Well, mp3 does have its drawbacks (like a lot of geeks here, I'd like to see Ogg and FLAC gain some momentum in the marketplace) -- but heck, for most music, I'll go for anything non-DRM with at least as good a sound as 160kbit mp3. MP3 over WMA, that's for sure. At least it's sort of standard...
I just don't see how major music companies are relevant today, when for a small investment, any music group can record their own music at CD quality or better, burn CDs for small production runs, farm out CD production to a mastering company if they hit it big, set up a website for e-commerce and publicity, etc etc. Any genre of music, from classical to folk-rock to metal to New Age, can be recorded fairly easily these days. In many cases (orchestras), the performance is a much bigger headache logistically than the recording, with so many artists involved.
With micropayments and the ease of putting content online, it's hard to see what value EMI, Columbia, and their ilk bring to the table. Most of the music that I enjoy can be found on sites like emusic.com -- and no matter what sort of music you prefer, the artists would be able to record and produce it without much more effort than it takes to perform it. Let's cut out the inefficient middleman and buy directly from the musicians!
On the topic of albums, they may be declining, but there is definitely something to be said for a well-imagined and well-executed album. IMHO an excellent example is ELO's "Time" album; the songs flow into one another, creating a continuous artistic work, rather than a collection of haphazardly-assembled songs. "Down to the moon" by Andreas Vollenweider is another example.
Well, I'll get modded down for this for sure -- but I feel the need to point out that:
* There are many individuals who would consider a total ban on abortions to be a major invasion of privacy, and
* Ron Paul is, from the statements on his website, 100% against any sort of legal abortion.
Other than that (and some deep skepticism about his idea to eliminate the Fed), he really does sound like a straight shooter. I respect the man, but can't vote for him.
I don't remember there being a pointing device to aid the first player. But then I am guessing you didn't RTFA. More like just didn't grok TFA (not a huge platformer fan, so I haven't played Mario in ages.)
For stealing boxes?!?! Yes. Eight-Xeon-CPU "boxes," with 64GB of memory, 200-TB RAID arrays of solid-state drives, and next-generation GPUs that make the ST Holodeck look lame.
Teleoperations when there is no real delay seems fine; a human operator could easily correct for any changes. That sounds like a great idea. Where I don't see it working well is where you have large (say, >500ms) latency, and it becomes difficult or impossible for a surgeon to see what is happening in time to correct for it.
How do they propose to compensate for all of the uncountable variables involved in surgery? Humans are imperfect, messy, squishy things to work on. It would be tricky enough to get a robot to reliably do repair work on electronics that have been out in the field -- let alone to do repair work on nonstandard, moving, ill-defined human parts.
Even if the surgeon back on Earth does a great job and is extremely careful, what happens if some part of the patient moves a bit? A surgeon would see this and make a correction; a robot which did not inherently understand surgery might have a very difficult time correcting without knowing what just happened. (Blood vessel sprang back in the way of the next incision -- which didn't happen on the CAT-scan simulation the surgeon worked on back Earthside.)
I'll take my chances with a local medic, working in consultation with a surgeon at a remote site. Maybe the surgeon could even do the surgery as an example -- but a human should be there to interpret it, at least until we have good enough AI to grok what it is doing.
I've always (albeit with no scientific reasoning behind it) figured that Nerds are those who are socially inept, ashamed of it, and incapable of changing.
Geeks, on the other hand, are proud of it and wouldn't want to be any other way.
At any rate, from the usage I usually hear, "Nerd" is a derogatory comment, while "Geek" is a compliment. (Or maybe that's just the fellow weirdos I hang out with.)
If this is an excuse to release crappier games, count me out. These things are expensive to make and I'd rather own 3 or 4 good games that have been invested in than 10 games that were just pounded out by some off-shore devs.
Yes, I'm sure some troll with mod points will kill my karma by me stating the obvious.
Amen. And would it kill them to make at least one or two games that aren't either about shooting-everything-that-moves, sports, or race cars?
