Comments for Record and Reverie

Comment on Expensive Hotels internet access by Noah Coad

Noah Coad — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:43:57 +0000

I completely agree! Having traveled a good bit, this was a quick find, now I only stay at ‘mid-level’ less expensive places w/ free internet. Much better.

Comment on New iPod Touch by Graham Booker

Graham Booker — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:56:23 +0000

Jeff,
Yeah, vibrating alarm would be very nice. So would a persistent alarm that keeps going off until you dismiss it, like on the Mac.
I also agree with the speaker. The last time I needed to show a video to someone I was fortunate enough to have a set of computer speakers nearby.

Comment on Switching back to Safari by Graham Booker

Graham Booker — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:54:30 +0000

Jeff,
Yes, I do, but as you pointed out, it doesn’t work when you are entering text. In addition, the cmd-shft-arrow or cmd-shft-[ or ] (which does work when you are entering text BTW), requires a lot more hand contortions than just holding down the right mouse button, and moving up then left or right.

Comment on Switching back to Safari by Jeff Geerling

Jeff Geerling — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:37:38 +0000

You do know, though, that you can switch tabs via Shift+Command+Arrow Key, right? As long as you’re not entering text in the tab or in the address bar, at least.

Comment on New iPod Touch by Jeff Geerling

Jeff Geerling — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:29:32 +0000

Great site you have here - I just got my Touch a few weeks ago, and I’m loving it! I used to use a Palm (m505, E, and a Visor), but never liked their interfaces much. With the Touch, I can navigate anywhere with one free hand in the nick of time.

Two features I wish it had:
1. A vibrating alarm - I don’t always hear the little beep sound.
2. A speaker - I can’t share my videos with anyone unless I bring a headphone splitter, so I can’t quickly show someone ‘that video’ on YouTube, or have them hear a song I want to share…

Comment on Where’s real AC3 Passthrough on the Mac? by Nick Vance

Nick Vance — Sat, 03 May 2008 17:48:37 +0000

I’m pretty sure the loss of AC3 passthrough in the latest versions of QuickTime is a bug. Apple certainly doesn’t care if you’re passing through stereo or AC3 audio from your own computer. Indeed they still let you pass through AC3 audio from the DVD player application which is perfectly capable of playing ripped Video_TS files. Certainly there would be more of an incentive to fix this if they did HD rentals with AAC support on the desktop however.

Also @Tumbles (comment 12): the AppleTV Take 2 *does* support AC3 passthrough (not just ProLogic II). Apple explicitly supports this on their HD movie rentals.

Comment on Where’s real AC3 Passthrough on the Mac? by Graham Booker

Graham Booker — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:26:48 +0000

First, ripping DVDs is not a violation of international copyright law, as long as it is not distributed to others. Ripping a DVD for your own use is no different than ripping a CD for your own use. Both fall under fair use.

The issue is that ripping a DVD in the US is now a violation of the DMCA. As is typical of a lousy president, instead of enforcing laws already on the books, create more laws which accomplish nothing more than to restrict the freedoms of law abiding citizens. Passing a law against already illegal action isn’t going to stop any of it.

Apple has admitted to me that they are not interested in enabling ripping of DVDs in any form, as they have too many relationships with studios. The only way I see Apple enabling AC3 passthrough on the desktop is if they eventually enable HD rentals on the desktop.

Comment on Branchless Code by Graham Booker

Graham Booker — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:17:26 +0000

Eh, computing an address for a jump is really not much different from a branch. However, processors have branch prediction logic, so changing a branch to an address computation and a jump could potentially be much worse than a branch. The only case where such a change won’t cause a pipeline stall is when the address is computed well beforehand, in which case the branch wouldn’t stall either.

There are actually no jumps in the code I mentioned above. It is essentially computing both paths from a branch, and then using boolean logic to determine which result is committed, and which is thrown away.

Comment on Branchless Code by Greg Davies

Greg Davies — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:58:47 +0000

I heard something about branchless programming before, but it was explained differently to me. Basically, boolean logic was altered by the compiler and linker to compute the address to jump to. That way you never do a comparison at all, just an unconditional jump.

Comment on Where’s real AC3 Passthrough on the Mac? by Tumbles

Tumbles — Sat, 03 May 2008 01:57:37 +0000

Great work Graham and Toxic for your advice in this area. I’ve followed your posts on a few forums. This is one of those crazy things that I just can’t believe Apple doesn’t sort. The not doing it so people buy apple tv’s is potentially one answer, although I thought AppleTV just put out pro logic anyway, not proper passthrough.

Another theory I have is that Apple considers that 95% of people wanting to passthrough AC3 from MP4/MKV etc at the moment are doing so in order to play ripped DVD’s which is obviously a copyright issue. So they are basically saying we’re not going to write code helping you to break copyrights. But with iTunes movies gaining speed, they have written the code ready for a future version of Quicktime when they feel its in demand enough in support of legit downloaded movies, and then they’ll tout it as some big new feature.