I've completely lost faith in classical theory. The failure to find the Higgs Boson is the main reason.
The Higgs Boson is part of the Standard Model, which is a Quantum Field Theory. (Note the "Quantum" in "Quantum Field Theory") It is not a classical theory. Perhaps you meant "Standard Model" rather than "Classical Theory". The word "Classical" to a physicist means "non-quantum".
As Schrodinger might say, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and there are is more than one way to give mass to the W and Z bosons (which is why we want the higgs). It has been proposed, for instance, that there are several higgs', separated in energy by about 10GeV. This could be responsible for the experimental evidince seen at LEP2 just before it was shut down. One thing is clear, however. Whether or not we find the higgs boson, the LHC (next accelerator at CERN) must find new phenomena. Some of our calculations simply don't make sense as you increase the energy. The higgs is a good, simple solution to part of the problem, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily correct. We theorists like to pretend we know what we'll see (SUSY/Extra Dimensions/Higgs) but I like to keep my mind open and hope that we'll be surprised by what we see at the LHC.
I wonder what effect these observations will have on superstring theory
Absolutely none. String theory contains a theory of quantum gravity. But as pointed out correctly by the Anonymous Coward above, this discovery is not a discovery of "quantum gravity", as the term is usually used. They have discovered quantization of neutron orbits in the classical gravitational potential, analagous to the quantization of electron orbits around a proton. (You know, the s,p,d,f energy levels from chemistry?) At low energies (and these are VERY low energies), our classical picture of gravity is extremely accurate, and there's not a graviton in sight. Experimental proof that the graviton exists would be proof of quantum gravity.
Discovering quantum gravity is much, much harder. The energy scale at which quantum gravity becomes important is 10^19 GeV (note 1 GeV/c^2=mass of proton). The accelerators we're building now are 2000 GeV. We won't get to 10^19 in our lifetimes, if ever. There has been a flurry of papers recently saying that we might see quantum gravity at current or near-term accelerators, but they do this by invoking extra dimensions. In other words, curled up extra space-time dimensions that are as big as 100um, and only gravity propegates in the extra dimensions. This has the effect of lowering the energy scale at which gravity becomes important, so that we might be able to see it.
But if that 10^19 figure is really correct, we ain't gonna see quantum gravity anytime soon. Unfortunately...
Can you back up the claim that the SBLive is not PCI compliant? References? Tests? The page you reference is quite vauge, and having had many problems with the crappy VIA KT133A chipset (and NO SBLive), I'm skeptical.
I used to have an es137x which would hang my alpha hard, and came to the conclusion that it was because the es137x violated the PCI spec (don't remember the specifics now -- unterminated PCI bus transfer?). More than one card from them violating the spec would not be a coincidence.
It's a word processor, not a hardware driver. Unless ALL your apps are crashing, it's the software developer's fault.
Misconfigurations?
Again, the developers fault. The application should perform predictably and not crash for all possible combinations of configuration. You cannot possibly prescribe or predict what users will do with your application that you might not have anticipated.
If it was a linux program, would you say the same thing?
I agree with all your points on keeping things free, but my content (physics papers - I use latex and postscript) is not exactly a segment of the market that matters. I don't produce audio or video content of any kind. I wish selecting products/companies were this simple. But the fact of the matter is that consumers rarely vote with their dollar, and marketing muscle determines consumer choice.
I rarely buy things for myself, but when I do I'm pretty selective and tend to try hard to select products that I agree with. But what am I to do? Stop liking my favorite band? Stop liking Star Wars? Tell my family after they buy me that Farscape DVD that I don't want it because the MPAA is a cartel? Tell my friends that I don't want to see that movie with them because the MPAA is a cartel? At least half the "stuff" I own is not purchased directly by me, but given as gifts, one way or another.
How do you tell when you go into the music/movie store which DVD's are encrypted? Can you tell which CD's are produced by companies not under the RIAA umbrella? Face it, the segment of the market that tries to make these choices, are the "fanatic fringe" and and we account for <1% of the purchasing power in any market. Why should any company pay attention to us?
