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SS2 upgraded models

Although Mr.Carmack says physics in game engines isn't easily scalable for level of detail, there is ongoing research about this producing good results. I remember a video from last years SIGGRAPH that had hundreds of plastic chairs falling from the sky, and bouncing realistically. The important part was it employed a level-of-detail hierarchy for interacting parts (i.e. an object doesn't have much physical detail if you don't touch it), but it will be some time before we can see such techniques in real time games.

I think you're misunderstanding his point. When he talks about level-of-detail, this has more to do with game design than with algorithms. What he's claiming is that detailed physics has much more of an effect on actual gameplay than detailed rending does, and that it's harder to write a game which graceful downgrades the player's physical interaction with the world. But a graceful downgrading is necessary for people who don't have a fancy physics-accelerating card.

For example, you can take an older game and change its appearance by giving it higher resolution textures, more detailed meshes for the AI models etc., without having to redesign the actual gameplay. (e.g., the SHTUP and Rebirth mods for System Shock 2).

These steps are independent of each other and independent of the rest of the game. They can simply be dropped in, or not. The point is that if it's that straightforward to take a game forward in technology, it's even easier to go in reverse. So the player can choose low texture detail, etc., and the game may look worse, but it will still play the same.

The game physics on the other hand has historically been more closely connected to the way the player interacts with the world.. so it has a big effect on level design. If Half-Life 2 had a 'simple physics' option that would somehow revert the game physics to something equivalent to the physics in the original Half-Life (ignoring aside the difficulty in implementing such an option) then some areas would have to be substantially redesigned so that they would remain playable for people using the simple physics.

This is of course what he means by peripheral elements "such as flowing water" being accelerated. But I have two criticisms of this.

1) Yes, physics acceleration may affect mainly peripheral elements of the game. But in some ways, the same could be said about improved textures, filtering, etc. If it's done well, it can significantly improve the overall experience. If it's done poorly, the player will hardly notice.

2) As long as it's an upgrade of the basic design, it will probably be okay to let it affect critical elements as well. E.g.: due to the engine upgrade in the port of Half-Life to the Source engine, movable crates and such have a more realistic response than in the original implementation. It's not a big improvement, since the levels were really designed with that in mind. But it doesn't hurt.

For me, the real question is whether improved physics would really make a game more enjoyable. I think this depends more on graphics than on anything else. As objects are made to look more realistic, it becomes more satisfying for them to have real-seeming interactions.

If graphics get much better, accelerated physics will be important. But if for some reason graphics tend to stabilize (due to the end of Moore's Law, long load times caused by slow disk access, or whatever), then the usefulness of improving game physics is more questionable.

http://home.att.net/~jbcole/humor/Microsoft_patent s.htm

I looked at AvantGo, but it doesn't support Linux.

Probably depends on your PDA. I'm using a (rather old) m515 with Linux & J-Pilot. Get the client for the PDA from AvantGo (the last files contain the .PRCs), then J-Pilot, and finally the MAL plugin (which might be already included in your distribution). Don't forget to enable the conduit in J-Pilot :)

Not true. Pedal locations were not always standard.
eg: http://home.att.net/~Berliner-Ultrasonics/mercedes .html
"The S and SS had the gas pedal BETWEEN the clutch and brake pedals? Made for some hairy reactions in emergencies!"

==>Lazn

In flat country, regenerative braking is not worthwhile. In moderately hilly country, regenerative braking could give up to 10% extra range.

Nevertheless, I'll attribute the remaining 35% mileage improvement to regenerative braking. That brings us to the 200 mile (maximum) range estimate in the article. Neglecting friction, 60 kWh at maximum speed (65 kW, 80 mph) gets you about an hour of driving, or an 80 mile range. My understanding is that electric motors have no preferable rpm range, so (neglecting friction) this is a valid estimate.

This means that, assuming the weights of the li-ion and fuel-cell-only systems are about equal, adding 25 miles for weight improvements, and with regenerative braking adding an additional 35%, a li-ion-only system would have a range of about 140 miles. Remember, though, that a significant portion of this is attributable to the dubious benefits of regenerative braking, which gives rise to the wide range of mileage estimates in the article.

