Piracy is stealing. You take something you want or value without paying for it. That's stealing. You can try to justify it anyway you like, but it is stealing.
No. Some things are free. Air, friends, the great outdoors. I want them, I take them, I don't pay for them. That is not stealing. And if a friend of mine has a nice desktop image, and I like it and want it, and he gives me a copy, that is not stealing either.
Stealing is when someone puts a price on something, and you don't pay that price. But not anyone can put a price on something. I can charge you $20/hr for air, but you don't have to pay for it. You can breathe and it isn't theft. The air isn't mine.
Ownership is the key. In order for me to put a price on something, it has to be mine. But if I make a movie, and sell the DVD, the DVD isn't mine anymore. The DVD belongs to whoever bought it. They can do what they want with it.
Hence, copyright. Which is different from ownership. And thus, illegal copies are different from theft.
I can see why it needs write access to the steam folder by users - multiple users probably want to run steam and be able to share its cache for downloaded content. To do that they need to write to it when they download.
That is what the "/Library/Application Support" folder is for.
So let me get this straight, the argument here is that the iPad isnt effecting netbook sales because the projected number of netbooks to be sold in 2011 hasn't been changed in the last month...
Like the two AC's, my first instinct was to bitch about affecting vs. effecting, but because I am their superior, I realize that "effecting" is perfectly cromulent here. To effect is to erase or remove, so the verb fits the situation.
So you lucked out. But next time, BitZtream...next time!
"Assembler code" is more correct than "assembly code." The program is called an "assembler," it assembles a program, and "assembler code" is code for the assembler. People call assembler code "assembler" because they are lazy.:)
People, especially people who read/., need to stop expecting quantum computers tomorrow. It turns out that they're really hard to do, but steps like this are solid progress. Give it time; quantum computers will come through a lot incremental progress towards increased fidelity operations in many areas of the field.
-- So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Given the tenor of your post, your sig is kind of ironic.:)
People who do anything because it interests & fascinates them on a personal level do better than those who are only in it for the paycheck. Doesn't matter whether it's programming, auto repair, landscaping, or anything else.
Sure, but the trick is distinguishing those who do it out of fascination from those who do it for the monies. Luckily, programming has esoteric and academic languages that we can as an indication of the former. Not every field is so lucky.:)
So what I'm hearing is that a discussion on color is useless people agree on the definition of color first. There are multiple kinds of color, being those that are external and those as perceived being two types for which the discussions are completely separate.
You just have to keep in mind which definition of color the other guy is talking about. It's like current flow or data flow. Both are analogous, and called "flow," and you can use both in the same conversation, but you have to keep track.
And sadly, imaginary colors are visible, but only to people who don't have the same color reference as others, so it's indescribable.
No, they aren't visible. No combination of wavelengths can cause an imaginary color from only one cone, because light activates all cones to a greater or lesser extent. I think people's color references are all the same. It all boils down to the three pigments or whatever that differentiate the cones, and those should be identical proteins across everybody (mutants excepted, of course). I don't know enough to be sure, but I think the neural networks on top of that that turn the cones' output into colors along the red/green and blue/yellow axes are basically identical for everyone as well.
The definition of color is essentially in relation to wavelength.
I would say "definition of spectral color." There are many colors that do not have a corresponding wavelength or frequency. These non-spectral colors are composed from receiving several different frequencies at the same time; a complex waveform if you want to think in those terms.
I wouldn't call spectral colors "pure," either. The pure colors, perceptually, are red, green, blue, and yellow. There are spectral colors that appear impure to us. The spectral color with a wavelength of 560 nm, for example, is a mix of green and yellow.
Twinbee has a point about a fully saturated green being muddied by mixing the M and L cone responses. If the M cone alone were stimulated, you'd see a green that is greener than any frequency or frequency mix that we can call "pure green." That can never happen, normally, of course. Such a green is an imaginary color.
Even though many nearby wavelengths trigger a particular cone, that doesn't mean the cone sends a range of colours to the brain. I still think that each cone represents and sends a pure primary colour, specifically red, green and blue for L, M and S. I'm talking about the final sensation here, rather than any intermediate signals such as preliminary wavelengths.
Cones don't send colors, they send activation levels. Each cone is activated in proportion to all the differently-colored photons that hit it, weighted by frequency. While photons of a given frequency are most efficient at generating an activation response, the activation level does not correspond to any particular spectral color. The colors come in when the visual system takes the activation levels of the cones and maps them to two internal color axes: the red/green axis and the blue/yellow axis. These, plus black and white, are the brain's primary colors — the ones that are perceptually pure. This is called the opponent process model.
