If you can't tell the difference between SD and HD on the gear you're using, fine, no problem. Enjoy your upconverted DVD's and more power to you. But do not case aspersions on those who do have gear that can show off the difference.
I didn't say you couldn't see the difference, I said it didn't really matter in normal setups. You can see it, it doesn't usually matter.
The way you are framing the situation is almost dishonest.
First you talk about 37" CRTs and agree that there is no difference between SD and HD, and I don't disagree. And then you jump to a 65" HDTV (presumably viewed within 6 feet?) and claim the difference is blindingly obvious. Again I don't disagree.
BUT...
What about 'most people'?
The majority of HDTVs being sold right now are in the 42-50" range. The vast majority of living rooms and even bedrooms are setup such that the TV is 8'-15' away from where its usually viewed from. (Think about it, even if its on a dresser at the end of your bed with just enough space to walk between comfortably, you are still a good 10' away if you are propped up on some pillows at the other end of the bed.
This puts it well out of the "THX recommended viewing distance", and even outside the maximum thx viewing distance.
And in this situation, the situation I'm talking about, viewers -can- see the difference between SDTV and HDTV, but the difference is pretty minor.
Given this is the situation most people are in, should they bother with blu-ray?
But do not case aspersions on those who do have gear that can show off the difference.
I'm not. But unless you've got an honest to god theatre in your house, your probably deceiving yourself. The fact that you can stand 6 feet away from your 65" TV and delight in the picture quality is moot if you are like most people, and sit on a couch 10+ feet away from it, at that distance the difference really isn't that great anymore. I have a 56" myself, and from 5 feet away I can really see the difference, but I sit some 12 feet away when I'm actually watching movies and not 'inspecting the picture quality'. And from 12 feet away, the difference between up-converted DVD and blu-ray isn't nearly so blinding.
Now, if you -do- have a thx compliant theatre in your house, great, more power to you, but don't kid yourself that that most people should buy blu-ray for the blu-ray -you- experience, because most people aren't going to get it.
Remember, when I say blu-ray is only a minor improvement, I am talking about the experience most people will have with it. Not some idealized microcosm inhabited by people with honest-to-god home theatres, with viewing distances THX would certify.
No. I guarantee you everyone is able to see the difference
I didn't say they wouldn't see the difference. I said they wouldn't care, and that it didn't matter. if they were sitting at the THX recommended distance from their screen.
Big if. Unless you have an actual 'theatre room' and a truly huge TV the THX recommended distance is a joke. Almost nobody sits that close to the TV. To put it into perspective, a 6'2" individual sitting in a recliner in the reclined position with his FEET ON THE TV STAND will still be well beyond the recommended viewing distance of his 42" TV.
If you want a cinema experience in your home as the director intended, bluray is the only way to go.
Don't flatter yourself. Directors are still aiming at a theater experience in a classic movie theater, projected by commercial projectors.
It does make a difference that anyone can see and resolve all 1080 lines and more if you are doing a valid test.
I don't dispute that if you create a test designed to show that people can see the difference that they will be able to see the difference. However, I'm talking regular people in regular situations.
Of course no one is going to see the difference 10 feet away from a 36" tv.
But since that's more or less how most people have it set up. (or 12-15" from a 42-48" set) why should they really care about blu-ray?
If the only way I'm going to realize any value in blu-ray purchase is to push my couch up against the TV, then its not *really* worth it, because that's not how I'm going to use it. Its a status symbol, and if push your couch up closer and look for it, you can see the difference, but it doesn't really matter.
To use a car analgy, its like buying a 911 Turbo instead of the slightly less powerful 911. Oh sure, there's an unmistakable performance difference between them, but really, the average driver will NEVER really experience more than a hint of the 'extra' the Turbo can deliver in normal driving usage. You've pretty much GOT to take it to the track to really experience the difference.
And for most people, the odds of taking their car out to the track on a regular basis to experience that extra is about the same as the odds of setting up a theatre room in their home... people do do it... but not many, not in the big scheme of things.
You must have a shitty tv or are blind to make such a stupid statement.
No. The only people who really care whether they are watching an up-converted DVD or a blu-ray are are videophile snobs looking to justify the expense, who pause the movie to point at some intricate pattern in the corner of the screen and gloat.
The average person can tell them apart side by side. The average person, once instructed what to look for, can see the up-conversion artifacts.
But when actually watching a movie, it just doesn't really matter, and most people can't tell the difference in a blind test, where they get to watch a few seconds of a random scene movie in just one format and then decide. I've done this with a number of people with a few movies I have in both formats, on a number of different TVs from plasma to DLP.
Bluray is the better picture (and sound), there is no question, but the difference is incremental, and ultimately pretty minor. Especially when compared with the transition from VHS to DVD. --THAT-- is a transition the average person can tell apart easily, and then you factor in all the extra convenience of the DVD format in terms of form factor and features. DVDs were worth re-buying much of ones collection in, blu-ray? There's maybe a dozen movies I would consider re-purchasing, and even when buying new, I'll take the usually significantly cheaper DVD version 9 times out of 10.
I never got this "Smuggling illegal data" thing. If you want to transfer something across international borders, its not like you have to tape hard drives to yourself under your shirt. All you have to do is use the internet.
Maybe you weren't paying attention to all the illegal and now seemingly legalized wiretapping? Its not too hard to envision a future where sending encrypted data that the 'gubmint' doesn't have a backdoor to across national borders will be illegal, or at least require a license.
If a law enforcement agency destroyed the "illegal data" in the process of looking for it, then it serves the purposes of the person hiding the data from them. If it was that important they would have made backups somewhere else.
If the person is seeking to move that data, destroying it everytime they try is highly effective. Imagine cocaine smuggling if everytime it crossed the border it was turned to dust automagically...