I'll admit this range is suprising

Hrmm

Article

Obligatory list of mirrors of my favorite techy Onion article:

http://home.att.net/~jbcole/humor/Microsoft_patent s.htm

http://www.ece.villanova.edu/~thanneru/zeroesAndOn es.html

http://www.gleitsmann.com/Frame3x3long.htm

And here's a link for a shirt:
http://subscribe.theonion.com/product_info.php?cPa th=5_12&products_id=80

You know, if only we had a search engine, that would save your joke...

Consider it saved.

I had thought my source had stated that, but I was wrong.

XB-36 Article

So the issue is that alone you would do the right thing, but in a group, you are involved with an excuse--that the rest of the group might not want it.

This is where I feel that corporations become evil. It is not any individual, it is the fact that when you get many individuals together you get the lowest common denominator when it comes to morals.

Everybody starts using this group as an excuse. It's okay if every individual profits from it, but there is no individual responsibility for having a soul.

This is the one case where a government should be strong--to ensure that these companies are giving back to the community, a community that supports them with educated workers, streets, protection, and customers.

Just because we have allowed companies to have "Rights", doesn't make it right.

The funny thing is, this has been known again and again throughout time. When things are going well, humans can't help but get greedy. We start to think that greed is great. We let government pass laws stomping on other people so a few can get richer. It's like we actually want people so rich that the only thing they can do with their money is buy laws or other people (acts that are by definition damaging to the general populace)

Last time it happened was in the 20's. By the 40's we had recaptured the government and started rebuilding from the wreck those laws had caused. Everyone understood how bad greed was at that point. The lesson lasted until the 80's, that's not too bad, but it seems like it must be time for another reminder.

http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/THE_GREAT_DEPRESSI ON.htm

The way corporations abuse copyrights is just one example of the extremities of greed they will go to when left unchecked. It will get worse.

The community is in great need of such fonts. This open source online equation editor is just an example. We had to recommend the use of a shareware pan-unicode font (Code2000) because the only alternative is the proprietary Arial Unicode MS.

Nevertheless, the time it took them to make STIX almost ready looks hilarious to me. Does anybody know how long does it usually take to design such a font?

Another cryptic Slashdot summary. Geez, we don't ALL know what to make of this mysterious "Canada" of which you speak. Whowherehuh?

Anyway, from a helpful primer I found:

"In fact, Canadians enjoy advancements such as refrigerated food, zippers and printing," notes Dorman, an "accountant" who goes to work wearing the comfortable trousers, dress shirt and necktie that form a traditional Canadian costume. "Our industries are large and varied, ranging from logging to automobile manufacturing."

Not too shabby for a nation that just 240 years ago had no electricity.

More info here. Good to know.

For a good comparison you could visit the LED Museum at http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/

Everything there is to know about LED's, flashlights and lasers.

I'm not the one you replied to, but I did look up the spectrum -- it's shown here. It's definitely more spread out than I would have guessed, but it doesn't look like an incandescent,

College campuses make good alien/futuristic cities. When I was attending UC Riverside, Gene Roddenberry came and turned the campus into the stronghold of the 22nd-century mutant warlords. Which really doesn't say anything nice about the architecture....

There are, if you can believe it, real flashlights that are almost as complicated. This one has a thirteen page user's guide in addition to a quick start guide and a reference card.

(The LED Museum is a site that all nerds should bookmark. I believe it's been Slashdotted before.)

But your assuming Energy Industry corruption where it may or may not exist.

Some of us live in the real world. Please join us.

Show where energy companies have financed GW skepticisim.

Here's an article detailing the GCC, a (former) energy industry-funded interest group.
http://www.prwatch.org/improp/gcc.html

Here's an article detailing how higher-education-based research "may" be influenced by energy company funding.
http://www.campaignexxonmobil.org/news/News_ChronH igherEd_2003.html

There's plenty more out there for those who are willing to look.

Finally, I looked up that Schneider quote (it's from 2. J. Schell, Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989., which is unf. not in discover.com's web archive).

However, there is plenty of evidence that this quote is taken out of context - i.e. you've fallen prey to someone's "talking points" (though at least you included the last sentences, which are often left out - check Google for easy proof).

