A page for randomness

Vorbis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vorbis is an open source, lossy audio codec project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and intended to serve as a replacement for MP3. It is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container and is then called Ogg Vorbis.

Vorbis development began following a September 1998 letter from Fraunhofer Gesellschaft announcing plans to charge licensing fees for the MP3 audio format. Soon after, founder Christopher “Monty” Montgomery commenced work on the project and was assisted by a growing number of other developers. They continued refining the source code until a stable version 1.0 of the codec was released on July 19, 2002.

The latest official version is 1.1.2 released on 2005-11-28, but there are some fine-tuned forks available such as aoTuV. Source code (called libvorbis) for the Xiph.Org release is available from the official xiph.org download page.

Gear Factor
We still have not cracked the secret of Greek Fire, a napalm-like weapon of terror and unmitigated destruction unleashed by the Romaioi of Constantinople on besieging Arabs in the 7th century. In fact, it’s possible that they didn’t, either, at least after the time of its original deployment, as almost all of our knowledge of the substance is legend and literary legerdemain.

It’s entirely possible that the unextinguishable incendiary formula, which kept the Eastern Roman Empire in business for so long, was itself a pale copy of the stunning invention of a single genius, Kallinikos, who took the true, original recipe to his grave.

While a more sober reading of the facts suggests it lived and died with the Roman Empire itself, until 1453, it’s easy to imagine the horror faced by anyone assaulting the city walls or leaping aboard an enemy trireme, only to see that odd metal pipe extending directly above their heads:

“Siphons!” the old man said, as gouts of flame filled the darkness, pouring from the carved heads.
I stumbled backwards, the back of my skull cracking against the ground. Pain blinded me, and I clutched at my scalp, hearing my sword clattering on the stone. Hot blood wet my hair as fire spilled across the rock. As I tried to rise, it fulminated over my shins. …
The old man walked forward as soon as the torrent receded. Drips of blazing light continued to drool from the stone dragons’ beaks.
“Naphtha, lime and old bones,” he said, without a hint of anger or fear.
“Not Greek!” Marlow said from within, his voice falling to a stammer. “My own formula!”

The key to its effectiveness was its ability to continue burning under any circumstances, even on the surface of water, making it a “wet, dark, sticky fire,” and a key maritime weapon.

Possible ingredients include sulphur, petroleum, quicklime, phosphorus, naptha and saltpeter. But this is only the first twist in the tale, as with incendiary chemicals, the method is just as important, determining how the precursor chemicals are stored, the logistics of transport, and how they are mixed and deployed in battle. Did greek fire ignite on contact with air, water, or naked flame? Were its fumes poisonous? How could such a devastating weapon remain a secret for so long?

To know the truth, however, would be to rob the mystery of its allure–like nostalgia and futurism, the journey itself is always more rewarding than the destination.

Wired News: How to Pop a Cork With a Sword
The clock’s counting down good riddance to 2006, and a crowd of thirsty revelers encircles you, the designated popper of the cork.

But how will you free the bubbly from its bottle to greet the new year? You can always go manual, or geek out with a gadget like the single-squeeze Descorjet.

But perhaps you want to start 2007 feeling a little more jaunty than usual. Maybe you feel like living life on the edge — the edge of a saber.

If so, it might be time to try champagne sabering, the delicate art of decapitating bottles of champagne.

Markus:
lol..
last night i punched the line at casa
very hard
i was pissed at a fucker

gk:
what?
what had happened?

Markus:
well, i had this party of 10
but it was the staggering type….3 were there at first
then a couple more, and so on
a couple were nice, but the rest were semi-rude….just telling me to get them more this more that w/o regard for what other things i had to do
but i dealt with it, and everything was fine
eventually the party was too big to fit at 22, so when one new guy showed up, he and a couple guys from 22 went and sat at 11
and i was joking to aimee saying “like an infection, my table has spread to your section”…
well they split their ticket
and one of the couple gave me a customer appreciation card
so i brought it to the back and stamped it
when i brought it back she asks me “why did you only stamp it once?”
“because only one entree is valid per visit per customer, you’ll see that written at the bottom of the card”
“well how come?”
“that’s just the rules”
so she hands the card to the other customers at the table
and says to me “well stamp it for them now”
which slightly pissed me off
but i just ignored them and continued passing out payment tickets
so one of the guys who moved to 11 kept joking the whole time “he’s paying for me….or she’s paying for me” etc
then when it was time to pay, he gives me his card and says “if it is declined, just use the remaining cash from [his] bill to pay for mine”
the guy sitting across from him was the one who had come last, and his bill was 10.75, and he gave me a $20

gk:
damn, what kind of people were these? rich, trashy, gangsta?

