One of my CS professors in college said, "Did you hear they're making an object-oriented version of COBOL? It's going to be called 'ADD 1 TO COBOL'"
I'm pretty sure it needs to be ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL (if we're doing the assignment). To be fair, compute COBOL = COBOL + 1 works too, though I hesitate to call it an improvement.
Putting any reasonably-modern video game in a movie requires licensing and rights to be negotiated. For 10 seconds of sounds you can pay $20,000 or more, just to hear it, thus, most of the time we use an FM synth making Colecovision-level sound effects. Sometimes we can use better stuff, but we have to be careful it's not recognizable.
That it costs so much is a bit of a travesty, considering the people who work on the game don't get royalties, even the voice talent, who under any other circumstance would get a cut up front.
I am a sound designer and a programmer. I have on many occasions intentionally, even without being asked, cut "blip" sound effects for code scrolling across a screen -- not just code, but any sort of stdout/text output/situational awareness display.
I do not do it because I'm stupid, or am trying to dumb down the audience, it for a few specific reasons:
There are several storytelling conventions in cinema, namely, computers make beeping noises when their graphics change. Though most computers don't now, they used to, and the convention was started around the time Robert Redford was passionately waiting for a teletype to emit an important bit of data.
Aside from the computer convention, there is the strong convention of providing a sound effect for any physical change that occurs on screen that humans cannot account for with alpha, beta or delta motion (see phi phenomenon for a discussion of how humans interpret 2-dimensional images). "See a sound, hear a sound" is the first commandment of sound effects.
Along these lines, I could show you footage of a computer screen and give you nothing but a fan whirr, and you'd be bored and immediately looking around the room, and the sound helps keep your attention on the data on screen. This is important, since computer displays often are bearing an embarrasing amount of exposition. Sound is like control characters in ASCII: it's out of band and can do magical things to your "session" (in the broadest sense of the word).
We put blips on a computer screen for the same reason ipods chirp when you press a button. Psychology.
Remarkable. Allow me to summarize the RIAA argument:
You (the consumer) are using a third party technology to exploit our intellectual property without our permission. Getting you to pay isn't working, so we'll attach the 3rd party.
This is precisely Microsoft's argument when they did their deal with Novell. The difference is that MS's arrangement with Novell now makes the "use" of their "intellectual property" in SUSE legal.
The next course of action is clear. If Apple is going to have to separate a dollar for every iPod to UMG, they had better get a blanket indemnity for all iPod users for the use of any UMG intellectual property (this is basically the rationale behind AHRA, extended to iPods).
A proprietary XML format that happens to be somewhat easier to read than a proprietary binary format is no less proprietary. Perhaps not in a legal sense, but it's a hell of a lot easier to reverse engineer.
Also, you can check an XML GUI source into an SCM, and then have a chance of merging and diff'ing it, which is impossible with the binary formats (my one serious gripe over interface builder).
BSD license means they can do whatever the hell they want with it as long as they keep the copyright attached to the code or binary, this is why Apple can build on top of BSD and link into it without releasing their UI code. The benefit of BSD is that different private companies can build on top of the same software infrastructure without giving up their improvements, while the reference implementation remains in public and still owned by the writer, who may elect to change the license in the future (BSD is not public domain). BSD is not for me, except for example programs in articles, maybe, but if you're one of those permissive types that wants developer to be "free" to use your code, then it's there for you.
He's not looking at the platform on its technical merits but on the hot air spit out by someone who's job is to spew hot air
Allow me to fix this for your...
He's not looking at the platform on its technical merits but at the threat of litigation posed by someone who's job is to administer the fortune of the largest software company on Earth.
When I hold the wimote 3-4 feet from the screen, the "beam" comes out at a downward pointing slant. When I stand back the problem disappears and the beam comes out along the major axis of the Wimote.
\{me puts on my photographers hat} As the camera that senses the sensor bar is in the wiimote, it's using the position of the IR emitters in the light bar to figure out its orientation. I'll bet the lens on the wiimote's CCD has a short focal length, meaning that if it could see normally, it would see fisheye; this means that it can see a wide swath of space, but things held close to it will appear distorted.
This implies that when one holds the wiimote too close, the sensor bar's emitters are being displaced further from the center of the CCDs image (the optical axis) than if they were at a distance. Thus, if your sensor bar is above your TV, your cursor will deflect down. The opposite is probably the case; if you place your emitters beneath the image, your cursor will deflect up if you hold the wiimote too close.
I admit, this effect being noticeable at all is a testament to the sensitivity of the wiimote, it simply must be held at a good distance. If Nintendo could cell LCD screens with emitters embedded behind the center of the screen, you could be as close as you want =D.
they don't want to focus on supporting a wide range of different devices
The issue at hand is not supporting a wide range of PlaysForSure devices. The Zune is the issue. Why can't the Zune play PlaysForSure media?
