Interestingly dynamic compression for the sake of getting things louder and data compression are almost mutual exclusive By compressing the dynamic range you are necessarily compressing the range of values your data can hold. That IS data compression. Kind of stupid data compression because you cannot then recreate the original data from it. You essentially lose all of the mapping between frequencies outside of your normalization envelope and map them to some other sound that is in that place(if there is sound occupying that space). That's what all that noise is--data that has been mapped to the same frequency. Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference when there are 2-3 instruments and they don't get in each other's way when normalized, but when you have sound and fury all compressed in a small space that's when you will really hear it.
As a side note it might be worth noting that it may be a way of making bad artists sound good. In a way you make their job easier with a smaller sound space they need to master. If you haven't noticed how some artists sound good on CD and they suck live this is the reason...not to mention other neat tricks they do in the studio but I digress...
This is actually quite easy on Linux. Use abxtest. Use it like this:
abxtest "aplay file.wav" "mpg321 file.mp3"
Now this will test if you can perceive the difference between file when it is encoded identically in both files. You can also muck with the statistical probability goal which is 0.5 or 50% by default. Have fun!
By that logic you can say that since your local telephone company is based in X state, it is still interstate commerce. Or if it actually is incorporated in your state they can claim that paying them through your bank account through Bank Y that is incorporated in State X it is still interstate commerce. Or if the bank, the intra-state phone company are all incorporated in your state government can claim that using your internet banking account to pay the company is interstate commerce. Or if even the ISP is incorporated in the same state they can claim that ISP is routing through another ISP incorporated in a different state and that is interstate commerce. Ad infinitum... And that's how the government usurps powers not vested in it.
Say your processor overheats and kills the temperature diode(or it just dies due to faulty hardware)...oops now the processor can't know that it's getting too hot and throttle(slow down) itself. Not to say that would be very very bad...especially if you overclock your processor(upping voltage anyone?) which I see many people with C2D are doing. Also if you want to have an automatic fan that speeds up as your processor heats up and your diode is borked, good luck. I was reading about this on Tom's Hardware forums a while ago. I wouldn't call this a 'show stopper' but I certainly would try not to take the heatsink or fan off...
Yes AMD does release errata(pdf warning).
Maybe Intel should stop releasing these lists and then no-one would even know about them. I guess they could stop releasing these lists but I would think that they would be liable. And as for no-one finding out...how do you think they find out about these bugs anyway? I would think that they would remove them prior to production if they could simulate real-life use 100% accurately. In fact, modern processors take upwards of 70% of their development time in testing--they're that complicated.
GPLed engines could work excellent in the gaming industry. Why you ask? Well the simple fact that the most creative and original work in a game is the interaction, the graphics the sounds. It isn't the gaming engine or the like. Most people don't care what API the developers use, all they care for is the end product. The other stuff in the game, the particle systems, the physical simulations, the mapping tools are remarkably similar. It's a shame developers have to start from scratch on the boring stuff when they could be making the cool and interesting parts instead.
But I hear that selling game engines is a quite lucrative enterprise... maybe if someone would come up with a 'neutral' extendible platform that can be extended to the various genres through some sort of plugin architecture then we might see some real innovation. Maybe even relevance of Linux in the gaming space. It's never a good thing when SDKs cost thousands of dollars and you don't even know if anybody will buy your stuff. It squeezes out the risk takers (innovators) and leaves the lobotomized dinosaurs that are getting too damn old for this stuff...
If these responses are typical of the environment, goodness knows what Microsoft does to people who post Dilbert cartoons on their office walls. They are promoted to the Security Researcher position?
This is a good background of the story. It's actually weirder than you think. Sturgeon loaned him money to use for his business which apparently his wife, Nina, "used exclusively." Thereafter he drugged and seduced her and "then engaged in Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism techniques and continued to redrug her repeatedly over time." He also threatened him: "Sean has threatened to have me beaten up by some of his associates in illegal activities and that he would hurt me, my mother or my children if he did not get what he wanted."