Markus:
annoying, not trashy, but bossy types
semi-trashy
so i go to run the card, put in the cash, etc…
and i exclaim “well i’ll be damned”…because that guys card was declined, i thought it was kinda funny actually
so i did everyone else’s payment, then bring it back
and i tell him, well your card was declined, but the 9.25 from his ticket won’t cover your bill
at that point the guy who had the cash was like “why are you trying to pay with mine?”, i tell him i was only joking, and that it wasn’t enough anyways
and i hand him back his change with the change receipt on top of the cash
“this isn’t mine”
“yes it is”
“no, this is not mine” and he shoves the top change receipt off, but takes the cash below
“well, yes it is sir, if you look here, it shows your previous balance of 10.75, here shows me you gave me a 20, and lastly this is your change”
he stares at it for a moment and tries to figure it out…and i repeat the same thing again
finally he tosses the tickets to the side and is like “well why do ya’ll do that, it is too damn confusing”
so i’m trying to not be condescending to this guy for being such a dumbass, and i take the other guys new card to try…and go run it
i come back, give him his receipt bc it went through this time
and the cash guy says to me “how come i got charged gratuity”
“well, because you were part of this party sir”
“no i wasn’t”
“yes you were, you are eating with them”
“but i’m sitting over here, i’m not with them”
“it shouldn’t be that big of a problem, i mean, gratuity is only a 1.31″
“well i think it is a problem”
“well if you do, i will give it back to you”
“do it”
so i stand right there, pull out my money purse

gk:
damn….

Markus:
and get a dollar, quarter, nickel, and set it down in front of him, and while reaching back inside i say “hold on one moment let me get you a penny”
and i gave it to him and walked off
and at that point i punched the shit out of he line

gk:
damn
then they left?

Markus:
they sat and talked for a little while longer, a couple people left from 22, so there was enough room for the 3 guys who “weren’t with the party” to go back and sit with their party
fucking assholes

gk:
damn….

Markus:
yeah, kinda pissed me off….bc i was gonna say somehting to the people about the cust app. card….like “if you’re trying to do that, you dont even deserve to have the card”
but i didn’t
then they kept eggin me on
the guy was like “well if you would have just stopped there then it wouldn’t have been a problem”….i think he thouht the part where i said “it is only 1.31″ was a little too smart ass for him, and since i had a backbone and talked back to him it wasn’t ok at that point
for the record, no one left me money over gratuity, and since i have that guy his grat back, i was stiffed from him…
never mind the fact that i did give them excellence service, their order was perfect, they had tons of salsa and chips and refills, etc…and everything was kosher till the end
i’m getting to the point where i’m tired of people’s bullshit, trying to scam, etc…
and i guess they caught me at the wrong time

gk:
i know
i just started gratting at the wok
like i just got pissed off when a group of like 7 rich white people
came in
gave them excellent service
and they only left me 1.40

Markus:
they act like you don’t exist, like you’re nothing
that’s what pisses me off

gk:
i just grat everybody with a table over 6, and if they don’t leave me extra, oh well

Markus:
would they still tip the same if their best friend did all the same things you did….
probably not
they don’t realize either
it takes some time to do what you do….like get the order right, good service, etc…it doesn’t come overnight, you have to work a while before you cna do that

gk:
yeah
those fuckers

Markus:
yeah
i hate the rich/annoying white people type
they’re the most annoying

gk:
those rich people never have to work a day in their lives

Markus:
act like they’re all that
they don’t know shit

Monkey Bites
AllofMP3, the Russia-based online music store, has responded to the lawsuit filed earlier this month by the RIAA calling the RIAA’s move “unjustified.” AllofMP3 continues to claim that the site is legal under Russian law. In a press release on the website, AllofMP3 says, “certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that Allofmp3.com operates legally in Russia.”