Or can it? The article is extremely confusing, because the official statement from Microsoft says basically:
Prop 1: (Set of Zune Media) INTERSECTION (Set of Media supported on PlaysForSure player) == (Some Zune Media) Prop 2: (Set of Zune Media) NOT EQUAL (Set of Media supported on PlaysForSure player)
While most of the people in the article, not just the author, but the analysts, are saying:
Prop 3: (Set of PlaysForSure Media) INTERSECTION (Set of Media supported by Zune) == EMPTY SET
If you see Robbie again, please ask him if Proposition 3 is TRUE or FALSE.
the mike was right in front of him and somehow able to filter out the crowd noise. (I don't know if it was mechanical shielding or if they did it electronically.)
Most ENG (Electronic News Gathering- radio and TV) microphones are highly directional, having either a hypercardioid pattern or "interference tube" shotgun pattern, because they have to operate under uncontrollable conditions where background noise, like a crowd, would drown-out the sound of the on-camera subject, like a Howard Dean. I think I remember reading at the time that particular pickup was done with a laveliere, which in general are cardioids which can be terribly sensitive while drowning out background sounds. They also tend to have a funny spectrum that accentuates the nasal midrange while getting very little low end (seriously, not making this up, check out the specs on a Sennheiser MKE-2 lav).
Indeed, the cameras everywhere makes candidates a bit more boring, but you have to consider how things used to be.
An example: Nixon, when he ran for his senate seat in 1950, would routinely call Helen Gahagan Douglas a Communist, claim that she was having an affair with Harry Truman, while other times insinuating she was a lesbian. He would do this indoors with friendly Rotary Club and Republican audiences, while the LA Times reporters covering the event would omit anything offensive from their coverage. Norman Chandler, the publisher of the Times at the time, was the Republican Party in California at the time (the Times would change its tack under Otis Chandler and became a major player in covering Watergate.
Politicians shouldn't be boring, but when they speak, they should be able to account for their statements. When they play to a friendly audience and pretend they're Rush Limbaugh, shootin' from the hip and damn if someone is offended, they aren't "connecting" with their audience, they're just pandering. Nixon was a poor people politician who relied on friendly media, and pandering to a rabid base of support. When he lost control of his image, and people could see him in the open, he was at his weakest.
This is totally getting into sour territory, but I would add:
The primitive types are all silently interchangeable with each other, and a string will often magically turn into an number if you use it in a function that want it to be a number. You have to test a variable for type with a library call if you want to guarantee its type for a particular operation.
The designers of the language seem to be confused on the question of 'hashes' and 'arrays' in that they seem to think they are the same thing.
Arrays themselves have pointers to their 'current location', which client functions set in their own scope and will return the array to you with it in funny places.
Just an FYI: for those of you that really want smaller binaries, the lipo(1) program can take a universal binary and strip out the executable resources for architectures you know you won't need. lipo comes with your Mac and can be found at/usr/bin/.
I personally think such an approach is a recipe for disaster, but if you're trying to make a LiveCD or some sort of mini-installlation, it might be the only way to go.
Have you considered piping your html pages thru tidy(1) after you've finished working them out in nano? tidy will take a reasonable html 3.2 file and make it into valid xhtml at no cost to you. If you invoke it with "-clean", it'll even turn all your font tags into valid span tags with css styles embedded.
Anyone can read an EULA, but it takes a lawyer to understand it.
If you cannot or do not understand an agreement, you cannot legally enter it. Practically speaking, they can run you into court and litigate every word of the thing to death, but if you can prove that there was truly no "meeting of the minds" between you and the writer of a contract, the contract is not enforceable. They can't just throw legalisms onto a page and hold you to it for breathing while looking at it, you have to understand it in order to truly be bound by the terms of it (this is at least my understanding of contracts, IANAL).
The flip side of this is that you can be held to anything you agree to if it's clear you did understand it, wether the agreement is in writing or not.
I think that Jobs could make much more money on licensing the Fairplay scheme to other music stores
I'm not sure that you can be certain of this until the Zune has played itself out. If the Zune Marketplace offers a good alternative to the iTMS for consumers and producers (which seems dubious based on current descriptions), Apple would be better to retain control of their platform and duke it out with MS on price/features.
In this endgame, this DVD Jon tool can be seen as pirate Office installs in the MS world: MS officially discourages them, but is happy to not chase down individuals who use it, since they spur the network effect.
Re:Full speed to dangerously offtopic!
on
An Ode To Al
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· Score: 1
Just FYI, if you ever get ahold of the Taschen Stanley Kubrick Archives (yeah it's pricey, I got it as a gift, but still would be worth it), you can see much of the artwork that Kubrick himself commissioned for AI, and there are a few images of frozen New York, the robot/aliens/whatever, etc. It's clear that Spielberg followed these pre-visualizations very closely when he took his swing at it.