So I try to make careful choices, but 9 times out of 10 I get fucked anyway (the latest was a Logitech Webcam with a 50% "rebate" -- 5 day window to purchase 12/15-12/20 and the rebate has to be postmarked by 1/3/2002 -- now that's a scam, they tricked me into paying twice what the webcam is worth. I won't buy logitech any more). It's an incredible amount of work to keep track of all this shit. And as time goes on the list of companies I won't do business with grows so large that I simply can't purchase certain goods (try buying a soundcard for linux excluding Creative Labs). All of them are out to fuck you. It's just the luck of the draw finding a good one.
*sigh*
What I think needs to happen is we should create a Consumer Technology Board. These people should represent open source wherever possible, but more importantly they should be at the bargaining table when companies are trying to choose between mp3 and ogg for distributing their content. They should represent open standards, unpatented and non-corporate work, and consumer rights like time-shifting, archival, and library access. They should show up at relevant trials ans work with the EFF and ACLU. They should put out press releases and make a lot of noise when industry cartels try to lock-out or lock-in competitors, and reduce consumer choice. Make exclusive contracts a PR nightmare for those involved. Maybe something like this exists already...if it does they need a kick in the pants.
Quicktime is a file format, it wraps many kinds of video codecs. The video codec I mention is the Sorensen codec, the one used in all the movie trailers, and the one for which there is not and probably never will be a linux player.
Mplayer uses wine and the windows DLL's to play many formats. This allows it to play them, but isn't a long term solution -- M$ still has control, the OSS community can't fix bugs in the DLL's, and it doesn't help people on non-Intel platforms. I don't think mplayer can play WMF files, but I could be wrong...
So M$ has pushed their proprietary crap into yet another niche...So I went looking for movie trailers yesterday, only to find that every single one is distributed only in Quicktime and sometimes WMF or Real. All of which suck if you're on linux. (particularly if your not on Intel)
So what are we to do, as a community, about the Powers That Be blocking us from content using technological measures? Will someone reverse-engineer the Sorensen codec or write a WMF player for linux? M$ and Apple will rabidly oppose this, and its author would likely be the next Dimitry Skylarov. DVD was just the tip of the iceberg. Heck, it's even taken 2-3 years to get a reasonable HTML viewer, while M$ and Netscrape embraced and extended the standard over and over.
But from the OSS side of the fence, we don't have the muscle, and aren't organized enough to push our codecs into the forefront. Who, exactly, will negotiate the exclusive contract getting movie trailers in DivX? Or books on tape in Ogg Vorbis?
It seems the solution isn't creating standards and codified specifications either. We can beat our drum over and over about "standards", but often, standards don't negotiate contracts for themselves. Standards don't magically get chosen by media execs just because they're better. Formats get chosen because there's a nosy M$ sales guy with a bad tie in the dumb exec's office every day for a month. Which OSS philanthropist wants that job?
Are we doomed forever to have all the power, but none of the content?
I'm sure there's room around here...maybe under the couch? Maybe between 3ivx and DivX? Or between MPEG-4 and Sorensen? If not then surely there's room between MJPEG and Indeo? Oh, I feel like breaking into song over the wonderful video codec situation!
Oh! 3iv1 3iv2, aasc abyr and aemi too! afli, aflc boy those are old! AMPG, ANIM, AP41 and you! Think of how your home videos will look, in ASV1, ASV2 or ASVX!! Mine look great, and I'm sure yours will too, with AUR2 or AURA!
And out of the A's and into the B's la da da do do do deeee! Bink, bt20, btcv bw10, boy those b's are short! Those B codec makers better get a move on! But onto the c's like the birds and the bees, cc12, cdvc, cfcc, cgdi, cham, cjpg, cpla, cram, cvid cwlt, cyuv, cyuy! Boy these things multiply fast! Makes me wonder, why the're called video codecs, and not WABBITS!
But D's come along, DIV2 and DIV4 and DIV5, with venerable DIVX short behind. DMB1, DMB2, DSVD, DUCK, DVAN, DVSD, DVE2, DVX1, DVX2, DVX3, DXTN, DXTC, and no more D's do we have! And the E's are short, because normal people don't start video codecs with vowels, ETV1, ETV2, ETVC are all that survive.
Only 3 F's, because F stands for Flunk, FLJP, FRWA, FRWD are fun! Oh my! GLZW, GPEG, GWLT from Microsoft? But videoconferencing still lives H260 goes plop, followed by H261, and H262, H263, H264, H265, H266, H267, H268, But finally everyone knows H269! HFYU, HMCR, and HMRR round out the H's!