The mapping process uses some sort of antagonistic weighting. The different cone types are not evenly distributed across the retina (the M and L cones are mostly in the fovea, while the S cones are scattered more widely), so the weightings must vary across the retina, or some sort of correction must be applied downstream after the color axis mapping.
If the human eye is the most sensitive to yellow, green, and violet, in that order, why aren't we making displays and computers that output combinations of YGV? That seems to me to be the best way to achieve realism is to match the natural sensitivity of human eyes.
I have done some reading about color recently. As I understand it, our cone types are called short, medium, and long. They each respond to many electromagnetic color frequencies — the spectral colors — but to different degrees. Short cones cover violet through green, and the medium and long cones cover violet and blue through red (or basically the entire EM color range).
We can see the spectral colors, of course, but we also see a lot of colors that aren't in the EM spectrum, like purple or sea green. We get those when we see a mix of EM frequencies. The brain weighs the different response levels of the three cones and picks a color. It sort of triangulates on a color. The thing is, there are many EM frequency mixes that add up to the same non-spectral color in the brain.
Now, our display technologies can only emit one color per type of element, but we can have several different types of element. In fact, we need to have at least three types, because we need to tickle each of the three cone types differently for the brain to lock onto a color. To vary colors, we change the relative brightness of one of the elements, which shifts the responses of the cones (but shifts each cone differently because of their differing sensitivities), which shifts the color. We can make the display elements emit spectral colors, but we don't have to. It works just as well if the elements emit non-spectral colors; the cones still change their responses as we change the brightness of the frequency mix.
The only constraint on the colors of the different display elements is that one has to have a really high frequency in its mix and one has to have a really low frequency in its mix. The highest and lowest frequencies emitted by the elements form the limits of the spectral colors that the display can, uh, display.
To directly address your suggestion, there is no point in trying to color-match a display element with a cone's sensitive range, because a display element can only emit one color and cones respond to a whole range of frequencies; and besides, it is the cones' different responses to the elements, not the exact frequencies of the elements, that cause the brain to lock on to a color.
culminated with an old, gray professor scratching his beard and remarking, "hm...yeah its dangerous for pig legs...but.....hey, someone get me a grad student!"
That's what grad students are for, you know. It is actually humane, if you think about. They can say to themselves, "look at me, I'm helping!" Actually, let me retract that statement. I really shouldn't anthropomorphize them. It's a bad habit.
It is like on Dragonball Z. Goku walked around and fought with lead weights in his clothes, to build up his strength and endurance. When he took those out and dropped them to the floor with a loud clunk, you knew shit was on!
Keys have the additional advantage that you can make a nasty brass knuckle kind of thing with them, or, if attached via chain, an impromptu morningstar.
I find this placebo to be quite interesting. They vote and they enjoy voting, but their votes change nothing. Perhaps they should classify voting as entertainment.
It can change things, from time to time. Nothing massive, nothing revolutionary, at least not by the standards of other countries. The American view (I can only speak for myself, but I believe it is a common view) is that if we have or need a real revolution, we screwed up badly. And I do not mean our leaders screwed up, but rather we the people screwed up. And who will admit to that?
You are right, of course, about voting being entertainment. This is the U.S. Everything is entertainment. We are an easily distracted people.
Don't confuse "speech recognition" with semantic analysis. If you want to dictate a document, the computer doesn't need to understand the meaning of a phrase, only identify the words. It's a much easier job.
You'd think, but no. The computer needs to know what word and phrase set to use. You can tell it that, but then, when writing, you commonly shift from, say, a medical vocabulary to a more legal vocabulary, or you start using phrases associated with job performance, or leading up to a favor, or whatever — the point is, the computer needs to realize that you are dictating a different kind of thing now. It needs semantic info to know when you are exceeding the boundaries of one linguistic domain and moving into another.
Even aside from that, to do a really good job of dictation, the computer needs to put paragraphs, sentences, commas, and other punctuation in the right place. It needs semantic information for that, as well as an understanding of the guidelines you'd find in a style guide.
One word of caution though, there are some places there (that i found while trying to keep up with my son) that can trigger claustrophobia.
That is a good educational experience right there. Most people don't normally get to see what claustrophobia is like until they go crawling around in caves.
The light doesn't just have to be directional... you have to do something similar to holography. The angular spectrum of the outgoing light has to be the same as the incoming light at a given point on the window
I hope that helps. In order to display an image, you have to fist capture an image to display. And you can't capture an image with an unadorned array of sensors unless the thing you're imaging is sidled right up next to the array.
Ah. I was thinking in terms of a HUD or an augmented reality display, not redisplaying an infrared image in visible wavelengths. I assumed there would be a scanning IR beam to light up the OLED elements.
