When Qualia is concerned, nothing is certain. It's reasonable to produce scientific measurements of this and that. But what colours (or saturation) they *map* to inside the brain is another matter. For example, some creatures are monochromats, which means they can probably only see one colour. But what that colour actually is, is anyone's guess.
Apparently, some people have four colour cones instead of three. Do they see a new colour competely outside our range, or just have extra 'depth' to distinguish our current range more easily?
[quote]Which doesn't in any way invalidate observations of (astronomically) very close galaxies. Which is what we base the existence of dark matter on.[/quote] Haven't heard that before, but I bet you're right. It's similar to the way programmes and media which try to explain quantum mechanics generally fail to even mention the "hidden variables" theory, and how that couldn't explain the theory.
Sorry for not keeping up with this whole thing, but once Google pull out of China, does that mean they won't even be able to access Google.com, a worldwide site?
It never ceases to amaze me how movie-makers are so obsessed with keeping to a super-jerky 24fps rate (albeit with motion blur), especially for action-packed CGI movies say. People can be so dumb.
Let's just have 200fps with zero motion blur and be done with.
I wonder if taste can ever be broken down into components, like colour/sight can be broken down into three primary colours, or how sound can be broken down into collections of frequencies.
Isn't it possible to make a wired connection where speed is determined by the amount of data sent. If true, then the power would only increase as the hardware became more sophisticated. Therefore, the USB3 interface would only eat up minimal power in the USB1 computer age (perhaps as little as USB 1 itself).
Why is it so hard for developers of ports and interface standards to get it super fast, first time round? It's not like there's a power issue and there's no worry about having to make things small enough (as with say the CPU).
For example, let's take USB: USB 1: 12 Mbit/s USB 2: 480 Mbit/s USB 3: 4 Gbit/s
Same goes for video and SATA etc. Perhaps I'm being naive, but it seems like they're all a bit short-sighted. They should develop for the hardware of the future, not artificially limit the speed to what current hardware is capable of.
I'd rather those programs you listed not bother to update at all, the risk of virii is minimal. Adobe is the worst offender - always bugging me, and the updates are probably because it wants to spam you more.
I like the idea of multiple companies in the first place, to improve a particular type of product/service, but in the end, 2 or 3 giant companies (not 1 because of lack of competition) is a VAST improvement on everyone trying to do the same thing.
Although the Larabee may not be as cost/energy/speed efficient as a dedicated GPU, perhaps it will be almost as fast, but easier to program for, thus ensuring its popularity...
Can someone please clarify exactly what they've achieved here? All I hear is that they can somehow sift through large quantities of data much quicker. What kind of data? What are they trying to extract? And for what end?
If what you say is really true, those 'annoyed' users would adapt far quicker to the correct approach, than if it were correct to begin with, and everything went to the pear shaped approach.
We should be simplifying and correcting things (starting at the hardware level, and then moving to the software layer as a last resort), not sticking with arbitrary standards.
Rather than have the image specification pandering to the whims of the hardware's arbitrary gamma, all monitor manufacturers should get together and make a standard, and keep to it.
Then "linear" will be linear forever, at least in software space.
[quote]Sound makes a good analogy. When you play music through any given combination of source, amp and speakers, it sounds different.[/quote]
Yes, but the point is, the best speakers should be able to *emulate* the other types. In other words, they can do the anything, and it's up to the sample data itself to provide the differences.
If some kind of distortion sounds 'interesting', or even subjectively better, I want the wave data to be doing that (or maybe some plugin sound alterer), not the hardware. The speaker should only play what it's being fed - no more, no less.
It seems to me that the gamma issue should be handled by the hardware behind the scenes. One shouldn't have to incorporate arcane number spaces in software, when a perfectly simple linear system should do the job.
Thus we should fix the real problem, and make the hardware (or at the very least, the OS abtraction layer) conform.
Yes and? I spent tons of time on that page; it's not going to hurt if I get a little reward. I mention a couple of the links are affiliates.
Like I said, you can check the results for yourself - which are *completely* open and reproducible (a couple of hosts may have shifted up/down since I created it, but they're not going to move much), and then sign up with the hosts in question without following any referral if you like.
Yes, a lot of host rating sites are bad. I took what I thought was a good idea, was honest about how I went about it, and that's my result. Look around the rest of my site. You'll see it's informative, mostly non profit, and 'just' a (large) personal hobby site really.
FWIW, I spent a few good months compiling data from the 'wisom of the masses' - i.e. along searching for quotes such as "I love host x", or "I hate host x". It sounds as though it could be open to spam, but I managed to filter out these kind of comments (as well as affiliate based incentives). Here are my findings (including fully open and reproducible results and full technique):
Slashdot Mirror
As if survival of the human race is at issue here...
Surely there are aspects which improve quality of life which have nothing to do with mere surivial?
When Qualia is concerned, nothing is certain. It's reasonable to produce scientific measurements of this and that. But what colours (or saturation) they *map* to inside the brain is another matter. For example, some creatures are monochromats, which means they can probably only see one colour. But what that colour actually is, is anyone's guess.
Apparently, some people have four colour cones instead of three. Do they see a new colour competely outside our range, or just have extra 'depth' to distinguish our current range more easily?