(Egad, am I done yet!)
Not hardly buddy! There's I263, IAN, ICLB, IGOR, IJPG, ILVC, ILVR, IPDV, IR21, IV30, IV31, IV32, IV33, IV34, IV35, IV36, IV37, IV38, IV39, IV40, IV41, IV42, IV43, IV44, IV45, IV46, IV47, IV48, IV49, and IV50 rounds out Intel's evil contribution! But wait! There's more! Call now and you'll receive this free JBYR, JPGL, KMVC, and LEAD, LJPG.
Not to worry, M is here! Here are all the ways Micro$oft can fuck a standard! M263, M261, MP42, MP43, MP4S, MPG4, MRLE, MSVC Oh my! I like MJPG, cause my marvel uses it, but Matrox also has MTX1, MTX2, MTX3, MTX4, MTX5, MTX6, MTX7, MTX8, MTX9! More M's! mJPG is not the same as MJPG? MCAM, MC12, MPEG, MRCA, MWV1, nAVI, NTN1, NVS0, NVS1, NVS2, NVS3, NVS4, NVS5, NVT0, NVT1, NVT2, NVT3, NTT4, NVT5, PDVC, PGVV, PIM1, PIM2, PIMJ, PVEZ, PVMM, PVW2, qpeg, QPEG, RGBT, RLE, RT21, rv20, rv30, RVX, s422, SDCC, SFMC, SMSC, SMSD, smsv, SPIG, SQZ2, SV10, STVA, STVB, STVC...oh god I'm getting bored...STVX, STVY, SVQ1, TLMS, TLST, TM20, TM2X, TMIC, TMOT, TR20 TSCC, TV10, TY2C, TY2N, TY0N, UCOD, ULTI, V261, VCR1, VCR2, VDOM, VDOW, VDTZ, VGPX, VIFP, VIDS, VIVO, VIXL, VLV1, VP30, VP31, VX1k, VX2K, VXSP, WBVC, WHAM, WINX, WJPG, WNV1, x263, XLV0, XMPG, XXAN, Y41P....almost there! Y8, YC12, YUV8, YUV2, YUYV, ZLIB, ZPEG!
And that ends my really bad song. But wait! Thre's more! Those are only the ones with FOURCC definitions! That doesn't include file types! There's MPEG-PS, AVI, Quicktime, and the venerable Microsoft format heist asf.
I think the statement "I developed a new video codec!" should be punishable by death.
--Bob
Re:A/V R/C Helicopter w/ long range capabilities
on
Geek Gift Ideas 2001
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· Score: 1
What I get upset about is people telling me what I should see or not... don't think you are?
I could care less what you see. Websites forcing me to install widget-of-the-week (flash/java/etc) just to see thier page bothers me. I don't go looking for flash/java pages, and I don't expect to find any.;) If a business expects me to have flash/java to see their site, then they've just lost a customer. From a usability perspective, java/flash are a disaster. That's not to say they shouldn't exist, but no business should ever use them.
As I said in my original post...art is another matter entirely.
As others have pointed out, the reviewer focused on business websites, which have no business using java or flash. It will cost you lots to develop it and will only cause you to lose customers.
Of the urls you quoted. I can't figure out what the first one does (praystation.com) and within a few minutes it wasn't doing anything useful and was consuming 100% of the CPU, I had to kill my browser. It's a blinky map, with a bunch of unlabeled clickable stuff on the left side. Excellent definition of unusable if you ask me.
The second (flight404.com) gives: "The requested URL/index2.html was not found on this server." when you click on the page. Hmmm...definition of failure there.
I'm not sure about the third, but it's definitely not a business website.;) Go art, go.
Movie promo = information about movie (including pictures. Money comes from people going to movie)
Online shopping = information (product info before buying...I'm not gonna buy XYZ if I don't know what XYZ is. Money comes from people buying stuff)
Game sites = information (about games...including screenshots. Money comes from people buying games)
--Bob
Re:Take Jakob with a grain of salt
on
Homepage Usability
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Jakob seems to be stuck on information delivery in its distilled form, which simply isn't paying the bills for many sites out there.