AllofMP3.com sells non-DRM downloads and charges roughly one dollar for albums and only a few cents for individual songs. The U.S.-based iTunes Store on the other hand sells DRM downloads at ten dollars an album and one dollar for songs.

The RIAA’s lawsuit against Media Services, owner of AllofMP3, claims the website is an illegal service and infringes on copyrights owned by the RIAA’s members. The RIAA alleges 11 million songs have been “pirated” using AllofMP3.com.

The RIAA lawsuit seeks $150,000 in damages per violation, which puts the total at over $1.65 trillion, which, as some have already pointed out, is just slightly less than the Gross National Product of Great Britain.

Slashdot | 100 Things We Didn’t Know Last Year
“The BBC news magazine is running a compilation of the interesting and sometimes downright unexpected facts that we did not know last year, but now know. some examples — There are 200 million blogs which are no longer being updated, say technology analysts. Urban birds have developed a short, fast ‘rap style’ of singing, different from their rural counterparts. The lion costume in the film ‘Wizard of Oz’ was made from real lions. Online shoppers will only wait an average of four seconds for an internet page to load before giving up. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. For every 10 successful attempts to climb Mount Everest there is one fatality. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666. The egg came first.”

Hungry For a Month: November 2006
For the month of November, I’m only spending $30 on food. The only exception will be things that are freely available to the average person (salt taken from restaurants, sauce packets from Taco Bell, free coffee from an office). Buying in advance is fine, but at the end of the month, it all has to add up to $30 or less.

Can you hear me now? Good; now look at this ad
Advertising has long been ubiquitous on the big screen (pre-feature ads, Coke-sponsored trivia questions, product placements in films) and television’s small screen, but the smallest screen of all has been holding out against the trend. No longer: Verizon has just announced that banner ads are coming to a cell phone near you.

The New York Times is reporting that Verizon wants to show the banners above web content when mobile phone users access the Internet. Details are sketchy at this point, but Verizon VP John Harrobin delivered the lump of coal to subscriber stockings, saying, “We know we can make significant dollars in mobile Web advertising in 2007. That said, we likely will not—we want to take it carefully and methodically, and enable the right experience.”

Any galaxy in which “the right experience” equals “watching ads on the cell phone that you’ve paid for when you access the Internet” is certainly far, far away. Customers have already paid for the phone, the service, and (usually) a separate data plan, all before seeing the ads. Will Verizon reduce its prices as a result of the sponsorship? Is the company trying to lower its bills? Do we really need to keep asking these questions?

PlayStation 3 Owners Trading Them For Wiis - Playfuls.com - Play your life!
People keep saying this will be the closest console race ever. But every now and then, a story comes along that really makes you question that statement. This, I believe, is one such story. Although it’s not about technical differences, supply shortages or software (i.e. games) quality, it does raise a serious question: why would people want to give away their PlayStation 3 for a Wii? And it’s not just a couple of people, but a whole lot of them; and by the looks of it, more and more are joining this “trend” by the day.

The folks from GigaGamez ran this story a few days ago, after several searches on Craiglist revealed quite a few PS3 owners willing to depart with their hard-earned console, in exchange for a Wii and, generally, some extra cash. There are also some who hope to get two Wiis for a PS3, or a 20GB PS3 plus a Wii for a 60GB PS3, but the trend is pretty much the same: people don’t want a PS3 anymore, they want a Wii. Even if that means no extra cash to make up for the loss.

So, not only are there way fewer PlayStation 3 consoles on the market, but now even some of the scarce PS3 owners are seeking to switch sides and leave Sony further behind in this “oh-so-close” console race. The question is: why would they do that? I know I would be more than happy to own a PS3, and it’s not that hard to get a Wii (with a wee-bit of patience).

GigaGamez has more than one answer to that question, and the last one should be most concerning for Sony:

“Finally, it could just be people who got the PS3 and have been terribly disappointed in the software line-up. The only game that seems to be doing relatively well in the ratings is Resistance: Fall of Man, and that’s not really enough to carry a $500-$600 system.”
You could say that Sony got off to a bad start, but then you’d be over-estimating them…

P.S. In Japan, even the DS Lite is a lot more sought-after than the PS3!

Church Is Robbed During Christmas Mass - New York Times
The morning heist in Flushing, Queens, yesterday seemed too bad to be true.