[quote]Which doesn't in any way invalidate observations of (astronomically) very close galaxies. Which is what we base the existence of dark matter on.[/quote]
Haven't heard that before, but I bet you're right. It's similar to the way programmes and media which try to explain quantum mechanics generally fail to even mention the "hidden variables" theory, and how that couldn't explain the theory.
Sorry for not keeping up with this whole thing, but once Google pull out of China, does that mean they won't even be able to access Google.com, a worldwide site?
That's a real shame that they don't know how much time they'd all save.
Which of the two techniques has a better 3D effect?
It never ceases to amaze me how movie-makers are so obsessed with keeping to a super-jerky 24fps rate (albeit with motion blur), especially for action-packed CGI movies say. People can be so dumb.
Let's just have 200fps with zero motion blur and be done with.
I wonder if taste can ever be broken down into components, like colour/sight can be broken down into three primary colours, or how sound can be broken down into collections of frequencies.
No, not software patents, but rather ridiculously simple patents that a 5 year-old could think of.
Hang on, one might *want* those tabs/programs to leech cycles in the background, which of course is basically multitasking.
A quad-core is only really better than a dual core when your most CPU-intensive application is multithreaded
Or if you want to multitask.
Or if you want to avoid closing applications/tabs before you use others without worrying about them leeching CPU cycles.
I'm sorta in favor of the idea that Copyright be fair, not non-existent.
Interesting, I didn't realize there was a middleground - I thought one had to be either one extreme or the other.
Isn't it possible to make a wired connection where speed is determined by the amount of data sent. If true, then the power would only increase as the hardware became more sophisticated. Therefore, the USB3 interface would only eat up minimal power in the USB1 computer age (perhaps as little as USB 1 itself).
Why is it so hard for developers of ports and interface standards to get it super fast, first time round? It's not like there's a power issue and there's no worry about having to make things small enough (as with say the CPU).
For example, let's take USB:
USB 1: 12 Mbit/s
USB 2: 480 Mbit/s
USB 3: 4 Gbit/s
Same goes for video and SATA etc. Perhaps I'm being naive, but it seems like they're all a bit short-sighted. They should develop for the hardware of the future, not artificially limit the speed to what current hardware is capable of.
I'd rather those programs you listed not bother to update at all, the risk of virii is minimal. Adobe is the worst offender - always bugging me, and the updates are probably because it wants to spam you more.
The problem here isn't that people can't afford anti-virus... it's that they can't be bothered to use it.
Or maybe because it's nice for computers to not run at 50% speed.
I like the idea of multiple companies in the first place, to improve a particular type of product/service, but in the end, 2 or 3 giant companies (not 1 because of lack of competition) is a VAST improvement on everyone trying to do the same thing.
Although the Larabee may not be as cost/energy/speed efficient as a dedicated GPU, perhaps it will be almost as fast, but easier to program for, thus ensuring its popularity...
Can someone please clarify exactly what they've achieved here? All I hear is that they can somehow sift through large quantities of data much quicker. What kind of data? What are they trying to extract? And for what end?
If what you say is really true, those 'annoyed' users would adapt far quicker to the correct approach, than if it were correct to begin with, and everything went to the pear shaped approach.
We should be simplifying and correcting things (starting at the hardware level, and then moving to the software layer as a last resort), not sticking with arbitrary standards.
Rather than have the image specification pandering to the whims of the hardware's arbitrary gamma, all monitor manufacturers should get together and make a standard, and keep to it.
Then "linear" will be linear forever, at least in software space.
[quote]Sound makes a good analogy. When you play music through any given combination of source, amp and speakers, it sounds different.[/quote]
Yes, but the point is, the best speakers should be able to *emulate* the other types. In other words, they can do the anything, and it's up to the sample data itself to provide the differences.
If some kind of distortion sounds 'interesting', or even subjectively better, I want the wave data to be doing that (or maybe some plugin sound alterer), not the hardware. The speaker should only play what it's being fed - no more, no less.
It seems to me that the gamma issue should be handled by the hardware behind the scenes. One shouldn't have to incorporate arcane number spaces in software, when a perfectly simple linear system should do the job.
Thus we should fix the real problem, and make the hardware (or at the very least, the OS abtraction layer) conform.
Does this post make sense?
Yes and? I spent tons of time on that page; it's not going to hurt if I get a little reward. I mention a couple of the links are affiliates.
Like I said, you can check the results for yourself - which are *completely* open and reproducible (a couple of hosts may have shifted up/down since I created it, but they're not going to move much), and then sign up with the hosts in question without following any referral if you like.
Yes, a lot of host rating sites are bad. I took what I thought was a good idea, was honest about how I went about it, and that's my result. Look around the rest of my site. You'll see it's informative, mostly non profit, and 'just' a (large) personal hobby site really.
FWIW, I spent a few good months compiling data from the 'wisom of the masses' - i.e. along searching for quotes such as "I love host x", or "I hate host x". It sounds as though it could be open to spam, but I managed to filter out these kind of comments (as well as affiliate based incentives). Here are my findings (including fully open and reproducible results and full technique):
http://www.skytopia.com/project/articles/host.html