From the article, it sounds like each OLED element includes its own IR sensor, or else converts the IR directly to visible light chemically. If they do it that way, the 4 lights situation (nice ref, by the way) shouldn't be a problem. The OLED elements closest to each of the 4 lights would be emit more light than elements more tangential to each light, because of higher IR intensity at that element as compared to other elements where the IR hits more incidentally and thus with a weaker flux density (which I think that is the correct term).
Slashdot Mirror
Piracy is stealing. You take something you want or value without paying for it. That's stealing. You can try to justify it anyway you like, but it is stealing.
No. Some things are free. Air, friends, the great outdoors. I want them, I take them, I don't pay for them. That is not stealing. And if a friend of mine has a nice desktop image, and I like it and want it, and he gives me a copy, that is not stealing either.
Stealing is when someone puts a price on something, and you don't pay that price. But not anyone can put a price on something. I can charge you $20/hr for air, but you don't have to pay for it. You can breathe and it isn't theft. The air isn't mine.
Ownership is the key. In order for me to put a price on something, it has to be mine. But if I make a movie, and sell the DVD, the DVD isn't mine anymore. The DVD belongs to whoever bought it. They can do what they want with it.
Hence, copyright. Which is different from ownership. And thus, illegal copies are different from theft.
That is what the "/Library/Application Support" folder is for.
Nothing useful from that search, but I looked for "women's urinal" and found this one. I am no woman, but this seems like the only practical choice.
Thank you for the detailed explanation of why we can't fix a malfunctioning satellite by capping it with a 100 ton steel funnel.
This is far classier than saying "whooosh."
I congratulate you, sir. *golf clap*
Like the two AC's, my first instinct was to bitch about affecting vs. effecting, but because I am their superior, I realize that "effecting" is perfectly cromulent here. To effect is to erase or remove, so the verb fits the situation.
So you lucked out. But next time, BitZtream...next time!
"Assembler code" is more correct than "assembly code." The program is called an "assembler," it assembles a program, and "assembler code" is code for the assembler. People call assembler code "assembler" because they are lazy. :)
Given the tenor of your post, your sig is kind of ironic. :)
Sure, but the trick is distinguishing those who do it out of fascination from those who do it for the monies. Luckily, programming has esoteric and academic languages that we can as an indication of the former. Not every field is so lucky. :)
You just have to keep in mind which definition of color the other guy is talking about. It's like current flow or data flow. Both are analogous, and called "flow," and you can use both in the same conversation, but you have to keep track.
No, they aren't visible. No combination of wavelengths can cause an imaginary color from only one cone, because light activates all cones to a greater or lesser extent. I think people's color references are all the same. It all boils down to the three pigments or whatever that differentiate the cones, and those should be identical proteins across everybody (mutants excepted, of course). I don't know enough to be sure, but I think the neural networks on top of that that turn the cones' output into colors along the red/green and blue/yellow axes are basically identical for everyone as well.
I would say "definition of spectral color." There are many colors that do not have a corresponding wavelength or frequency. These non-spectral colors are composed from receiving several different frequencies at the same time; a complex waveform if you want to think in those terms.
I wouldn't call spectral colors "pure," either. The pure colors, perceptually, are red, green, blue, and yellow. There are spectral colors that appear impure to us. The spectral color with a wavelength of 560 nm, for example, is a mix of green and yellow.
Twinbee has a point about a fully saturated green being muddied by mixing the M and L cone responses. If the M cone alone were stimulated, you'd see a green that is greener than any frequency or frequency mix that we can call "pure green." That can never happen, normally, of course. Such a green is an imaginary color.
Cones don't send colors, they send activation levels. Each cone is activated in proportion to all the differently-colored photons that hit it, weighted by frequency. While photons of a given frequency are most efficient at generating an activation response, the activation level does not correspond to any particular spectral color. The colors come in when the visual system takes the activation levels of the cones and maps them to two internal color axes: the red/green axis and the blue/yellow axis. These, plus black and white, are the brain's primary colors — the ones that are perceptually pure. This is called the opponent process model.
The mapping process uses some sort of antagonistic weighting. The different cone types are not evenly distributed across the retina (the M and L cones are mostly in the fovea, while the S cones are scattered more widely), so the weightings must vary across the retina, or some sort of correction must be applied downstream after the color axis mapping.
I have done some reading about color recently. As I understand it, our cone types are called short, medium, and long. They each respond to many electromagnetic color frequencies — the spectral colors — but to different degrees. Short cones cover violet through green, and the medium and long cones cover violet and blue through red (or basically the entire EM color range).