It happened at the Church of St. Mel during the 9 a.m. Christmas Mass, which was said in Italian. The parishioners had helped fill the safe in the sacristy with something north of $20,000, including money for needy children. The thieves, according to police and witness accounts, opened the safe, and lugged a heavy metal box with the money to a white sport utility vehicle with Vermont license plates.

There are, certainly, much more heinous offenses, especially considering that the collection in the safe consisted mostly of checks that could be stopped, and that the whole amount was insured. But the nerve shown by the thieves made it hard — especially for parishioners who had attended the church for decades — to imagine a worse transgression.

“I’m shocked,” said Claudia DiMaggio, 36, who went to the church’s grammar school. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

The Rev. Christopher J. Turczany, who was saying Mass at the time of the theft, still sounded shaken in an interview after the noon service. “They were very bold — not even scared,” said Father Turczany, who believes he saw one of the thieves about an hour before the robbery. That it happened on Christmas, he added, “is heartbreaking.” But he was thankful no one was hurt, recalling a violent episode at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2002 when a man waved a gun at a priest in the church’s rectory before shooting himself in the chin.

Wired 15.01: The Perfect Human
DEAN KARNAZES WAS SLOBBERING DRUNK. IT WAS HIS 30TH BIRTHDAY, and he’d started with beer and moved on to tequila shots at a bar near his home in San Francisco. Now, after midnight, an attractive young woman – not his wife – was hitting on him. This was not the life he’d imagined for himself. He was a corporate hack desperately running the rat race. The company had just bought him a new Lexus. He wanted to vomit. Karnazes resisted the urge and, instead, slipped out the bar’s back door and walked the few blocks to his house. On the back porch, he found an old pair of sneakers. He stripped down to his T-shirt and underwear, laced up the shoes, and started running. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fox: How can the FCC fine us when they don’t publish the rules?
The FCC was in court last week, defending its recent indecency rulings before an appellate panel of judges. The case at issue was brought by Fox after the network was sanctioned (but not fined) by the agency for a pair of curse words that went “unbleeped” during two different awards shows. The FCC found the broadcast indecent and Fox sued, looking for clarity as to what constitutes indecent material.

Fox is confused because the FCC does not issue clear standards about what is and is not acceptable on TV and radio. The agency believes that doing so would amount to censorship, so they only sanction broadcasters once a show has aired. The obvious problem here is that broadcasters never know in advance if a show will be found indecent; the end result is self-censorship by networks trying to avoid the FCC’s wrath.

The justices grilled both parties to a crispy golden brown (watch the video at C-SPAN) and showed tremendous skepticism toward many of the FCC’s claims. Because the agency’s powers to regulate indecency rarely receive a court hearing, the case could be an important one. It’s too early to know how the court will rule (the decision is not expected for several more months), but the ruling could curtail the FCC’s power to regulate broadcast content.

If it does so, it won’t quite be the Wild West—the networks will still be accountable to their public. Groups like the Parents Television Council (which is by some accounts responsible for 99 percent of FCC indecency complaints) will shift their focus from the FCC to the networks, who will then be on the receiving end of e-mail and letter campaigns, boycotts, and punditry whenever they show material that some consider objectionable.

Given that YouTube, webcasts, and cable television all go largely unregulated by the government, is it only a matter of time before the agency loses its sanctioning power over the major broadcast networks? Or will it convince the judiciary that over-the-air broadcasters need special government oversight? Given the direction that things are moving in the industry, it may not really matter either way; unregulated distribution channels (web broadcasts, cable channels, satellite radio, BitTorrent, etc.) are exploding. The major networks will simply avoid FCC problems by censoring over-the-air broadcasts and making the unedited material available online (as NBC recently did with the SNL joke song “Dick in a Box”).

NBC.com > Saturday Night Live
Digital Short: The uncensored version that didn’t air on TV! This holiday season, give the biggest gift of all, “Dick in a box”.