If you can read this... 01110101 00100000 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100
No no no. A 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011, if you please.
Right this way, sir. Our company has set up a database to help manage your email marketing experience. And it won't even cost you a thing! Just confirm your valid email address via a script, and...
The sad thing is, I know this would collect a LOT of valid emails. (Probably from folks who would buy things from spammers, too.) Unfortunately, I'm not quite evil enough to bring myself to do that. It's too bad, really.
FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) sound like they would be just the ticket for SIMD (single-instruction-multiple-data) calculations such as this. Configure up a bunch of FPGA chips to do the encryption calculations on a zillion combinations in parallel...
To do voltage division. There are three possible voltage levels (since the resistors are equal): Both low (which results in a low output), both high (which results in a high output), and one high/one low, which results in a medium/neutral output.
His plan has three components, do you really need a pretty picture? It sounds like it'd be a pretty simple AM transmitter, and have lots and lots of out-of-band transmission.
Well, yeah. Square wave outputs do tend to generate alllll sorts of harmonics. But it does technically work. If I were serious about it, I'd at least add a capacitor across the output, to make some attempt at filtration.
The "schematic" involved an 8-pin microprocessor, with two outputs each connected to a 1k resistor. The other ends of both resistors were connected to the antenna. Not very efficient, but as a proof of concept, it was a cool toy. Tuning was completely via software (tweak the timing loop to provide the correct waveform.)
You want pictures? Happy to oblige. (The idea was to see just how simple a transmitter I could make...)
It's amazing what can sometimes be done in software. You can make a simple AM-band transmitter using a microcontroller and two resistors -- with everything done in software. MCUs are fun!
...can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in to Circuit City, buying something, and refusing to show ID? My friends, they may think it's a movement.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, mp3 does have its drawbacks (like a lot of geeks here, I'd like to see Ogg and FLAC gain some momentum in the marketplace) -- but heck, for most music, I'll go for anything non-DRM with at least as good a sound as 160kbit mp3. MP3 over WMA, that's for sure. At least it's sort of standard...
A recent article was talking about how much less reliable Leopard seems to be than Tiger.
Now we find out that Leopard has some Windows compatibility. Maybe they're just making it bug-for-bug compatible?
How long until we hear Apple take up the "it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature" line?
I just don't see how major music companies are relevant today, when for a small investment, any music group can record their own music at CD quality or better, burn CDs for small production runs, farm out CD production to a mastering company if they hit it big, set up a website for e-commerce and publicity, etc etc. Any genre of music, from classical to folk-rock to metal to New Age, can be recorded fairly easily these days. In many cases (orchestras), the performance is a much bigger headache logistically than the recording, with so many artists involved.
With micropayments and the ease of putting content online, it's hard to see what value EMI, Columbia, and their ilk bring to the table. Most of the music that I enjoy can be found on sites like emusic.com -- and no matter what sort of music you prefer, the artists would be able to record and produce it without much more effort than it takes to perform it. Let's cut out the inefficient middleman and buy directly from the musicians!
On the topic of albums, they may be declining, but there is definitely something to be said for a well-imagined and well-executed album. IMHO an excellent example is ELO's "Time" album; the songs flow into one another, creating a continuous artistic work, rather than a collection of haphazardly-assembled songs. "Down to the moon" by Andreas Vollenweider is another example.
They have no right! I'LL KILL THEM ALL!
No, wait...
Well, I'll get modded down for this for sure -- but I feel the need to point out that:
* There are many individuals who would consider a total ban on abortions to be a major invasion of privacy, and
* Ron Paul is, from the statements on his website, 100% against any sort of legal abortion.
Other than that (and some deep skepticism about his idea to eliminate the Fed), he really does sound like a straight shooter. I respect the man, but can't vote for him.
Didn't Gauntlet have four-way cooperative playing a looong time ago?
(To this day, I still sometimes catch myself thinking: "Wizard needs food -- badly.")
Ah. That makes sense, then.
...but I got modded *informative*?!? Go figure...
