MPEG2 supports bit rates of up to 80 megabits/second. This is very high. The Cam is using up to 25 mbits and this is sufficient for HD. To give you a comparison, 8 mbits MPEG-2 is higher quality than you see on your standard TV. Besides, the only way to record it is to use some form of compression if you want a tape to last more than a minute. And MPEG-2 is better than some I could think of (think Redmond). Besides, MPEG-2 hardware compressors are very cheap compared to anything else, and MPEG is more versatile for this. Besides, since MPEG-2 is a SMPTE standard, they can garuntee that the files will be compatible with any program out there for editing them.
It is really surprising that we have interlaced standards in the HDTV specs.
Not really, when you consider who came up with all the specs for DTV in the first place. No one in the broadcast industry wanted to eliminate interlace and change to progressive originally. Just like when the digital cameras for filming movies came out, the movie makers wouldn't use them until they supported 24fps instead of only 30fps. The reasons for support don't usually make sense other than it is what the people are comfortable with. And if you try arguing with some of them about it, you would find that they have almost religious convictions about the format they use.
Actually, given the benefits of progressive scan, I'm surprised there isn't more equipment in 1080p
The basic reason they don't is due to the bandwidth of the amount of information you'd have to transfer is double that of 1080i. And then you have to compress that information. Compressed HDTV runs at 19.8 Mega Bits/second. To do 1080p you would have to run at twice that 39.6 Mbps. This amounts to one full 4.7GB disk every 15 minutes. Not many devices can record that fast, except raid arrays. If you want progressive, use 720p for now.
Depends on the application. There are many programs that don't take advantage of a second processor. Also, there are some tasks that can only be done linearly. A second processor only helps when instructions can be done in paralel. In those cases, the only option is "Speed Speed Speed" to get better performance.
anonymity is critical to the practice of democracy.
Then don't vote using Absentee Balot. After all, they have to see how you voted and you have to sign the sheet in order to vote. In fact, why not just outlaw absentee voting altogether? Why not just make it impossible for anyone that is outside their district on election day to vote? Like a good large chunk of college students that go to school out of state or more than 30 min from where they live and people that are overseas (military, ambassadors etc).
No matter how you do absentee voting, you give up a lttle anonymity. And if you didn't have to sign the sheets, you'd have a lot of voter fraud. "Lets see, 300 absentee voters, 300,000 absentee votes. I wonder which are the fake ones."
A general purepose robot wouldn't be used for super-soldiers, and the military would have them before the general purepose ones came out. For instance, the soldier bots would need things like, ARMOR and other things.
DC has a city council and mayor at the sufferance of the U.S. Congress. It took a vote to get them set up in the first place so that the Congressmen wouldn't have to run the day to day affairs of a city. One vote and the council is toast.
As to Puerto Rico, they are a territory, not a nation. And the entire territory is owned by the US.
I wonder if they took into account the fact that transmitters are usually placed in areas with a high population density. If you have 70% more deaths with 1000% more people, then it could be said that it reduces cancer.
Why are they worried about fewer women in Computer Science? Proportionaly there were about 3 times as many women in the CS program at my University than in the entire Engineering program. And I just graduated this year. Why are they worried about CS then?
Put the engineers along the outside walls and have some nice BIG windows. The one thing I hate is not seeing the sun for so long. Especially in college where all my classes were either in the basement (no windows or sunroofs) or at night. I missed the sun for so long.
So it's important for humans to curb CO2 emissions when mother nature is is pumping out about 20 THOUSAND TIMES MORE THAN THE U.S. ALONE? How the HELL is 0.00005% more or less CO2 going to have any real effect on the environment?
Moreover, having worked in industry research there is absolutely zero interest to embark in the type of long term research that takes place in universities. Research that may take 20 years to pan out, such as, lets see, the internet.
From what I understand, AT&T's Bell Labs did long term research before they got split. Hell, from what I understand if AT&T would have been left intact we would have had DSL in every house in the 80's.
Instead, now is a very good time to move away from labels and move to indi music or simply those that support downloads.
Then the RIAA will use the loss of sales to fuel their claims that people are illegally downloading music instead of buying CD's. Course this is mainly from the fact that they only look at their CD sales and not the entire markets CD sales.
When was the last time they included an idependant label or say a Bach CD in their sales figures? Anybody know?
P2P, notably bit torrent, is being used increasingly by producers who can't afford a fat pipe for the whole world to download their stuff and by consumers who are tired of waiting in line at fileplanet.