Not to mention this guy has admitted to killing 8 people. I don't know how much reasonable doubt one would need to get acquitted. I guess we will find out...
I found the piece was terribly distraught especially this:
While he launches into the intricacies of database science, I'm thinking, "Where is the front passenger seat of your car?" He has never explained this. It seems a fundamental hole in his defense. But he won't stop talking. When I try to interrupt, he insists I let him finish. It's as if the file system holds all the answers.
So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process."
So I guess this is a confession now? I'm sorry but that's just deceiving and wrong. He calls a patch against the kernel tree a "program" and all the pluses he didn't remove before the code reaffirm this suspicion that he doesn't even know what proper code looks like. He makes it sound as if this comment describing how a specific file structure of the file system works as some sort of "secret confession" hidden there for the unscrupulous researcher. Joshua Davis, please turn in your geek badge!
With someone that calls himself a geek to come with such a preposterous conclusion leaves me little room for hope that any sort of truth of this case from either side will come out or that any real justice will be done. It speaks volumes of the "blindness of justice" and how our prisons end up being jammed with people placed on death row with DNA evidence later exonerating them and having no recourse to repair their life or credibility. So truly, Death really is a Complex Process.
Here is the actual passage he was talking about:
+/* EVERY ZNODE'S STORY + + 1. His infancy. + + Once upon a time, the znode was born deep inside of zget() by call to + zalloc(). At the return from zget() znode had: + + . reference counter (x_count) of 1 + . assigned block number, marked as used in bitmap + . pointer to parent znode. Root znode parent pointer points + to its father: "fake" znode. This, in turn, has NULL parent pointer. + . hash table linkage + . no data loaded from disk + . no node plugin + . no sibling linkage + + 2. His childhood + + Each node is either brought into memory as a result of tree traversal, or + created afresh, creation of the root being a special case of the latter. In + either case it's inserted into sibling list. This will typically require + some ancillary tree traversing, but ultimately both sibling pointers will + exist and JNODE_LEFT_CONNECTED and JNODE_RIGHT_CONNECTED will be true in + zjnode.state. + + 3. His youth. + + If znode is bound to already existing node in a tree, its content is read + from the disk by call to zload(). At that moment, JNODE_LOADED bit is set + in zjnode.state and zdata() function starts to return non null for this + znode. zload() further calls zparse() that determines which node layout + this node is rendered in, and sets ->nplug on success. + + If znode is for new node just created, memory for it is allocated and + zinit_new() function is called to initialise data, according to selected + node layout. + + 4. His maturity. + + After this point, znode lingers in memory for some time. Threads can + acquire references to znode either by blocknr through call to zget(), or by + following a pointer to unallocated znode from internal item. Each time + reference to znode is obtained, x_count is increased. Thread can read/write + lock znode. Znode data can be loaded through calls to zload(), d_count will + be increased appropriately. If all references to znode are released + (x_count drops to 0), znode is n
I was looking for a nice desktop image and happened to come upon this panorama of Carina Nebula. This supernova is clearly visible(not fake colored x-ray) in the image, it is about 1/4 from the left side and in the middle of the picture just left of the big blob of dust. Curiously it has some sort of crosshairs on it, probably an optical illusion but nontheless interesting.
Let's think about this. Would you rather listen to music on radio or advertisements for car insurance, etc? That's why nobody listens to radio anymore. Radio IS advertising there's no way around it.
Also I'm just sick of listening to blatant advertising in-show where they talk about this great plastic surgery company and how affordable they are. Is this considered advertising? I'm sure that it is advertising, but you go to the FCC and try to get them to investigate they will say: "Oh they are just voicing their opinions."
That's why I hate such stupid regulation. Look anywhere and you will see advertising make its way into main programming. It's the MTV model taking over. Lots of money to be made when what you are advertising is advertisements. There is clearly a big gray area and this is where the money is being made.
Moral or immoral, I also need to note that people are not stupid and that they will catch on to your little tricks (10 pages to go through an article?? stuff on web needs more that 1 page??). Then when they do, your audience will plummet and you will have to whore yourself more and more until it's just you and the spammers.