And just what do you think the web is? Some kind of place where people pay good money to see your blinking flashy popup crap? No. People use the web to find information. Anything else is secondary. If people can easily find what they want, they will buy it, and that's where the money comes from. They won't buy it because your ad blinks more than the next guy's.
I'm sorry non-information-delivery doesn't pay bills for you, but really, good riddance.
Kudos to Jakob for emphasizing function over form. The web is a functional medium. Now if you're running an on-line art-gallery...that's a different story.
Perhaps this would be a good time to ask... does anyone know of a proxy that allows you to rewrite packets on the fly? I think the web's got to the point where I want to start overriding some HTML arbitrarily. I know regular expressions, so some sort of regex interpreter would be quite handy.
<plug type=shameless>
You want FilterProxy. It does exactly what you said, using perl and perl's regexes, and some sophisticated tag/tagblock/attrib matchers. Mostly I use it for filtering ads, but it can do a lot more.
</plug>
And I'm with you on the deleting url bar contents. But did you know you can middle-button paste the url from the clipboard into the main window and it will load it? Don't have to mess with the URL bar at all. I also have WindowMaker menu items like "load this URL" which call 'mozilla -remote' and pass it the url. I have others like "look up this word" which tell mozilla to load a dictionary.com url with the word in the clipboard.
Why would it take the airlock on Mars a full hour to open?
Pressure (and IIRC it's more like 1/2 hour). The suits are soft, not hard, so they operate at an internal pressure closer to the atmospheric pressure of Mars. If you didn't lower the pressure, you'd be wearing a big balloon. They could go with hard suits, but manuverability is severly limited.
Criminalizing is not the answer. As pointed out by others, it's a short step from "hate speech" to "politically unpopular speech". And it's a short step to the Ministry of Information, making sure no one is thinking bad thoughts.
Information and speech must remain free. There is a price, but the price is worth it. Killing people, defacing cemetaries, threatening people, and the like are all already illegal. We must be vigilant in their enforcement, and make sure they know that their behavior is not acceptable. But the next step after banning their speech is banning speech you don't find offensive (but someone else does), and the next thing you know, it's your speech that is censored.
Information and propeganda have been used as a political tool for millennia. We must not fall into the same trap again. We must keep this tool out of the hands of those who would use it to control us. Though you may agree with them now, governments are not looking out for your best interest. Their power must be kept in check, and one major way this is done is with freedom of information, and freedom of speech.
Not in the short term, no. But it's a step in the right direction. NASA needs to start looking for ways to simultaneously cut costs and generate revenue. Government agencies have a way of maximizing costs, while commercial entities minimize costs and maximize profits. And 100 rich guys at $20M a pop is 2 Billion. A significant dent, if you ask me.
We need to force NASA to start operating like a commercial entity, then change some legislation to allow commercial competition by companies somewhat smaller than LockMart/Boeing. The model NASA has been using of single-noncompeting subcontractor (like the guys that operate the shuttle - United Space Alliance) does not tend to reduce costs since the contractor always asks for more money, and there's no competition for the job. Of course, the reason they use these subcontractors is that they can claim they are "privatizing" space, and it looks good on paper. But reality is that they still have a stranglehold on space.
It costs $10,000 per pound to put stuff into orbit right now. As long as Space is held tightly by governments, it will stay that way, and you and I will never get there. Commercial competition and innovation is the only way to bring that cost down to somewhere a mere mortal could afford.
You should see the legislation on this issue. There's reams and reams of it. Launch contracts are locked up by NASA, the military, and a handful of big guys (LockMart/Boeing). There's NO WAY for a newcomer to get contracts and make any money, due to the way the government has fixed the market. (Look at the promising Beal Aerospace for an example -- now bankrupt) Any newcomer has to go through reams and reams of red tape, and buy a congressman and an FAA representative to get launch permits.
We have to accept that failure is an option and that we need commercial competition.
So turn the ISS into a profit generating place. Send up more people like Tito and suck them for as much as they'll pay.
It's about time Space moved into the private sector anyway. I'm sick of NASA and federal regulations keeping space in the hands of governments only. I WANT TO GO TO MARS!!! (ME, personally, and I don't see that happening under the current administration, or under NASA)
--Bob
Re:How is this different from a notebook?
on
The Dream Handheld
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· Score: 2
How is this different from a notebook?