Re:Only works if it's default install
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TrueCrypt 6.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Stop being an idiot and read up on it. You can *not* tell. And it certainly does not show up as free space. You can *not* prove OR disprove the existence of another hidden partition.
Actually you can disprove the existence of another hidden volume in the corner case that the visible volume is full.
You can also eliminate the hidden volume by filling the visible one. Be interesting to see if law enforcement would be satisfied with just zeroing out the free space in your 'visible' volumes at the borders, thereby destroying your hidden one(s).
They might not 'catch a criminal' this way, but it could be seen as 'preventative'... no point in smuggling illegal data in a hidden truecrypt volume if they routinely destroy them. They can destroy hidden volumes without knowing they are there.
Re:Only works if it's default install
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TrueCrypt 6.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Unless it has a password that will *securely* wipe the hidden volume when entered, then it only has an illusion of a defence against that which is in reality no more than another example of security by obscurity.
Worse thant that, anyone with half a clue will be working on a clone of the original drive. No point in needlessly potentially damaging evidence. So if your dealing with someone competent, and who has time on their hands to do things right, a secure erase panic password will buy you nothing.
BOB SLYDELL So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and you bring them down to the software engineers?
TOM That, that's right.
BOB PORTER Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the specifications directly to the software people, huh?
TOM Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, engineers are not good at dealing with customers.
BOB SLYDELL You physically take the specs from the customer?
TOM Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.
BOB SLYDELL Ah.
BOB PORTER Then you must physically bring them to the software people.
TOM Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.
BOB SLYDELL Well, what would you say... you do here?
TOM Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!
I'm tired of scientests refusing to admit the full implications of their work.
Its more a case that due to the astronomical cost, difficulty, and less than ideal results, for the forseeable future medical use is the only application where the cost isn't too high, and the risk is acceptable, and the clumsy results are still infinitely preferable to what's available otherwise.
Long term sure, maybe we'll be operating our computer, car, and TV by thought. But nobody is going to pay $250,000+ for a system that lets them change the channel with an 80% accuracy of it getting it right.
On the other hand, for someone paralyzed from the neck down... even clumsy control would be a godsend.
In a few jurisdictions, yes, but not many. There's not much point in criminalizing an action that by definition involves a self inflicted death penalty before the proceedings even get started. What are you going to do? Charge the deceased with suicide?
(Attempted) Suicide is more generally considered a symptom of depression and other psychological issues, and most courts are more aligned at getting the person 'help', rather than 'punishment'. Even where it is a crime, its more commonly used as a way of keeping the suicidal person in custody, for their own protection, rather than punishment.
Inducing a person to commit suicide on the other hand is pretty grey area especially where suicide itself is not criminal.
It's still not hard to pirate MSO. Geek - Pirate Bay > Search:"MS Office Cracked" > Download > Install Non-Geek - Find Geek > Have Him/Her install it
Given that any self respecting geek will choose OO over MSO and at most will only install MSO as a back up for when OO can't handle some MSO wierdness, while it might not be 'hard' to get MSO, there is ample opportunity for OO to get installed.
geek - just install OO non-geek - find geek - geek tells them to use OO instead of MSO unless they need a lot of complex powerpoint, or really complex word/excel stuff from work. most non-geeks end up with OO.
We have a winner. AJAX applications do not "break the web". They create richer documents and points of interest on the web. You can still link from one HTML application to the next, so the hypertext functionality is not lost.
Not always. There are LOTS of sites on the web that you can not link to a specific page of information. Any attempt to try just links you to a home page which might be 40 clicks away from the information you want to link to.
Hypertext is almost useless if I can only link to the front door of an application or website.
search engines are presented with a challenge
Not just search engines. Regular people looking to send a link to their parents, or including one on their blog or website find it challenging too...
you used to be able to just send a link, now its... send a link to a starting page with instructions... ok, go there, then click enter, halfway down hit search, enter Q44425466, then submit, then 2/3rds of the way down click download, then 'scroll' through the license and tick of 'Accept', then 'Download', then choose a mirror, then uncheck 'install yahoo toolbar', and 'send me the newsletter', then 'download', and it should start.
That pile of needless bullshit navigation is precisely what hypertext was supposed to allow you to avoid.
"The two most common measurement methods are "rise-and-fall" and "gray-to-gray". A technical specification for rise-and-fall is available from VESA (the Video Electronics Standards Association). Rise-and-fall is measured as the time taken for a pixel to change from black to white (rise) and back to black again (fall). Gray-to-gray is the time to change from one shade of gray to another. Transitions between the fine graduations of gray-to-gray can be 3 to 4 times slower than those of rise-and-fall because of the lower driving signal for the transition."
"It may seem that the process of switching from black to gray should go faster than switching from black to white since the crystals are turned round by a smaller angle, but the fact is the applied electric field not only determines the orientation of the crystals, but also the speed of their turning round. The force that affects the crystals is proportional to the square of the applied electric field. So it takes a four times smaller force to turn the crystals round by a two times smaller angle."
This again confirms that g2g (gtg) is slower than black-white.
And the reason it takes longer for g2g transitions is that you use smaller electric fields to turn the crystals, which in turn means the crystals orient slower. Thus the smaller the transition, the slower the transition.
Overdrive works because it hits them with a strong field to get them to quickly orient to a new position (in the wrong position), and then hits them with another strong field to get them to the target intensity, back near where they started. And it works out that these two quick transitions with strong fields is faster than one slow transition with a weak field.
Either way, grey-to-grey is faster than a standard measurement (be it white-to-black or white-black and back, or whatever "standard" panel manufacturers use), almost always by a factor of 2.
My experience, and the links above agree, is the opposite. I have no idea what the newegg ad is trying to disclose... maybe thats the gtg transition speed with and without overdrive? Or maybe its the rise-fall and the gtg with overdrive?
