There's a joke in there somewhere about us having grown tired of all this vision, but I can't be bothered to find it:-)
Possibly not an Information Theory major
on
DivX 6.0 is Out
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· Score: 4, Funny
In my tests with the new DivX Encoder--a tool scheduled to replace the company's Dr. DivX--I could re-encode DivX 5 files as DivX 6, with the resulting file size not much larger than the ZIP-compressed DivX 5 file. This implies a compression scheme that is just about as capable as the most aggressive Lempel-Ziv algorithms available.
Er...ok.
Mercifully free from the ravages of scientific method:-)
I think it's time to repeat that amusing but probably apocryphal story about double negatives and double positives.
A respected linguistics academic was once lecturing (you can tell it's an UL already, can't you?) on the subject of double negatives and pointed out that English is one of the few languages that has no instance of a double positive construct being used to mean a negative.
The story goes that a voice from the back of the hall then called out, "Yeah, right."
As *someone* once said, if aliens find the ruins of earth millions of years from now, they would dig up our laptops and imagine that we had 104 fingers.
If the aliens were that stupid, they wouldn't have been able to invent the propulsion systems that enabled them to reach Earth.
We want people to pay attention to this distraction, instead of the bits that show Linux has had no effect whatsoever on accelerating Windows development.
Fine. You get your nitpicking badge, even though you could have simply posted a link to your preferred meaning of that term instead of leaving your point as an open question.
You can accuse me of nitpicking all you like, but I've been developing for Windows since 3.0, and went through the NT and 95 transitions - including Win32s - and your use of Win32 to mean Windows 9X OSs is just plain wrong. That usage would confuse just about every Windows developer I've ever met. If they had to use 'Win32' to describe either 9X or NT (which they wouldn't anyway, because it's an API, not an OS), all the ones I know would go for NT every time.
Most devs I know (including the ones at MS) use Windows 9X to mean 95/98/ME (i.e. the 9X kernel, not the NT kernel), and NT to mean NT 3.x/4.0, 2k and XP (i.e. the NT kernel).
NT has always been the 'true' manifestation of Win32, whereas Windows 95 supported Win32, but with some caveats (although not nearly as many as some people like to make out - that was the job of Win32s).
To answer your request for clarification, Win32 is the name of an API, not the name of an OS. All the OSs you mentioned support Win32, albeit some of them not 100%. As I said, the natural home of Win32 is the NT kernel (wow only gets fired up if you run a 16-bit app, whereas 16-bit support is always around on 9X).
The reason I didn't clarify what I meant by Win32 was that I assumed it was so obvious that it wouldn't need explaining, and that you had just made an inadvertant slip by using it in the way you did.
You kids are lucky to have such a sane Windows userland these days.
Gee, thanks Dad. I'll remember that the next time I'm debugging floating point exceptions in the Win32s print dialog, or swearing at Adobe's Windows 95 PostScript driver for flattening bezier path segments into straight lines.
I used one for exactly what you descibe - watching TV on a commute. Well, I actually used an iPaq, by ripping shows from my Tivo and re-encoding them to WMV appropriate for PocketPC display. It worked pretty well. The only problem was that dark scenes were a bit iffy due to the relatively poor contrast of the screen. Other than that, ot worked fine (barring the usual poor UI of media players).
I would hold it in front of me - seemed large enough. It's not like I used to prop it up on the seat opposite or anything.
It was pretty cool because the iPaq is so light and thin (I had a 1Gb SD Card, so I could get a few hours of video on the card at once).
Only thing left are the clocks with a single AA battery on the wall, and at some point they are going to use the pervasive
Dude, that's so 5 years ago. I just bought a wall clock for my kitchen that takes an AA battery, and it syncs to the UK nuclear clock signal. It's great.
Cost? 8 pounds.
A similar clock in my living room does the same thing. The futar is here!
So I guess we now know what really happened to the Death Star. A gaping security "hole" + a special download.
Turn on your Monitor. Luke Skywalker has been captured. While ENN has no pictures at this point of time, the military channel (TIE) released some pictures. I managed to capture a couple of these pictures off my monitor. Ive attached a slideshow containing all the pictures I managed to capture. I apologize for the low quality, its the best I could do at this point of time. Hopefully ENN will have pictures and a video soon.
It's a big risk to make this switch. Developers need to rewrite their apps again.
Well, I'm not sure I'd go with 'rewrite'. The OS X APIs seem fairly clean now, so I'd guess for most ISVs all they really need to worry about is endianness, particularly with respect to serialising data to/from disk (there may also be alignment issues in there).
Apart from that, it should be a recompile for a new target with the odd tweak now and then.
Some vendors (Quark) took forever to move to X, and that's been within the last 5 years.
Yes, but I would have thought moving from OS 9 to OS X is a much bigger task than switching CPU targets - for most apps.
Of course, Photoshop etc. may have a large amount of PPC assembler in their filters, but I'm guessing most Mac apps have little to no assembler code in them these days. (And I suspect Adobe at least might know where to get some x86 based versions of their filter code).
But it does seem a little unexpected/unlikely - I keep looking for the part where it says "Only kidding. It's a joke."
Funny, I usually classify someone as a fool if they ever use the term 'gaming rig' in a non-ironic way:-)
Agreed though - I upgraded my PC a while back, and the gfx card cost about £120 ($220ish). It played HL2 fine. Well, more than fine, to be honest. I'm not really sure what another $200 would get you.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot: Come for the discussion, stay for the flames...