Without the original article, we can at least read a related message by Schneider, addressing the "controversy" over his quote.
http://rpuchalsky.home.att.net/sci_env/sch_quote.h tml

This words are particularly telling:
What I was telling the Discover interviewer,
of course, was my disdain for a soundbite-communications process that
imposes the double ethical bind on all who venture into the popular
media. To twist my openly stated and serious objections to the
soundbite process into some kind of advocacy of exaggeration is a
clear distortion. Moreover, not only do I disapprove of the "ends
justify the means" philosophy of which I am accused, but, in fact have
actively campaigned against it in myriad speeches and writings.

By your rationale it's perfectly fine for Global Warming skeptics to mike wild accusations, false or not, about the Global warming movement in the interest of firthering science?

Of course not, I expect honesty, and that honesty should be based on accuracy, not ignorance.

You're welcome, though it looks like I was partially mistaken as the only IR LED review I can find now is this one...
http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/ledir.htm
.
. ...and there do not seem to be any IR flashlights reviewed there. The above review links to this IR LED supplier...
http://www.irled.com/
.
. ...which seems to no longer exist. I googled and found this company, though...
http://www.ledsupply.com/
.
. ...selling the following two IR LEDs:
http://store.yahoo.com/ledsupply/l2-0-ir3th60-1.ht ml
http://store.yahoo.com/ledsupply/l2-0-ir5th30-1.ht ml

You can find IR flashlights and LEDs reviewed here:
http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/

So the Onion is really a prophetic newspaper.

He only said that because he accidentally published it with the movements being of different lengths, yet still adding up to exactly 4'33", which seems to indicate that his clame of note-for-note composition was little more than marketing spin.

There's a fair amount of discussion on this point in the document you originally cited. There are a number of potential explanations for the disparity in timings between publications. The most obvious one is a simple misremembering, which itself might be considered a chance operation. For you to claim with a tone of authority why it happened or what Cage was thinking is pretty ridiculous, particularly in the light of Cage's own statements that contradict your claims. One wonders, as well, why you would doubt so stubbornly that the piece was composed note by note (not "note-for-note")--as Cage was in the process of writing Music For Changes at the time, he was doing this pretty regularly. Why should anyone believe your claim that it was "marketing spin" and not several days of actual compositional process, as Cage himself stated?

In other words, one is free to perform 4'33" at any time, for any duration, for one's own, or someone else's entertainment or interest.

You are confusing 4'33" with 0'0", which was a later work he "composed," which consisted of actively listening to one's environment in any context for any druration.

Here are two additional quotations from the document you cited:

Later, Cage did not regard the length of the movements as important. "It can be any length," he said, "so that we can listen at any time to what there is to hear." "I think what we need in the field of music is a very long performance of that work." If the length is insignificant, then why spend "several days to write it"? And, why have specific lengths at all? -- It was most likely because Cage later realized that a fixed temporal frame was not necessary for this work. Perhaps he realized the mistake of the two different timings and decided that it really didn't matter after all. (Perhaps this was the "mistake" he referred to in I-VI.) This, in itself, points to another change in compositional philosophy after writing 4'33", which may have been the cause of it.

And...

When asked about the disparity in time lengths of the scores, Cage replied that it could be of any length. This does not mean, however, that the formal structure of 4'33" can be violated. He said that it would still be titled 4'33", that the durations of the movements must be determined by some type of chance procedure, and that it must be in three movements.

On to your other statement:

4'33" is always performed by one instrument, and always for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.

Here's another quote from the document you cited. You yourself, in fact, already quoted this paragraph earlier in the discussion:

4'33" is written for any instrument or combination of instruments. It is, however, usually done as a piano piece. This is probably because of the precedent set by the premiere performance, since the score does not specify a piano or any other instrument.

You're confusing the manuscript with the writing process. As with a number of Cage's pieces, the actual notes were chosen using chance operations. The fact that the manuscript had no notes written on it is due to the notes' already having been rendered tacet. No doubt there is a page somewhere in the world where Cage wrote down the operations and their result before producing the manuscript you are referring to.