(and also because search works so well in gmail - I actually tend to ignore structure and go straight for search most of the time
Bingo. The advantage of gmail isn't its 'tagging' vs 'folders' its its excellent search on tags and body content. Traditional folder clients with the the ability to search for mail by folder name and body content as quickly and easily as gmail would be a good thing.
But wasn't the original question which was a superset of the other?:-)
What would make one a super set of the other one?
To my way of thinking the one that is a superset is the one that can contain the other one.
If you have a folder hierarchy you can contain within it all the information of a tagging system, but not the other way around.
If I start with a folder structure, and you start with a label structure and we categorize each message the same, at the end I will be able to transform the folder structure into exactly what you've got tagged.
But if you have a tagging system you cannot represent a specific folder structure. So while you can generate a folder structure consistent with the tags, it may or may not be the one I created.
I think grey to grey is rgb [x,x,x] to rgb[y,y,y] where x,y are in {0..255} and both are somewhere in the middle-ish... like x might be 155 and y might be 174. grey-to-grey is the time to transition from one grey to another grey. Not grey-black-and-back-to-grey.
I don't think there is an established standard or even de facto standard for which grey-to-grey transition they meausure, or how, and I cynically think vendors choose the intensities of the 2 levels for optimal measurements.
They really -should- report average & worst case g2g transition. Because if they can get worst case g2g transition to be faster than a 120Hz refresh rate (or about ~8ms) then that is all anyone needs. (Hell, even 16ms will be fast enough for a 60Hz refresh rate).
In reality right now you need to find independant benchmarks, and that's when you find that a Viewsonic Pro series screen advertised as '4ms' actually can do all transitions in under 9ms, while a generic '2ms' screen might do some of its transitions in the 2ms range, but also have a large number of transitions that take 15+ms.
In which case the viewsonic is a much more responsive screen in practice.
We're still stuck with the less-than-honest measurement, which was my original point.
Absolutely. I would go as far as to say, its misleading and pointless too.
But this is exactly where you are when you don't use folders, and only use tags
Yes, the difference is that this is a fairly perverse worst case scenario. In the real world the vast majority of one's mail fits pretty neatly into the user defined folder hierarchy. Even with a 10x10x10 folder hierarchy, most messages only belong in one, and occasionally two of them.
you can't map tags into sensible folder hierarchies
Right, which is why you start with a folder hierarchies and map to tags.;)
At best you're looking at 4ms (white-to-black) which is 250 Hz.
Black to white is actually generally faster than grey-to-grey, not slower. That's why the whole grey-to-grey benchmarks started showing up. Because screens that could go black-to-white in 4ms were easily available, but they still had grey-to-grey times of 32ms for some level transitions.
Further, most 'fast' screens use 'overdrive' which actually overshoots the target destination color (because larger transitions are faster than smaller ones), and then brings it back down to the target color. (leading to 'sparkle' when whatching movies etc because a pixel on a small transition from 'almost black' to 'just a little bit less almost black' shoots through medium-grey to get there.
#1. The answers to the exercises WILL be available on-line. So? If the instructor cannot come up with his/her own exercises then s/he needs to find a new job.
The solution to that is to simply not assign any value to competing assignments with respect to ones final grade.
The point of exercises is the -exercise-.
If you can solve the problems without looking the answers up you don't need to do them. If you can't solve them and need to look up the answers online, that should be your first clue that you NEED to do them.
All the profs have to do is structure the course around that principle and it won't matter if students can download the answers of the internet. The tests should be HARD and apply variations of the tricky exercises, and be changed every semester. The assignments can stay the same for a decade, but should be worthless in terms of your final grade.
Mail 1: labela, labelb
Mail 2: labelb, labelc
Mail 3: labelc, labela
If I were doing that particular example, without any more information to guide my choices:
folders:
a
mail1
mail2
b
mail2
mail3
c
mail1
mail3
in terms of implementation surely anyone on slashdot should be familiar with hardlinks. This requirement was solved in filesystems years ago.;)
Despite your claims that it is a simple UI issue, if you organise information in a tree then the multiple "tags" that each level applies cannot be retrieved out of order efficiently.
For large collections this becomes an issue as there are O(n!) possible arrangements of a set of applied tags into possible paths in the tree that they could be stored at.
Only if you only have a strict tree representation to search. Imagine however if you implemented the tree as a relational database:
The list of folder names in use would be in labels, the messages would be in objects with a link to their parent treenode. The tree object contains the structure of the tree, and object-labels contains the full list...
so:
work
may
project bumble
object a play
may
vacation france
object d
object-labels {1,103} - object a, project bumblebee
{1,100} - object a, work
{1,101} - object a, may...
such a database would be easy to query both as a tree and as a list of tags. insertions would be quite efficient. deleting objects would be quite efficient. moving objects would be quite efficient. The only thing that would be somewhat expensive is moving branches of the tree around (because all the object-labels of all the leaf nodes in that branch would need to be updated. But moving branches around is a relatively infrequent operation, and i can live with with the expense.
You claim that this is beneficial because deeply nested folders have further distance from one another, but also that it "speeds up" applying collections of tags. You forget that you have to navigate to that depth before you can apply all of the tags together, so the amount of work is the same.
Same number of choices need to be made, yes, but the range of options for each choice is dramatically smaller, and the ability to make an incorrect choice is dramatically reduced. So actually making the choices is faster. If I have 10 folders each with 10 sub folders each with 10 sub folders each, I have 1000 different folders, but to apply 3 tags I only need to consider 10 options, then 10 options, than 10 options. In a tagging system I potentially have to consider 1000 options then 999 options than 998 options. (Obviously, its not going to be -that- bad in a real world scenario, but could easily be several hundred options.)
In my folder system I have 10^3 'pre-created' tag combinations that are easy to navigate. In a tag system I have 1000!/997! tag combinations that aren't.