The point is not to replace the notebook computer, the point is to replace the tablet of paper, which, despite it's apparently ungainly form factor, is in widespread use. This will require an innovative pen-based interface, and dumping many of the things you might want to do with a notebook computer. A tablet should be for reading and writing documents, and that's all. If it does anything else, that's gravy. People are already good at using the pen/tablet paradigm, it's just a matter of not fucking it up with too many buttons and "wizards".
I imagine something that would use PDF's as its internal format, and would let you annotate them with the pen. The primary input mechanism should be drawing letters, trying to recognize them is secondary. You should be able to upload documents (including html) from your computer, and download handwritten things to your computer. The tablet should give a much better means of organizing little slips of paper than the pile-on-desk paradigm, now widely in use.
Remember, don't think it's a computer...it's an upgrade to paper.
Another thing to consider is that nobody switches back from linux to windows. It's arguable that the cost of moving from windows to linux is too high. But very very slowly, people are moving from windows to linux (Wine will help a lot in the coming years). And they will never go back. The move from windows to linux can be motivated on cost alone, and corporations are cost-minimizing entities. The move from linux to windows must have a much stronger reason, because windows is more expensive, you have less control, you're more prone to viruses, you have to rebuild boxes on a 6-month basis after they become unstable, and you're tied to the vendor's proprietary whims and licensing schemes, etc...
Water runs downhill. Windows is at the top, and linux is at the bottom. The hill is not very steep. Eventually, all the water will be at the bottom of the hill. The only thing that could change this is if Microsoft started giving Windows away for free.
Slashdot Mirror
The Higgs Boson is part of the Standard Model, which is a Quantum Field Theory. (Note the "Quantum" in "Quantum Field Theory") It is not a classical theory. Perhaps you meant "Standard Model" rather than "Classical Theory". The word "Classical" to a physicist means "non-quantum".
As Schrodinger might say, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and there are is more than one way to give mass to the W and Z bosons (which is why we want the higgs). It has been proposed, for instance, that there are several higgs', separated in energy by about 10GeV. This could be responsible for the experimental evidince seen at LEP2 just before it was shut down. One thing is clear, however. Whether or not we find the higgs boson, the LHC (next accelerator at CERN) must find new phenomena. Some of our calculations simply don't make sense as you increase the energy. The higgs is a good, simple solution to part of the problem, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily correct. We theorists like to pretend we know what we'll see (SUSY/Extra Dimensions/Higgs) but I like to keep my mind open and hope that we'll be surprised by what we see at the LHC.
--Bob
Absolutely none. String theory contains a theory of quantum gravity. But as pointed out correctly by the Anonymous Coward above, this discovery is not a discovery of "quantum gravity", as the term is usually used. They have discovered quantization of neutron orbits in the classical gravitational potential, analagous to the quantization of electron orbits around a proton. (You know, the s,p,d,f energy levels from chemistry?) At low energies (and these are VERY low energies), our classical picture of gravity is extremely accurate, and there's not a graviton in sight. Experimental proof that the graviton exists would be proof of quantum gravity.
Discovering quantum gravity is much, much harder. The energy scale at which quantum gravity becomes important is 10^19 GeV (note 1 GeV/c^2=mass of proton). The accelerators we're building now are 2000 GeV. We won't get to 10^19 in our lifetimes, if ever. There has been a flurry of papers recently saying that we might see quantum gravity at current or near-term accelerators, but they do this by invoking extra dimensions. In other words, curled up extra space-time dimensions that are as big as 100um, and only gravity propegates in the extra dimensions. This has the effect of lowering the energy scale at which gravity becomes important, so that we might be able to see it.
But if that 10^19 figure is really correct, we ain't gonna see quantum gravity anytime soon. Unfortunately...
--Bob
I used to have an es137x which would hang my alpha hard, and came to the conclusion that it was because the es137x violated the PCI spec (don't remember the specifics now -- unterminated PCI bus transfer?). More than one card from them violating the spec would not be a coincidence.
--Bob
It's a word processor, not a hardware driver. Unless ALL your apps are crashing, it's the software developer's fault.
Misconfigurations?