Actually that is precisely what TFA is talking about and goes to show that this has been known for a while. I noticed FDA did a test on drinks last year and found drinks that exceeded FDA recommendations.
This caught my eye:
A Food Standards Agency survey of benzene in drinks last year found high levels in four brands which were removed from sale. So I went to their site and found this helpful FAQ. Here is the study they did last year.
Interestingly on the study website they note this:
Samples were collected and analyzed by CFSAN except for reformulated samples that were provided by the manufacturer for CFSAN to analyze. If that doesn't set off your WTF detector, I don't know what will... Luckily I was able to find this previous un-reformulated sample.
Somehow I think we need random testing of products for these kinds of things. Incidentally, anybody's pets die from petfood recently?
On a large enough "distance", the speed of that event, if we just tried to add together the relative expansion per unit length, would exceed c. That's certainly news to me! In fact, if you understood the concept of Special Relativity, this is precisely the concept that it excludes i.e. there can be nothing that moves faster than c. I would go into explaining how this all works and why there is no luminiferous aether and Michelson-Moreley experiment and how it lead to the development of Special Relativity but it would be way outside of the scope of what I can describe here.
There is/should be matter much farther away than the 2 * 15 bly "bubble" that would be the theoretical maximum of matter simply going in all directions at the point of Big Bang. I don't think you understand the Big Bang Theory. It postulates that all matter was condensed into a point singularity at the beginning of time i.e. there cannot exist any matter outside it.
Even if matter did exist "outside" we would not be able to know of it. We have religion to tell us of things we cannot examine. Let science take care of the other.
That depends. If you argue that circumventing protections that violate your fair use rights is a form of political speech, they would have a hard time censoring you. Fair use is a part of copyright law, and having companies ignore it(or even blatantly oppose it) is just the same as people pirating those same companies' shit. Why have the law if it's just a bunch of scribbles on a piece of paper you can wipe your ass with? Fair use right is a big part of free speech. When you can't even show what you are criticizing then what's the point?
Also note that Corporations are entities created by the Government. You can kill a corporation by revoking its charter. They are bound by the same laws as anyone else. However they have business protections through patents, copyrights, and trademarks but those laws are created by--Government.
Constitution was written with "common sense" kind of law in mind, not the "loophole" kind of law it has turned into today. Bill of Rights was supposed to be left out for precisely this reason until states demanded it. Such rights were obvious and including them, as was argued in the Federalist Papers, would merely designate those rights as the only ones afforded to individuals. Hence the X Amendment(which has, sadly, also been shaped and perverted).
However such foresight is incredible, I can only think that we are failing to see that government is an arbitrator of contracts between people, not an absolute "decider" of what is right and what is wrong(tell that to the abortion loonies on both sides). Maybe I would also mention the "right to a speedy trial" but who am I kidding here...speedy as compared to geological formations maybe? Sure it's not perfect, but [somewhere] there are people running it that have common sense and that is really the important thing. 2006 election was a sort of French Revolution but a lot less bloody. Thank god for civility. The losers should feel much more lucky.
Already done. Covered a bit more in my journal.
I'm still piqued that the movie studios haven't caught on to this. It would be expensive to film though. You would essentially need to create a working model from live shots, but it's not so far out there. Just that it's much easier to manipulate the markets than offer revolutionary technology that would keep the theaters packed.
Some people will appreciate this:
In other provisions of the bill that could directly benefit open source proponents, a patent could not be obtained for an invention if it was found to have been in general use more than one year before the date of the invention, or if it was to have been used at all except for purposes of demonstration within that one-year period. Such a provision would give prospective inventors a one-year window of opportunity to demonstrate their inventions to interested parties, have their proposals rejected, and still obtain patents before the rejecting party beats them to the table. Open source advocates may appreciate the amplified language that would prohibit any organization from claiming patentability over a concept that was "in public use or sale" (note the distinction) prior to the claim. Read: death of software patents. I doubt it will survive a full frontal IBM and Microsoft assault though...
