In this context, "lossless" simply means the decoder for your compression method gives you back exactly what was put in, and "lossy" doesn't.
But that's just the thing -- GIF compression doesn't give me back exactly what I put in.
My point is that in today's computer graphics world, where everything is antialiased and has shadows and gradients, 256 colors just doesn't cut it unless your image is tiny or is solid.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's when someone saves a photograph as a GIF. *shudders*...it just looks so awful...
PNG and Gif are both lossless (If you are talking about a 256 color (8 bit) palette.
At this day in the age of pretty high-color widgets and whatnot, I would definately call only 256 colors lossy. No one is limited to a 256 color display anymore. Even my phone has 65K colors (and supports PNG!). 24bit+8alpha is just about required now for your graphics to look good and fit in with the OS.
I hate the fact that when IE loads my PNGs with alpha it gives it an ugly solid bluish background. You have to hack it just to get my damned images to display correctly in IE. As a result, no one uses regular PNGs.
Re:No one can answer that question
on
Portable Storage?
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· Score: 1
No one can answer that question
You obviously missed all the iPod posts that went up while you were writing your comment.
You are thinking about the seats by the emergency exits. You can't sit there if you are under 15 or would be unable to open the exit and assist others in the event of a crash.
However, they can't simply refuse service because someone has no limbs. That's discrimination. Granted, they won't have much of a chance in a crash, but those are the breaks.
Hey asshole: I hope that if I die in a crash, I'm smashing into you.
Shit, it's late here and I was just throwing out ideas. Isn't that the point of discussion, to throw out your ideas to other people? Oh, that's right, this is the internet, where the point is to make fun of other people's ideas while adding absolutely nothing of value to the discussion. Reminds me of the poster, "Arguing on the Internet"
Do you honestly expect me or anyone else to build their own private road system? No. Nor do I. And after reading through all the replies to my post, I realize that yes, it is probably a good idea to make sure everyone is insured. I was wrong -- shit happens, get over it.
I'm sorry you had to endure the pain of reading my "retarded libertarian" comment. And this is why I am also a fan of free speech: Even if I say a bad idea out loud and some jerk wants to flame me, I can write up a reprisal to it... or I can just laugh at it.
No hard feelings, though. I know everyone has their bad days and a trigger finger on the Reply button.
We could set up a "payment plan" for the uninsured. The court could mandate that $X or X% of every paycheck goes to paying off the person you hit.
This way, you can choose to risk it by not buying liablity insurance. But if you do hit someone, then that person would still be compensated for damages.
I'm just trying to think of new ideas. As long as I can afford liablity, I'll probably but it. What I don't like is laws which force me to buy it even if I don't want it or can't afford it.
I'm not a fan of the government-imposed insurance tax. If someone smashes into you (and is found at fault) who has chosen not to have insurance, you take them to court and force them to pay for your car.
If you smash into a tree, it's your own damn fault if you don't have insurance.
Dear government, please stop telling me how to spend my money.
My bet: you're a twelve-year-old with zero social skills, zero friends. You try to look smart by using big words. You have nothing valuable to contribute to mature discussion; instead you post flamebait and add to the clutter. You are nothing more than wasted mod points that could have been used to bring out a valuable comment.
The fact that you were defensive to being called a geek only confirms my theory. You have to point out how much smarter you are than a "geek." You're out to prove that you're not a loser, so you go around insulting people and calling them losers in an anonymous manner. Now that, my friend, takes balls. Guess what -- you are the loser.
My advice: grow up and act with some maturity. Treat others with respect. Be friendly towards people. Who knows, you might even make some real-life friends. Get out of the house and do something. I find it ironic that you talk about "lamers" sitting in their parents' basement when you yourself posted that comment from your parents' house. Not to mention the little bit about "pretending to know anything."
Oh, and don't use "whilst." It only makes it painfully obvious that you are trying to sound intelligent.
-- Not posted anonymously because I have balls and I don't have anything to prove.
For the love of all your precious data, NOOOOOO!!!
Don't you know that you've made it easy for the men in the white van outside? Now all they have to do is watch the LEDs through the window and see that you've been downloading terrabytes of pr0n to your fileserver!
Having a single device being able to do more than its specific purpose is a good thing. Not only does it reduce the clutter of what's in my pocket, but if the extra features aren't really getting in your way, then why not?