Wikipedia founder to create user-driven search engine
According to Wales, conventional search-engine ranking algorithms lack the efficacy of human intervention. “Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision: ‘this page is good, this page sucks’,” says Wales, “Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way.” Wales also complains about poor results from mainstream search engines, commenting: “Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap.”

wookie-lp.jpg (JPEG Image, 324×321 pixels)
http://www.i-mockery.com/shorts/starwars-xmas/wookie-lp.jpg

Overview
DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense DoD. DARPA’s mission is to leverage ingenuity and research to develop transformational technologies that give our armed forces a decisive edge.

DARPA Grand Challenge
Created in response to a Congressional and DoD mandate, DARPA Grand Challenge is a field test intended to accelerate research and development in autonomous ground vehicles that will help save American lives on the battlefield. The Grand Challenge brings together individuals and organizations from industry, the R&D community, government, the armed services, academia, students, backyard inventors, and automotive enthusiasts in the pursuit of a technological challenge.

Grand Challenge 2004
The Grand Challenge 2004 field test of autonomous ground vehicles ran from Barstow, California to Primm, Nevada offered a $1 million prize. From the qualifying round at the California Speedway, 15 finalists emerged to attempt the Grand Challenge. However, the prize went unclaimed as no vehicles were able to complete the difficult desert route.

Grand Challenge 2005
The Grand Challenge 2005 was held on October 8, 2005 in the desert Southwest. The Stanford Racing Team won the $2 million prize with the winning time of 6 hours, 53 minutes. A total of five teams completed the Grand Challenge course which was 132 miles over desert terrain.

More on DARPA Grand Challenge at Wikipedia.

The Hole - video powered by Metacafe

Slashdot | Google Reaches Second-Most Visited Site Status
Another anonymous reader has written to mention a story carried by Bloomberg, which has the news that Google is the second-most visited site on the internet. This puts it out in front of Yahoo!, which previously held the position. Google is now just behind Microsoft which, as the submitter pointed out, is the site that IE defaults to. From the article: ” Visitors to Google’s sites rose 9.1 percent to 475.7 million in November from a year earlier, while those to Yahoo sites rose 5.2 percent to 475.3 million, ComScore Networks Inc. said today. Both sites trail Microsoft, which had 501.7 million visitors, ComScore said. It is the first time that Mountain View, California-based Google attracted more visitors than Yahoo, reflecting Google’s growing popularity outside the U.S.”

Judge: music labels have to prove sharing
The beat goes on in the world of file-sharing litigation. Earlier this week, the case against Patti Santangelo was dismissed without prejudice and refiled, this time naming two of her children as defendants. In another closely followed case, UMG v. Lindor, a federal judge has ruled that the RIAA will have to show that Lindor actually shared music, a higher burden than demonstrating that she made the files available for download.

Judge David G. Trager ruled that when the case goes to trial, “plaintiffs will have the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant did indeed infringe plaintiffs copyrights by convincing the fact-finder, based on the evidence plaintiffs have gathered, that defendant actually shared sound files belonging to plaintiffs.”

In Electra v. Perez, another judge held that making files available for distribution was enough to prove infringement. Since that case was dismissed without prejudice, there is little likelihood that the ruling in that case will be precedent setting.

UMG v. Lindor appears headed for trial next year unless one of the parties blinks. With todays ruling, it appears that the record labels will have to demonstrate that someone actually infringed on their copyrights by downloading music from Lindors computer. Thats a step beyond the RIAAs argument that making files available for download constitutes infringement.

Keep in mind that since none of the file-sharing cases have actually made it to trial, there is little indication of how a judge will respond to the arguments put forth by both sides.

Ramjet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A ramjet, sometimes referred to as a stovepipe jet, is a type of jet engine. It contains no (major) moving parts and can be particularly useful in applications requiring a small and simple engine for high speed use; such as missiles. They have also been used successfully, though not efficiently, as tipjets on helicopter rotors.

Afterburner (engine) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An afterburner is an additional component added to some jet engines, primarily those on military aircraft. The Jumo 004 engine variation, 004C, included an afterburner for increased thrust in the design, but was never built. It was also considered for the Miles M.52 project during the last years of World War II (never completed nor tested) where it was called a reheat jetpipe.

Its purpose is to provide a temporary increase in thrust for situations such as take-off, or in military aircraft, combat or supersonic flight. This is achieved by injecting additional fuel into the jet pipe downstream of (i.e. after) the turbine. This fuel is ignited by the hot exhaust gasses and adds greatly to the thrust of the engine. The advantage of afterburning is significantly increased thrust; the disadvantage of afterburning is its very high fuel consumption and inefficiency but this is acceptable for the short periods in which reheat is usually used.