Similarly, Cage once made a film of a chess game he played with Marcel Duchamp, wherein the exposure settings for the film camera were determined by chance operations. Parts of the film are completely black. This doesn't mean there wasn't a chessboard in the frame; it means that the process didn't record its image. The manuscript for 4'33" is like the black segments of the chess film--the image is there, but the notes have been erased.

If you actually go back and read the document you quoted, without attribution, among many other details, you'll find the following quote from Cage:

I wrote it note by note, just like the Music of Changes [1951]. That's how I knew how long it was when I added the notes up. It was done like a piece of music, except there were no sounds -- but there were durations.

We may never know whether the notes Cage wrote for 4'33" had pitches. It may be that he didn't generate enough chance data to derive pitches from, or that he merely didn't bother to extract the pitch information from his data, since it wasn't needed. In the latter case, if we knew the process and had the data, we could indeed produce the pitches to go along with the durations.

But assuming, for the sake of [your] argument, that no information for pitches was ever even generated, we could have a semantic debate as to whether durations by themselves, without pitch, constitute "notes". The fact is that, underlying 4'33", at the very least, there is a sequence of durations of specific durations. These constitute a rhythm; would you argue that a specific rhythm written out on a score to be played on a snare drum is not written "note by note"? Now take away the snare drum.

Finally, consider that rests often occur in places where a specific pitch is expected, such as the middle of a phrase; one hears the pitch in one's mind even though it is not heard. 4'33" can be regarded as a piece where all of the notes are expected, yet heard only in one's mind. It illustrates how the act of listening for music enables the mind to hear it, even if the guy at the piano isn't touching any keys.

One thing I find noticablly missing from this discussion is the fact that a recording of a performance of Cage's 4'33" would not, in fact, be the audio equivalent of a zero-byte file. Cage's intention, as documented here was that there can be no such thing as listening to the total abcense of sound. A recording of a performance of 4'33" should include the ambient noises from the recording situation (made better now through improved recording techniques).

I guess that one could "perform" the performance by listening to the whole piece on a computer where the music file is 4'33" of nulls and end up listening to the ambient noise in the listening environment (my ears ringing, in my case, due to audio abuse I subjected them to in my youth), but that would probably be more of a computer-induced performance of the piece rather than an accoustic recording of another performance, which would include audience noises (i.e. people shifting in their seats, polite coughs, etc.) as well as environmental ones (i.e. air handling system cycling, wind movement in an outdoor environment, etc.)

We're a bit too late for that one...

A darkened cabin aboard this vessel.. Two figures lie in bed.

Zoom in on the perspiring figure of Captain Robert April, tossing and turning in a fitful sleep. Having consumed entirely too much Arcturian rarebit at dinner the night before, April suddenly sits bolt upright in bed, screaming "YAAAAHHHHH!!! in sheer terror, the result of a particularly long and horrible nightmare. Wife Sarah, rubbing the sleep from her own eyes, rolls over looking at him with concern and says, "Honey, what's wrong? What's wrong?"

Slow fade to black, roll credits.

This great practically self-taught Indian mathematician might have said differently.

Also, a brief look into the history of mathematics will reveal a decimal system in use in India around 2100BC, the development of theories of a solar-centric solar system, and pi around 500 AD, and tangible proof of the development of zero and negative numbers around 650-ish AD (the 7th century, and yes, this is a huge accomplishment nit-wit). Additonally, the term sine is derived from an Indian word, as trigonometry originated there, though you likely never made it through algebra.

The contributions made by the people of the Indian subcontinent are far from trivial. Sounds like someone also needs a history lesson.

IIRC MS patented boolean values a few months ago

The Onion is not a real news source.

Incredibly bad at honoring our debt obligations? Particularly unstable? Can you provide evidence or example? Has the instability been more or less disruptive to the foundations of government than that associated with the depression, abolition, women's suffrage, or the civil war?

http://home.att.net/~mwhodges/debt.htm tells the story- and we've yet to see how disruptive it will be. Certainly at present time, anybody buying any sort of security sold by the United States Government is a fool who doesn't know the truth about just how overextended we are and how we've failed to pay back any significant debt since 1929.

Yes, but you're the one who said we should "hide the body" and "charge up" their credit cards. If I were to extend the metaphore, your plan is like leading a mob of stockholders that shoot Martha Stewart in a crowded public square because you don't think she's gonna honor her stock.

