE 65 SI data, generally carried on a low frequency QPSK Out-of-Band channel. (Atlanta is a Motorola market, in spite of being home to Scientific Atlanta!) These data aren't encrypted or obfuscated in any way.
Exactly, and that channel mapping could be read just as easily by software in the TV itself, eliminating the need for the stupid box.
This is probably not the experience the operator intends for you to have. You may be happy with this scheme, but the operator probably feels that you are using a loophole to access the digital content.
Honestly, I don't give a shit how the operator "feels." It should be the operator's job to transmit the content to which I'm entitled in as convenient a form as possible, and then butt out! The operator shouldn't be allowed to dictate how I go about receiving it!
From a purely technical and capitalistic point of view, it probably isn't feasible for them to limit the design of the network to the capabilities of your TV.
Except cable companies don't get (or at least, shouldn't get) the privilege of considering the situation from a capitalistic point of view: they are government-sanctioned local monopolies and thus have a responsibility to serve the public, not just their own greedy selves! They are in dire need of a smackdown from the FCC and/or FTC so that maybe they'll remember that.
You didn't just opt out of the Comcast DNS 'helper' ?
I shouldn't have to "opt out" of having my Internet service sabotaged!
I'd double check those Comcast speeds too. 6Mbps seems to be the _minimum_ speed you'll get, funny as it is to say that. For me, large downloads ramp up to 10-20MBps every time.
I don't care: I got fed up with Comcast's fascist bullshit, and principle is more important than bandwidth any day!
(For what it's worth, I was also pissed about a 5-day total service outage due to the cable serving my entire building physically breaking and the various incompetent technicians passing the buck around until the weekend, at which point we had to wait till Monday to get it fixed, since obviously 8 units aren't enough to bother sending somebody out on a Saturday...!)
As someone who used to work as a TSR (Tech Support Rep) for Time Warner, I can tell you that your incorrect.
That's funny: you tell me I'm incorrect, then agree with me in great detail! For example, read my quote:
it didn't support bullshit like "On Demand."
And your quote:
So being able to access channels that relied on switched-video technology, On Demand, or anything that required feedback of information back to headend would never work.
You see the similarity there? And my other quote:
Not only were there tons of "compatibility problems,"
And your corresponding quote:
I can't recall how many times I've been on phone with both frustrated customers and on-site installer techs trying to troubleshoot problems. Some issues could be resolved by "re-paring" the unique TV and cable card codes again, but most of the time it was the TV's fault. Either the QAM tuner in the set was crap, or the TV's logic board needed a firmware update. Any other issues that remained were traced to a weak signal or ingress on the line.
I'd say my quote pretty much summarizes yours...
So anyway, thank you for taking the time to re-iterate my argument; it's nice to have someone from the industry validating what I said.
Of course, there is one tiny nuance to the issue you missed, though:
Basically, Comcast and Co did *not* sabotage the cable card. It truly failed because its implementation from the very start was just that BAD!
Have you ever asked yourself why the implementation was bad? I'll tell you why: because the people implementing it wanted it to be bad! And who implemented it, you may ask? Why, CableLabs of course, which is -- wait for it -- OWNED BY THE CABLECOS!
What I'm "getting on about" is that cableco-owned set-top boxes and TivoHDs are about the only devices that have CableCARDS. TVs -- new ones, the kind you'd find in normal retailers like Best Buy or Sears -- don't have them. TVs did have them, briefly (in models released circa 2005), but manufacturers subsequently quit putting them in because, as I said, the standard is dead.
The Firewire requirement only applies to HD set-top boxes, which (of course) Comcast charges even more for. So those of us (such as myself) who want to be left alone to watch analog and/or standard-definition digital TV in peace using our perfectly good [digital]-cable-ready TV without a shitty box would not only have to get a box, but get the most expensive one ($10-$15 per box, per month)! Far from being a solution, it merely adds insult to injury!
Cable companies have always been adamant about encrypting their signals on the digital tier
Actually, Comcast's digital tier (albeit 480i) is transmitted in the clear too, at least in most of the Atlanta market, and at least for now. The only real reason you "need" the box, aside from extra stuff like "On Demand" or HD, is that it re-arranges the channels from the frequencies they're actually transmitted on over the wire to the logical channel numbers that show up in the TV listings. For example, Discovery is nominally on channel 40 (using either analog or digital with the set-top box), but I can also receive it on channel 103.5 using my TV's QAM tuner with no box.
Comcast intends to both cease transmitting the analog signal and encrypt the digital signal, in order to render both tuners useless and force everyone to rent boxes instead (at great expense and inconvenience).