Your claims about using leafs as tagged objects and performing database queries of tree structures ignore the complexity of these operations.
As you can see I'd given thought to how this could be implemented efficiently.
Do you realize that labels (and what you can do with them) are (almost) a super set of folders?
This is utterly wrong, and completely backwards. Folder hierarchies are a strict super-set of labels. Think about it. Given a tree you CAN easily transform it into its 'equivalent' labeled objects, and you can query it in that form as well. But you CAN'T transform that list of labeled objects back into the original tree -- structural information was lost.
Folder-hierarchies contain much information. Folder hierarchies can optionally be queried as trees or labelled objects. Labelled objects lack the structure to be usefully queried as trees.
If you are having difficulty getting your head around hierarchy then stop using the box on the left to get into your labels and start using the search dialog. When you organize things hierarchically you put one folder inside another. This is equivalent to putting two labels on the same message.
Not quite. The folder structure imposes itself on the 'labels'. If I have a work folder, and a project-bumblebee sub-folder then I can have objects 'tagged' work, and objects 'tagged' work + project-bumblebee, but I won't have anything 'tagged' just 'project-bumblebee' without the 'work' tag, unless I go out of my way to create a root folder called 'project-bumblebee'.
That is the advantage of hierarchical folders. I drop something in the 1998-vacation-France folder, and its automatically 'tagged' 1998 and vacation too. In a tagging system, if I tag it France, its just France. I have to also tag it 1998 and vacation. Worse, 1998 and vacation aren't associated with France in the UI at all, so the next time I have a 1998-vacation-France message, I can't browse to the folder through the structure, I have to apply all 3 tags independently.
Furthermore, if I'm trying to file something for my french vacation I'm seeing project-bumblebee in my list of tags... even though its not even work related. And conversely, when I'm filing 'work' email in a folder system, I open up the work folder, and there are all my projects. In a label system, I tag something work, and then I go to tag it a project... and I'm still seeing vacation, france, 1998 in the list of possible tags to apply.
With a folder system not only does it let me apply multiple tags in a single action, but it implicitly applies related keys.
The "nested" group of messages is now the intersection between the two labels.
Yes, of course. However, a folder system is inherently browse-able... and only combinations that I have pre-approved are easily available. work+bumblebee is a meaningful intersection, work+vacation isn't. I can still achieve work+vacation messages in a folder system by putting a copy(or link) in both work and vacation but this would be an anomalous case. I don't really expect this to happen much, and don't want it to happen by accident. The hierarchical model helps me correctly tag messages. Tagging directly leads to more errors, missing tags, and unintended combinations. Its easy to accidentally tag a message work/mary/project bumblebee when I meant work/may/project bumblebee if I have both mary and may tags. But in a folder system, work/may/project bumble-bee is a long way away from personal/soccer/mary.
The reason that I said almost above is that ordering is strict in a tree but sloppy in labels. Most people consider this to be a benefit rather than a limitation as it means that I can find the first group above as either: May/Work Work/May
Not quite. The ordering in a tree is strict in construction, but not in retrieval. There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why you could not query 'work+may' and 'may+work' in a tree system and get the results of the work/may folder in either case.
And if you had work/may/bumblebee and work/june/bumblebee folders in a folder system, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why you could not query 'bumblebee' and get the combined contents of work/may/bumblebee and work/june/bumblebee. These are simple UI featur
And based on the additional information you've given I would suggest the following: 1) move. you aren't going to get reliable internet. if its that important: move.
2) if you don't want to move, look into 2 way satellite options. They will be slow and high lag.
3) given your are at 10k elevation, is there somewhere on your property with LOS to a more populated and reliable building?
You might want to try getting a long range directional wi-fi connection to a site within 'the city' or something. e.g. negotiate with a local church or business within LOS from your property for example, and install an antenna on their roof with a directional wireless link to your property; and pay the church a reasonable monthly rate to cover power, and put a little in their pocket to piggy back on their broadband connection. (or alternatively, you pay for it, and let them piggy back on yours...whatever)
Food for thought anyway, as its probably your best bet for reliable internet.
If you get a lot of rain with your lightning, you'll need to take that into account, of course, and purchase suitable antennae.
If you've used broadband for the last eight years and not had any trouble with your ISP, you must be really lucky.
Canada is generally pretty decent for broadband, and a major city like Vancouver is that much better. But even if I had considerably more trouble, I'd still be disinclined to think it was a good value to add a 2nd connection.
it will vary within a band. And when you get in the saturated part of the band, it sucks, and you wish you had a second connection, or at least a directional wifi antenna
Or just change providers. If their are no options or they 'both' suck you are pretty well hosed.
It's also not doubling the costs. If he needs/wants bandwidth above the base package, 2xbase package will not be twice as expensive as buying a single source.
Huh? If he's paying say $40/mo for ADSL, adding a 2nd ADSL line or a cable service will cost another $40/mo, give or take. That's double the cost, give or take.
So since I have oodles of extra bandwidth and 100% uptime, everyone else should have it too.
I may have a better than average up-time, even significantly better... but even if I was down an hour a week I wouldn't likely think it was worth another $50/mo to cover it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't tell the difference between SD and HD on the gear you're using, fine, no problem. Enjoy your upconverted DVD's and more power to you. But do not case aspersions on those who do have gear that can show off the difference.
I didn't say you couldn't see the difference, I said it didn't really matter in normal setups. You can see it, it doesn't usually matter.
The way you are framing the situation is almost dishonest.
First you talk about 37" CRTs and agree that there is no difference between SD and HD, and I don't disagree. And then you jump to a 65" HDTV (presumably viewed within 6 feet?) and claim the difference is blindingly obvious. Again I don't disagree.
BUT...
What about 'most people'?