I can't tell if you're kidding. You don't really read slashdot to keep informed of things that are actually important, do you? :-)
Now I know why Taco added this to the poll results page:
The only thing wrong is expecting any kind of journalism from The Sun, let alone 'top quality' journalism.
This is the sort of paper that uses bold and italics in its editorials, just to make sure you get the point.
Enough said, I think.
"You're Sun Readers, aren't you?"
"How did you know that?"
"You've sawn the wrong ends off your shotguns."
There's a joke in there somewhere about us having grown tired of all this vision, but I can't be bothered to find it :-)
Er...ok.
Mercifully free from the ravages of scientific method :-)
And it works just fine, too - it certainly embiggens my DVD viewing experience.
Oh goody, I've always wanted to reply to one of these UID threads :)
I think it's time to repeat that amusing but probably apocryphal story about double negatives and double positives.
A respected linguistics academic was once lecturing (you can tell it's an UL already, can't you?) on the subject of double negatives and pointed out that English is one of the few languages that has no instance of a double positive construct being used to mean a negative.
The story goes that a voice from the back of the hall then called out, "Yeah, right."
No, that's an Alpha you're thinking of.
:-)
Beta generally means feature complete, but needs testing.
I know people mess these terms up so much sometimes it's not worth making the distinction, but I've decided to make a stand, dammit!
If the aliens were that stupid, they wouldn't have been able to invent the propulsion systems that enabled them to reach Earth.
I wish I was clever enough to understand that.
You can accuse me of nitpicking all you like, but I've been developing for Windows since 3.0, and went through the NT and 95 transitions - including Win32s - and your use of Win32 to mean Windows 9X OSs is just plain wrong. That usage would confuse just about every Windows developer I've ever met. If they had to use 'Win32' to describe either 9X or NT (which they wouldn't anyway, because it's an API, not an OS), all the ones I know would go for NT every time.
Most devs I know (including the ones at MS) use Windows 9X to mean 95/98/ME (i.e. the 9X kernel, not the NT kernel), and NT to mean NT 3.x/4.0, 2k and XP (i.e. the NT kernel).
NT has always been the 'true' manifestation of Win32, whereas Windows 95 supported Win32, but with some caveats (although not nearly as many as some people like to make out - that was the job of Win32s).
To answer your request for clarification, Win32 is the name of an API, not the name of an OS. All the OSs you mentioned support Win32, albeit some of them not 100%. As I said, the natural home of Win32 is the NT kernel (wow only gets fired up if you run a 16-bit app, whereas 16-bit support is always around on 9X).
The reason I didn't clarify what I meant by Win32 was that I assumed it was so obvious that it wouldn't need explaining, and that you had just made an inadvertant slip by using it in the way you did.
Gee, thanks Dad. I'll remember that the next time I'm debugging floating point exceptions in the Win32s print dialog, or swearing at Adobe's Windows 95 PostScript driver for flattening bezier path segments into straight lines.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
I used one for exactly what you descibe - watching TV on a commute. Well, I actually used an iPaq, by ripping shows from my Tivo and re-encoding them to WMV appropriate for PocketPC display. It worked pretty well. The only problem was that dark scenes were a bit iffy due to the relatively poor contrast of the screen. Other than that, ot worked fine (barring the usual poor UI of media players).
I would hold it in front of me - seemed large enough. It's not like I used to prop it up on the seat opposite or anything.
It was pretty cool because the iPaq is so light and thin (I had a 1Gb SD Card, so I could get a few hours of video on the card at once).
Dude, that's so 5 years ago. I just bought a wall clock for my kitchen that takes an AA battery, and it syncs to the UK nuclear clock signal. It's great.
Cost? 8 pounds.
A similar clock in my living room does the same thing. The futar is here!
See X-Wing vs TIE Fighter - that had network play.
Turn on your Monitor. Luke Skywalker has been captured. While ENN has no pictures at this point of time, the military channel (TIE) released some pictures. I managed to capture a couple of these pictures off my monitor. Ive attached a slideshow containing all the pictures I managed to capture. I apologize for the low quality, its the best I could do at this point of time. Hopefully ENN will have pictures and a video soon.
God bless the Emperor!
Why buy the cdrs? That's just a waste of money. You could use the original CDs.
Then the cost would only be $30.
I fail to see how this is Apple's fault, to be honest.
(Only joking - I just love that line :-)
Well, I'm not sure I'd go with 'rewrite'. The OS X APIs seem fairly clean now, so I'd guess for most ISVs all they really need to worry about is endianness, particularly with respect to serialising data to/from disk (there may also be alignment issues in there).
Apart from that, it should be a recompile for a new target with the odd tweak now and then.
Yes, but I would have thought moving from OS 9 to OS X is a much bigger task than switching CPU targets - for most apps.
Of course, Photoshop etc. may have a large amount of PPC assembler in their filters, but I'm guessing most Mac apps have little to no assembler code in them these days. (And I suspect Adobe at least might know where to get some x86 based versions of their filter code).
But it does seem a little unexpected/unlikely - I keep looking for the part where it says "Only kidding. It's a joke."
Perhaps not that bad - a quick Froogle for US prices for the part I bought results in a range from $175 to $260.
Funny, I usually classify someone as a fool if they ever use the term 'gaming rig' in a non-ironic way :-)
Agreed though - I upgraded my PC a while back, and the gfx card cost about £120 ($220ish). It played HL2 fine. Well, more than fine, to be honest. I'm not really sure what another $200 would get you.