If Martha has spent the past 60 years not honoring her stock- then you might have a bit of a case.

Yes, good thinking. You can cleanly pick off the large corporations. No small businesses provide any services to large corporations, and large corporations don't contribute to the economy. There will still be plenty of demand left in the economy when people once employed by the corporations and small businesses are out of work. I suppose that once the corporations are gone, the people will be happier without their televisions, sodas, cars, gas, computers, and other products produced by large corporations. After all, they will have the company's office furniture and the cash from the register at the local Texaco under the mattress.

What does demand matter to a starving population? Basic needs have yet to be met for 100% of the population- maybe when your vaulted capitalism can do that, we can talk about how the rest is worth something.

Of course that cash gets its value because it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, an institution destroyed under your plan.

That institute has no faith and credit left- hasn't for a very long time now.

Dramatic inflation would be almost inevitable as the dollars value would plummet without the government there to give it value.

What's wrong with inflation? At least inflation helps us pay down debt.

Oh, right, your Marxist benevloence would shine through after killing and seizing the assets of everyone perceived to hold power under the current system.

Why not, what would I do with excess?

Guilty as charged. I believe that the free market is still better than what humans can accomplish via managed economies.

Then you're just another wage slave who doesn't know he's got fewer freedoms than your average 13th century peasant.

I believe that the federal representative republic in which we live gives citizens a voice without yielding to mob rule.

Too bad none of the representatives are chosen by the citizens anymore- they're all bought and paid for by the corporations, who are the real government.

I believe that limited debt is an efficient way to take risk in order to produce growth, and that the presence of a federal deficit for over 100 years actually argues strongly that the government takes its debt obligations seriously.

100 years of defaulting on debt argues that the government takes it's debt obligations seriously? Actually, it hasn't been 100 years yet- we had no debt and no deficit in 1928 and 1929, the last time that the government could be counted on to pay it's debts.

Quite the contrary. I disagree strongly with your argument in favor of torture, murder, and theft for the recovery of debt. That does not equate with a belief that defaulting on debt should be "punishment" free. I believe that it should be free from punishment by bodily injury.

Which means free from punishment- besides, above you said you agreed with the rediculous argument that failing to pay debt for 100 years is evidence of taking debt seriously.....

A bit of backup for what I was saying about the United States honoring it's debt obligations: http://home.att.net/~mwhodges/debt.htm is an interesting report on how we went from oweing NOTHING to ANYBODY, to $200 million over the 20 years after WWII never getting paid off but never going up either, to the horrid situation we have today where every baby is born $25,000 in debt or more. It shows how over the last 40 years, Americans have been taking WAY more in government services than they have been paying for- and why the "surplus" was a bogus fiddling of numbers taking from FICA to support tax breaks for the rich.

If you like Reboot you should try Kid Rad Its a fairly involved comic about old Game ROMs on the Internet. Its really surprisingly deep and has a quality ending. (Yes, an on-line comic with an ending!)

Anyone who is now thinking; "eww on-line comic"... Well, your loss.

> There is no dispute over the fact that it was an ordinary laser pointer
> involved. I'm not sure what sort of "powerful" laser pointer you have in
> mind. Go down to Best Buy and try to buy one of these "powerful" pointers.
>
> Let us presume, however, that you have somehow managed to get a "powerful"
> pointer and a monocular. You will still be unable to do anything more that
> pass the beam over the retina of a motionless man 20 feet away by "blind"
> luck, and only for a fraction of a second at a time. The feat has nothing to
> do with the power of the laser or any possible optical magnification.

I can buy a 47mW green laser pointer on ebay.
I can find a 50mW one or even a 190mW one.

Note that these class IIIb lasers that *will* damage the eye faster than the blink reflex kicks in (read: fraction of a second) on a "sweep" -- no monocular required; and can even cause damage if viewed indirectly (reflected).

You've quoted/created/invented/whatever the Fifth Law of robotics.

The Fourth Law can be found here.

The Sixth Law probably contains directions for what a robot does with this switch when Slashdotted.

And then there is a Seventh Law on what a robot does when pursued by Will Smith in the worst acted, most unlikable role of his recent career.