The majority of HDTVs being sold right now are in the 42-50" range. The vast majority of living rooms and even bedrooms are setup such that the TV is 8'-15' away from where its usually viewed from. (Think about it, even if its on a dresser at the end of your bed with just enough space to walk between comfortably, you are still a good 10' away if you are propped up on some pillows at the other end of the bed.
This puts it well out of the "THX recommended viewing distance", and even outside the maximum thx viewing distance.
And in this situation, the situation I'm talking about, viewers -can- see the difference between SDTV and HDTV, but the difference is pretty minor.
Given this is the situation most people are in, should they bother with blu-ray?
But do not case aspersions on those who do have gear that can show off the difference.
I'm not. But unless you've got an honest to god theatre in your house, your probably deceiving yourself. The fact that you can stand 6 feet away from your 65" TV and delight in the picture quality is moot if you are like most people, and sit on a couch 10+ feet away from it, at that distance the difference really isn't that great anymore. I have a 56" myself, and from 5 feet away I can really see the difference, but I sit some 12 feet away when I'm actually watching movies and not 'inspecting the picture quality'. And from 12 feet away, the difference between up-converted DVD and blu-ray isn't nearly so blinding.
Now, if you -do- have a thx compliant theatre in your house, great, more power to you, but don't kid yourself that that most people should buy blu-ray for the blu-ray -you- experience, because most people aren't going to get it.
Remember, when I say blu-ray is only a minor improvement, I am talking about the experience most people will have with it. Not some idealized microcosm inhabited by people with honest-to-god home theatres, with viewing distances THX would certify.
No. I guarantee you everyone is able to see the difference
I didn't say they wouldn't see the difference. I said they wouldn't care, and that it didn't matter.
if they were sitting at the THX recommended distance from their screen.
Big if. Unless you have an actual 'theatre room' and a truly huge TV the THX recommended distance is a joke. Almost nobody sits that close to the TV. To put it into perspective, a 6'2" individual sitting in a recliner in the reclined position with his FEET ON THE TV STAND will still be well beyond the recommended viewing distance of his 42" TV.
If you want a cinema experience in your home as the director intended, bluray is the only way to go.
Don't flatter yourself. Directors are still aiming at a theater experience in a classic movie theater, projected by commercial projectors.
It does make a difference that anyone can see and resolve all 1080 lines and more if you are doing a valid test.
I don't dispute that if you create a test designed to show that people can see the difference that they will be able to see the difference. However, I'm talking regular people in regular situations.
Of course no one is going to see the difference 10 feet away from a 36" tv.
But since that's more or less how most people have it set up. (or 12-15" from a 42-48" set) why should they really care about blu-ray?
If the only way I'm going to realize any value in blu-ray purchase is to push my couch up against the TV, then its not *really* worth it, because that's not how I'm going to use it. Its a status symbol, and if push your couch up closer and look for it, you can see the difference, but it doesn't really matter.
To use a car analgy, its like buying a 911 Turbo instead of the slightly less powerful 911. Oh sure, there's an unmistakable performance difference between them, but really, the average driver will NEVER really experience more than a hint of the 'extra' the Turbo can deliver in normal driving usage. You've pretty much GOT to take it to the track to really experience the difference.
And for most people, the odds of taking their car out to the track on a regular basis to experience that extra is about the same as the odds of setting up a theatre room in their home... people do do it... but not many, not in the big scheme of things.
You must have a shitty tv or are blind to make such a stupid statement.
No. The only people who really care whether they are watching an up-converted DVD or a blu-ray are are videophile snobs looking to justify the expense, who pause the movie to point at some intricate pattern in the corner of the screen and gloat.
The average person can tell them apart side by side. The average person, once instructed what to look for, can see the up-conversion artifacts.
But when actually watching a movie, it just doesn't really matter, and most people can't tell the difference in a blind test, where they get to watch a few seconds of a random scene movie in just one format and then decide. I've done this with a number of people with a few movies I have in both formats, on a number of different TVs from plasma to DLP.
Bluray is the better picture (and sound), there is no question, but the difference is incremental, and ultimately pretty minor. Especially when compared with the transition from VHS to DVD. --THAT-- is a transition the average person can tell apart easily, and then you factor in all the extra convenience of the DVD format in terms of form factor and features. DVDs were worth re-buying much of ones collection in, blu-ray? There's maybe a dozen movies I would consider re-purchasing, and even when buying new, I'll take the usually significantly cheaper DVD version 9 times out of 10.
I never got this "Smuggling illegal data" thing. If you want to transfer something across international borders, its not like you have to tape hard drives to yourself under your shirt. All you have to do is use the internet.
Maybe you weren't paying attention to all the illegal and now seemingly legalized wiretapping? Its not too hard to envision a future where sending encrypted data that the 'gubmint' doesn't have a backdoor to across national borders will be illegal, or at least require a license.
If a law enforcement agency destroyed the "illegal data" in the process of looking for it, then it serves the purposes of the person hiding the data from them. If it was that important they would have made backups somewhere else.
If the person is seeking to move that data, destroying it everytime they try is highly effective. Imagine cocaine smuggling if everytime it crossed the border it was turned to dust automagically...
Stop being an idiot and read up on it. You can *not* tell. And it certainly does not show up as free space. You can *not* prove OR disprove the existence of another hidden partition.
Actually you can disprove the existence of another hidden volume in the corner case that the visible volume is full.
You can also eliminate the hidden volume by filling the visible one. Be interesting to see if law enforcement would be satisfied with just zeroing out the free space in your 'visible' volumes at the borders, thereby destroying your hidden one(s).
They might not 'catch a criminal' this way, but it could be seen as 'preventative'... no point in smuggling illegal data in a hidden truecrypt volume if they routinely destroy them. They can destroy hidden volumes without knowing they are there.
Unless it has a password that will *securely* wipe the hidden volume when entered, then it only has an illusion of a defence against that which is in reality no more than another example of security by obscurity.