Jet engines are referred to as operating wet when reheat is being used, and dry when the engine is used without afterburner.

List of Emacs commands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Emacs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Commands

From the Unix shell, a file can be opened for editing by typing “emacs [filename]“. If the filename you entered does not exist a file will be created with that name. For example “emacs xorg.conf” will edit the xorg.conf file in the current directory, if it exists. However, Emacs documentation recommends starting Emacs without a file name, to avoid the bad habit of starting a separate Emacs for each file you edit. Visiting all files in a single Emacs process is the way to get the full benefit of Emacs.

In the normal editing mode, Emacs behaves just like other text editors: the character keys (a, b, c, 1, 2, 3, etc.) insert the corresponding characters, the arrow keys move the editing point, backspace deletes text, and so forth. Other commands are invoked with modified keystrokes, pressing the control key and/or the meta key/alt key in conjunction with a regular key. Every editing command is actually a call to a function in the Emacs Lisp environment. Even a command as simple as typing a to insert the character a involves calling a function–in this case, self-insert-command.

Some of the basic commands are shown below. More can be found at List of Emacs commands. The control key [Ctrl] is denoted by a capital C, and the meta or alt [Alt] key by a capital M.

Delta encoding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Delta encoding is a way of storing or transmitting data in the form of differences between sequential data rather than complete files. Delta encoding is sometimes called delta compression, particularly where archival histories of changes are required (e.g., in software projects).

The differences are recorded in discrete files called “deltas” or “diffs”, after the Unix file comparison utility, diff. Because changes are often small (only 2% total size on average), delta encoding greatly reduces data redundancy. Collections of unique deltas are substantially more space-efficient than their non-encoded equivalents.

(Delta encoding should not be confused with Elias delta coding).

Perhaps the simplest example is storing values of bytes as differences (deltas) between sequential values, rather than the values themselves. So, instead of 2, 4, 6, 9, 7, we would store 2, 2, 2, 3, -2. This is not very useful when used alone, but it can help further compression of data in which sequential values occur often. IFF 8SVX sound format applies this encoding to raw sound data before applying compression to it. Unfortunately, not even all 8-bit sound samples compress better when delta encoded, and the usability of delta encoding is even smaller for 16-bit and better samples. Therefore, compression algorithms often choose to delta encode only when the compression is better than without. However, in video compression delta frames can considerably reduce frame size, and are used in virtually every video compression codec.

Concurrent Versions System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CVS uses client-server architecture: a server stores the current version(s) of the project and its history, and clients connect to the server in order to check-out a complete copy of the project, work on this copy and then later check-in their changes. Typically, client and server connect over a LAN or over the Internet, but client and server may both run on the same machine if CVS has the task of keeping track of the version history of a project with only local developers. The server software normally runs on Unix (although at least CVSNT server supports various flavors of Windows and Unix), while CVS clients may run on any major operating-system platform.

Several developers may work on the same project concurrently, each one editing files within their own working copy of the project, and sending (or checking in) their modifications to the server. To avoid the possibility of people stepping on each other’s toes, the server will only accept changes made to the most recent version of a file. Developers are therefore expected to keep their working copy up-to-date by incorporating other people’s changes on a regular basis. This task is mostly handled automatically by the CVS client, requiring manual intervention only when a conflict arises between a checked-in modification and the yet-unchecked local version of a file.

If the check-in operation succeeds, then the version numbers of all files involved automatically increment, and the CVS server writes a user-supplied description line, the date and the author’s name to its log files. CVS can also run external, user-specified log processing scripts following each commit. These scripts are installed by an entry in CVS’s loginfo file, which can trigger email notification, or convert the log data into a web-based format.

Clients can also compare different versions of files, request a complete history of changes, or check-out a historical snapshot of the project as of a given date or as of a revision number. Many open-source projects allow “anonymous read access”, a feature that was pioneered by OpenBSD. This means that clients may check-out and compare versions with either a blank or simple published password (e.g “anoncvs”); only the check-in of changes requires a personal account and password in these scenarios.