Again, the developers fault. The application should perform predictably and not crash for all possible combinations of configuration. You cannot possibly prescribe or predict what users will do with your application that you might not have anticipated.
If it was a linux program, would you say the same thing?
Absolutely.
--Bob
If an application crashes, it's the developer's fault. Period. End of story. It is NEVER the user's fault.
To answer the article's question. I recommend LaTeX, LyX, latex2html (comes with LaTeX), and dvipdf (comes with ghostscript).
--Bob
I rarely buy things for myself, but when I do I'm pretty selective and tend to try hard to select products that I agree with. But what am I to do? Stop liking my favorite band? Stop liking Star Wars? Tell my family after they buy me that Farscape DVD that I don't want it because the MPAA is a cartel? Tell my friends that I don't want to see that movie with them because the MPAA is a cartel? At least half the "stuff" I own is not purchased directly by me, but given as gifts, one way or another.
How do you tell when you go into the music/movie store which DVD's are encrypted? Can you tell which CD's are produced by companies not under the RIAA umbrella? Face it, the segment of the market that tries to make these choices, are the "fanatic fringe" and and we account for <1% of the purchasing power in any market. Why should any company pay attention to us?
So I try to make careful choices, but 9 times out of 10 I get fucked anyway (the latest was a Logitech Webcam with a 50% "rebate" -- 5 day window to purchase 12/15-12/20 and the rebate has to be postmarked by 1/3/2002 -- now that's a scam, they tricked me into paying twice what the webcam is worth. I won't buy logitech any more). It's an incredible amount of work to keep track of all this shit. And as time goes on the list of companies I won't do business with grows so large that I simply can't purchase certain goods (try buying a soundcard for linux excluding Creative Labs). All of them are out to fuck you. It's just the luck of the draw finding a good one.
*sigh*
What I think needs to happen is we should create a Consumer Technology Board. These people should represent open source wherever possible, but more importantly they should be at the bargaining table when companies are trying to choose between mp3 and ogg for distributing their content. They should represent open standards, unpatented and non-corporate work, and consumer rights like time-shifting, archival, and library access. They should show up at relevant trials ans work with the EFF and ACLU. They should put out press releases and make a lot of noise when industry cartels try to lock-out or lock-in competitors, and reduce consumer choice. Make exclusive contracts a PR nightmare for those involved. Maybe something like this exists already...if it does they need a kick in the pants.
--Bob
Mplayer uses wine and the windows DLL's to play many formats. This allows it to play them, but isn't a long term solution -- M$ still has control, the OSS community can't fix bugs in the DLL's, and it doesn't help people on non-Intel platforms. I don't think mplayer can play WMF files, but I could be wrong...
--Bob
So what are we to do, as a community, about the Powers That Be blocking us from content using technological measures? Will someone reverse-engineer the Sorensen codec or write a WMF player for linux? M$ and Apple will rabidly oppose this, and its author would likely be the next Dimitry Skylarov. DVD was just the tip of the iceberg. Heck, it's even taken 2-3 years to get a reasonable HTML viewer, while M$ and Netscrape embraced and extended the standard over and over.
But from the OSS side of the fence, we don't have the muscle, and aren't organized enough to push our codecs into the forefront. Who, exactly, will negotiate the exclusive contract getting movie trailers in DivX? Or books on tape in Ogg Vorbis?
It seems the solution isn't creating standards and codified specifications either. We can beat our drum over and over about "standards", but often, standards don't negotiate contracts for themselves. Standards don't magically get chosen by media execs just because they're better. Formats get chosen because there's a nosy M$ sales guy with a bad tie in the dumb exec's office every day for a month. Which OSS philanthropist wants that job?
Are we doomed forever to have all the power, but none of the content?
--Bob
Oh! 3iv1 3iv2, aasc abyr and aemi too! afli, aflc boy those are old! AMPG, ANIM, AP41 and you! Think of how your home videos will look, in ASV1, ASV2 or ASVX!! Mine look great, and I'm sure yours will too, with AUR2 or AURA!
And out of the A's and into the B's la da da do do do deeee! Bink, bt20, btcv bw10, boy those b's are short! Those B codec makers better get a move on! But onto the c's like the birds and the bees, cc12, cdvc, cfcc, cgdi, cham, cjpg, cpla, cram, cvid cwlt, cyuv, cyuy! Boy these things multiply fast! Makes me wonder, why the're called video codecs, and not WABBITS!