Worse thant that, anyone with half a clue will be working on a clone of the original drive. No point in needlessly potentially damaging evidence. So if your dealing with someone competent, and who has time on their hands to do things right, a secure erase panic password will buy you nothing.
Whoosh.
BOB SLYDELL
So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and
you bring them down to the software engineers?
TOM
That, that's right.
BOB PORTER
Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the
specifications directly to the software people, huh?
TOM
Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, engineers are not good at dealing with
customers.
BOB SLYDELL
You physically take the specs from the customer?
TOM
Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.
BOB SLYDELL
Ah.
BOB PORTER
Then you must physically bring them to the software people.
TOM
Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.
BOB SLYDELL
Well, what would you say... you do here?
TOM
Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so
the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at
dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS
WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Office-Space.html
I'm tired of scientests refusing to admit the full implications of their work.
Its more a case that due to the astronomical cost, difficulty, and less than ideal results, for the forseeable future medical use is the only application where the cost isn't too high, and the risk is acceptable, and the clumsy results are still infinitely preferable to what's available otherwise.
Long term sure, maybe we'll be operating our computer, car, and TV by thought. But nobody is going to pay $250,000+ for a system that lets them change the channel with an 80% accuracy of it getting it right.
On the other hand, for someone paralyzed from the neck down... even clumsy control would be a godsend.
charge her with the crime of enticing another person to commit suicide
Is that actually illegal where it happened?
(suicide is a criminal offense, i think)
In a few jurisdictions, yes, but not many. There's not much point in criminalizing an action that by definition involves a self inflicted death penalty before the proceedings even get started. What are you going to do? Charge the deceased with suicide?
(Attempted) Suicide is more generally considered a symptom of depression and other psychological issues, and most courts are more aligned at getting the person 'help', rather than 'punishment'. Even where it is a crime, its more commonly used as a way of keeping the suicidal person in custody, for their own protection, rather than punishment.
Inducing a person to commit suicide on the other hand is pretty grey area especially where suicide itself is not criminal.
It's still not hard to pirate MSO.
Geek - Pirate Bay > Search:"MS Office Cracked" > Download > Install
Non-Geek - Find Geek > Have Him/Her install it
Given that any self respecting geek will choose OO over MSO and at most will only install MSO as a back up for when OO can't handle some MSO wierdness, while it might not be 'hard' to get MSO, there is ample opportunity for OO to get installed.
geek - just install OO
non-geek - find geek - geek tells them to use OO instead of MSO unless they need a lot of complex powerpoint, or really complex word/excel stuff from work. most non-geeks end up with OO.
at least in theory.
We have a winner. AJAX applications do not "break the web". They create richer documents and points of interest on the web. You can still link from one HTML application to the next, so the hypertext functionality is not lost.
Not always. There are LOTS of sites on the web that you can not link to a specific page of information. Any attempt to try just links you to a home page which might be 40 clicks away from the information you want to link to.
Hypertext is almost useless if I can only link to the front door of an application or website.
search engines are presented with a challenge
Not just search engines. Regular people looking to send a link to their parents, or including one on their blog or website find it challenging too...
you used to be able to just send a link, now its... send a link to a starting page with instructions... ok, go there, then click enter, halfway down hit search, enter Q44425466, then submit, then 2/3rds of the way down click download, then 'scroll' through the license and tick of 'Accept', then 'Download', then choose a mirror, then uncheck 'install yahoo toolbar', and 'send me the newsletter', then 'download', and it should start.
That pile of needless bullshit navigation is precisely what hypertext was supposed to allow you to avoid.
I've always thought grey-to-grey was going from [128,128,128] to [0,0,0] (or [255,255,255]) and back.
from:
http://www.presentationtek.com/2008/03/13/lcd-display-response-time/
"The two most common measurement methods are "rise-and-fall" and "gray-to-gray". A technical specification for rise-and-fall is available from VESA (the Video Electronics Standards Association). Rise-and-fall is measured as the time taken for a pixel to change from black to white (rise) and back to black again (fall). Gray-to-gray is the time to change from one shade of gray to another. Transitions between the fine graduations of gray-to-gray can be 3 to 4 times slower than those of rise-and-fall because of the lower driving signal for the transition."
and from
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/response-compensation.html
"It may seem that the process of switching from black to gray should go faster than switching from black to white since the crystals are turned round by a smaller angle, but the fact is the applied electric field not only determines the orientation of the crystals, but also the speed of their turning round. The force that affects the crystals is proportional to the square of the applied electric field. So it takes a four times smaller force to turn the crystals round by a two times smaller angle."
This again confirms that g2g (gtg) is slower than black-white.
And the reason it takes longer for g2g transitions is that you use smaller electric fields to turn the crystals, which in turn means the crystals orient slower. Thus the smaller the transition, the slower the transition.
Overdrive works because it hits them with a strong field to get them to quickly orient to a new position (in the wrong position), and then hits them with another strong field to get them to the target intensity, back near where they started. And it works out that these two quick transitions with strong fields is faster than one slow transition with a weak field.
Either way, grey-to-grey is faster than a standard measurement (be it white-to-black or white-black and back, or whatever "standard" panel manufacturers use), almost always by a factor of 2.
My experience, and the links above agree, is the opposite. I have no idea what the newegg ad is trying to disclose... maybe thats the gtg transition speed with and without overdrive? Or maybe its the rise-fall and the gtg with overdrive?
(and also because search works so well in gmail - I actually tend to ignore structure and go straight for search most of the time
Bingo. The advantage of gmail isn't its 'tagging' vs 'folders' its its excellent search on tags and body content. Traditional folder clients with the the ability to search for mail by folder name and body content as quickly and easily as gmail would be a good thing.
But wasn't the original question which was a superset of the other? :-)
What would make one a super set of the other one?
To my way of thinking the one that is a superset is the one that can contain the other one.