I did that already a few weeks ago when they started hijacking DNS (and yes, I cited both that and the impending digital cable encryption as reasons why I was cancelling). The trouble is, the only thing I could cancel was the Internet service because I live in an apartment that has a bulk agreement with Comcast, and the cable TV is included as part of my rent. I really am a captive Comcast victim; my only further recourse would be to move! And to add insult to injury, while normal "residential" accounts get a free box, apartment bulk accounts don't, which means I'm going to have to pay extra even though I only use one TV. (Not to mention the objection I have to using the extra, redundant piece of equipment in the first place!)
Incidentally, I switched my Internet service to Clear WiMax. It's slightly more expensive than Comcast in the short term because I had to buy the equipment, but they've got a 3Mbps/$30 tier while Comcast's minimum was 6Mbps/$42.95, so I'll save money in the long run. And more importantly, it lets me avoid supporting the fascists at either Comcast or AT&T (the only DSL provider here)! Totally worth it...
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You might have answered your own question: since developing an algorithm like marching cubes is a solved problem, slapping it on as a post-processing step wouldn't really count as research. These academics are trying to make a cool demo to show off their research, not create a finished product. If they waste too much time polishing it, they risk not getting enough real research done and losing their funding.
Personally, I see no reason why these multifunction devices can't be improved to the point where they completely supplant "deck of cards"-size point-and-shoot cameras. Sure, they'll never replace SLRs, but I for one would love to carry around one "deck of cards" instead of two.
Yeah, but the downside is that those devices are often DRM-infested (TiVo, for example). In fact, Android is hardly the first popular Linux phone... it's noteworthy because it's the first popular Linux phone that's actually hackable.
You forgot to mention one big feature all these camera phones are still missing: optical zoom!
You know, a few years ago every digital camcorder had Firewire (coincidentally, they all also tended to use MiniDV because flash/HDD-based ones hadn't been invented yet). If new ones don't have it, it's only because they switched to USB2. But that doesn't mean Firewire is "professional," it just means it lost (unfortunately, IMHO).
That could be because sometimes it is cheap -- as in, rendered using a cheap, crappy synthesizer (such as an older computer sound card). A good stand-alone sound module (or software with a good set of sound fonts nowadays, I suppose) can sound indistinguishable from a real instrument, in my opinion.
How about keeping PA and JACK but skipping the ALSA layer, then (especially since non-Linux systems apparently manage without it)?
My 12" Thinkpad x60 tablet does 1400x1050 and is a few years old now. It's not all that hard to find reasonably high DPI laptop displays. What's hard is finding decent desktop displays. And speaking of desktop displays, why is it that even monstrous 17-plus-inch laptops manage to have quarter-inch-thick screens, but desktop LCDs are always at least an inch or two thick?
True, but it's possible that it doesn't support non-rectangular configurations (especially since it presents everything as one big virtual monitor to Windows).
The person doesn't have to be an asshole; he could just be terminally ignorant. After all, Windows is telling him the disk is blank/unformatted; why would you expect a random luser to know better?
This thread is not evidence of Linux being deficient compared to Windows; portable media doesn't usually have intact and correct permissions on Windows systems either! The difference here is that Linux users are pickier about the issue while Windows users, on average, don't care (if they even know about and understand the problem to begin with).
First of all, what makes you think he ever received such a thing? IIRC, he got called into a conference with a bunch of people, including ones who weren't authorized to know the password and unknown ones on the other end of a speakerphone, and was asked to convey it verbally. And since he was the top IT guy to begin with, did he even have a manager other than the mayor himself?
Second, this was a politically-motivated witch hunt: if he had disclosed the password sooner, they would have just jailed him for improperly disclosing it instead! Every course of action he could have taken would have resulted in them arresting him; at least this way he's not actually guilty of what they're accusing him of.
There were no "actual owners" for Childs to divulge the passwords to! In fact, Childs was both fired and arrested because he insisted on following the documented password policy even though unqualified-but-politically-powerful assholes demanded that he break it. Agreeing to give the passwords to the mayor, a compromise he made while already in jail, was actually the only thing he did wrong (because, according to the policy, the mayor wasn't entitled to be given the passwords either)!
O RLY? Fine then; I challenge you to find one listed for sale at the website of a major national retailer (e.g. Fry's, Best Buy, Sears, etc.), and one which is a new model (as opposed to a discontinued or refurbished one).
No, seriously -- please do find one, because I've looked and looked and haven't been able to! And bonus points if you can find one at Sears, in the $1200-$1400 range (as I've actually got a warranty replacement credit that I need to use to buy a new TV...)
