Your post is an insidious attempt to use irony and cynicsm to lure people into complacency.
The post undercuts all efforts at legitimate televised expression with ridicule. It makes readers think they are sophisticated by sneering at efforts to entertain the public. In reality, these people are just becoming bleating sheep.
Just look at a site like Slashdot.org, supposedly visited by intelligent people. Among some of these geeks, mere parrotting of anti-corporate sentiment passes for genuine cleverness. Sad they don't realize that they have surrendured the ability to think for themselves to what is largely a bunch of angsty anti-socials.
The enormous market of anti-corporate consumerist crap like Save The Whales mugs and lobby group memberships completes the circle. Aimless, sheeplike anti-corporate-drones become good little consumers and buy all the junk, lining the pockets of the profit-taking merchandising companies and special interests lobbyists even as they think buying a copy of No Logo from Amazon.com constitutes some kind of transgressive act. It is beyond sad.
WAKE UP! TURN OFF THE DAMNED COMPUTER!
---
Ha, ha.... Only serious.
So, serisously, does Mr./Ms. Coward there: - just like posting a good troll now and then? - really hate the Simpsons? - feel that the young people nowdays aren't moral/reverent/respectful/calm/friendly/charitable/civil/dependable/motivated/etc. enough, and is searching far and wide for a cause (read scapegoat), his/her own closedmindedness notwithstanding, so as not to have to deal with the fact that the youth can think for themselves and some have genuinely determined using their own faculties that they do not give a flying fuck about the above? - have a contingency plan for continuing to power his/her reality distortion field, so that it can protect their ever-growing ego, now inflated several times over the legal limit?
"So the width of the groove is roughly.01/667 meters, which is 150 microns."
Well, you meant to say.1/667, but it's still 150 microns.
"To reproduce a signal whose dynamic range is 90 dB, the smallest excursions have to be roughly 1/30000 of the maximum amplitude. 150/30000 microns is 5 nanometers."
First of all, the system isn't linear. Think about the sizes you're talking about. And 90dB? But there's a more important issue: your complaint here would make sense if the software was tracking the groove movement by pattern recognition. But that's not what was suggested here; it's using the light levels along the grooves in the scans to estimate the surface angle and extrapolate the position. All the picture we need for that is a view a few pixels across on the groove. Of course, there still could be an issue with the lack of intensity resolution on the scanner... But since even my entry-level $130 Canon can do 36-bit colour optically (presumably yielding a 12-bit greyscale), you might just be able to shop your way round it.
Although I'm a fan of the show, I have to wonder why this story is here. A front page posting? Is a result of some kind of coherent editorial policy or just a symptom of sloppy editing? I mean, okay, Buffy has a certain geek affinity, and so I understand why it would squeeze in for anthropological interest. But stories about relatively insignificant casting rumblings?
There are already good sources of show and cast minutiae (e.g. Slayage) and spoilers (e.g. The Spoiler Slayer) for those in need. Editors: If you really feel the need to feed us, say, casting baubles, or angsty rumblings about the future of the show, make a category for them. If not, save it. Thanks.
They're designed for KDE... But that doesn't prevent you from using them with something other than KDE's bundled window manager in any way. Desktop environment APIs aren't mutually exclusive.
"AGP Texture Download Problem" implies that there's a problem downloading textures via AGP from main memory. But it's not about texture transfers at all, it's about transfers of rendered frames back to the system (in the opposite direction).
Hey, 'Taco... You're the high point of the/. editing staff; your readership is depending on you to drag the other editors up the bell curve kicking and screaming by your example. Don't give up now. =)
"USB often interferes with computer hibernation, to give another example."
Are you talking about the Windows 2000/ME/XP hibernation feature? It doesn't require any particular hardware support, only that the drivers are designed with it in mind so that they can save state properly.
>>That said, what sound cards (and they *must* be fully DOS-compatible to be useful to me) don't have such BS built in??