If you have a folder hierarchy you can contain within it all the information of a tagging system, but not the other way around.
If I start with a folder structure, and you start with a label structure and we categorize each message the same, at the end I will be able to transform the folder structure into exactly what you've got tagged.
But if you have a tagging system you cannot represent a specific folder structure. So while you can generate a folder structure consistent with the tags, it may or may not be the one I created.
Grey-to-grey would be / - /
I think grey to grey is rgb [x,x,x] to rgb[y,y,y] where x,y are in {0..255} and both are somewhere in the middle-ish... like x might be 155 and y might be 174. grey-to-grey is the time to transition from one grey to another grey. Not grey-black-and-back-to-grey.
I don't think there is an established standard or even de facto standard for which grey-to-grey transition they meausure, or how, and I cynically think vendors choose the intensities of the 2 levels for optimal measurements.
They really -should- report average & worst case g2g transition. Because if they can get worst case g2g transition to be faster than a 120Hz refresh rate (or about ~8ms) then that is all anyone needs. (Hell, even 16ms will be fast enough for a 60Hz refresh rate).
In reality right now you need to find independant benchmarks, and that's when you find that a Viewsonic Pro series screen advertised as '4ms' actually can do all transitions in under 9ms, while a generic '2ms' screen might do some of its transitions in the 2ms range, but also have a large number of transitions that take 15+ms.
In which case the viewsonic is a much more responsive screen in practice.
We're still stuck with the less-than-honest measurement, which was my original point.
Absolutely. I would go as far as to say, its misleading and pointless too.
But this is exactly where you are when you don't use folders, and only use tags
Yes, the difference is that this is a fairly perverse worst case scenario. In the real world the vast majority of one's mail fits pretty neatly into the user defined folder hierarchy. Even with a 10x10x10 folder hierarchy, most messages only belong in one, and occasionally two of them.
you can't map tags into sensible folder hierarchies
Right, which is why you start with a folder hierarchies and map to tags. ;)
That's 2ms grey-to-grey (or worse...).
At best you're looking at 4ms (white-to-black) which is 250 Hz.
Black to white is actually generally faster than grey-to-grey, not slower. That's why the whole grey-to-grey benchmarks started showing up. Because screens that could go black-to-white in 4ms were easily available, but they still had grey-to-grey times of 32ms for some level transitions.
Further, most 'fast' screens use 'overdrive' which actually overshoots the target destination color (because larger transitions are faster than smaller ones), and then brings it back down to the target color. (leading to 'sparkle' when whatching movies etc because a pixel on a small transition from 'almost black' to 'just a little bit less almost black' shoots through medium-grey to get there.
Mail 1: labela, labelb
Mail 2: labelb, labelc
Mail 3: labelc, labela
If I were doing that particular example, without any more information to guide my choices:
folders:
a
mail1
mail2
b
mail2
mail3
c
mail1
mail3
in terms of implementation surely anyone on slashdot should be familiar with hardlinks. This requirement was solved in filesystems years ago. ;)
sorry for the double reply, /. screwed up my formatting.
#1. The answers to the exercises WILL be available on-line. So? If the instructor cannot come up with his/her own exercises then s/he needs to find a new job.
The solution to that is to simply not assign any value to competing assignments with respect to ones final grade.
The point of exercises is the -exercise-.
If you can solve the problems without looking the answers up you don't need to do them. If you can't solve them and need to look up the answers online, that should be your first clue that you NEED to do them.
All the profs have to do is structure the course around that principle and it won't matter if students can download the answers of the internet. The tests should be HARD and apply variations of the tricky exercises, and be changed every semester. The assignments can stay the same for a decade, but should be worthless in terms of your final grade.
Mail 1: labela, labelb Mail 2: labelb, labelc Mail 3: labelc, labela If I were doing that particular example, without any more information to guide my choices: folders: a mail1 mail2 b mail2 mail3 c mail1 mail3 in terms of implementation surely anyone on slashdot should be familiar with hardlinks. This requirement was solved in filesystems years ago. ;)
Despite your claims that it is a simple UI issue, if you organise information in a tree then the multiple "tags" that each level applies cannot be retrieved out of order efficiently.
For large collections this becomes an issue as there are O(n!) possible arrangements of a set of applied tags into possible paths in the tree that they could be stored at.
Only if you only have a strict tree representation to search. Imagine however if you implemented the tree as a relational database:
table objects: [objectid, parenttreenodeid, object data...]
table labels: [label id, label name (unique)]
table tree: [treenodeid, labelid, parenttreenodeid]
table object-labels: [objectid, labelid]
The list of folder names in use would be in labels, the messages would be in objects with a link to their parent treenode. The tree object contains the structure of the tree, and object-labels contains the full list...
so:
work
may
project bumble
object a
play
may
vacation france
object d
would be represented as:
objects {1,a} {2,d}
labels {100, work} {101, play} {102, may}, {103, project bumble} {105, vacation france}, {106, 'root'}
tree {200, 106, null} - root node ...
{201, 100, 200} - work node
{202, 101, 200} - play node
{203, 102, 201} - work/may node
{204, 102, 202} - play/may node
object-labels {1,103} - object a, project bumblebee ...
{1,100} - object a, work
{1,101} - object a, may
such a database would be easy to query both as a tree and as a list of tags. insertions would be quite efficient. deleting objects would be quite efficient. moving objects would be quite efficient. The only thing that would be somewhat expensive is moving branches of the tree around (because all the object-labels of all the leaf nodes in that branch would need to be updated. But moving branches around is a relatively infrequent operation, and i can live with with the expense.
You claim that this is beneficial because deeply nested folders have further distance from one another, but also that it "speeds up" applying collections of tags. You forget that you have to navigate to that depth before you can apply all of the tags together, so the amount of work is the same.
