Is there a video codec that is nontrivial (not verbatim RGB), royalty-free (not MPEG-2 or MPEG-4), and recognized by a standards body (not Theora)? No, there are not. Therefore, they should choose a closed, proprietary, non-uniquitous piece of commercial nagware. If you can't do it perfectly, you might as well use the crappiest possible solution.
MPEG or MPEG-4 would be just fine since there are plenty of free, open, and reference implementations. Flash video would be reasonable alternative because although it is closed, it's ubiquitous.
When did NASA start using RealVideo? I thought they used to use standard formats. Yay, my tax dollars at work undermining standards to prop-up proprietary formats.
I generally keep my inbox clear. The only things in my inbox are things I need to get back to. Email is nice, because I can get back to them as-needed.
However, at my current job, my inbox is a 10 page mess. This isn't because I don't manage email properly - it's a symptom of the organization. Email doesn't cause stress any more than phone calls or postal mail. It becomes stressful if the job is stressful.
In-game advertising could kill period games. You can't seamlessly integrate ads them into the game world (soda machines, ads on the race cars, restaurants in the city, etc.) If period games lose revenue then designers will only finance games with advertising in them. Either that, or the period games will be more expensive. Which means we get a flood of modern-day and sports games. No more Okami, Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, etc.
Depends how fast it is moving. There's been research into using ballistics instead of nuclear because you can do more damage while leaving no fallout. You just have to accelerate something really really fast.
...to boost their academic results on school league tables.
If taking easy classes boosts academic results, then the people making those tables probably didn't take any upper level math courses either.
I work for a company that offers a downloadable product with a monthly subscription. We find that people actually login, enter their credit card number, download the software, and never run it. There's another group who never click the download button. It's really quite amazing. We've worked hard to make it as easy as possible - make sure the download link is visible on all screen resolutions, browsers, not require scripting or the latest softare, etc.
The only way to make me even consider actually paying for a mere audio file (as opposed to a CD which has liner notes etc.) is to offer FLAC. This hits the nail on the head with the self-righteous pirate attitude. Because online music isn't as a good as the CDs, the poster concludes that they have the right to pirate the music. Had they considered the other two options?
1) Don't buy it or download it at all 2) Buy the CD
Nobody should be pirating because of DRM when you can go into a music store and get a non-DRM'd RAW copy of the music. And if they don't offer a non-DRM CD (AKA Sony/BMG rootkits) then just don't buy it at all. We've become such a consumerist society that people think they can't live without music. Dude, your parents survived without TV, gasoline, or CDs. So don't do a "woe is me! It's DRM'd!" If you don't like it don't buy it, don't pirate it, just spit on them and let them fail.
Every time you pirate it it gives them one more reason to add more DRM, and every cent they lose from your piracy is spent on bribing your senators to give them more powers. When all PCs have mandated "Trusted Computing" in them it will be because of your actions. I'm sick of donating to the EFF and writing letters to my senators saying why DRM is evil and the RIAA sohuld not be given legal exemptions, and you add fuel to the fire on the other side. It's like I'm sitting here defending your right to screw me over. Well when I am putting myself on the line fighting a revolution to gain back the U.S. constitution, and you are lazily sitting there pirating music, you will be on my hit list. #1 = the representatives who got us here, #2 = the oligarchies and cartels who push for it, #3 = the people who fueled that fire because they just couldn't live without it.
You have plenty of right to complain about the state of DRM and online downloads, but none of that is justification for piracy.
IMO, the only way to reduce NP-Complete problems is using something like quantum entanglement or another similar characteristic that is not bounded by classical physics. I think that is what they are doing. Using interferometry to reduce one part of the problem to O(1)
Wow, that's almost like having some sort of permissions, or access control list, that prevents applications from modifying certain files. What a concept! I'll invent it, and call it UNIX!
You might be better to do another six hour encode, depending on what is involved in this algorithm. I bet you would have to go through each frame, mark which areas a wrong, then obtain a library of semantically related images, then run the program against the frames that you marked bad - and still not have the right result.
For what you are trying to do, a better idea would be to copy data from the previous and next frames. That's what they do when they "digitally remaster" old films to get rid of scratches or marks.
There is a commercial bittorrent? I didn't even know that. Who cares? There are probably a hundred open source implementations of the protocol. If a commercial company decides to fork the protocol in an incompatible way, will anyone care? Will anyone use their product if nobody can connect to it?