This could have been said about PCs 20 years ago. "Why are there all these other things it can do??? All I bought this for was word processing." I like my computer being able to play games, tune into TV, browse the web, listen to music...
Peronally, I'm glad my PDA plays music and videos. Now I don't have to buy an iPod. I only have 3.1 GB of music on my computer. I don't need 40 gigs of music. On the other hand, if it played videos, I could load it up with divxes...
There's no difference between a camera watching you and a policeman.
There most definately is. The cop watching me isn't recording exactly what I'm doing. He might be able to remember the important details later, but there isn't a tape laying around for somebody to watch later for signs of "political dissent." (As an extreme example.)
Besides, I'd quite honestly much rather the cop watch me. I think we should stop spending money on cameras and instead put more cops on patrol. If something is happening to me, a cop can do something about it. All that a camera can do is possibly identify my attackers, and they may or may not be found.
Re:Your Rights Online? What a joke.
on
1984 Comes To Boston
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What rights are in question?
People do NOT have a right of privacy in public.
Oh, but you do.
Just not as much as when you're sitting at home on a beanbag naked eating Cheet-ohs.
Like most other things, my expectation of privacy is not binary, 1 or 0, black and white. When I am at home on my beanbag, I have a full expectation of privacy. It is my very reasonable expectation that no one is watching and recording what I do, listening to my phone conversations, or going through my porno collection to see what kind of pornos I have. (Warrants notwithstanding.) When I'm walking down the street, it would not be a reasonable for me to expect that no one is watching me. However, I do expect that no one is following me around with a camcorder, and I think that is perfectly reasonable. However, I can resonably expect to show up on a camera if I go to a baseball game.
Likewise, if I'm on a crowded street, chances are somebody will hear my phone conversation. If I don't like that, I should find somewhere a little out of the way so no one can hear what I'm talking about. But I do expect that the streetlamp isn't recording what I'm saying.
I also expect that no one will look through my brown bag full of pornos-- It's my bag, even though I'm in a public space.
The examples can go on and on. It's simple: There are varying degrees of privacy.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's just the thing -- GIF compression doesn't give me back exactly what I put in.
My point is that in today's computer graphics world, where everything is antialiased and has shadows and gradients, 256 colors just doesn't cut it unless your image is tiny or is solid.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's when someone saves a photograph as a GIF. *shudders* ...it just looks so awful...
At this day in the age of pretty high-color widgets and whatnot, I would definately call only 256 colors lossy. No one is limited to a 256 color display anymore. Even my phone has 65K colors (and supports PNG!). 24bit+8alpha is just about required now for your graphics to look good and fit in with the OS.
I hate the fact that when IE loads my PNGs with alpha it gives it an ugly solid bluish background. You have to hack it just to get my damned images to display correctly in IE. As a result, no one uses regular PNGs.
You obviously missed all the iPod posts that went up while you were writing your comment.
However, they can't simply refuse service because someone has no limbs. That's discrimination. Granted, they won't have much of a chance in a crash, but those are the breaks.
Shit, it's late here and I was just throwing out ideas. Isn't that the point of discussion, to throw out your ideas to other people? Oh, that's right, this is the internet, where the point is to make fun of other people's ideas while adding absolutely nothing of value to the discussion. Reminds me of the poster, "Arguing on the Internet"
Do you honestly expect me or anyone else to build their own private road system? No. Nor do I. And after reading through all the replies to my post, I realize that yes, it is probably a good idea to make sure everyone is insured. I was wrong -- shit happens, get over it.
I'm sorry you had to endure the pain of reading my "retarded libertarian" comment. And this is why I am also a fan of free speech: Even if I say a bad idea out loud and some jerk wants to flame me, I can write up a reprisal to it... or I can just laugh at it.
No hard feelings, though. I know everyone has their bad days and a trigger finger on the Reply button.
This way, you can choose to risk it by not buying liablity insurance. But if you do hit someone, then that person would still be compensated for damages.
I'm just trying to think of new ideas. As long as I can afford liablity, I'll probably but it. What I don't like is laws which force me to buy it even if I don't want it or can't afford it.
If you smash into a tree, it's your own damn fault if you don't have insurance.
Dear government, please stop telling me how to spend my money.
Thank you.
NOW all that's left is converting my leather Lay-Z-Boy into a toilet. Then I won't even have to care that my muscles are atrophying!
This led to it being called the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," which is essentially what it is.
I can't wait for next time MM's copyright is up for expiration....