But D's come along, DIV2 and DIV4 and DIV5, with venerable DIVX short behind. DMB1, DMB2, DSVD, DUCK, DVAN, DVSD, DVE2, DVX1, DVX2, DVX3, DXTN, DXTC, and no more D's do we have! And the E's are short, because normal people don't start video codecs with vowels, ETV1, ETV2, ETVC are all that survive.
Only 3 F's, because F stands for Flunk, FLJP, FRWA, FRWD are fun! Oh my! GLZW, GPEG, GWLT from Microsoft? But videoconferencing still lives H260 goes plop, followed by H261, and H262, H263, H264, H265, H266, H267, H268, But finally everyone knows H269! HFYU, HMCR, and HMRR round out the H's!
(Egad, am I done yet!)
Not hardly buddy! There's I263, IAN, ICLB, IGOR, IJPG, ILVC, ILVR, IPDV, IR21, IV30, IV31, IV32, IV33, IV34, IV35, IV36, IV37, IV38, IV39, IV40, IV41, IV42, IV43, IV44, IV45, IV46, IV47, IV48, IV49, and IV50 rounds out Intel's evil contribution! But wait! There's more! Call now and you'll receive this free JBYR, JPGL, KMVC, and LEAD, LJPG.
Not to worry, M is here! Here are all the ways Micro$oft can fuck a standard! M263, M261, MP42, MP43, MP4S, MPG4, MRLE, MSVC Oh my! I like MJPG, cause my marvel uses it, but Matrox also has MTX1, MTX2, MTX3, MTX4, MTX5, MTX6, MTX7, MTX8, MTX9! More M's! mJPG is not the same as MJPG? MCAM, MC12, MPEG, MRCA, MWV1, nAVI, NTN1, NVS0, NVS1, NVS2, NVS3, NVS4, NVS5, NVT0, NVT1, NVT2, NVT3, NTT4, NVT5, PDVC, PGVV, PIM1, PIM2, PIMJ, PVEZ, PVMM, PVW2, qpeg, QPEG, RGBT, RLE, RT21, rv20, rv30, RVX, s422, SDCC, SFMC, SMSC, SMSD, smsv, SPIG, SQZ2, SV10, STVA, STVB, STVC...oh god I'm getting bored...STVX, STVY, SVQ1, TLMS, TLST, TM20, TM2X, TMIC, TMOT, TR20 TSCC, TV10, TY2C, TY2N, TY0N, UCOD, ULTI, V261, VCR1, VCR2, VDOM, VDOW, VDTZ, VGPX, VIFP, VIDS, VIVO, VIXL, VLV1, VP30, VP31, VX1k, VX2K, VXSP, WBVC, WHAM, WINX, WJPG, WNV1, x263, XLV0, XMPG, XXAN, Y41P....almost there! Y8, YC12, YUV8, YUV2, YUYV, ZLIB, ZPEG!
And that ends my really bad song. But wait! Thre's more! Those are only the ones with FOURCC definitions! That doesn't include file types! There's MPEG-PS, AVI, Quicktime, and the venerable Microsoft format heist asf.
I think the statement "I developed a new video codec!" should be punishable by death.
--Bob
--Bob
As I said in my original post...art is another matter entirely.
--Bob
Of the urls you quoted. I can't figure out what the first one does (praystation.com) and within a few minutes it wasn't doing anything useful and was consuming 100% of the CPU, I had to kill my browser. It's a blinky map, with a bunch of unlabeled clickable stuff on the left side. Excellent definition of unusable if you ask me.
The second (flight404.com) gives: "The requested URL /index2.html was not found on this server." when you click on the page. Hmmm...definition of failure there.
I'm not sure about the third, but it's definitely not a business website. ;) Go art, go.
May both flash and java die a quick death.
--Bob
Movie promo = information about movie (including pictures. Money comes from people going to movie)
Online shopping = information (product info before buying...I'm not gonna buy XYZ if I don't know what XYZ is. Money comes from people buying stuff)
Game sites = information (about games...including screenshots. Money comes from people buying games)
--Bob
And just what do you think the web is? Some kind of place where people pay good money to see your blinking flashy popup crap? No. People use the web to find information. Anything else is secondary. If people can easily find what they want, they will buy it, and that's where the money comes from. They won't buy it because your ad blinks more than the next guy's.