Slashdot Mirror
As a side note it might be worth noting that it may be a way of making bad artists sound good. In a way you make their job easier with a smaller sound space they need to master. If you haven't noticed how some artists sound good on CD and they suck live this is the reason...not to mention other neat tricks they do in the studio but I digress...
"The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others"
Yes, but how many laptop miles per hour is that?
By that logic you can say that since your local telephone company is based in X state, it is still interstate commerce. Or if it actually is incorporated in your state they can claim that paying them through your bank account through Bank Y that is incorporated in State X it is still interstate commerce. Or if the bank, the intra-state phone company are all incorporated in your state government can claim that using your internet banking account to pay the company is interstate commerce. Or if even the ISP is incorporated in the same state they can claim that ISP is routing through another ISP incorporated in a different state and that is interstate commerce. Ad infinitum... And that's how the government usurps powers not vested in it.
That was one of my favorite videos. Enjoy.
Say your processor overheats and kills the temperature diode(or it just dies due to faulty hardware)...oops now the processor can't know that it's getting too hot and throttle(slow down) itself. Not to say that would be very very bad...especially if you overclock your processor(upping voltage anyone?) which I see many people with C2D are doing. Also if you want to have an automatic fan that speeds up as your processor heats up and your diode is borked, good luck. I was reading about this on Tom's Hardware forums a while ago. I wouldn't call this a 'show stopper' but I certainly would try not to take the heatsink or fan off...
GPLed engines could work excellent in the gaming industry. Why you ask? Well the simple fact that the most creative and original work in a game is the interaction, the graphics the sounds. It isn't the gaming engine or the like. Most people don't care what API the developers use, all they care for is the end product. The other stuff in the game, the particle systems, the physical simulations, the mapping tools are remarkably similar. It's a shame developers have to start from scratch on the boring stuff when they could be making the cool and interesting parts instead.
But I hear that selling game engines is a quite lucrative enterprise... maybe if someone would come up with a 'neutral' extendible platform that can be extended to the various genres through some sort of plugin architecture then we might see some real innovation. Maybe even relevance of Linux in the gaming space. It's never a good thing when SDKs cost thousands of dollars and you don't even know if anybody will buy your stuff. It squeezes out the risk takers (innovators) and leaves the lobotomized dinosaurs that are getting too damn old for this stuff...
This is a good background of the story. It's actually weirder than you think. Sturgeon loaned him money to use for his business which apparently his wife, Nina, "used exclusively." Thereafter he drugged and seduced her and "then engaged in Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism techniques and continued to redrug her repeatedly over time." He also threatened him: "Sean has threatened to have me beaten up by some of his associates in illegal activities and that he would hurt me, my mother or my children if he did not get what he wanted."
Not to mention this guy has admitted to killing 8 people. I don't know how much reasonable doubt one would need to get acquitted. I guess we will find out...
While he launches into the intricacies of database science, I'm thinking, "Where is the front passenger seat of your car?" He has never explained this. It seems a fundamental hole in his defense. But he won't stop talking. When I try to interrupt, he insists I let him finish. It's as if the file system holds all the answers.
So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process."
So I guess this is a confession now? I'm sorry but that's just deceiving and wrong. He calls a patch against the kernel tree a "program" and all the pluses he didn't remove before the code reaffirm this suspicion that he doesn't even know what proper code looks like. He makes it sound as if this comment describing how a specific file structure of the file system works as some sort of "secret confession" hidden there for the unscrupulous researcher. Joshua Davis, please turn in your geek badge!
With someone that calls himself a geek to come with such a preposterous conclusion leaves me little room for hope that any sort of truth of this case from either side will come out or that any real justice will be done. It speaks volumes of the "blindness of justice" and how our prisons end up being jammed with people placed on death row with DNA evidence later exonerating them and having no recourse to repair their life or credibility. So truly, Death really is a Complex Process.
Here is the actual passage he was talking about:
I was looking for a nice desktop image and happened to come upon this panorama of Carina Nebula. This supernova is clearly visible(not fake colored x-ray) in the image, it is about 1/4 from the left side and in the middle of the picture just left of the big blob of dust. Curiously it has some sort of crosshairs on it, probably an optical illusion but nontheless interesting.
