N Monkey - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Kodak's Future... (Score 1) 177

by N Monkey on Thursday January 12, 2012 @02:37AM (#38671230) Attached to: Kodak Sues HTC and Apple

the camera screens have smaller resolutions than the photo so you will need an algorithm to downgrade the image, that part is patentable. icloud does something similar where the photo stream images are lesser resolutions than the original. so i guess apple could have ripped them off if they used the same algorithm

Sigh...
Most smart phones have a 3D graphics processor and those will all support MIP mapping where, to prevent hideous aliasing of textures, the graphics system keeps multiple copies of each texture at different levels of scaling. This concept has been around for decades.

Comment Re:linked lists still common (Score 1) 672

by N Monkey on Friday January 06, 2012 @11:27AM (#38609986) Attached to: Are Brain Teasers Good Hiring Criteria?

anyone else use linked lists on a regular basis?

Regularly? No. On occasions, certainly.

Comment Re:I've never liked Brain Teasers (Score 1) 672

by N Monkey on Friday January 06, 2012 @11:25AM (#38609958) Attached to: Are Brain Teasers Good Hiring Criteria?

I've never liked Brain Teasers. Every time I try one I keep thinking about how I would write a program to solve it.

I typically ask a couple of brain teasers in the interviews I conduct. Explaining how to write a program to solve one would be a more than acceptable answer for me.

Comment Some irony in this? (Score 1) 249

by N Monkey on Friday November 18, 2011 @02:10PM (#38100882) Attached to: Google Upgrades WebP To Challenge PNG Image Format

From the article thet seem to be targeting both lossy and lossless:

WebP was proposed as an alternative to JPEG, with 25–34% better compression compared to JPEG images at equivalent SSIM index.

and

Our main focus for lossless mode has been in compression density and simplicity in decoding. On average, we get a 45% reduction in size when starting with PNGs found on the web, and a 28% reduction in size compared to PNGs that are re-compressed with pngcrush and pngout. Smaller images on the page mean faster page loads

So their aim is to reduce bandwidth, which is admirable, yet the video side of Google is choosing to avoid H.264 which, AFAIU, has been shown to be better "bang for the bit" than VP8, and surely video is a far bigger consumer of bandwidth these days. (I'm not sure the unencumbered argument would stand up to close scrutiny).

Comment Re:The times are a-changing. (Score 1) 308

by N Monkey on Wednesday October 26, 2011 @02:09PM (#37846720) Attached to: BT Ordered To Block Usenet Binaries Index

I prefer "too damn busy to park my ass in front of the tv at a fixed time" or "You're not reshowing that episode for 4 months? Fuck you I'm downloading it." over "pirate".

Or "perhaps too cheap to buy a DVR?" ;-) (or a TV card for the PC?)

Comment Re:Cat (Score 1) 374

by N Monkey on Monday October 24, 2011 @04:10AM (#37814886) Attached to: Devices on my home network (less modem):

Cat-5 or Cat-6?

I imagine it's more likely he has Cat-Fur all over the place.

Comment Re:Errors in article (Score 1) 197

by N Monkey on Friday September 30, 2011 @04:20AM (#37564348) Attached to: Pavegen To Tap Pedestrians For Power In the UK

Also:

Kembell-Cook is now in the running to win the Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of 2011 Award which would give him 10,000 lbs to use towards his invention.

Wow. Will his prize be in the form of a giant cartoon-style weight with "10,000 lbs" written on it? Perhaps they'll drop it on his house.

You do have to wonder if that journalist has ever been outside of the US.... or maybe he was assuming that the original definition of "pound sterling" was still in use?

Comment Haven't submarines been sunk? (Score 1) 278

by N Monkey on Thursday September 22, 2011 @07:36AM (#37478008) Attached to: Tax Loopholes No Longer Patentable

Yet Submarine Patents..... are still legal.

How are (new) submarine patents possible? AFAIU, a few years ago the USPTO came in to line with the rest (or at least most) of the world in that a patent application automatically becomes public 18 months after filing. Prior to that, (again AFAIU), it only became public when granted, and hence submariners would keep tweaking their application so it stayed in the exam process until a time that suited them.

Comment Re:What detail was revealed? (Score 1) 158

by N Monkey on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @11:29AM (#37468888) Attached to: Microsoft Ousts IE Mobile Manager For Revealing Nokia Phone Details

All advertising is good advertising.

On the contrary, there is the Osborne Effect

Comment Re:How do they do it? (Score 1) 86

by N Monkey on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @08:17AM (#36510954) Attached to: Google To Digitize, Make Available British Library's Historical Holdings

I worked at company that did the same for the French National Library, about fifteen to eighteen years ago. To go through your questions: ...

Actual process was to guillotine the books and feed them through the scanners, some books would then be restitched. In the case of rare books we'd photograph them instead (and then scan the photo - this predates digital cameras).

I thought that Google had tech that could scan the pages of an original book and automatically compensate for any curvature. IIRC** it did something like flash a test pattern onto the page to determine how to straighten the final image.

**but it was a while ago I read this so could easily be mistaken.

Comment Re:Common knowledge (Score 1) 670

by N Monkey on Wednesday June 15, 2011 @04:49AM (#36447270) Attached to: C++ the Clear Winner In Google's Language Performance Tests

I think there is an electric fence equivalent on Windows- it might be called something like bounds checker - if that's any help.

Comment Re:Common knowledge (Score 1) 670

by N Monkey on Wednesday June 15, 2011 @04:31AM (#36447180) Attached to: C++ the Clear Winner In Google's Language Performance Tests

I diagnosed a use-after-free bug just a few days ago. I happened to get lucky and spotted it after 5 or 10 minutes because I happened to look at the right pointer values,

Have you used Electric Fence or Valgrind?

Comment Re:Toss up (Score 1) 119

by N Monkey on Tuesday June 14, 2011 @02:16AM (#36432906) Attached to: First Challenge To US Domain Seizures Filed

I wonder why on Earth an agency founded in the aftermath of 9/11, to protect gainst terrorist threats to the United States is involved in thus kind of thing? May as well have the fucking coast guard policing patent infringements!

I think they'd be of more use watching out for submarine patents.

Comment Re:At least the Daleks don't have relationships (Score 1) 332

by N Monkey on Wednesday June 01, 2011 @10:18AM (#36307886) Attached to: Daleks To Be Given 'A Rest' From Dr. Who

Why do I never have mod points?

yours
Davros

Comment Comparison with earluer daleks... (Score 1) 332

by N Monkey on Wednesday June 01, 2011 @09:47AM (#36307554) Attached to: Daleks To Be Given 'A Rest' From Dr. Who

It's gotta be the bold primary colors... those seem to signal children's shows. Plus all the roundedness signals "safe" - it's kinda a meme that scary stuff has sharp angles.

So they now looks like AI robot pets!

This thread just reminded me that the BBC's click program recently featured the Dalek6388 web site that has the history of the daleks used in the series from '63 to '88. I'm just having a look through it now (so please don't slashdot it before I'm done) :-)

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