What do you mean by "DOS-compatible"? Do you mean that they have to be supported natively by your DOS programs? Or simply that they must be usable in a VM? I'm happily using a whole bunch of dossy scene software under XP using vdmsound to provide Sound Blaster interfaces inside the ntvdm.
>Yes, actually, i do. And you need to do more research. It exist.
Really? I thought Apple wouldn't sell anything but a whole system. How do I buy a motherboard on its own? Don't they use non-standard power supply connectors?
Laying the smack down on a company just for trademark usage in their user agent string may seem a little far fetched. But keep in mind that US courts have found DNS entries to violate trademark rights in a number of cases. (And that's not even because the server could transmit the trademark-containing name, but only because of the IP address it replies with).
Sure, 1394 has occupied a certain market share, as you say, primarily on digital video (since the DV format is built around it) and anywhere high speed external storage is required (laptops, macs in general*), and where 1394 ports are included (e.g. Macs, most Sony PCs).
There's also a bit of a market for systems where neither USB 2 or 1394 ports are available and where a new controller card will be necessary either way (e.g. the other 95% of the PC market). Here, the longer history of 1394 means that more devices are available; but it still has to compete with USB 2 in other areas...
>>and while USB 2.0 might become a competitor because of it's name,
ROFL!!! USB 2 is a serious competitor for firewire... But it's primarily because of its backwards compatibility. I can't see the name recognition alone being a big deal.
USB 1.x devices will work fine on USB 2 ports, and most USB 2 devices will work (although at reduced speed) on USB 1.x ports. The manufacturer can replace a USB 1.x chipset with a USB 2 chipset, without affecting compatibility with your existing USB devices at all. It really doesn't cost that much more to build systems with USB 2.
On the other hand, at best, firewire has to coexist with a cheaper low data rate standard of some kind -- it's cost prohibitive to build a firewire mouse. And USB 1.x is already widespread in both the Mac and PC worlds. So, for most PCs, adding firewire support would mean integrating it in alongside continued USB 1.x functionality. More expensive.
Of course, it's important to point out: Less port types for more devices = less confusing; that's "mac-like" for the same reasons as ADB and USB 1.
So, given this, the Mac community's general support of firewire over USB 2 is kind of ironic... But just because they eat the cake doesn't mean they would know how to bake one.
There are lots of spurious comments about the inferiority of USB 2 coming from macheads. As far as I can tell, the trashing that USB 2 is getting is mostly your typical not-early-adopted-here rhetoric, and includes listing of unimportant technical merits (e.g. peer-to-peer -- great for connecting two computers or DV cameras, but needlessly driving up costs for the remaining 95% of stuff you connect to your computer), and pointing at the USB standard's association with Intel (Okay, so what?)
Now, it's valid to point out that the established base of 1394 devices in the Mac world means that Apple is tied to 1394 for the time being, and so their standard USB 1.x + 1394 combination will save money over going to USB 2.x + 1394.
[I could then argue that making users pay for more functionality on every system, even though only a handful of them will actually take advantage of it, is more "mac-like" too. But that would just be me speaking as a cynical PC user. =) ]
>>I think IEEE 1394 will stay on the PC, although mainly used in video.
Oh, of course, I think that 1394 cards will continue to be available. But I don't think 1394 will ever be standard in the PC world in the same way that USB 1.x is and USB 2 will be.
* I don't mean to insult mac users' technical knowledge, but for every machead who's willing to crack open their G4 tower to drop in another HD, there's one who either: - doesn't know how - is willing to drop extra $ to avoid dealing with scary computer innards - owns an imac or a cube and doesn't have that option - is out of drive bays (or IDE channels and PCI slots for another IDE controller) -- you can't exactly migrate your mac to a full-size tower case with ease, or buy a mobo with more pci slots, you know what I mean? =)
Given the amount of self-censorship and focus group re-editing that goes on, it's a bit hard to take DGA's cry of "censorship" seriously. At best, they can argue that those other compromises have to occur with the director's permission; the director still has some recourse if they can't come to a compromise. If they want to push some restrictions about this into their contract terms, then good for them, but I don't see why I should be particularly concerned about it, with the artistic integrity cat largely out of the bag and all. It wouldn't surprise me if they're just looking for directors to score some consultation dollars on those third party edits.
