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August 14, 2006
"Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants they chose a new form for him - that of a giant Slorr! Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slorr that day, I can tell you!"
There's this ridiculous column in HomeTheaterMag claiming there's "NO DIFFERENCE" between 1080i and 1080p. The guy uses some major rhetorical legerdemain to conflate two totally separate issues, 3:2 pulldown and de-interlacing. His claim is 1080i == 1080p, but technically all he's proving is that content looks best at its native frame rate, and that the first Blu-Ray player has a major video processing flaw. via
Movies and almost all TV shows are shot at 24 frames-per-second (either on film or on 24fps HD cameras). All TVs have a refresh rate of 60Hz. What this means is that the screen refreshes 60 times a second. In order to display something that is 24fps on something that is essentially 60fps, you need to make up, or create new frames. This is done using a method called 3:2 pulldown (or more accurately 2:3 pulldown). The first frame of film is doubled, the second frame of film is tripled, the third frame of film is doubled and so on, creating a 2,3,2,3,2,3,2 sequence. It basically looks like this: 1a,1b,2a,2b,2c,3a,3b,4a… Each number is the original film frame. This lovely piece of math allows the 24fps film to be converted to be displayed on 60Hz products (nearly every TV in the US, ever).
This can be done in a number of places. With DVDs, it was all done in the player. With HD DVD, it is done in the player to output 1080i. With Blu-ray, there are a few options. The first player, the Samsung, added the 3:2 to the signal, interlaced it, and then output that (1080i) or de-interlaced the same signal and output that (1080p). In this case, the only difference between 1080i and 1080p is where the de-interlacing is done. If you send 1080i, the TV de-interlaces it to 1080p. If you send your TV the 1080p signal, the player is de-interlacing the signal. As long as your TV is de-interlacing the 1080i correctly, then there is no difference.
The next Blu-ray players (from Pioneer and the like) will have an additional option. They will be able to output the 1080p/24 from the disc directly. At first you may think that if your TV doesn't accept 1080p, you'll miss out on being able to see the "unmolested" 1080p/24 from the disc. Well even if your TV could accept the 1080p/24, your TV would still have to add the 3:2 pulldown itself (the TV is still 60Hz). So you're not seeing the 1080p/24 regardless.
"As long as your TV is de-interlacing the 1080i correctly." Except there's no such thing as as de-interlacing "correctly." It's impossible. De-interlacing is an inherently lossy process.
Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video (a sequence of fields) into a non-interlaced form (a sequence of frames). This is a fundamentally impossible process that must always produce some image degradation, since it ideally requires "temporal interpolation" which involves guessing the movement of every object in the image and applying motion correction to every object.
Artifacts will always be present in deinterlaced video, as the process must attempt to combine two fields for simultaneous presentation. Any object that is moving will appear in different positions on the two fields, and simply displaying them overlaid results in very objectionable mouse teeth, venetian blinds, or 'comb-effect' on the moving vertical edges. There is no perfect way to interpolate images in time, unless everything is moving together, as in a panned image.
1,500-year-old murder victim discovered at a Roman archaeological site in England. via
A human skeleton was found hidden in what would have been a Roman corn drier, and experts believe the person was deliberately put inside.
The six-week excavation on the former Roman farm will end this week.
The skeleton was found by a team from Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project (SHARP).
On-site human remains expert Zannah Baldry said the body appeared to have been pushed into the oven and then set alight.
IBM's devised a way to store a bit of data on a single molecule, in a non-volatile, rewritable fashion. via
Crucial for investigating the inherent properties of molecules is the ability to deal with them individually. To do this, Riel and Lörtscher extended a method called the mechanically controllable break-junction (MCBJ). With this technique, a metallic bridge on an insulating substrate is carefully stretched by mechanical bending. Ultimately the bridge breaks, creating two separate electrodes that possess atomic-sized tips. The gap between the electrodes can be controlled with picometer (one thousandth of a nanometer) accuracy due to the very high transmission ratio of the bending mechanism. In a next step, a solution of the organic molecules is deposited on top of the electrodes. As the junction closes, a molecule capable of chemically bonding to both metallic electrodes can bridge the gap. In this way, an individual molecule is "caught" between the electrodes, and measurements can be performed.
The molecules investigated are specially designed organic molecules measuring only about 1.5 nanometers in length, approximately one hundredth of a state-of-the-art CMOS element.
In an old Modern Mechanix article about Thomas Edison's parapsychological experiments, I learned that Edison's spiritual beliefs were quite similar to Leibniz's monads:
It was Edison’s belief, even up to the day of his death, that life in man and animal results from the activity of countless myriads of what he called “immortal units,” endowed with intelligent direction of life and its processes.
To substantiate his hypothesis, Edison burnt his finger intentionally! (Before the finger was burned, however, the scientist had a Bertillion print made of his digit.) The burn was severe enough to obliterate all the delicate skin lines, yet after the finger had healed, another print showed that the lines and whorls, even though they had been hopelessly destroyed, had returned to their original position.
From this experiment, Edison got confirmation of his hypothesis that it is these aforementioned “immortal units” which supervised the regrowth of his finger skin, following out the original design. Man, he believed, is a mosaic of such life units, and it is these entities which determine what we shall be.
To make his hypothesis clear, Edison was wont to cite the following analogy. Suppose this earth were visited by some extraterrestrial being whose eyes were so coarse that the smallest thing he could see was the Brooklyn bridge. Naturally he would take the structure as some sort of natural growth.
Now suppose this imaginary giant were to destroy the bridge, then, after a couple of years, find it rebuilt. Don’t you suppose the giant would assume that some guiding intelligence were behind the reconstruction? That’s what Edison believed.
This Slashdot headline is so sci-fi it hurts: "Botnet Herders Attack MS06-040 Worm Hole"
Posted by Jon Rubin at August 14, 2006 09:05 PM
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