Disqus - Latest Comments for logicalextremes

Re: Oh, FriendFeed is now Facebook’s “official” R&D department!

logicalextremes — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:50:21 -0000

One more item for #6... + Facebook does not allow pseudonymous accounts, FriendFeed does. Google does. Twitter does.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

logicalextremes — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:19:01 -0000

"The FUNDAMENTAL problem is that I want everything in The Cloud. Everything." - Wow, that's pretty scary. Hard drive space gets cheaper and more reliable by the week. Services like this strike me as Thin Clients 3.0, solving a problem that doesn't really exist on a mass scale (though certainly there are niches of users that it works for). It's one thing to want to back up in the cloud, but I would never want to accumulate more data than I could store (and reliably back up) on local physical media.

Re: How To Type ♺ On Mac, And The Reasons Why Not

logicalextremes — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:46:44 -0000

I think it encodes as one byte, I managed to get 140 of them into Twitter and through to FriendFeed... http://friendfeed.com/e/fd205492-60e7-c48d-c6ea... But I agree it's not universally compatible, so should be used with caution.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

logicalextremes — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:51:37 -0000

I don't disagree with the anti-consumer aspect of exclusivity (all carriers are guilty of this), but... Warranty and insurance don't cover negligence, only defects. But the Apple Store may be lenient, it's worth a try. But if not, ATT is telling you wrong. Even if you are within your current contract, it should definitely be at the subsidized price if the contract is getting extended. I've done this, push back.

Re: Dominiek - web, technology and startups

logicalextremes — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:56:22 -0000

Privacy is only dead for those to choose to have none...
http://logicalextremes.blogspot.com/2009/01/pri...

Re: No More Laptops or Work in My Bedroom

dcfemella — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:17:14 -0000

Log, thanks for the wonderful article. I never thought about music, but maybe it will work. I am going to try it tonight and tell you how it goes. I think I am going to stick in some Jaqueline Du Pre to see if I go to sleep without tossing and turning. Again, thanks!

Re: No More Laptops or Work in My Bedroom

logicalextremes — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:31:54 -0000

That's a good idea. I usually fall alseep within a couple of minutes, but I've read a lot of articles that suggest a pre-sleep ritual, including distraction-free relaxation. Came across this also... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2198316.stm ...I always thought music would be a distraction to sleep, but maybe I never tried the right kind.

Re: The question is wrong

logicalextremes — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:31:59 -0000

But in your new 3-child problem, the game has ended once you give that information. There are no more unknowns. It's a different class of problem.

In the original problem, we are told only that of two children, one is a girl. The other is still a mystery, and has a 50% chance of being a boy and a 50% chance of being a girl.

Re: The question is wrong

Manolis — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:10:17 -0000

The difference is that you are told information after the events have taken place.

Let's say we are asked the probability that of three children, at least one is a boy and at least one is a girl.

The probability of that happening is 6/8 or 75%.

Let's say I tell you that of three children, at least one is a boy and at least one is a girl. If I asked after providing that information the probability of there being at least one boy and at least one girl, would you still say it is 75%?

Of course not, because the extra information provided changes the probabilities.

Re: The question is wrong

logicalextremes — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:01:51 -0000

The simpler, intuitive to some, way to think about the problem is that children ARE like coins... successive children are independent events. It's irrelevant whether one is a girl or not. The odds of any given child being a boy or girl is 50%.

Re: The question is wrong

logicalextremes — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:19:17 -0000

Paul, you are absolutely right of course. 50% is probably the most acceptable answer because people should be able to assume that all known information has been presented in the problem, and it has not been rigged in some arbitrary way. The rigged problem is essentially similar to the Monty Hall problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem where motivations and asymmetric information come into play.

Re: louisgray.com: 5 Questions and Answers to Better Understand Blu-ray

logicalextremes — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:36:55 -0000

Good additional detail, Phil. I think the takeaway for most consumers is that it's not a simple yes-no answer. The last couple percent of video quality improvement to be extracted from a standard DVD depends on the specific TV, DVD player, and Blu-ray player combinations being considered. But in practice, they will all look about equally great to 90% of the population.

Re: louisgray.com: 5 Questions and Answers to Better Understand Blu-ray

logicalextremes — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:30:43 -0000

480p (progressive) is the best a conventional DVD will do, but older players without a digital output will be sending this to the TV on an analog component (or, worse, composite) connection. This analog connection is generally inferior to an HDMI connection (one factor is that it goes from digital data to analog signal, then gets converted to digital again in the TV). But newer DVD players with an HDMI connection should give comparable performance to a Blu-ray player (with an HDMI connection), with regular DVDs. The settings on the player and the TV can be optimized to take advantage of whichever has better scaling hardware.