Because, as we all know, once something falls into the public domain, no one will want to keep it around anymore and it will forever be lost.
Yes, they might be the ones that said "huh.... katie.com is already in use.... Fuck it, we'll use it anyway!"
But they aren't the ones sending the lawyers after Katie Jones. Katie Tarbox, the author, is sending the lawayers after the other Katie.
I can almost forgive using katie.com. It is inexcusable for the author to send the lawyers after someone who has the legal rights to the domain.
Indigenous inhabitants didn't stop European settlers from taking land as their own over the past few centuries.
Hell, we'll just make them work at McDonald's! They won't speak English, but how is that different from today's McDonald's?
You are just a dumbass.
My bet: you're a twelve-year-old with zero social skills, zero friends. You try to look smart by using big words. You have nothing valuable to contribute to mature discussion; instead you post flamebait and add to the clutter. You are nothing more than wasted mod points that could have been used to bring out a valuable comment.
The fact that you were defensive to being called a geek only confirms my theory. You have to point out how much smarter you are than a "geek." You're out to prove that you're not a loser, so you go around insulting people and calling them losers in an anonymous manner. Now that, my friend, takes balls. Guess what -- you are the loser.
My advice: grow up and act with some maturity. Treat others with respect. Be friendly towards people. Who knows, you might even make some real-life friends. Get out of the house and do something. I find it ironic that you talk about "lamers" sitting in their parents' basement when you yourself posted that comment from your parents' house. Not to mention the little bit about "pretending to know anything."
Oh, and don't use "whilst." It only makes it painfully obvious that you are trying to sound intelligent.
--
Not posted anonymously because I have balls and I don't have anything to prove.
Don't you know that you've made it easy for the men in the white van outside? Now all they have to do is watch the LEDs through the window and see that you've been downloading terrabytes of pr0n to your fileserver!
And then we wonder why we don't get laid...
It kinda works like T9 input, press each number for a letter only once.
The results usually are regular HTML pages. When you click on them, Google will transform the pages to WML pages with varying levels of success.
My phone won't read HTML.
Unfortunately, this has led me to read Slashdot while driving.
DAMN YOU, WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY!
You'll still have a car -- just drive in the days you can't fly.
I use these cameras every day and love them. They produce a great picture and even the standard batteries aren't that bad.
And Final Cut does support 24fps natively.
This could have been said about PCs 20 years ago. "Why are there all these other things it can do??? All I bought this for was word processing." I like my computer being able to play games, tune into TV, browse the web, listen to music...
Peronally, I'm glad my PDA plays music and videos. Now I don't have to buy an iPod. I only have 3.1 GB of music on my computer. I don't need 40 gigs of music. On the other hand, if it played videos, I could load it up with divxes...
There most definately is. The cop watching me isn't recording exactly what I'm doing. He might be able to remember the important details later, but there isn't a tape laying around for somebody to watch later for signs of "political dissent." (As an extreme example.)
Besides, I'd quite honestly much rather the cop watch me. I think we should stop spending money on cameras and instead put more cops on patrol. If something is happening to me, a cop can do something about it. All that a camera can do is possibly identify my attackers, and they may or may not be found.
Oh, but you do.
Just not as much as when you're sitting at home on a beanbag naked eating Cheet-ohs.
Like most other things, my expectation of privacy is not binary, 1 or 0, black and white. When I am at home on my beanbag, I have a full expectation of privacy. It is my very reasonable expectation that no one is watching and recording what I do, listening to my phone conversations, or going through my porno collection to see what kind of pornos I have. (Warrants notwithstanding.) When I'm walking down the street, it would not be a reasonable for me to expect that no one is watching me. However, I do expect that no one is following me around with a camcorder, and I think that is perfectly reasonable. However, I can resonably expect to show up on a camera if I go to a baseball game.
Likewise, if I'm on a crowded street, chances are somebody will hear my phone conversation. If I don't like that, I should find somewhere a little out of the way so no one can hear what I'm talking about. But I do expect that the streetlamp isn't recording what I'm saying.
I also expect that no one will look through my brown bag full of pornos-- It's my bag, even though I'm in a public space.
The examples can go on and on. It's simple: There are varying degrees of privacy.
Tim and Al were roommates back in college.
Tim just stole the floppy from Al's computer while he was sleeping and took all the credit.
Al won't rest until he makes the cover of Wired.