It's getting to the point where it is hard to find some linux distros that are not using Bittorrent. Also, several places that release shows on the net (legally, sorry, i don't remember the name of the last/. article that had this) only through BT now.
They've gotten over a hundred back, as far as I recall.
I could have sworn we only had five to begin with. Columbia, Discovery, Challenger, Atlantis, Endeavour and (if you count it) the Prototype Enterprise. Seeing as how we only had five to begin with (now three, unfortunataley) how could be have gotten over a hundred back?
Considering they're already 20 years behind our shuttle
And considering our shuttle was obsolete before the Enterprise even had it's test landing, that will mean this thing will be obsolete by 40 years or more when it launches in 11 to 16 years.
Why can't they just work on a 100% completely reusable Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) Verticle Takeoff and Landing (VTOL)? It could land anywhere that is flat enough and take off again if it still had sufficient fuel. No need for long specialized runways that are longer and more costly than an airport. Hell, with the right setup, you could land it in the Sahara desert. Or even a helicopter pad, assuming the asphalt doesn't melt too much.
Well, since you brought up the numbers.
300 million/40 million school kids (a low estimate) comes out to $7.50 per student. I don't see how that is going to affect the school system much when the average amount spent per year per student is OVER $9,000, and increase of ess than 0.1%. I'd rather have the money going towards space rather than an inconsequentialy small increase somewhere else.
Orion IS politically possible. We who support nuclear just need to drown out the voices of those who are anti-nuclear.
As for a Space elevator costing tens of billions of dollars, that is still insanely cheap compared to what it would cost to ship everything up or down the way we are now. After all, once we get a space elevator up, we could just start assembling ships in space instead of on earth. That would also give us the ability to eliminate the heat shielding and smooth surfaces required for atmospheric takeoff and landing.
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MPEG2 supports bit rates of up to 80 megabits/second. This is very high. The Cam is using up to 25 mbits and this is sufficient for HD. To give you a comparison, 8 mbits MPEG-2 is higher quality than you see on your standard TV. Besides, the only way to record it is to use some form of compression if you want a tape to last more than a minute. And MPEG-2 is better than some I could think of (think Redmond). Besides, MPEG-2 hardware compressors are very cheap compared to anything else, and MPEG is more versatile for this. Besides, since MPEG-2 is a SMPTE standard, they can garuntee that the files will be compatible with any program out there for editing them.
HD is 1.5 Gigabits/second uncompressed. HDCAM records at ~2 to 1 compression.
It is really surprising that we have interlaced standards in the HDTV specs.
Not really, when you consider who came up with all the specs for DTV in the first place. No one in the broadcast industry wanted to eliminate interlace and change to progressive originally. Just like when the digital cameras for filming movies came out, the movie makers wouldn't use them until they supported 24fps instead of only 30fps. The reasons for support don't usually make sense other than it is what the people are comfortable with. And if you try arguing with some of them about it, you would find that they have almost religious convictions about the format they use.
Actually, given the benefits of progressive scan, I'm surprised there isn't more equipment in 1080p
The basic reason they don't is due to the bandwidth of the amount of information you'd have to transfer is double that of 1080i. And then you have to compress that information. Compressed HDTV runs at 19.8 Mega Bits/second. To do 1080p you would have to run at twice that 39.6 Mbps. This amounts to one full 4.7GB disk every 15 minutes. Not many devices can record that fast, except raid arrays. If you want progressive, use 720p for now.
Depends on the application. There are many programs that don't take advantage of a second processor. Also, there are some tasks that can only be done linearly. A second processor only helps when instructions can be done in paralel. In those cases, the only option is "Speed Speed Speed" to get better performance.
Interesting rainbow halo around it. I wonder what causes the CYM pattern. Anybody know?
What I would want to see is one that lights up the night as if it were day. Heard that happened once, would love to see it with my own eyes.
anonymity is critical to the practice of democracy.
Then don't vote using Absentee Balot. After all, they have to see how you voted and you have to sign the sheet in order to vote. In fact, why not just outlaw absentee voting altogether? Why not just make it impossible for anyone that is outside their district on election day to vote? Like a good large chunk of college students that go to school out of state or more than 30 min from where they live and people that are overseas (military, ambassadors etc).
No matter how you do absentee voting, you give up a lttle anonymity. And if you didn't have to sign the sheets, you'd have a lot of voter fraud. "Lets see, 300 absentee voters, 300,000 absentee votes. I wonder which are the fake ones."
You reminded me of a quote from WWII.
