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Comment Look at the forest, not the trees (Score 3, Interesting) 306

Everyone is looking at the tree, not the forest. While everyone is going to jump on the "Apple did this to make money" argument, you know a major reason for this key was Apple's way of keeping content providers happy. Now that it's broken, there is a new "analog hole" for audio and video content. It is easy to imagine a computer using this to create a digital media file rather than routing to speakers. I suspect it won't be long before content providers pressure Apple into using secondary data to confirm iTunes is talking to a legit device.

Comment Correction, they are from both CMU and Stanford (Score 1) 293

Google actually built an all-star team. They hired the tech leads for both the Carnegie Mellon team (top finisher for 1st Grand Challenge and won the Urban Grand Challenge) and the Stanford team (won the 2nd Grand Challenge). They also hired a bunch of the other developers from each team. I was at Chris Urmson's recent presentation at Carnegie Mellon about the Google cars. The approach the Google team is using looks predominately like the CMU method but with key features of the Stanford team.

Some well known facts within the robotics community, but not outside: The Stanford team was a former CMU prof (Thrun) and his technical lead (Montemerlo) was still finishing his CMU PhD while working for Stanford. His co-advisor was the prof running the CMU team (Whittaker) and his CMU classmate was the technical lead for CMU's teams (Urmson). Google hired three out of four on this list.

Comment Re:thrusting (Score 4, Insightful) 594

However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase. Certainly Cameron's Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D, and without throwing somebody's yo-yo in your face ...

I've been telling people that Cameron got Avatar "right" in terms of 3D exactly for this reason. There is such a stark contrast between it and other 3D movies in that there were only a couple scenes where it was clear they were showing off the 3D. Even those had reasons where the scene kind of made sense (like refocusing on near/far during the diary videos). I think Avatar will be a real benchmark in 3D strictly because it shows you can do well with 3D without being an eye-poker movie. It will be interesting to see how many other directors learn from Cameron's willingness to try to do it right.

Comment Easy solution (Score 3, Interesting) 175

Don't post media on unprotected pages. No big loss behind this step. Friends and family can handle a simple user/password combination - we've been doing this for years. Trust me, the rest of the world doesn't really want to see your pictures of the kids at their friend Joey's birthday party.

Comment Re:ah yes, CC != subtitles (Score 1) 396

Grandparent: There is a pretty big difference between CC and subtitles. The former can be manipulated in format, font, etc and often include details like "Phone Ringing" that are left out of subtitles. Even subtitles that are supposedly for the deaf and hard of hearing often lack these audible descriptors. Subtitles also don't move based on the scene.. For example, text for edited CC is often positioned from side to side to match two people bantering or italicized for an off screen speaker (example). Real-time CC, which is not typical in movies, is the stuff you see scrolling at the top or bottom of screens in bars during sports and news. That's closer to subtitles due to the time pressure the captioner is under.

Parent: There is a digital CC spec but, like line21, it basically gets hosed by HDMI.

Comment Closed captions, hello? (Score 5, Interesting) 396

I can live with confusing names if they get around to supporting closed captioning data like they are supposed to. They misinterpreted the legal requirements for closed captioning as it being something which is handled by set-top boxes rather than TVs and elected to not transmit the data. HDMI's own FAQ makes this position clear. However, the law is quite clear that the TVs are required to render captions. Unfortunately, people use devices other than set-top boxes to push content to the TV. If you need captioning, you can't use HDMI with Blu-ray disc players or other devices.

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