: "we're black; we don't do math." I read this comment a week ago and it has been troubling me ever since. I keep imagining what I would do if I was teaching and I heard that. So here's what I came up with:
I would probably ask the student out to the hall for this one. I would say, with an academic tone, "Did you know that there is a term for that? An old term. For a black man who doesn't read or write?" Give him a chance to answer. And if he doesn't get it, tell him the word is "Slave." Say it cooly, frankly, not like it was a well-planned attack. Ask him to look into that classroom and answer "Who do they have to thank for being there? Mom? Dad? " Perhaps suggest "Abraham Lincoln for freeing the slaves?" then prompt him "What is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. doing right this minute?" Naturally, he is dead. But the right answer is "rolling over in his grave." "Why is Dr. King dead? Because he is a martyr." Explain that "Dr. King died so that you could be in this classroom. Imagine that? Somebody who never knew you gave up their hopes, dreams, friends, family... so that you had a chance to learn. And you are throwing it away. I sure would not want to die to give somebody the right to spit in my face." Tell him he can be disrespectful, he can fail, he can do whatever. But he should not disrespect every hard working black engineer on the planet. Tell him that every black man who struggled, worked hard, and overcame prejudice to be successful just had a chill go down their spine. Tell him that his words are like the crack of a whip on their backs. Tell him that his people fought for a hundred years for the right to be educated, and he owes it to generations of black Americans to do his best.
Yeah, the kid would probably punch me if I said all that. But dammit, I can't help but feel like the chill from his comment could end global warming.
I'm not sure if you still teach, but I was googling for famous black engineers and I came across Eric Clark who won an award for his work at NASA. He happens to also mentor high school students. If you still know where this misguided kid is, join LinkedIn and give Eric Clark a call.
FYI: If that is the case, then you should not be paying $200/month. Health insurance that only covers major expenses should be
Even if your intent is not to help other people for good-hearted purposes, it's still socialist:
No, insurance is not about socialism...Insurance allows me to spread the risk among other, equally healthy people
I have Flashblock. Is there a Javablock? I'm surprised advertisers don't use Java more often. Java is one of those things that I would probably want to enable manually anyway, there's no need for it to be on all the time.
The article starts off language-agnostic:
Finding good programmers is hard in any language...You don't need to hire an expert in language X, you can and should look for expert programmers that are willing to learn language X. An expert can easily cross over... Then he turns on the PERL advocacy:
We love Perl and think it's a great language that you graduate to after you have been forced to use less agile languages such as Java, C/C++/C#, etc. Not necessarily a first language you get your feet wet with and then move onto a *cough* "real" language. It is annoying when smart people write an intelligent article on a subject, then decide to throw in a "oh, and while I'm sounding wise, my OS can beat your OS sux0rs!!!!" Excuse me while I go write an article on the relative efficiency of sorting algorithms, then insert why C++ is the language that everyone graduates too after they've wasted time on Perl. Sheesh.
Other that that, this looks like some decent advice.
I will not bid on any item that has a reserve So if someone puts an item out there that you are willing to pay $100 for, and they put a reserve at $10, you won't buy the item on principle? That's pretty lame.
1) I, Robot was not a novel. It was a collection of short stories based around a central theme. 2) The I, Robot movie was an original plot that carried the same theme as the short stories.
The actual short stories are would look lame with a movie adaption. It was too cerebral. It might work as a play though. Creating an original 2-hour plotline based around the same themes made a lot of sense.
Most games must be done start to finish within 2 years. If you write a game and it takes 5 years, then the game is usually obsolete by the time it comes out. The longer the development cycle, the more difficult it is to target the hardware that will be available when you ship the game. And as the code base grows in complexity it becomes harder to maintain, test, fix bugs, etc. I think too many people say "Will Wright knows what he is doing!" and conclude everything will work out. But history shows that when a game is ambitious, overhyped, and delayed multiple times -- that the odds are not good.
I really hope Spore works out. But I think they may have become subject to high expectations and scope creep.
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It's exactly the same in C++ as it is for Java. If you want multiple interfaces, just separate them by commas just like in Java. No magic required.
MPEG or MPEG-4 would be just fine since there are plenty of free, open, and reference implementations.
Flash video would be reasonable alternative because although it is closed, it's ubiquitous.
When did NASA start using RealVideo? I thought they used to use standard formats. Yay, my tax dollars at work undermining standards to prop-up proprietary formats.
I generally keep my inbox clear. The only things in my inbox are things I need to get back to. Email is nice, because I can get back to them as-needed.
However, at my current job, my inbox is a 10 page mess. This isn't because I don't manage email properly - it's a symptom of the organization. Email doesn't cause stress any more than phone calls or postal mail. It becomes stressful if the job is stressful.
In-game advertising could kill period games. You can't seamlessly integrate ads them into the game world (soda machines, ads on the race cars, restaurants in the city, etc.) If period games lose revenue then designers will only finance games with advertising in them. Either that, or the period games will be more expensive. Which means we get a flood of modern-day and sports games. No more Okami, Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, etc.
Depends how fast it is moving. There's been research into using ballistics instead of nuclear because you can do more damage while leaving no fallout. You just have to accelerate something really really fast.
...to boost their academic results on school league tables. If taking easy classes boosts academic results, then the people making those tables probably didn't take any upper level math courses either.I work for a company that offers a downloadable product with a monthly subscription. We find that people actually login, enter their credit card number, download the software, and never run it. There's another group who never click the download button. It's really quite amazing. We've worked hard to make it as easy as possible - make sure the download link is visible on all screen resolutions, browsers, not require scripting or the latest softare, etc.
