When NVidia finally implements Xvmc support in the 8 series I might start giving a shit about their products again. But I suspect by the time that happens the open source ATI drivers might be a real alternative. So I probably won't give a shit then, either./angry at nvidia
Does anyone else find it amazing that we are at a time where 80 gigabytes can be called a "lower capacity" hard drive without laughing? I remember a time when simply *adding* a hard drive to your machine was a significant upgrade, and I'm only 24.
Your insinuation (within your unnecessarily aggressive diatribe) that I am American amuses me. I'm not. FYI, I do happen to reside in a country that standardised on the metric system, ooh, a few decades ago now.
The metric system was renamed SI and properly standardised in the 1960s. The metric system, with prefixes in the form as they are now, have existed since before the 1800s.
Put another way, it's 9 years later, and the term kibibyte is still almost universally guaranteed to get you modded "troll" in any computing forum.
...I must say I find the attitude exhibited by the profession against simply using a slightly different moniker to avoid any ambiguity with an already established metric disturbingly egoistic.
Go ahead. Don't use base 10 for measuring RAM sizes, use base 2, I really don't care. Just don't go calling it a Gigabyte, because it isn't. I would have no problem picking up a 2 GiB stick of RAM. If you'd prefer not to call it a Gibibyte, either, fine, call it something else. Just please stop calling it what it isn't. For an industry that regularly has to deal with and resolve ambiguities, it's surprising to me how inert it seems to have been on this one.
I'm sure you're smart enough to think of examples of things people have done for decades that are or were wrong and should be or were changed, so I won't bother, just to point it out.
People are being confused by two incompatible definitions. Is that not a reason to change?
Inconsistency of IT be damned, SI units were defined and consistent long before IT usurped and mangled its prefixes.
Regardless of whether the IT sector is _technically_ in the wrong it's commonly accepted that in this area we work with powers of two.
...Just so long as we're talking about filesize, or RAM capacity. HD capacity and bandwidth are commonly accepted to be powers of ten. Consistency, anyone?
The fact that people have to explicitly explain this fact shows that everyone expects it to be that way.
What? Please read what you just wrote, because it sure doesn't make any sense to me.
Exactly. The information technology sector is and has always been wrong to suggest that k is 2^10. It is not, and it will never be. k=10^3, M=10^6, G=10^9, etc.
If anything has even the remotest chance that something catches fire, eventually it will, and a dumbass will try to sue the manufacturer for it. Guaranteed.
Having thought and read about it a little more, I agree with you. A gaussian blur (to define what kind of blur we're talking about) is indeed a kind of low pass filter. Although...
I'm beginning to venture into the realm of impracticality here, but in a gaussian distribution there is no zero, and so technically there is no actual information loss in a true, continuous gaussian convolution (blur). It's just that the higher frequencies are scaled down by a factor that approaches zero as the frequency approaches infinity. The trouble with this is that we don't live in a world with continuous images with infinite precision pixels. This is where the problems involved in reconstruction arise. It's not fundamental to the general blur theory, though. Which I guess is really the point I was trying to make.
I still contend that in cases with the right parameters a good deal of the original information can be retrieved, and much of the blur can be undone. I've seen it performed.
Counter-tripe. Taking an average is not a kind of blurring at all. A blur mixes the values of adjacent/nearby pixels across those pixels. An average produces *one* pixel from a *block* of adjacent pixels. With an average you are left with fewer values in total than the original. With a blur you are left with the same number of values.
Then, deblurring the image basically boils down to finding the inverse of a matrix that represents the blur operation. I'm not saying that you can find the inverse in every case. I'm saying that in some cases you can, and if you have the right parameters you can get pretty close to the original. I'm not saying that it's practical either, often it's not, but it's possible.
A blur does not destroy the information, it merely redistributes it. The only reason your example of the sheet of gray colour is true is because the blur has distributed the information outside the range of the image. If, however, the blur is not so drastic, then with the correct parameters a reasonably accurate approximation of the original can be produced. The general process is called deconvolution. The trick is getting the parameters right.
It depends on what degree of proof constitutes "proof". As far as I'm concerned, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence, both in the micro sense and the macro sense, pointing towards common descent through evolution, and little to none in the way of contradictory evidence, is sufficient enough to call the theory "proved".
I'd bet that if you made a realistic looking letter from a made-up law company it would be very hard to trace and YouTube would still remove the video.
In the noble pursuit of technical correctness, I don't think it's true that FLAC was originally written as the Ogg lossless format. My understanding is that it was originally (Oct 2000, according to the SF registration date) written separately, and later (Jan 2003, according to the FLAC news page) also incorporated under the Ogg banner.
Well, yeah, if someone's in a movie clapping and cheering so loudly that other people can't hear it, then they're just being inconsiderate.
I saw Transformers with a group of friends opening night here in AU. I enjoyed it. When at the end other people in the audience started clapping, I did too, enthusiastically. My point is I don't get people that say they don't get people who do that. It's a social thing, much akin to cheering at the TV, and not "I must tell the author my appreciation *clapclapclap*".