First, the Nazis went after the disabled and homosexual, but I was not disabled or homo-sexual, so I did not speak up.
Then they went after the Gypsies, but I was not Gypsy, so I did not speak up.
Then they went after the communists, but I was not communist, so I did not speak up.
Then they went after the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak up.
Then they went after the Catholics, but I was not a Catholic, so I did not speak up.
Then they came after ME, and there was no one left to speak.
A general purepose robot wouldn't be used for super-soldiers, and the military would have them before the general purepose ones came out. For instance, the soldier bots would need things like, ARMOR and other things.
DC has a city council and mayor at the sufferance of the U.S. Congress. It took a vote to get them set up in the first place so that the Congressmen wouldn't have to run the day to day affairs of a city. One vote and the council is toast.
As to Puerto Rico, they are a territory, not a nation. And the entire territory is owned by the US.
I wonder if they took into account the fact that transmitters are usually placed in areas with a high population density. If you have 70% more deaths with 1000% more people, then it could be said that it reduces cancer.
Why are they worried about fewer women in Computer Science? Proportionaly there were about 3 times as many women in the CS program at my University than in the entire Engineering program. And I just graduated this year. Why are they worried about CS then?
Now if they can only do something about that FAX spam that keeps getting sent to my Cellphone as well I will be happy.
The only other launch ideas as cool are the Orion Project and the space elevator.
You forgot Project Promethius.
Put the engineers along the outside walls and have some nice BIG windows. The one thing I hate is not seeing the sun for so long. Especially in college where all my classes were either in the basement (no windows or sunroofs) or at night. I missed the sun for so long.
So it's important for humans to curb CO2 emissions when mother nature is is pumping out about 20 THOUSAND TIMES MORE THAN THE U.S. ALONE? How the HELL is 0.00005% more or less CO2 going to have any real effect on the environment?
Moreover, having worked in industry research there is absolutely zero interest to embark in the type of long term research that takes place in universities. Research that may take 20 years to pan out, such as, lets see, the internet.
From what I understand, AT&T's Bell Labs did long term research before they got split. Hell, from what I understand if AT&T would have been left intact we would have had DSL in every house in the 80's.
Instead, now is a very good time to move away from labels and move to indi music or simply those that support downloads.
Then the RIAA will use the loss of sales to fuel their claims that people are illegally downloading music instead of buying CD's. Course this is mainly from the fact that they only look at their CD sales and not the entire markets CD sales.
When was the last time they included an idependant label or say a Bach CD in their sales figures? Anybody know?
P2P, notably bit torrent, is being used increasingly by producers who can't afford a fat pipe for the whole world to download their stuff and by consumers who are tired of waiting in line at fileplanet.
/. article that had this) only through BT now.
It's getting to the point where it is hard to find some linux distros that are not using Bittorrent. Also, several places that release shows on the net (legally, sorry, i don't remember the name of the last
So now instead of /.ing the website we /. the Internet Archive instead.
They've gotten over a hundred back, as far as I recall.
I could have sworn we only had five to begin with. Columbia, Discovery, Challenger, Atlantis, Endeavour and (if you count it) the Prototype Enterprise. Seeing as how we only had five to begin with (now three, unfortunataley) how could be have gotten over a hundred back?
Considering they're already 20 years behind our shuttle
And considering our shuttle was obsolete before the Enterprise even had it's test landing, that will mean this thing will be obsolete by 40 years or more when it launches in 11 to 16 years.
Why can't they just work on a 100% completely reusable Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) Verticle Takeoff and Landing (VTOL)? It could land anywhere that is flat enough and take off again if it still had sufficient fuel. No need for long specialized runways that are longer and more costly than an airport. Hell, with the right setup, you could land it in the Sahara desert. Or even a helicopter pad, assuming the asphalt doesn't melt too much.
Well, since you brought up the numbers. 300 million/40 million school kids (a low estimate) comes out to $7.50 per student. I don't see how that is going to affect the school system much when the average amount spent per year per student is OVER $9,000, and increase of ess than 0.1%. I'd rather have the money going towards space rather than an inconsequentialy small increase somewhere else.
Orion IS politically possible. We who support nuclear just need to drown out the voices of those who are anti-nuclear.
As for a Space elevator costing tens of billions of dollars, that is still insanely cheap compared to what it would cost to ship everything up or down the way we are now. After all, once we get a space elevator up, we could just start assembling ships in space instead of on earth. That would also give us the ability to eliminate the heat shielding and smooth surfaces required for atmospheric takeoff and landing.