I'm sorry non-information-delivery doesn't pay bills for you, but really, good riddance.
Kudos to Jakob for emphasizing function over form. The web is a functional medium. Now if you're running an on-line art-gallery...that's a different story.
--Bob
Jeez, chill. Typo. I know debian doesn't have rpm.
At least under linux there's 'rpm -Va', assuming the hacker hasn't mucked your rpm database.
--Bob
FilterProxy is a perl web proxy that can strip and eliminate popups.
--Bob
<plug type=shameless>
You want FilterProxy. It does exactly what you said, using perl and perl's regexes, and some sophisticated tag/tagblock/attrib matchers. Mostly I use it for filtering ads, but it can do a lot more.
</plug>
And I'm with you on the deleting url bar contents. But did you know you can middle-button paste the url from the clipboard into the main window and it will load it? Don't have to mess with the URL bar at all. I also have WindowMaker menu items like "load this URL" which call 'mozilla -remote' and pass it the url. I have others like "look up this word" which tell mozilla to load a dictionary.com url with the word in the clipboard.
--Bob
--Bob
Criminalizing is not the answer. As pointed out by others, it's a short step from "hate speech" to "politically unpopular speech". And it's a short step to the Ministry of Information, making sure no one is thinking bad thoughts.
Information and speech must remain free. There is a price, but the price is worth it. Killing people, defacing cemetaries, threatening people, and the like are all already illegal. We must be vigilant in their enforcement, and make sure they know that their behavior is not acceptable. But the next step after banning their speech is banning speech you don't find offensive (but someone else does), and the next thing you know, it's your speech that is censored.
Information and propeganda have been used as a political tool for millennia. We must not fall into the same trap again. We must keep this tool out of the hands of those who would use it to control us. Though you may agree with them now, governments are not looking out for your best interest. Their power must be kept in check, and one major way this is done is with freedom of information, and freedom of speech.
--Bob
Governments most definitely are keeping the private sector out of space. Make no mistake about it.
--Bob
We need to force NASA to start operating like a commercial entity, then change some legislation to allow commercial competition by companies somewhat smaller than LockMart/Boeing. The model NASA has been using of single-noncompeting subcontractor (like the guys that operate the shuttle - United Space Alliance) does not tend to reduce costs since the contractor always asks for more money, and there's no competition for the job. Of course, the reason they use these subcontractors is that they can claim they are "privatizing" space, and it looks good on paper. But reality is that they still have a stranglehold on space.
It costs $10,000 per pound to put stuff into orbit right now. As long as Space is held tightly by governments, it will stay that way, and you and I will never get there. Commercial competition and innovation is the only way to bring that cost down to somewhere a mere mortal could afford.
You should see the legislation on this issue. There's reams and reams of it. Launch contracts are locked up by NASA, the military, and a handful of big guys (LockMart/Boeing). There's NO WAY for a newcomer to get contracts and make any money, due to the way the government has fixed the market. (Look at the promising Beal Aerospace for an example -- now bankrupt) Any newcomer has to go through reams and reams of red tape, and buy a congressman and an FAA representative to get launch permits.
We have to accept that failure is an option and that we need commercial competition.
Die NASA, Die.
--Bob
It's about time Space moved into the private sector anyway. I'm sick of NASA and federal regulations keeping space in the hands of governments only. I WANT TO GO TO MARS!!! (ME, personally, and I don't see that happening under the current administration, or under NASA)
--Bob
I imagine something that would use PDF's as its internal format, and would let you annotate them with the pen. The primary input mechanism should be drawing letters, trying to recognize them is secondary. You should be able to upload documents (including html) from your computer, and download handwritten things to your computer. The tablet should give a much better means of organizing little slips of paper than the pile-on-desk paradigm, now widely in use.
Remember, don't think it's a computer...it's an upgrade to paper.
-- Bob
Water runs downhill. Windows is at the top, and linux is at the bottom. The hill is not very steep. Eventually, all the water will be at the bottom of the hill. The only thing that could change this is if Microsoft started giving Windows away for free.
--Bob