I am also a brit, and the one thing i really love about Canada is the way it merged the Best of Britain, America and Europe into a country.
It is certainly intresting how Canada is more socialist than even Britain sometimes, and its a good thing, when you also see how its run, and the kind nature of the people.
I am not dissing Americans either, American citizens are really nice too. But I see the attitudes of the people not nessasarily reflected in aspects of the administrative procedures, which really can ruin a hoilday by a tourist.
This reminds me of the Red Dwarf books, where it describes sometime in the future; CocaCola embarks on an advertising campaign where they send out spaceships to blast a number of stars into a supernova, spelling out the words "Coke gives life" into the night sky.
(This is how Lister finds Kryten, on board one of the ships originally sent out)
I used to be with Metronet for dial-up (i stil use them for hosting). They are local to where i live (Harrow) and they are pretty good, and friendly folks.
The only reason why i left them, was to get the NTL £10 a month unlimited dialup, which was a total joke, then when i moved to DSL, the offeres metronet had back then were not available. I feel i woudl have got it much cheaper had I stuck with metronet.
There are plenty of number already in existance.. search on Google for advantages to the RT2000 system. This already uses the 3D card, and yes, you are able to do real time work at full res NTSC/PAL with up to 5 sources i believe. It can even do it with "live" video.
Currently, Transitions use a lot of software rendering techniques for generating effects such as transparency, 3D flyovers, and composition.
Traditionally, using software rendering, a simple 10 minuite clip can take 1 hour to render. Just over the weekend, I created a 8 minuite "moving slideshow" video clip from Still photos, and titles, which consited of photos gently moving in and out, and cross fading, and titles being added to it. A very simple composition task, yet it took my Athlon 2500+ over 40 minuites to render frame by frame into High Quality MPEG2 for DVD using software rendering.
Few years ago, it was suggested that maybe a 3D card can be used to assist in that, so the blunt of the rendering was done on a 3D card, and then frame by frame captured from the frame buffer to create a final AVI/MPEG of the composition.
The presumption was that frames of the video or Stills can be used as Textures, and the power of the Graphics card to render it all
Also it can be used for Real-Time composition of effects, as you can hook up a video recorder to the output, and directly record onto tape.
This technology was used extensivly in the Matrox RT2000 and beyond. The RT2000 was a professional video editing suite which consists of a Modified Matrox G400 graphics card (called the G400 flex) and a RT2000 video in/out card, which did realtime DV/MPEG encoding/decoding, and had firewire/analogue connections.
The RT system used the Matrox G400 Flex to perform the realtime compositing and rendering, and is powerfull enough to do the same effects in realtime, then send back to the RT card to directly send to DV tape, or MPEG2 file.
Then in 2000, ATi shown a proof of concept software using a normal Radeon card to render two video sequences onto a spinning cube in realtime, which was really stunning to look at.
So i assume this is further development is the realisation of this proof of concept.
As for WHY all this is nessasary, well for professional video editors, it gives the ability to have instant high quality previews, and fast rendering, which saves so much time, hence increases productivity.
I prefer the more "traditional" way creating... more fun, more creative, great universal interface (very little incompatibilities)
Sure there is a 9 month wait...
And before you say "this is slashdot", and most have difficulty finding good "equipement" to connect to.. well we are already good at getting various new "hardware" to connect to our computers.. maybe use the same tricks to get various fleshware to connect to us:)
I thought it was rather obvious the irony when you read it. Maybe my British background...
The irony is, my powerful computer running both linux and windows XP does not 100% support SVG (animations too), and even then, its via a plugin for an APPLICATION. I am talking support in the shell/toolkit.
This phone has SVG support built in, and its part of the core graphics support (you can use SVG in backgrounds/MMS/Themes). It also has PNG support with transparency, used for its User Interface
The fact that the phone is NOT a smartphone (though it does blur the lines somewhat) makes it more the impressive.
But then again, Sony Ericssons have been quite intresting in their support for standards. They had one of the first "Normal" cellphones to support - JPEG/GIF/PNG with Alpha - SVG with ANimations - XHTML - with CSS - Support for TAR format in files used on the phone, such as themes, which is just a TAR file containing all the graphics in JPG/GIF/PNG, coupled with a plain text XML file) - SynchML - SMIL support (used for MMS, and WAP)
and all this on a small phone.. whilst my Windows XP machine...