I hate having to wade through so many varieties of exceptions when trying to use Java Classes (not classes, Classes -- instances of the java.lang.Class class).
Sidenote: It bothers me to no end that there's no way to get a Class object for a class through a static method. I realize something like that would go against the lack of static method inheritance in Java, but Object.getClass() must contain some pretty nasty voodoo anyway.
As it is, I have to either:
(new Foo(...)).getClass()
which gets really annoying if Foo has no default constructor or uses a lot of resources on creation
or
Class.forName("pack.Foo")
which is somewhat more elegant, except that I have to handle an exception where the string constant I give doesn't match a class. That would be moot -- as it should be -- if the class name could be checked at compile time.
Add on another load of exceptions if you want to use Methods or Constructors (again, distinct from methods and constructors), and for the same reason... methods can't have their corresponding Method referenced statically at compile time.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't SGI own Cray? (At least until recently?)
Your post is an insidious attempt to use irony and cynicsm to lure people into complacency.
e /civil/dependable/motivated/etc. enough, and is searching far and wide for a cause (read scapegoat), his/her own closedmindedness notwithstanding, so as not to have to deal with the fact that the youth can think for themselves and some have genuinely determined using their own faculties that they do not give a flying fuck about the above?
The post undercuts all efforts at legitimate televised expression with ridicule. It makes readers think they are sophisticated by sneering at efforts to entertain the public. In reality, these people are just becoming bleating sheep.
Just look at a site like Slashdot.org, supposedly visited by intelligent people. Among some of these geeks, mere parrotting of anti-corporate sentiment passes for genuine cleverness. Sad they don't realize that they have surrendured the ability to think for themselves to what is largely a bunch of angsty anti-socials.
The enormous market of anti-corporate consumerist crap like Save The Whales mugs and lobby group memberships completes the circle. Aimless, sheeplike anti-corporate-drones become good little consumers and buy all the junk, lining the pockets of the profit-taking merchandising companies and special interests lobbyists even as they think buying a copy of No Logo from Amazon.com constitutes some kind of transgressive act. It is beyond sad.
WAKE UP! TURN OFF THE DAMNED COMPUTER!
---
Ha, ha.... Only serious.
So, serisously, does Mr./Ms. Coward there:
- just like posting a good troll now and then?
- really hate the Simpsons?
- feel that the young people nowdays aren't moral/reverent/respectful/calm/friendly/charitabl
- have a contingency plan for continuing to power his/her reality distortion field, so that it can protect their ever-growing ego, now inflated several times over the legal limit?
"So the width of the groove is roughly .01/667 meters, which is 150 microns."
.1/667, but it's still 150 microns.
Well, you meant to say
"To reproduce a signal whose dynamic range is 90 dB, the smallest excursions have to be roughly 1/30000 of the maximum amplitude. 150/30000 microns is 5 nanometers."
First of all, the system isn't linear. Think about the sizes you're talking about. And 90dB?
But there's a more important issue: your complaint here would make sense if the software was tracking the groove movement by pattern recognition. But that's not what was suggested here; it's using the light levels along the grooves in the scans to estimate the surface angle and extrapolate the position. All the picture we need for that is a view a few pixels across on the groove. Of course, there still could be an issue with the lack of intensity resolution on the scanner... But since even my entry-level $130 Canon can do 36-bit colour optically (presumably yielding a 12-bit greyscale), you might just be able to shop your way round it.
Although I'm a fan of the show, I have to wonder why this story is here. A front page posting? Is a result of some kind of coherent editorial policy or just a symptom of sloppy editing? I mean, okay, Buffy has a certain geek affinity, and so I understand why it would squeeze in for anthropological interest. But stories about relatively insignificant casting rumblings?