Let's think about this. Would you rather listen to music on radio or advertisements for car insurance, etc? That's why nobody listens to radio anymore. Radio IS advertising there's no way around it.
Also I'm just sick of listening to blatant advertising in-show where they talk about this great plastic surgery company and how affordable they are. Is this considered advertising? I'm sure that it is advertising, but you go to the FCC and try to get them to investigate they will say: "Oh they are just voicing their opinions."
That's why I hate such stupid regulation. Look anywhere and you will see advertising make its way into main programming. It's the MTV model taking over. Lots of money to be made when what you are advertising is advertisements. There is clearly a big gray area and this is where the money is being made.
Moral or immoral, I also need to note that people are not stupid and that they will catch on to your little tricks (10 pages to go through an article?? stuff on web needs more that 1 page??). Then when they do, your audience will plummet and you will have to whore yourself more and more until it's just you and the spammers.
This caught my eye: A Food Standards Agency survey of benzene in drinks last year found high levels in four brands which were removed from sale. So I went to their site and found this helpful FAQ. Here is the study they did last year.
Interestingly on the study website they note this: Samples were collected and analyzed by CFSAN except for reformulated samples that were provided by the manufacturer for CFSAN to analyze. If that doesn't set off your WTF detector, I don't know what will...
Luckily I was able to find this previous un-reformulated sample.
Somehow I think we need random testing of products for these kinds of things. Incidentally, anybody's pets die from petfood recently?
Even if matter did exist "outside" we would not be able to know of it. We have religion to tell us of things we cannot examine. Let science take care of the other.
Keith Richards' nose?
Which party will be doing business by signing licensing agreements while the other is out innovating?
Extra credit:
Why would avoiding IP be beneficial?
In other news, [professional] non-astrophysicists call [professional] astrophysicists ignorant about astrophysics. OK, now that is ironic.
That depends. If you argue that circumventing protections that violate your fair use rights is a form of political speech, they would have a hard time censoring you. Fair use is a part of copyright law, and having companies ignore it(or even blatantly oppose it) is just the same as people pirating those same companies' shit. Why have the law if it's just a bunch of scribbles on a piece of paper you can wipe your ass with? Fair use right is a big part of free speech. When you can't even show what you are criticizing then what's the point?
Also note that Corporations are entities created by the Government. You can kill a corporation by revoking its charter. They are bound by the same laws as anyone else. However they have business protections through patents, copyrights, and trademarks but those laws are created by--Government.
Constitution was written with "common sense" kind of law in mind, not the "loophole" kind of law it has turned into today. Bill of Rights was supposed to be left out for precisely this reason until states demanded it. Such rights were obvious and including them, as was argued in the Federalist Papers, would merely designate those rights as the only ones afforded to individuals. Hence the X Amendment(which has, sadly, also been shaped and perverted).
However such foresight is incredible, I can only think that we are failing to see that government is an arbitrator of contracts between people, not an absolute "decider" of what is right and what is wrong(tell that to the abortion loonies on both sides). Maybe I would also mention the "right to a speedy trial" but who am I kidding here...speedy as compared to geological formations maybe? Sure it's not perfect, but [somewhere] there are people running it that have common sense and that is really the important thing. 2006 election was a sort of French Revolution but a lot less bloody. Thank god for civility. The losers should feel much more lucky.
No I just thought it was really cool and innovative. The way 3D should be.
Already done. Covered a bit more in my journal. I'm still piqued that the movie studios haven't caught on to this. It would be expensive to film though. You would essentially need to create a working model from live shots, but it's not so far out there. Just that it's much easier to manipulate the markets than offer revolutionary technology that would keep the theaters packed.
You mean this clip? Oh wait, those aren't bananas..
Open source advocates may appreciate the amplified language that would prohibit any organization from claiming patentability over a concept that was "in public use or sale" (note the distinction) prior to the claim. Read: death of software patents. I doubt it will survive a full frontal IBM and Microsoft assault though...