We can see the spectral colors, of course, but we also see a lot of colors that aren't in the EM spectrum, like purple or sea green. We get those when we see a mix of EM frequencies. The brain weighs the different response levels of the three cones and picks a color. It sort of triangulates on a color. The thing is, there are many EM frequency mixes that add up to the same non-spectral color in the brain.
Now, our display technologies can only emit one color per type of element, but we can have several different types of element. In fact, we need to have at least three types, because we need to tickle each of the three cone types differently for the brain to lock onto a color. To vary colors, we change the relative brightness of one of the elements, which shifts the responses of the cones (but shifts each cone differently because of their differing sensitivities), which shifts the color. We can make the display elements emit spectral colors, but we don't have to. It works just as well if the elements emit non-spectral colors; the cones still change their responses as we change the brightness of the frequency mix.
The only constraint on the colors of the different display elements is that one has to have a really high frequency in its mix and one has to have a really low frequency in its mix. The highest and lowest frequencies emitted by the elements form the limits of the spectral colors that the display can, uh, display.
To directly address your suggestion, there is no point in trying to color-match a display element with a cone's sensitive range, because a display element can only emit one color and cones respond to a whole range of frequencies; and besides, it is the cones' different responses to the elements, not the exact frequencies of the elements, that cause the brain to lock on to a color.
culminated with an old, gray professor scratching his beard and remarking, "hm...yeah its dangerous for pig legs...but.....hey, someone get me a grad student!"
That's what grad students are for, you know. It is actually humane, if you think about. They can say to themselves, "look at me, I'm helping!" Actually, let me retract that statement. I really shouldn't anthropomorphize them. It's a bad habit.
And can you still stand up?
It is like on Dragonball Z. Goku walked around and fought with lead weights in his clothes, to build up his strength and endurance. When he took those out and dropped them to the floor with a loud clunk, you knew shit was on!
Keys have the additional advantage that you can make a nasty brass knuckle kind of thing with them, or, if attached via chain, an impromptu morningstar.
I find this placebo to be quite interesting. They vote and they enjoy voting, but their votes change nothing. Perhaps they should classify voting as entertainment.
It can change things, from time to time. Nothing massive, nothing revolutionary, at least not by the standards of other countries. The American view (I can only speak for myself, but I believe it is a common view) is that if we have or need a real revolution, we screwed up badly. And I do not mean our leaders screwed up, but rather we the people screwed up. And who will admit to that?
You are right, of course, about voting being entertainment. This is the U.S. Everything is entertainment. We are an easily distracted people.
Don't confuse "speech recognition" with semantic analysis. If you want to dictate a document, the computer doesn't need to understand the meaning of a phrase, only identify the words. It's a much easier job.
You'd think, but no. The computer needs to know what word and phrase set to use. You can tell it that, but then, when writing, you commonly shift from, say, a medical vocabulary to a more legal vocabulary, or you start using phrases associated with job performance, or leading up to a favor, or whatever — the point is, the computer needs to realize that you are dictating a different kind of thing now. It needs semantic info to know when you are exceeding the boundaries of one linguistic domain and moving into another.
Even aside from that, to do a really good job of dictation, the computer needs to put paragraphs, sentences, commas, and other punctuation in the right place. It needs semantic information for that, as well as an understanding of the guidelines you'd find in a style guide.
Count from 1 to 20 alternating between numbers and letters as fast as you can, for example 1-A-2-B-3-C.
I stall out at G. I have to start running through the whole alphabet to get to the next letter.
I accidentally the whole thing!
Well played!
I'd mod you insightful if I had the points. :)
One word of caution though, there are some places there (that i found while trying to keep up with my son) that can trigger claustrophobia.
That is a good educational experience right there. Most people don't normally get to see what claustrophobia is like until they go crawling around in caves.
You need a cock in your ass today.
I respectfully suggest that that would only worsen his mood...
I hadn't heard of this but I sure as hell am interested. Do you know if it runs without plug-ins?
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/01/google-html5-quake/
Seems like just HTML5 and JavaScript.
What's an "angular spectrum?"
Ah. I was thinking in terms of a HUD or an augmented reality display, not redisplaying an infrared image in visible wavelengths. I assumed there would be a scanning IR beam to light up the OLED elements.
From the article, it sounds like each OLED element includes its own IR sensor, or else converts the IR directly to visible light chemically. If they do it that way, the 4 lights situation (nice ref, by the way) shouldn't be a problem. The OLED elements closest to each of the 4 lights would be emit more light than elements more tangential to each light, because of higher IR intensity at that element as compared to other elements where the IR hits more incidentally and thus with a weaker flux density (which I think that is the correct term).
If you're talking about ads, how many capabilities do you need? If you can write Quake in HTML5, you can write a "hit the dancing monkey" ad in HTML5.