There are already good sources of show and cast minutiae (e.g. Slayage) and spoilers (e.g. The Spoiler Slayer) for those in need. Editors: If you really feel the need to feed us, say, casting baubles, or angsty rumblings about the future of the show, make a category for them. If not, save it. Thanks.
-aT
Okay, have you ever actually seen the show?
Does this sound like pure merchandising to anyone else? It reminds me of those music-inspired-by-the-movie "soundtracks".
You speak the truth. Now, for reasons you've so conveniently illustrated, we must blow your ass up with cinematographer-friendly guerilla actions.
>>I wish Debian would automatically update also. Apt-get dist-upgrade is simply too much work.
What, you mean it takes too much of your time? Couldn't you just have cron run it with some kind of hands-off all-defaults detail level?
I wonder what we could expect to pay for one of these if the order goes through...
I've been sort of kicking myself for not buying one at a reasonable price before the supply died out. But now I might have my chance.
Wierdness. What is 1E9 called in the UK, then? Has it ever been determined when the usages diverged?
How does determining primality in polynomial time help you factor really big composites?
They're designed for KDE... But that doesn't prevent you from using them with something other than KDE's bundled window manager in any way. Desktop environment APIs aren't mutually exclusive.
"AGP Texture Download Problem Revealed"
/. editing staff; your readership is depending on you to drag the other editors up the bell curve kicking and screaming by your example. Don't give up now. =)
"AGP Texture Download Problem" implies that there's a problem downloading textures via AGP from main memory. But it's not about texture transfers at all, it's about transfers of rendered frames back to the system (in the opposite direction).
Hey, 'Taco... You're the high point of the
"USB often interferes with computer hibernation, to give another example."
Are you talking about the Windows 2000/ME/XP hibernation feature? It doesn't require any particular hardware support, only that the drivers are designed with it in mind so that they can save state properly.
ACPI suspend-to-disk is another matter, however.
Animations by subway tunnel spray-painting hoodlums? Of what, former subway tunnel spray-painting hoodlum gore bits moving around? =)
"What does God need with a 4x4?"
Well, sometimes rear wheel drive just won't do the trick. =)
>>That said, what sound cards (and they *must* be fully DOS-compatible to be useful to me) don't have such BS built in??
What do you mean by "DOS-compatible"? Do you mean that they have to be supported natively by your DOS programs? Or simply that they must be usable in a VM? I'm happily using a whole bunch of dossy scene software under XP using vdmsound to provide Sound Blaster interfaces inside the ntvdm.
>Yes, actually, i do. And you need to do more research. It exist.
Really? I thought Apple wouldn't sell anything but a whole system. How do I buy a motherboard on its own? Don't they use non-standard power supply connectors?
Laying the smack down on a company just for trademark usage in their user agent string may seem a little far fetched. But keep in mind that US courts have found DNS entries to violate trademark rights in a number of cases. (And that's not even because the server could transmit the trademark-containing name, but only because of the IP address it replies with).
They're both just as flimsy if you ask me.
>>Firewire is already embedded in the market
Sure, 1394 has occupied a certain market share, as you say, primarily on digital video (since the DV format is built around it) and anywhere high speed external storage is required (laptops, macs in general*), and where 1394 ports are included (e.g. Macs, most Sony PCs).
There's also a bit of a market for systems where neither USB 2 or 1394 ports are available and where a new controller card will be necessary either way (e.g. the other 95% of the PC market). Here, the longer history of 1394 means that more devices are available; but it still has to compete with USB 2 in other areas...
>>and while USB 2.0 might become a competitor because of it's name,
ROFL!!! USB 2 is a serious competitor for firewire... But it's primarily because of its backwards compatibility. I can't see the name recognition alone being a big deal.
USB 1.x devices will work fine on USB 2 ports, and most USB 2 devices will work (although at reduced speed) on USB 1.x ports. The manufacturer can replace a USB 1.x chipset with a USB 2 chipset, without affecting compatibility with your existing USB devices at all. It really doesn't cost that much more to build systems with USB 2.