> the solution is so simple! just make mozilla hook > in to IE the same way flash does. as a plugin. > ie's greatest strength of auto installing plugins > seamlessly would then become its worst enemy!
Actually, that is possible already. Adam Locke's Moz ActiveX control allows you to embed the gecko engine into a page rendered in IE.
Actually, the Sony Ericsson S700 (and i think the K700/K500, that is currenly all the rage here in UK) support not just static SVG, but also Animated SVG too (it comes with two sample animated SVG pics)
Its certainly ironic when I see one of the best "built in" SVG parsers, present not on a computer, but on a Mobile Phone (SonyEricsson S700i), yet all the viewers i see in IE seem to have some faults here or there.
An AC has replied to you with a link pointing to proof that in fact Bollywood IS more popular than you think.
But What you said is not true. In japan, South Indian films (especially Tamil) are extremely popular. Especially films by a particular actor called Rajani Khanth, whos is treated extremely well in Japan, and his films often sell more than hollywood over there.
Here in UK we have seen a big increase in Bollywood style films, and its not just because of the large indian population. Bend it like beckham earned the title among the population of "Best British comedy" of 2002. Monsoon wedding and the recent Bride and prejudice was also well recieved.
True Bollywood films such as Devdas and Mohabaitten were showing in "normal" (non-indian) cinemas. The film Taal was the inspiration for Andrew Llyod Webbers Bombay Dreams show.
The Bollywood composer A.R Rahman, is going to create the musical score for the Lord of the Rings West End show.
Bollywood has affected commerce in the UK too. Clothing shops now stock Bollywood style dresses and clothing made for the "white english" market. Even McDonalds sometimes does an Indian Special, where they add Spicey Lambburgers, and Spicy Fries.
a LOT of bollywood films ARE having significant scenes being shot in the UK, with the UK government trying to encourage this further.
Maybe in the US its not so big, but look out of your borders, before you come up with a statement like that
if i am right, bgates was born in 1955 which if the photo was taken 1983 (most likely 1984), he would be.... 28/29... on a magazine for 13 year olds???????
Also, before i get blasted at being sexist, In general, men drive more than women. Take a family. EVEN IF the woman is a driver, when the entire family goes out, who does the driving?
Before a count is made as to who has more/less accidents, they also need to consider the amount driven too.
And now with more women driving at a younger age, i think we are going to see some intresting results.
Try a SonyEricsson S700i, I bought one of those babies. It has a decent (as in good sound) MP3 player, a 1.3Mp camera (sure not Nikon Coolpix territory, but amazingly good in daylight situations) and an FM radio that actually works.
I used to use the P800 for these tasks (combined cell/pda/camera/MP3/OGG player) but it was just too big to be practical. But the S700 is dangerously close.... Oh and it has bluetooth too, and a instresting "Bluetooth Display" profile... god knows what THAT is.
Man, now i see why Slashdot readers bat low when it comes to females.
- sending text like this is just stalking. You are not going to gain anything.
- So what about your CD's let it go man! You GAVE it to her as a gift. I bought my previous ex a nice ring, i never even questioned it back. I would have far more pride than to ask a gift back.
- Another poster talked about making her life a "miserable hell" by telling her parents. God, the last time i heard that sort of thing was in Primary School.
Frankly seeing what some of the suggestions made, I am not surprised your girlfriends left you....
Ok, i have never been breast fed (I was premature by nearly two months, so was put on a special SMA compound instead). Yet, I became pretty smart in both intellect, and street-smarts. I was able to argue a case with the Profs at uni, and also with the bozos (Chavs) down at the local shopping centre. And did a Phd too to boot.
My sister was breast fed until quite late. Yet screwballed her studies, with only 1 GCSE pass (now two). Even in streetsmarts she is not so smart.
I think it has nothign to do with breast feeding itself, but more to do with other factors.
This reminded me of Doug Naylor's Red Dwarf Book (from the BBC), where they talk about special genetic organisms developed, and played football.
