Alright, I've mentioned elsewhere in this discussion that recording the whole light field data at decent framerates isn't currently possible in an economically feasible way. It could be done if you throw enough money at the problem, but at that point it's cheaper to redo the shot a couple of times.

Hm, I'm not sure that this kind of camera is able to generate good depth maps. The visualization that helps adjust the focal range in this demo video illustrates the point: it is basically an edge detection filter run on each focal depth that gets recorded. If it finds an edge thin enough then that area must be in focus and gets highlighted. This is why edges get highlighted, but not surfaces with low frequency textures. Finding the sharpest image of a low frequency texture in a focal stack is not a simple thing and this is where the generated depth maps will also break. The nasty part about this is that all the large and rather flat areas in your image will end up suffering.

As far as I remember, the Lytro cameras use a micro-lenslet array to refocus the image differently for different patches on the sensor. So it is recording multiple focal planes at once. But when you dig a bit into light field representations and light field interpolation (e.g. the original light field and lumigraph papers), then you'll probably see that you can process the data in more interesting ways than simply flipping through a focal stack.

That would be the equivalent of a 80 megapixel raw video in order to retain all the viewing/editing capabilities afterwards... storing that away in real time isn't yet economic. And I honestly have no idea if there is a decent compression scheme for the data, either.

So you want to strap yourself to an exploding console? Neat!

I actually wonder at the many plot devices that placed high power conduits through control consoles. I mean, really? Why wouldn't you design the bridge system as low power system sending control signals to high power equipment in some cabinets a few firewalls away?

Almost all characters in TNG got twisted and bent to fit the plot at some point or another. This is really annoying to watch at times. I find it amazing that the actors put up with that and managed to act out these scripts. There's actually some really good acting from almost all main actors in there, but also a good amount of bad acting as well.

As far as I can tell the problems aren't the Realtek chips themselves, but some half-assed mainboard integration. The snd-hda-intel driver is full of workarounds for wrongly connected chips. Plus, nobody cares for the quality of the analog audio signal which is generated and amplified on the board. The result is fucking terrible. I can listen to my programs working when I connect my headphones to the onboard audio. At times I was able to tell which stage of the algorithm the GPU was computing from the noise.

40GB is going to be the start of the future. With every new generation of consoles so far the size of the game data increases *a lot* because the new generation of console hardware is capable of handling that and competition with other game titles required that the hardware gets pushed to the limit. Get used to it!

And the show is more about the hidden costs of that "business" and the related lifestyle...

Randomness in sensor data surely exists. Take a recording with your computer's microphone or line-in port with maximum amplification and take the least significant bit of each sample. Unless you manage to get a recording where each and every sample is clipped (most won't be, even if you have clipping), the result is very random and absolutely not predictable.

Actually, it is quite true. Slowness in Java can come from many things (inefficient algorithms, inefficient memory usage, overloading the GC with too many claimable objects on the heap, ...), but the code that JITs generate for Java can be very good and fast. At least Sun's/Oracle's JVM really can claim a good performance. I've benchmarked it repeatedly by porting Java code to C++ and running it on the same problem. And I've been surprised. If there's a big performance difference somewhere it's most likely because your own code is doing something wrong and there's often a way to fix it. Of all the things annoying or broken in Java, raw execution speed isn't.

Well, neither gtk nor qt use any drawing primitives within X. They have their own, quite complex internal rendering backends for that and just push the resulting images to the X server in many cases. The reality is a bit more complex than that because they can draw things entirely in software, use OpenGL acceleration, fall back onto the X server for some things where it is useful and so on. But essentially, when you run a gtk and a Qt application at the same time, you're already running that kind of duplication. So with a lightweight display server you get at least the third independent implementation out of your RAM.

Given that the front of those cars is already loaded with sensors for loads of other stuff (braking assistants, etc.) it shouldn't be hard to try to actually figure out the shape of the road ahead...

He is the head of the state. Similar separations of offices exist in other countries. The Weimar constitution did give the President a lot of powers, for instance, to declare a state of emergency and to take any emergency measures he deems necessary. This was a loophole that was exploited by Hitler.

The successor of the that constitution removed almost all remaining powers from the President. This is a mostly representative role these days with very little freedom for making decisions. Most of his tasks (appointing the Chancellor and Ministers, signing laws etc.) are strictly mandated by the constitution. The only exception I know is that he may call the "Bundesverfassungsgericht" (special court ruling on matters related to the constitution) before signing a law if there are serious doubts about the law being in accordance with the constitution.

No, its the head of the executive branch similar to the US President or UK Prime Minister. Chancellor is just a German name for that position.

Same here, strangely enough. Looks like a measure to avoid load caused by foreigners that got curious from all the bad reporting that this website got.