I would also say to anyone who thinks we all "missed" the down ending of AI, I would just humbly submit that Spielberg flubbed it, and you're cutting him too much slack. He's done it before, who among us hasn't fallen asleep during 1941?
Curse Sans-Serif
on
An Ode To Al
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I was just thinking, "Yeah, if they'd only cut off the last half-hour and the whole reviving his mother so he could say goodbye, it would have been a pretty awesome movie. JUst leave him trapped under the ferris wheel."
Put then I realized it was "An Ode to AL" and not "An Ode to AI". Whoever originated the Sans-Serif L should be shot;).
Gotta spend that 10-digit R&D budget on something. Anything.
Lots of R&D projects make MSFT look like a buy with growth potential. Competent maintenance of a core business (like Windows or Office) would make it look like Otis Elevator.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure it needs to be ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL (if we're doing the assignment). To be fair, compute COBOL = COBOL + 1 works too, though I hesitate to call it an improvement.
--- Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka
Putting any reasonably-modern video game in a movie requires licensing and rights to be negotiated. For 10 seconds of sounds you can pay $20,000 or more, just to hear it, thus, most of the time we use an FM synth making Colecovision-level sound effects. Sometimes we can use better stuff, but we have to be careful it's not recognizable.
That it costs so much is a bit of a travesty, considering the people who work on the game don't get royalties, even the voice talent, who under any other circumstance would get a cut up front.
A statement:
I am a sound designer and a programmer. I have on many occasions intentionally, even without being asked, cut "blip" sound effects for code scrolling across a screen -- not just code, but any sort of stdout/text output/situational awareness display.
I do not do it because I'm stupid, or am trying to dumb down the audience, it for a few specific reasons:
We put blips on a computer screen for the same reason ipods chirp when you press a button. Psychology.
Remarkable. Allow me to summarize the RIAA argument:
This is precisely Microsoft's argument when they did their deal with Novell. The difference is that MS's arrangement with Novell now makes the "use" of their "intellectual property" in SUSE legal.
The next course of action is clear. If Apple is going to have to separate a dollar for every iPod to UMG, they had better get a blanket indemnity for all iPod users for the use of any UMG intellectual property (this is basically the rationale behind AHRA, extended to iPods).
Perhaps not in a legal sense, but it's a hell of a lot easier to reverse engineer.
Also, you can check an XML GUI source into an SCM, and then have a chance of merging and diff'ing it, which is impossible with the binary formats (my one serious gripe over interface builder).
As long as Microsoft puts something like "Some portions © Regents of the University of California" on a splash page somewhere, they've done everything they need to "rip off" BSD code. Winsock was just the Windows implementation of Berkeley sockets, and is the prime example of their use of BSD licensed code.
BSD license means they can do whatever the hell they want with it as long as they keep the copyright attached to the code or binary, this is why Apple can build on top of BSD and link into it without releasing their UI code. The benefit of BSD is that different private companies can build on top of the same software infrastructure without giving up their improvements, while the reference implementation remains in public and still owned by the writer, who may elect to change the license in the future (BSD is not public domain). BSD is not for me, except for example programs in articles, maybe, but if you're one of those permissive types that wants developer to be "free" to use your code, then it's there for you.
Allow me to fix this for your...
He's not looking at the platform on its technical merits but at the threat of litigation posed by someone who's job is to administer the fortune of the largest software company on Earth.\{me puts on my photographers hat} As the camera that senses the sensor bar is in the wiimote, it's using the position of the IR emitters in the light bar to figure out its orientation. I'll bet the lens on the wiimote's CCD has a short focal length, meaning that if it could see normally, it would see fisheye; this means that it can see a wide swath of space, but things held close to it will appear distorted.
This implies that when one holds the wiimote too close, the sensor bar's emitters are being displaced further from the center of the CCDs image (the optical axis) than if they were at a distance. Thus, if your sensor bar is above your TV, your cursor will deflect down. The opposite is probably the case; if you place your emitters beneath the image, your cursor will deflect up if you hold the wiimote too close.
I admit, this effect being noticeable at all is a testament to the sensitivity of the wiimote, it simply must be held at a good distance. If Nintendo could cell LCD screens with emitters embedded behind the center of the screen, you could be as close as you want =D .
A java applet for testing the speed of a serial process. Something deeply ironic about that.
I'm at 56 WPM on a clickety Apple II style keyboard, and 48 on my Powerbook G4 keyboard, though of course it can't be too scientific a conclusion.
This is oblique, but not fully off-topic.
Maybe the slashdot icon for Microsoft should be switched from Bill the Borg to Admiral Akbar with Steve Balllamer's face photoshopped on.
Just a thought.
The issue at hand is not supporting a wide range of PlaysForSure devices. The Zune is the issue. Why can't the Zune play PlaysForSure media?