Yes. Eight-Xeon-CPU "boxes," with 64GB of memory, 200-TB RAID arrays of solid-state drives, and next-generation GPUs that make the ST Holodeck look lame.
Teleoperations when there is no real delay seems fine; a human operator could easily correct for any changes. That sounds like a great idea. Where I don't see it working well is where you have large (say, >500ms) latency, and it becomes difficult or impossible for a surgeon to see what is happening in time to correct for it.
How do they propose to compensate for all of the uncountable variables involved in surgery? Humans are imperfect, messy, squishy things to work on. It would be tricky enough to get a robot to reliably do repair work on electronics that have been out in the field -- let alone to do repair work on nonstandard, moving, ill-defined human parts.
Even if the surgeon back on Earth does a great job and is extremely careful, what happens if some part of the patient moves a bit? A surgeon would see this and make a correction; a robot which did not inherently understand surgery might have a very difficult time correcting without knowing what just happened. (Blood vessel sprang back in the way of the next incision -- which didn't happen on the CAT-scan simulation the surgeon worked on back Earthside.)
I'll take my chances with a local medic, working in consultation with a surgeon at a remote site. Maybe the surgeon could even do the surgery as an example -- but a human should be there to interpret it, at least until we have good enough AI to grok what it is doing.
I've always (albeit with no scientific reasoning behind it) figured that Nerds are those who are socially inept, ashamed of it, and incapable of changing.
Geeks, on the other hand, are proud of it and wouldn't want to be any other way.
At any rate, from the usage I usually hear, "Nerd" is a derogatory comment, while "Geek" is a compliment. (Or maybe that's just the fellow weirdos I hang out with.)
Yes, I'm sure some troll with mod points will kill my karma by me stating the obvious.
Amen. And would it kill them to make at least one or two games that aren't either about shooting-everything-that-moves, sports, or race cars?
If you can read this... 01110101 00100000 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100
No no no. A 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011, if you please.
Right this way, sir. Our company has set up a database to help manage your email marketing experience. And it won't even cost you a thing! Just confirm your valid email address via a script, and...
The sad thing is, I know this would collect a LOT of valid emails. (Probably from folks who would buy things from spammers, too.) Unfortunately, I'm not quite evil enough to bring myself to do that. It's too bad, really.
In Soviet Russia, memes perpetuate *YOU*!
Yeah, I know. Go ahead and mod me redundant or overrated. Just remember, in Soviet Russia, overrated Soviet-Russia-meme posters mod *YOU*!
Heh. Little do they know that ********* is my password!
FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) sound like they would be just the ticket for SIMD (single-instruction-multiple-data) calculations such as this. Configure up a bunch of FPGA chips to do the encryption calculations on a zillion combinations in parallel...
In Soviet Russia, the memes mod YOU!
Naah. Penn and Teller don't have Kari!
Run a dutch auction. Highest bidders win. No fuss, no bots, nice and clean.
To do voltage division. There are three possible voltage levels (since the resistors are equal): Both low (which results in a low output), both high (which results in a high output), and one high/one low, which results in a medium/neutral output.
Well, yeah. Square wave outputs do tend to generate alllll sorts of harmonics. But it does technically work. If I were serious about it, I'd at least add a capacitor across the output, to make some attempt at filtration.
The "schematic" involved an 8-pin microprocessor, with two outputs each connected to a 1k resistor. The other ends of both resistors were connected to the antenna. Not very efficient, but as a proof of concept, it was a cool toy. Tuning was completely via software (tweak the timing loop to provide the correct waveform.)
You want pictures? Happy to oblige. (The idea was to see just how simple a transmitter I could make...)
http://www.intellectualism.org/electronics/schematic.jpg
http://www.intellectualism.org/electronics/Closeup.jpg
It's amazing what can sometimes be done in software. You can make a simple AM-band transmitter using a microcontroller and two resistors -- with everything done in software. MCUs are fun!
...can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in to Circuit City, buying something, and refusing to show ID? My friends, they may think it's a movement.