Re: louisgray.com: 5 Questions and Answers to Better Understand Blu-ray

eng1ne — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:27:47 -0000

There are a number of ways an upscaling DVD (including Blu-Ray) player can improve the picture quality of a standard DVD. The easiest is simple line-doubling, but this alone would just make everything look a little blockier. However, if you look at another issue with DVDs, called 3 to 2 pulldown, that gives an upscaling DVD player a little more information to work with since alternating frames have different information. Combine that info and you have a higher-res picture.

Of course, most decent LCD and Plasma TVs also do this automatically to an incoming video signal. So a good upscaling DVD player has to have a couple of extra tricks up its sleeve, such as sub-pixel interpolation, edge enhancement, 120hz frame rate compatibility, etc.

Overall, Blu-Ray players will have more of these technologies than your standard upscaling DVD player simply because Blu-Ray itself makes use of more of these technologies than standard DVD.

Re: louisgray.com: 5 Questions and Answers to Better Understand Blu-ray

mona — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:47:46 -0000

I am not an engineer, but I would guess it has to do with output and the HD signal. Even if the resolution is 480, if the player continuously (progressively) scans lines of 480, wouldn't the picture be better?

Re: louisgray.com: 5 Questions and Answers to Better Understand Blu-ray

logicalextremes — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:45:45 -0000

I question the "boost" in resolution that a Blu-ray player can give to a traditional DVD. There are only so many bits there (480p) and a player can't create data from nothing. DVDs really do look pretty darn good on a large HDTV, particularly via a digital (HDMI) connection. I'm not aware of anything a Blu-ray player can do to improve traditional DVD output quality that a good modern DVD player can't do. It comes down to which chunk of hardware has the best algorithms, and most consumers have little desire or knowledge to get to that level.

Re: WHAT SHOULD WE DUMP CABLE TV FOR? BOXEE | My Philly Network

logicalextremes — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:27:37 -0000

Also on the waitlist, but the email said it might be weeks :-( Thanks! [email is my disqus name at gmail.com]

Re: Favorite Films, One Letter at a Time

faithx5 — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:49:07 -0000

Mine are chronological within genre, and genre definitions are fluid depending on available shelf space. :) But I think with film, chronologically is definitely more useful than alphabetically. I sometimes keep series together, but sometimes not. Depends on my mood.

My records are all in Excel, which is not the most powerful of solutions (spreadsheet rather than database), but it is easy to control, update, and search. I've tried more specialized database solutions, like Delicious Library, but I never seem to like them as much as plain old Excel.

Re: Favorite Films, One Letter at a Time

logicalextremes — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:42:39 -0000

I organize many of my DVDs chronologically, some by genre, director, studio, or grouping (e.g., trilogy). Movies I've seen at the theater I have in simple chronological lists by the year I saw them. Picking a best of by alpha I think would require a good alpha database like you have. I'm looking for a good way to database the movies I've seen (something in the neighborhood of 4000) and movies I want to see.

Re: Quiz: Guess the Horror Clips

faithx5 — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:27:36 -0000

Yep! Awesome! Gotta love some German Expressionism.

And thanks; there are a couple of transitions in the music I could've handled better, but I think it overall came out pretty good.

Re: Quiz: Guess the Horror Clips

logicalextremes — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:14:11 -0000

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Nice montage, BTW. The accompaniment was very well done.

Re: Coming to a Podcast Near You!

matsie — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:54:25 -0000

Thanks for the words of encouragement! I hope you keep coming back to see what we're up to. We've changed the design to the site among other things to help improve your GenTech experience. We're a group full of ideas, so be sure to check back and see what we're up to.

Thanks again for your comment!

Re: Coming to a Podcast Near You!

logicalextremes — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:40:30 -0000

You guys have a great group rapport, and the range of topics keeps things interesting. Nice job!

Re: Internet fallout from the crashing market (Scripting News)

Gregor Rothfuss — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:48:34 -0000

http://www.freepops.org/en/ allows you to scrape your Yahoo mail. It worked ok for the emails that I wanted to liberate about two years ago. It is quite sad that a company who put openness onto their banner is holding user data hostage.

Re: Internet fallout from the crashing market (Scripting News)

logicalextremes — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:12:33 -0000

Yahoo Mail Classic (free) unfortunately doesn't have POP, IMAP, or bulk forwarding. So you're left with either individually saving or forwarding, or upgrading to Mail Plus ($20/yr) and POPing everything. Maybe someone knows a way to script Yahoo webmail. iPhone will download messages from a Yahoo webmail account.