She's turning up a ton of hits on Google

Here she is at the XGamestation booth: http://www.xgamestation.com/view_media.php?id=109

Here's another article on her:

http://home.att.net/~rmestel/articles/on_road_ells worth.txt

It's not just poor grammar -- many high school graduates aren't as smart as 8th graders were 100 years ago. I guess kids these days aren't spending enough time looking at history books. Then again, who can blame them? Most of them would rather be catching up on public interest stories.

You are very much mistaken.

" According to the Treasury Department, major foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities total $1.35 trillion. Over the first seven months of 2003, mainland China and Hong Kong accumulated $177 billion of U.S. debt.

Currently, China is the world's second-largest buyer of our debt, exceeded only by Japan. Furthermore, China's purchases of U.S. government securities rose 20 percent over the first half of this year and have more than doubled since 2001."

(Source: Congressman John Tanner

Some more reading:

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat-b.h tm#foreign

Wow. I thought I wasn't that old, having started my chops on a C64 (actually a Atari 400, but shortly thereafter upgrading to the 64), until I saw this (one of the Google Images result pages for the person in question) - it's pretty bad when 1/3 of your local regulars also appear in the "In Memoriam" section (notice how some nefarious agent photoshopped the shirt on Mr. Kirby, may he rest in peace, between the topmost photo and his memory photo).

Children in the USA can avoid expensive legal fees by paying a nominal license fee.

$49.95 per year allows children to use the following patented terms:
GimmyThat!
ItsMine!
IsNot!
IsToo!
NahU aa!
You're a poo-poo head!!!
MOM!

Geez! This reminds me of this story:
http://home.att.net/~jbcole/humor/Microsoft_patent s.htm

Next thing you know they will get a patent on the whole "One or Zero" thingy.

been there. done that.

Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes

In my commuting it's become clear to me that most humans shouldn't control vehicles. Too many of them drive erratically, creating traffic flow problems by changing speed and weaving between lanes.And there are the idiots who think there's only accelerate and brake. Few seem to understand coasting is a way to slow down without causing a compression wave from your brake lights. Commuting would be so nice if we all had mass transit or Johnny Cabs.

It can be patented anyway and as Microsoft has patented zeroes and ones, all your base are belong to Microsoft (quite literally) ;-) .

My commendations on creating havoc. This pathetic discussion forum will now have four more years to gripe!

Perhaps you would like to check out the fine wares and warez at Villain Supply to further your future evil needs? If you've got the cash, we've got the evil! [TM]

* ( Posted anonymously to avoid those pesky agents who are after my WMDs! Silly federal agents, WMDs are for Evil Overlords! Offers void where legal, further restrictions may apply. See henchmen for details. WMDs may not be shipped to Iraq at this time. By purchasing one of our fine products, you agree to give us control of the world should you ever actually take control of it. This agreement is terminated whenever you are. )

Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

--
But this is the best part, this is when they... START RAPPING! Bwahahaha. "It's The Ledged Of Zelda and it's really rad. Those creatures from Gondorf are pretty bad." That is just a snippet from the rhyming prodigy's in this commercial. I don't really know what Nintendo was thinking when they thought up the idea for portraying their customers as hopeless dorks, but this is by far my favorite Nintendo commercial.

So far spim has only affected relatively small numbers of users

By which they mean anyone who ever goes into an AIM chatroom. It's so bad almost noone uses them anymore, even with pyboticide

Local loop and long distance, voice over IP (currently in a price war with Vonage), and some silly thing called the Internet.

Sure, if you're twelve. Whereas I agree that Reeve remains the quintessential Supes, he had a tough time prying the crown from this guy's troubled brow. For many of us growing up, George Reeves was the real dealio. Ever wonder from what specific piece of pop culture these lines came from?

"Rocketed to earth from a dying planet
Faster than a speeding bullet
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound
And who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper,
Fights a never ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way."

Reeve was great, may he rest in piece. But it was Reeves and that show from the '50's that are the stuff pop culture legends are built upon.

as seen in The Onion (but cached elsewhere)

truly weird....why would it do that!?

... or just big Steam fans ?

Buy your vagina paintings here!