The "joke" about that (which may be hard to understand if you are not English) was that "things got to a head when Scotland fielded an oblong the shape and size fo the goal to a world cup qualifier. Yet they still managed to not qualify"
MS gave IE away not to make browsers a commodity, but to capture and lock-in a market. IE contains plenty of proprietry extensions that is not a standard. Giving away IE effectively locks into MS own proprietry standards, and makes MS money elsewhere. When a company locks a customer into a technology, its often because they are not confident it would stand up on its own otherwise.
IBM is "giving away" the OS to make the OS a comodity. Linux is a "standard" they do not control. In many ways, it is possible for company XYZ to make a Mainframe with Linux, and it could even compete with IBM, and run the same sort of software as the IBM Mainframe. However, IBM is confident in their abilities as a hardware manufacturer, and as a solutions provider to compete against any competitors, and this is what PHBs will see.
In a way its like comparing a Korean/Japanese car with a German car here in the UK. The cars fromt eh orient are usually cheaper than the Mercedes, when you look at it in the forecourt. But, when it comes to the parts, you will find the Mercedes is far more reasonable. I can say this is very true, I have a Mercedes C-Class and my sister has a Nissan Micra. I spend far less on parts than her car. A pair of Brake Discs cost £14 for the Merc, and £22 for the Micra. Even more crazy, the platic badge on the Merc costs £3.50, whilst on the Micra costs £17.50.
The Parent was pretty funny, and shame those who replied who didnt see the joke.
However, the parent was unintentionally insightful as to the reasons why people stick with XP. Frankly everyone THINKS Windows comes "free" with every PC. When we market Linux as "free" (either freedom or price) they think, but we got XP for free too. And when they consider that some "free" versions of Linux actually costs about £5 for the disks. suddenly it doesnt look so "free". They do not know the true cost of Windows (£100 over here in the UK).
I am not sure about what its like in USA, but if you go to PCWORLD (Our big Computer Chain Store). You will see Windows XP Professional often featuring somewhat more prominently than XP Home. And where XP Home / MCE is available, it is sold as an "upgrade". The impression customers get is that the XP home that comes with a new computer is "free" and part of the computer, and there is an offer to "upgrade" the computer by purchasing Pro.
Those who dont have Windows XP, see the XP Home upgrade edition as a kind of upgrade that makes their computer's 10x more powerful. This then causes dissapointment. Which is why the salesmen try to peddle a new computer with XP Home pre-installed. Imagine the marketing for this: Either you can purchase this Xp Home for £100 which may run slower on YOUR computer, or you can get for £500 this funky new powerfull multimedia computer with printer, and scanner, and it comes with XP already to go. You can imagine what most customers are doing. This sort of selling technique does give the impression that XP is "free" (just look at the costs)
As for Linux, where customers have actually heard about it, they think that its "not for THEIR Packard Bell/HP/Dell PC's" and that you need a special PC to run it.
Its not that surprising when you consider that if they have ever seen Linux run, its on a custom PC by an enthusiast, and not something that they see in PCWorld.
The point I am trying to make, is that the Parent poster played the role of a typical PCWORLD saleman, and while things are like that, XP will continue to rule.
Actually you might have come up with an idea that coudl be useful.
Why woudl you need an OS to boot another OS? well, given the complexity of modern BIOS software, how about a basic BIOS that boots a Micro Linux kernal stored in Flash or a Hardisk, and use that for config, and initial load.
In fact, it doesnt even have to be Linux, it can be a FreeDOS hack.
As i have written in another post, These things are illegal in the UK (we have to use special transmitter/recievers that work on the 2.4Ghz band). So thank god, I dont need to listen to "Johny next door", who loves to broadcast crappy songs, drowning out my regular channels.
Slashdot Mirror
Seconded...
I am also a brit, and the one thing i really love about Canada is the way it merged the Best of Britain, America and Europe into a country.
It is certainly intresting how Canada is more socialist than even Britain sometimes, and its a good thing, when you also see how its run, and the kind nature of the people.
I am not dissing Americans either, American citizens are really nice too. But I see the attitudes of the people not nessasarily reflected in aspects of the administrative procedures, which really can ruin a hoilday by a tourist.