Same number of choices need to be made, yes, but the range of options for each choice is dramatically smaller, and the ability to make an incorrect choice is dramatically reduced. So actually making the choices is faster. If I have 10 folders each with 10 sub folders each with 10 sub folders each, I have 1000 different folders, but to apply 3 tags I only need to consider 10 options, then 10 options, than 10 options. In a tagging system I potentially have to consider 1000 options then 999 options than 998 options. (Obviously, its not going to be -that- bad in a real world scenario, but could easily be several hundred options.)
In my folder system I have 10^3 'pre-created' tag combinations that are easy to navigate. In a tag system I have 1000!/997! tag combinations that aren't.
Your claims about using leafs as tagged objects and performing database queries of tree structures ignore the complexity of these operations.
As you can see I'd given thought to how this could be implemented efficiently.
Bu
Do you realize that labels (and what you can do with them) are (almost) a super set of folders?
This is utterly wrong, and completely backwards. Folder hierarchies are a strict super-set of labels. Think about it. Given a tree you CAN easily transform it into its 'equivalent' labeled objects, and you can query it in that form as well. But you CAN'T transform that list of labeled objects back into the original tree -- structural information was lost.
Folder-hierarchies contain much information. Folder hierarchies can optionally be queried as trees or labelled objects. Labelled objects lack the structure to be usefully queried as trees.
If you are having difficulty getting your head around hierarchy then stop using the box on the left to get into your labels and start using the search dialog. When you organize things hierarchically you put one folder inside another. This is equivalent to putting two labels on the same message.
Not quite. The folder structure imposes itself on the 'labels'. If I have a work folder, and a project-bumblebee sub-folder then I can have objects 'tagged' work, and objects 'tagged' work + project-bumblebee, but I won't have anything 'tagged' just 'project-bumblebee' without the 'work' tag, unless I go out of my way to create a root folder called 'project-bumblebee'.
That is the advantage of hierarchical folders. I drop something in the 1998-vacation-France folder, and its automatically 'tagged' 1998 and vacation too. In a tagging system, if I tag it France, its just France. I have to also tag it 1998 and vacation. Worse, 1998 and vacation aren't associated with France in the UI at all, so the next time I have a 1998-vacation-France message, I can't browse to the folder through the structure, I have to apply all 3 tags independently.
Furthermore, if I'm trying to file something for my french vacation I'm seeing project-bumblebee in my list of tags... even though its not even work related. And conversely, when I'm filing 'work' email in a folder system, I open up the work folder, and there are all my projects. In a label system, I tag something work, and then I go to tag it a project... and I'm still seeing vacation, france, 1998 in the list of possible tags to apply.
With a folder system not only does it let me apply multiple tags in a single action, but it implicitly applies related keys.
The "nested" group of messages is now the intersection between the two labels.
Yes, of course. However, a folder system is inherently browse-able... and only combinations that I have pre-approved are easily available. work+bumblebee is a meaningful intersection, work+vacation isn't. I can still achieve work+vacation messages in a folder system by putting a copy(or link) in both work and vacation but this would be an anomalous case. I don't really expect this to happen much, and don't want it to happen by accident. The hierarchical model helps me correctly tag messages. Tagging directly leads to more errors, missing tags, and unintended combinations. Its easy to accidentally tag a message work/mary/project bumblebee when I meant work/may/project bumblebee if I have both mary and may tags. But in a folder system, work/may/project bumble-bee is a long way away from personal/soccer/mary.
The reason that I said almost above is that ordering is strict in a tree but sloppy in labels. Most people consider this to be a benefit rather than a limitation as it means that I can find the first group above as either:
May/Work
Work/May
Not quite. The ordering in a tree is strict in construction, but not in retrieval. There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why you could not query 'work+may' and 'may+work' in a tree system and get the results of the work/may folder in either case.
And if you had work/may/bumblebee and work/june/bumblebee folders in a folder system, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why you could not query 'bumblebee' and get the combined contents of work/may/bumblebee and work/june/bumblebee. These are simple UI featur
YES
Question asked, question answered.
And based on the additional information you've given I would suggest the following:
1) move. you aren't going to get reliable internet. if its that important: move.
2) if you don't want to move, look into 2 way satellite options. They will be slow and high lag.
3) given your are at 10k elevation, is there somewhere on your property with LOS to a more populated and reliable building?
You might want to try getting a long range directional wi-fi connection to a site within 'the city' or something. e.g. negotiate with a local church or business within LOS from your property for example, and install an antenna on their roof with a directional wireless link to your property; and pay the church a reasonable monthly rate to cover power, and put a little in their pocket to piggy back on their broadband connection. (or alternatively, you pay for it, and let them piggy back on yours...whatever)
Food for thought anyway, as its probably your best bet for reliable internet.
If you get a lot of rain with your lightning, you'll need to take that into account, of course, and purchase suitable antennae.
cheers!
If you've used broadband for the last eight years and not had any trouble with your ISP, you must be really lucky.
Canada is generally pretty decent for broadband, and a major city like Vancouver is that much better. But even if I had considerably more trouble, I'd still be disinclined to think it was a good value to add a 2nd connection.
it will vary within a band. And when you get in the saturated part of the band, it sucks, and you wish you had a second connection, or at least a directional wifi antenna
Or just change providers. If their are no options or they 'both' suck you are pretty well hosed.
It's also not doubling the costs. If he needs/wants bandwidth above the base package, 2xbase package will not be twice as expensive as buying a single source.
Huh? If he's paying say $40/mo for ADSL, adding a 2nd ADSL line or a cable service will cost another $40/mo, give or take. That's double the cost, give or take.
So since I have oodles of extra bandwidth and 100% uptime, everyone else should have it too.
I may have a better than average up-time, even significantly better... but even if I was down an hour a week I wouldn't likely think it was worth another $50/mo to cover it.