Or can it? The article is extremely confusing, because the official statement from Microsoft says basically:
While most of the people in the article, not just the author, but the analysts, are saying:
If you see Robbie again, please ask him if Proposition 3 is TRUE or FALSE.
Most ENG (Electronic News Gathering- radio and TV) microphones are highly directional, having either a hypercardioid pattern or "interference tube" shotgun pattern, because they have to operate under uncontrollable conditions where background noise, like a crowd, would drown-out the sound of the on-camera subject, like a Howard Dean. I think I remember reading at the time that particular pickup was done with a laveliere, which in general are cardioids which can be terribly sensitive while drowning out background sounds. They also tend to have a funny spectrum that accentuates the nasal midrange while getting very little low end (seriously, not making this up, check out the specs on a Sennheiser MKE-2 lav).
Indeed, the cameras everywhere makes candidates a bit more boring, but you have to consider how things used to be.
An example: Nixon, when he ran for his senate seat in 1950, would routinely call Helen Gahagan Douglas a Communist, claim that she was having an affair with Harry Truman, while other times insinuating she was a lesbian. He would do this indoors with friendly Rotary Club and Republican audiences, while the LA Times reporters covering the event would omit anything offensive from their coverage. Norman Chandler, the publisher of the Times at the time, was the Republican Party in California at the time (the Times would change its tack under Otis Chandler and became a major player in covering Watergate.
Politicians shouldn't be boring, but when they speak, they should be able to account for their statements. When they play to a friendly audience and pretend they're Rush Limbaugh, shootin' from the hip and damn if someone is offended, they aren't "connecting" with their audience, they're just pandering. Nixon was a poor people politician who relied on friendly media, and pandering to a rabid base of support. When he lost control of his image, and people could see him in the open, he was at his weakest.
After all the news lately, Admiral Akbar isn't even surprised anymore.
This is totally getting into sour territory, but I would add:
Just an FYI: for those of you that really want smaller binaries, the lipo(1) program can take a universal binary and strip out the executable resources for architectures you know you won't need. lipo comes with your Mac and can be found at /usr/bin/.
I personally think such an approach is a recipe for disaster, but if you're trying to make a LiveCD or some sort of mini-installlation, it might be the only way to go.
Have you considered piping your html pages thru tidy(1) after you've finished working them out in nano? tidy will take a reasonable html 3.2 file and make it into valid xhtml at no cost to you. If you invoke it with "-clean", it'll even turn all your font tags into valid span tags with css styles embedded.
I should have downloaded that "Trapped in the Closet" South Park episode while I still had the chance. Now it's officially DoublePlusUnHistory.
Anyone can read an EULA, but it takes a lawyer to understand it.
If you cannot or do not understand an agreement, you cannot legally enter it. Practically speaking, they can run you into court and litigate every word of the thing to death, but if you can prove that there was truly no "meeting of the minds" between you and the writer of a contract, the contract is not enforceable. They can't just throw legalisms onto a page and hold you to it for breathing while looking at it, you have to understand it in order to truly be bound by the terms of it (this is at least my understanding of contracts, IANAL).
The flip side of this is that you can be held to anything you agree to if it's clear you did understand it, wether the agreement is in writing or not.
The truth stands, mutatis mutandis. You imply mutual exclusion where none exists.
I'm not sure that you can be certain of this until the Zune has played itself out. If the Zune Marketplace offers a good alternative to the iTMS for consumers and producers (which seems dubious based on current descriptions), Apple would be better to retain control of their platform and duke it out with MS on price/features.
In this endgame, this DVD Jon tool can be seen as pirate Office installs in the MS world: MS officially discourages them, but is happy to not chase down individuals who use it, since they spur the network effect.
Just FYI, if you ever get ahold of the Taschen Stanley Kubrick Archives (yeah it's pricey, I got it as a gift, but still would be worth it), you can see much of the artwork that Kubrick himself commissioned for AI, and there are a few images of frozen New York, the robot/aliens/whatever, etc. It's clear that Spielberg followed these pre-visualizations very closely when he took his swing at it.
I would also say to anyone who thinks we all "missed" the down ending of AI, I would just humbly submit that Spielberg flubbed it, and you're cutting him too much slack. He's done it before, who among us hasn't fallen asleep during 1941?
I was just thinking, "Yeah, if they'd only cut off the last half-hour and the whole reviving his mother so he could say goodbye, it would have been a pretty awesome movie. JUst leave him trapped under the ferris wheel."
Put then I realized it was "An Ode to AL" and not "An Ode to AI". Whoever originated the Sans-Serif L should be shot ;).
Gotta spend that 10-digit R&D budget on something. Anything.
Lots of R&D projects make MSFT look like a buy with growth potential. Competent maintenance of a core business (like Windows or Office) would make it look like Otis Elevator.