This reminds me of the Red Dwarf books, where it describes sometime in the future; CocaCola embarks on an advertising campaign where they send out spaceships to blast a number of stars into a supernova, spelling out the words "Coke gives life" into the night sky.
(This is how Lister finds Kryten, on board one of the ships originally sent out)
At the time I was like, yeah right.....
I used to be with Metronet for dial-up (i stil use them for hosting). They are local to where i live (Harrow) and they are pretty good, and friendly folks.
The only reason why i left them, was to get the NTL £10 a month unlimited dialup, which was a total joke, then when i moved to DSL, the offeres metronet had back then were not available. I feel i woudl have got it much cheaper had I stuck with metronet.
There are plenty of number already in existance.. search on Google for advantages to the RT2000 system. This already uses the 3D card, and yes, you are able to do real time work at full res NTSC/PAL with up to 5 sources i believe. It can even do it with "live" video.
But it IS being done already.. the RT2000 i mentioned in my post earlier.....
Being British, I didnt understand how the link was made that:
"very British kind of editing application" =
"Lots of style and not so much substance"
Currently, Transitions use a lot of software rendering techniques for generating effects such as transparency, 3D flyovers, and composition.
Traditionally, using software rendering, a simple 10 minuite clip can take 1 hour to render. Just over the weekend, I created a 8 minuite "moving slideshow" video clip from Still photos, and titles, which consited of photos gently moving in and out, and cross fading, and titles being added to it. A very simple composition task, yet it took my Athlon 2500+ over 40 minuites to render frame by frame into High Quality MPEG2 for DVD using software rendering.
Few years ago, it was suggested that maybe a 3D card can be used to assist in that, so the blunt of the rendering was done on a 3D card, and then frame by frame captured from the frame buffer to create a final AVI/MPEG of the composition.
The presumption was that frames of the video or Stills can be used as Textures, and the power of the Graphics card to render it all
Also it can be used for Real-Time composition of effects, as you can hook up a video recorder to the output, and directly record onto tape.
This technology was used extensivly in the Matrox RT2000 and beyond. The RT2000 was a professional video editing suite which consists of a Modified Matrox G400 graphics card (called the G400 flex) and a RT2000 video in/out card, which did realtime DV/MPEG encoding/decoding, and had firewire/analogue connections.
The RT system used the Matrox G400 Flex to perform the realtime compositing and rendering, and is powerfull enough to do the same effects in realtime, then send back to the RT card to directly send to DV tape, or MPEG2 file.
Then in 2000, ATi shown a proof of concept software using a normal Radeon card to render two video sequences onto a spinning cube in realtime, which was really stunning to look at.
So i assume this is further development is the realisation of this proof of concept.
As for WHY all this is nessasary, well for professional video editors, it gives the ability to have instant high quality previews, and fast rendering, which saves so much time, hence increases productivity.
I prefer the more "traditional" way creating... more fun, more creative, great universal interface (very little incompatibilities)
:)
Sure there is a 9 month wait...
And before you say "this is slashdot", and most have difficulty finding good "equipement" to connect to.. well we are already good at getting various new "hardware" to connect to our computers.. maybe use the same tricks to get various fleshware to connect to us
I thought it was rather obvious the irony when you read it. Maybe my British background...
The irony is, my powerful computer running both linux and windows XP does not 100% support SVG (animations too), and even then, its via a plugin for an APPLICATION. I am talking support in the shell/toolkit.
This phone has SVG support built in, and its part of the core graphics support (you can use SVG in backgrounds/MMS/Themes). It also has PNG support with transparency, used for its User Interface
The fact that the phone is NOT a smartphone (though it does blur the lines somewhat) makes it more the impressive.
But then again, Sony Ericssons have been quite intresting in their support for standards. They had one of the first "Normal" cellphones to support
- JPEG/GIF/PNG with Alpha
- SVG with ANimations
- XHTML - with CSS
- Support for TAR format in files used on the phone, such as themes, which is just a TAR file containing all the graphics in JPG/GIF/PNG, coupled with a plain text XML file)
- SynchML
- SMIL support (used for MMS, and WAP)
and all this on a small phone.. whilst my Windows XP machine...