Slashdot Mirror
When NVidia finally implements Xvmc support in the 8 series I might start giving a shit about their products again. But I suspect by the time that happens the open source ATI drivers might be a real alternative. So I probably won't give a shit then, either. /angry at nvidia
Microsoft have noticed.
*clicks repeatedly on you*
Does anyone else find it amazing that we are at a time where 80 gigabytes can be called a "lower capacity" hard drive without laughing? I remember a time when simply *adding* a hard drive to your machine was a significant upgrade, and I'm only 24.
Your insinuation (within your unnecessarily aggressive diatribe) that I am American amuses me. I'm not. FYI, I do happen to reside in a country that standardised on the metric system, ooh, a few decades ago now.
The metric system was renamed SI and properly standardised in the 1960s. The metric system, with prefixes in the form as they are now, have existed since before the 1800s.
Go ahead. Don't use base 10 for measuring RAM sizes, use base 2, I really don't care. Just don't go calling it a Gigabyte, because it isn't. I would have no problem picking up a 2 GiB stick of RAM. If you'd prefer not to call it a Gibibyte, either, fine, call it something else. Just please stop calling it what it isn't. For an industry that regularly has to deal with and resolve ambiguities, it's surprising to me how inert it seems to have been on this one.
The OS wouldn't even have to do the conversion. (As a bare minimum) All that needs to be done is a little "i" inserted between the "G" and the "B".
I'm sure you're smart enough to think of examples of things people have done for decades that are or were wrong and should be or were changed, so I won't bother, just to point it out.
People are being confused by two incompatible definitions. Is that not a reason to change?
Inconsistency of IT be damned, SI units were defined and consistent long before IT usurped and mangled its prefixes.
Exactly. The information technology sector is and has always been wrong to suggest that k is 2^10. It is not, and it will never be. k=10^3, M=10^6, G=10^9, etc.
If anything has even the remotest chance that something catches fire, eventually it will, and a dumbass will try to sue the manufacturer for it. Guaranteed.
Having thought and read about it a little more, I agree with you. A gaussian blur (to define what kind of blur we're talking about) is indeed a kind of low pass filter. Although...
I'm beginning to venture into the realm of impracticality here, but in a gaussian distribution there is no zero, and so technically there is no actual information loss in a true, continuous gaussian convolution (blur). It's just that the higher frequencies are scaled down by a factor that approaches zero as the frequency approaches infinity. The trouble with this is that we don't live in a world with continuous images with infinite precision pixels. This is where the problems involved in reconstruction arise. It's not fundamental to the general blur theory, though. Which I guess is really the point I was trying to make.
I still contend that in cases with the right parameters a good deal of the original information can be retrieved, and much of the blur can be undone. I've seen it performed.
Counter-tripe. Taking an average is not a kind of blurring at all. A blur mixes the values of adjacent/nearby pixels across those pixels. An average produces *one* pixel from a *block* of adjacent pixels. With an average you are left with fewer values in total than the original. With a blur you are left with the same number of values.
Then, deblurring the image basically boils down to finding the inverse of a matrix that represents the blur operation. I'm not saying that you can find the inverse in every case. I'm saying that in some cases you can, and if you have the right parameters you can get pretty close to the original. I'm not saying that it's practical either, often it's not, but it's possible.
A blur does not destroy the information, it merely redistributes it. The only reason your example of the sheet of gray colour is true is because the blur has distributed the information outside the range of the image. If, however, the blur is not so drastic, then with the correct parameters a reasonably accurate approximation of the original can be produced. The general process is called deconvolution. The trick is getting the parameters right.
It depends on what degree of proof constitutes "proof". As far as I'm concerned, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence, both in the micro sense and the macro sense, pointing towards common descent through evolution, and little to none in the way of contradictory evidence, is sufficient enough to call the theory "proved".
Now that I think about it, it's probably because I never had my intuition sufficiently warped by religion.
"One size fits all" has never been a good approach to anything. Why is it being entertained here?
In the noble pursuit of technical correctness, I don't think it's true that FLAC was originally written as the Ogg lossless format. My understanding is that it was originally (Oct 2000, according to the SF registration date) written separately, and later (Jan 2003, according to the FLAC news page) also incorporated under the Ogg banner.
They must have figured this out where I work. The toilet paper here is horrible. Now I know, it's all just a ploy to get me to crap at home, instead!
It worked, too.
Well, yeah, if someone's in a movie clapping and cheering so loudly that other people can't hear it, then they're just being inconsiderate.
I saw Transformers with a group of friends opening night here in AU. I enjoyed it. When at the end other people in the audience started clapping, I did too, enthusiastically. My point is I don't get people that say they don't get people who do that. It's a social thing, much akin to cheering at the TV, and not "I must tell the author my appreciation *clapclapclap*".