On the other hand, at best, firewire has to coexist with a cheaper low data rate standard of some kind -- it's cost prohibitive to build a firewire mouse. And USB 1.x is already widespread in both the Mac and PC worlds. So, for most PCs, adding firewire support would mean integrating it in alongside continued USB 1.x functionality. More expensive.
Of course, it's important to point out: Less port types for more devices = less confusing; that's "mac-like" for the same reasons as ADB and USB 1.
So, given this, the Mac community's general support of firewire over USB 2 is kind of ironic... But just because they eat the cake doesn't mean they would know how to bake one.
There are lots of spurious comments about the inferiority of USB 2 coming from macheads. As far as I can tell, the trashing that USB 2 is getting is mostly your typical not-early-adopted-here rhetoric, and includes listing of unimportant technical merits (e.g. peer-to-peer -- great for connecting two computers or DV cameras, but needlessly driving up costs for the remaining 95% of stuff you connect to your computer), and pointing at the USB standard's association with Intel (Okay, so what?)
Now, it's valid to point out that the established base of 1394 devices in the Mac world means that Apple is tied to 1394 for the time being, and so their standard USB 1.x + 1394 combination will save money over going to USB 2.x + 1394.
[I could then argue that making users pay for more functionality on every system, even though only a handful of them will actually take advantage of it, is more "mac-like" too. But that would just be me speaking as a cynical PC user. =) ]
>>I think IEEE 1394 will stay on the PC, although mainly used in video.
Oh, of course, I think that 1394 cards will continue to be available. But I don't think 1394 will ever be standard in the PC world in the same way that USB 1.x is and USB 2 will be.
* I don't mean to insult mac users' technical knowledge, but for every machead who's willing to crack open their G4 tower to drop in another HD, there's one who either:
- doesn't know how
- is willing to drop extra $ to avoid dealing with scary computer innards
- owns an imac or a cube and doesn't have that option
- is out of drive bays (or IDE channels and PCI slots for another IDE controller) -- you can't exactly migrate your mac to a full-size tower case with ease, or buy a mobo with more pci slots, you know what I mean? =)
>>I think Sun also have this capitable.
Uh... I don't think so. Even in the fairly new Solaris 9, support for USB and 1394 hard drives is fairly sketchy.
Given the amount of self-censorship and focus group re-editing that goes on, it's a bit hard to take DGA's cry of "censorship" seriously. At best, they can argue that those other compromises have to occur with the director's permission; the director still has some recourse if they can't come to a compromise. If they want to push some restrictions about this into their contract terms, then good for them, but I don't see why I should be particularly concerned about it, with the artistic integrity cat largely out of the bag and all. It wouldn't surprise me if they're just looking for directors to score some consultation dollars on those third party edits.
I hate having to wade through so many varieties of exceptions when trying to use Java Classes (not classes, Classes -- instances of the java.lang.Class class).
Sidenote: It bothers me to no end that there's no way to get a Class object for a class through a static method. I realize something like that would go against the lack of static method inheritance in Java, but Object.getClass() must contain some pretty nasty voodoo anyway.
As it is, I have to either:
(new Foo(...)).getClass()
which gets really annoying if Foo has no default constructor or uses a lot of resources on creation
or
Class.forName("pack.Foo")
which is somewhat more elegant, except that I have to handle an exception where the string constant I give doesn't match a class. That would be moot -- as it should be -- if the class name could be checked at compile time.
Add on another load of exceptions if you want to use Methods or Constructors (again, distinct from methods and constructors), and for the same reason... methods can't have their corresponding Method referenced statically at compile time.
Grumble.
Rofl... This is some press release with all the opium references replaced with mentions of open source software, right? =)
Source code: The opiate of the people (the geeky ones, at any rate)
>>Because its on a CDR we know the tools are safe.
Huh? What does it being on a CDR have to do with whether or not you can use it to modify the HD contents?