> the solution is so simple! just make mozilla hook
Z iE.shtml
> in to IE the same way flash does. as a plugin.
> ie's greatest strength of auto installing plugins
> seamlessly would then become its worst enemy!
Actually, that is possible already. Adam Locke's Moz ActiveX control allows you to embed the gecko engine into a page rendered in IE.
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm
> im kidding. but you have to admit, it would be
> pretty funny to do something like that.
Already done, check MOZiE below for ONE example.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/MO
Actually, the Sony Ericsson S700 (and i think the K700/K500, that is currenly all the rage here in UK) support not just static SVG, but also Animated SVG too (it comes with two sample animated SVG pics)
Its certainly ironic when I see one of the best "built in" SVG parsers, present not on a computer, but on a Mobile Phone (SonyEricsson S700i), yet all the viewers i see in IE seem to have some faults here or there.
An AC has replied to you with a link pointing to proof that in fact Bollywood IS more popular than you think.
But What you said is not true. In japan, South Indian films (especially Tamil) are extremely popular. Especially films by a particular actor called Rajani Khanth, whos is treated extremely well in Japan, and his films often sell more than hollywood over there.
Here in UK we have seen a big increase in Bollywood style films, and its not just because of the large indian population. Bend it like beckham earned the title among the population of "Best British comedy" of 2002. Monsoon wedding and the recent Bride and prejudice was also well recieved.
True Bollywood films such as Devdas and Mohabaitten were showing in "normal" (non-indian) cinemas. The film Taal was the inspiration for Andrew Llyod Webbers Bombay Dreams show.
The Bollywood composer A.R Rahman, is going to create the musical score for the Lord of the Rings West End show.
Bollywood has affected commerce in the UK too. Clothing shops now stock Bollywood style dresses and clothing made for the "white english" market. Even McDonalds sometimes does an Indian Special, where they add Spicey Lambburgers, and Spicy Fries.
a LOT of bollywood films ARE having significant scenes being shot in the UK, with the UK government trying to encourage this further.
Maybe in the US its not so big, but look out of your borders, before you come up with a statement like that
Except... one worrying thing...
... on a magazine for 13 year olds???????
if i am right, bgates was born in 1955
which if the photo was taken 1983 (most likely 1984), he would be.... 28/29
Scarey....
Also, before i get blasted at being sexist, In general, men drive more than women. Take a family. EVEN IF the woman is a driver, when the entire family goes out, who does the driving?
Before a count is made as to who has more/less accidents, they also need to consider the amount driven too.
And now with more women driving at a younger age, i think we are going to see some intresting results.
Try a SonyEricsson S700i, I bought one of those babies. It has a decent (as in good sound) MP3 player, a 1.3Mp camera (sure not Nikon Coolpix territory, but amazingly good in daylight situations) and an FM radio that actually works.
I used to use the P800 for these tasks (combined cell/pda/camera/MP3/OGG player) but it was just too big to be practical. But the S700 is dangerously close.... Oh and it has bluetooth too, and a instresting "Bluetooth Display" profile... god knows what THAT is.
Not just Japan...
Europe too, is vastly different than the US. My new SonyRicsson S700i has a pretty decent Java Gaming system, that actually works well.
Man, now i see why Slashdot readers bat low when it comes to females.
- sending text like this is just stalking. You are not going to gain anything.
- So what about your CD's let it go man! You GAVE it to her as a gift. I bought my previous ex a nice ring, i never even questioned it back. I would have far more pride than to ask a gift back.
- Another poster talked about making her life a "miserable hell" by telling her parents. God, the last time i heard that sort of thing was in Primary School.
Frankly seeing what some of the suggestions made, I am not surprised your girlfriends left you....
Breast milk makes your baby smarter?
*looks at own family*
Ok, i have never been breast fed (I was premature by nearly two months, so was put on a special SMA compound instead). Yet, I became pretty smart in both intellect, and street-smarts. I was able to argue a case with the Profs at uni, and also with the bozos (Chavs) down at the local shopping centre. And did a Phd too to boot.