And introducing encryption is nothing more or less than a scheme to convert those pesky free-by-law extra outlets into fee-paying set-top box rentals. Greedy fuckers!
So what? That's completely useless and irrelevant because the only current devices that support cable cards are TiVos and the cableco's set top boxes themselves!
Yes, that's what I mean.
Exactly, and that channel mapping could be read just as easily by software in the TV itself, eliminating the need for the stupid box.
Honestly, I don't give a shit how the operator "feels." It should be the operator's job to transmit the content to which I'm entitled in as convenient a form as possible, and then butt out! The operator shouldn't be allowed to dictate how I go about receiving it!
Except cable companies don't get (or at least, shouldn't get) the privilege of considering the situation from a capitalistic point of view: they are government-sanctioned local monopolies and thus have a responsibility to serve the public, not just their own greedy selves! They are in dire need of a smackdown from the FCC and/or FTC so that maybe they'll remember that.
I shouldn't have to "opt out" of having my Internet service sabotaged!
I don't care: I got fed up with Comcast's fascist bullshit, and principle is more important than bandwidth any day!
(For what it's worth, I was also pissed about a 5-day total service outage due to the cable serving my entire building physically breaking and the various incompetent technicians passing the buck around until the weekend, at which point we had to wait till Monday to get it fixed, since obviously 8 units aren't enough to bother sending somebody out on a Saturday...!)
Wow, that sucks! At least it's only about 7% though...
That's funny: you tell me I'm incorrect, then agree with me in great detail! For example, read my quote:
And your quote:
You see the similarity there? And my other quote:
And your corresponding quote:
I'd say my quote pretty much summarizes yours...
So anyway, thank you for taking the time to re-iterate my argument; it's nice to have someone from the industry validating what I said.
Of course, there is one tiny nuance to the issue you missed, though:
Have you ever asked yourself why the implementation was bad? I'll tell you why: because the people implementing it wanted it to be bad! And who implemented it, you may ask? Why, CableLabs of course, which is -- wait for it -- OWNED BY THE CABLECOS!
What I'm "getting on about" is that cableco-owned set-top boxes and TivoHDs are about the only devices that have CableCARDS. TVs -- new ones, the kind you'd find in normal retailers like Best Buy or Sears -- don't have them. TVs did have them, briefly (in models released circa 2005), but manufacturers subsequently quit putting them in because, as I said, the standard is dead.
I've got a newsflash for you: those are all obsolete models leftover from 2005 or so.
There's nothing wrong with HDMI (which is really just DVI+audio in a single convenient connector); it's HDCP that's the problem!
The Firewire requirement only applies to HD set-top boxes, which (of course) Comcast charges even more for. So those of us (such as myself) who want to be left alone to watch analog and/or standard-definition digital TV in peace using our perfectly good [digital]-cable-ready TV without a shitty box would not only have to get a box, but get the most expensive one ($10-$15 per box, per month)! Far from being a solution, it merely adds insult to injury!
Actually, Comcast's digital tier (albeit 480i) is transmitted in the clear too, at least in most of the Atlanta market, and at least for now. The only real reason you "need" the box, aside from extra stuff like "On Demand" or HD, is that it re-arranges the channels from the frequencies they're actually transmitted on over the wire to the logical channel numbers that show up in the TV listings. For example, Discovery is nominally on channel 40 (using either analog or digital with the set-top box), but I can also receive it on channel 103.5 using my TV's QAM tuner with no box.
Comcast intends to both cease transmitting the analog signal and encrypt the digital signal, in order to render both tuners useless and force everyone to rent boxes instead (at great expense and inconvenience).
I did that already a few weeks ago when they started hijacking DNS (and yes, I cited both that and the impending digital cable encryption as reasons why I was cancelling). The trouble is, the only thing I could cancel was the Internet service because I live in an apartment that has a bulk agreement with Comcast, and the cable TV is included as part of my rent. I really am a captive Comcast victim; my only further recourse would be to move! And to add insult to injury, while normal "residential" accounts get a free box, apartment bulk accounts don't, which means I'm going to have to pay extra even though I only use one TV. (Not to mention the objection I have to using the extra, redundant piece of equipment in the first place!)
Incidentally, I switched my Internet service to Clear WiMax. It's slightly more expensive than Comcast in the short term because I had to buy the equipment, but they've got a 3Mbps/$30 tier while Comcast's minimum was 6Mbps/$42.95, so I'll save money in the long run. And more importantly, it lets me avoid supporting the fascists at either Comcast or AT&T (the only DSL provider here)! Totally worth it...