Clients can also use the “update” command in order to bring their local copies up-to-date with the newest version on the server. This eliminates the need for repeated downloading of the whole project.

CVS can also maintain different “branches” of a project. For instance, a released version of the software project may form one branch, used for bug fixes, while a version under current development, with major changes and new features, forms a separate branch.

CVS uses delta compression for efficient storage of different versions of the same file. The implementation favours files with many lines (usually text files) - in extreme cases individual copies of each version are stored rather than a delta.

Catmull-Rom spline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computer graphics, Catmull-Rom splines are frequently used to get smooth interpolated motion between key-frames. For example, most camera path animations generated from discrete key-frames are handled using Catmull-Rom splines. They are popular mainly for being relatively easy to compute, guaranteeing that each key-frame position will be hit exactly, and also guaranteeing that the tangents of the generated curve are continuous over multiple segments.

Phong shading - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As a rendering method, Phong shading can be regarded as an improvement on Gouraud shading that provides a better approximation to a point-by-point application of an underlying reflection model by assuming a smoothly varying surface normal vector. The Phong interpolation method works better than Gouraud shading when applied to the Phong reflection model or to any reflection model that has small specular highlights.

The main problem with Gouraud shading is that when a specular highlight occurs near the center of a large triangle, it will usually be missed entirely, due to the interpolation of colors between vertices. This problem is fixed by Phong shading.

Bump mapping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bump mapping is a computer graphics technique where at each pixel, a perturbation to the surface normal of the object being rendered is looked up in a heightmap and applied before the illumination calculation is done (see, for instance, Phong shading). The result is a richer, more detailed surface representation that more closely resembles the details inherent in the natural world. Normal mapping is the most commonly used bump mapping technique, but there are other alternatives, such as Parallax mapping.

The difference between displacement mapping and bump mapping is evident in the example images; in bump mapping, the normal alone is perturbed, not the geometry itself. This leads to artifacts in the silhouette of the object (the sphere still has a circular silhouette).

Nonuniform rational B-spline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Development of NURBS (Non Uniform Rational Basis Spline) began in the 1950s by engineers who were in need of a mathematically exact representation of freeform surfaces like those used for car bodies and ship hulls, which could be exactly reproduced whenever technically needed. Prior representations of this kind of surface only existed as a single physical model created by a designer.

The pioneers of this development were Pierre Bézier who worked as an engineer at Renault, and Paul de Casteljau who worked at Citroën, both in France. Bézier worked nearly parallel to de Casteljau, neither knowing about the work of the other. But because Bézier published the results of his work, the average computer graphics user today recognizes splines — which are represented with control points lying on the curve itself — as Bézier splines, while de Casteljau’s name is only known and used for the algorithms he developed to evaluate parametric surfaces. In the 1960s it became clear that non-uniform, rational B-splines are a generalization of Bézier splines, which can be regarded as uniform, non-rational B-splines.

ClearType - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Computer displays in which the positions of individual pixels are permanently fixed by the design of the hardware—such as most modern flat-panel displays—can show strong aliasing artifacts, which manifest as jagged, saw-tooth edges (sometimes referred to as “jaggies”) when displaying small, high-contrast graphic elements such as text. ClearType uses anti-aliasing at the subpixel level to greatly reduce visible artifacts on such displays when text is rendered, making the text appear “smoother” and more legible.

While the exact implementation of ClearType is specific to Microsoft, the older principles upon which it is based have been known and used for many years in various types of display systems, such as that used by computers with NTSC television sets in the 1970s.

Like most other types of subpixel rendering, ClearType actually involves a compromise, sacrificing one aspect of image quality (color or chrominance detail) for another (light and dark or luminance detail). The compromise improves text appearance because when viewing black and white text, luminance detail is more important than chrominance. The compromise works because it takes advantage of certain pecularities of human vision.

ClearType is applied only to text that is rendered as such by user and system applications. Other graphic display elements (including text that has already been converted to bitmaps) are not altered by ClearType. For example, text in Microsoft Word will be rendered on the screen with ClearType enhancement, but text placed in a bitmapped image in a program such as Adobe Photoshop will not be modified. This is important because the ClearType technology is extremely specific to text rendering on certain types of computer displays; it would not be useful and could even degrade perceived image quality if it were applied in any other circumstances.