My sister was breast fed until quite late. Yet screwballed her studies, with only 1 GCSE pass (now two). Even in streetsmarts she is not so smart.
I think it has nothign to do with breast feeding itself, but more to do with other factors.
This reminded me of Doug Naylor's Red Dwarf Book (from the BBC), where they talk about special genetic organisms developed, and played football.
The "joke" about that (which may be hard to understand if you are not English) was that "things got to a head when Scotland fielded an oblong the shape and size fo the goal to a world cup qualifier. Yet they still managed to not qualify"
Whatever it is, this is the actions of one company. Until other leeches also mend their ways, i still think Software patents are inheritently evil.
You are comparing Apples and Oranges.
MS gave IE away not to make browsers a commodity, but to capture and lock-in a market. IE contains plenty of proprietry extensions that is not a standard. Giving away IE effectively locks into MS own proprietry standards, and makes MS money elsewhere. When a company locks a customer into a technology, its often because they are not confident it would stand up on its own otherwise.
IBM is "giving away" the OS to make the OS a comodity. Linux is a "standard" they do not control. In many ways, it is possible for company XYZ to make a Mainframe with Linux, and it could even compete with IBM, and run the same sort of software as the IBM Mainframe. However, IBM is confident in their abilities as a hardware manufacturer, and as a solutions provider to compete against any competitors, and this is what PHBs will see.
In a way its like comparing a Korean/Japanese car with a German car here in the UK. The cars fromt eh orient are usually cheaper than the Mercedes, when you look at it in the forecourt. But, when it comes to the parts, you will find the Mercedes is far more reasonable. I can say this is very true, I have a Mercedes C-Class and my sister has a Nissan Micra. I spend far less on parts than her car. A pair of Brake Discs cost £14 for the Merc, and £22 for the Micra. Even more crazy, the platic badge on the Merc costs £3.50, whilst on the Micra costs £17.50.
The Parent was pretty funny, and shame those who replied who didnt see the joke.
However, the parent was unintentionally insightful as to the reasons why people stick with XP. Frankly everyone THINKS Windows comes "free" with every PC. When we market Linux as "free" (either freedom or price) they think, but we got XP for free too. And when they consider that some "free" versions of Linux actually costs about £5 for the disks. suddenly it doesnt look so "free". They do not know the true cost of Windows (£100 over here in the UK).
I am not sure about what its like in USA, but if you go to PCWORLD (Our big Computer Chain Store). You will see Windows XP Professional often featuring somewhat more prominently than XP Home. And where XP Home / MCE is available, it is sold as an "upgrade". The impression customers get is that the XP home that comes with a new computer is "free" and part of the computer, and there is an offer to "upgrade" the computer by purchasing Pro.
Those who dont have Windows XP, see the XP Home upgrade edition as a kind of upgrade that makes their computer's 10x more powerful. This then causes dissapointment. Which is why the salesmen try to peddle a new computer with XP Home pre-installed. Imagine the marketing for this: Either you can purchase this Xp Home for £100 which may run slower on YOUR computer, or you can get for £500 this funky new powerfull multimedia computer with printer, and scanner, and it comes with XP already to go. You can imagine what most customers are doing. This sort of selling technique does give the impression that XP is "free" (just look at the costs)
As for Linux, where customers have actually heard about it, they think that its "not for THEIR Packard Bell/HP/Dell PC's" and that you need a special PC to run it.
Its not that surprising when you consider that if they have ever seen Linux run, its on a custom PC by an enthusiast, and not something that they see in PCWorld.
The point I am trying to make, is that the Parent poster played the role of a typical PCWORLD saleman, and while things are like that, XP will continue to rule.
Actually you might have come up with an idea that coudl be useful.
Why woudl you need an OS to boot another OS? well, given the complexity of modern BIOS software, how about a basic BIOS that boots a Micro Linux kernal stored in Flash or a Hardisk, and use that for config, and initial load.
In fact, it doesnt even have to be Linux, it can be a FreeDOS hack.
As i have written in another post, These things are illegal in the UK (we have to use special transmitter/recievers that work on the 2.4Ghz band). So thank god, I dont need to listen to "Johny next door", who loves to broadcast crappy songs, drowning out my regular channels.