1) Don't buy it or download it at all
2) Buy the CD
Nobody should be pirating because of DRM when you can go into a music store and get a non-DRM'd RAW copy of the music. And if they don't offer a non-DRM CD (AKA Sony/BMG rootkits) then just don't buy it at all. We've become such a consumerist society that people think they can't live without music. Dude, your parents survived without TV, gasoline, or CDs. So don't do a "woe is me! It's DRM'd!" If you don't like it don't buy it, don't pirate it, just spit on them and let them fail.
Every time you pirate it it gives them one more reason to add more DRM, and every cent they lose from your piracy is spent on bribing your senators to give them more powers. When all PCs have mandated "Trusted Computing" in them it will be because of your actions. I'm sick of donating to the EFF and writing letters to my senators saying why DRM is evil and the RIAA sohuld not be given legal exemptions, and you add fuel to the fire on the other side. It's like I'm sitting here defending your right to screw me over. Well when I am putting myself on the line fighting a revolution to gain back the U.S. constitution, and you are lazily sitting there pirating music, you will be on my hit list. #1 = the representatives who got us here, #2 = the oligarchies and cartels who push for it, #3 = the people who fueled that fire because they just couldn't live without it.
You have plenty of right to complain about the state of DRM and online downloads, but none of that is justification for piracy.
Wow, that's almost like having some sort of permissions, or access control list, that prevents applications from modifying certain files. What a concept! I'll invent it, and call it UNIX!
If you want to watch the movie offline, or on a laptop, just get the DVD.
You might be better to do another six hour encode, depending on what is involved in this algorithm. I bet you would have to go through each frame, mark which areas a wrong, then obtain a library of semantically related images, then run the program against the frames that you marked bad - and still not have the right result.
For what you are trying to do, a better idea would be to copy data from the previous and next frames. That's what they do when they "digitally remaster" old films to get rid of scratches or marks.
There is a commercial bittorrent? I didn't even know that. Who cares? There are probably a hundred open source implementations of the protocol. If a commercial company decides to fork the protocol in an incompatible way, will anyone care? Will anyone use their product if nobody can connect to it?
I would probably ask the student out to the hall for this one. I would say, with an academic tone, "Did you know that there is a term for that? An old term. For a black man who doesn't read or write?" Give him a chance to answer. And if he doesn't get it, tell him the word is "Slave." Say it cooly, frankly, not like it was a well-planned attack. Ask him to look into that classroom and answer "Who do they have to thank for being there? Mom? Dad? " Perhaps suggest "Abraham Lincoln for freeing the slaves?" then prompt him "What is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. doing right this minute?" Naturally, he is dead. But the right answer is "rolling over in his grave." "Why is Dr. King dead? Because he is a martyr." Explain that "Dr. King died so that you could be in this classroom. Imagine that? Somebody who never knew you gave up their hopes, dreams, friends, family... so that you had a chance to learn. And you are throwing it away. I sure would not want to die to give somebody the right to spit in my face." Tell him he can be disrespectful, he can fail, he can do whatever. But he should not disrespect every hard working black engineer on the planet. Tell him that every black man who struggled, worked hard, and overcame prejudice to be successful just had a chill go down their spine. Tell him that his words are like the crack of a whip on their backs. Tell him that his people fought for a hundred years for the right to be educated, and he owes it to generations of black Americans to do his best.
Yeah, the kid would probably punch me if I said all that. But dammit, I can't help but feel like the chill from his comment could end global warming.
I'm not sure if you still teach, but I was googling for famous black engineers and I came across Eric Clark who won an award for his work at NASA. He happens to also mentor high school students. If you still know where this misguided kid is, join LinkedIn and give Eric Clark a call.
I have Flashblock. Is there a Javablock? I'm surprised advertisers don't use Java more often. Java is one of those things that I would probably want to enable manually anyway, there's no need for it to be on all the time.
Scientists now have a clear image of the God of the Whopper galaxy.
Other that that, this looks like some decent advice.
No doubt our congress will act swiftly by moving daylight savings time to conserve power.
1) I, Robot was not a novel. It was a collection of short stories based around a central theme.
2) The I, Robot movie was an original plot that carried the same theme as the short stories.
The actual short stories are would look lame with a movie adaption. It was too cerebral. It might work as a play though. Creating an original 2-hour plotline based around the same themes made a lot of sense.
Why did JPEG 2000 not take-off? It looks much better than JPEG. Did patents kill it?
All good points.
My fingers are crossed for Spore.
Most games must be done start to finish within 2 years. If you write a game and it takes 5 years, then the game is usually obsolete by the time it comes out. The longer the development cycle, the more difficult it is to target the hardware that will be available when you ship the game. And as the code base grows in complexity it becomes harder to maintain, test, fix bugs, etc. I think too many people say "Will Wright knows what he is doing!" and conclude everything will work out. But history shows that when a game is ambitious, overhyped, and delayed multiple times -- that the odds are not good.
I really hope Spore works out. But I think they may have become subject to high expectations and scope creep.