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I don't know what you were trying to say, but reading it made my head hurt :P

Voxels don't have anything more to do with sprites then pixels do. And there is no reason you couldn't make a sprite out of Voxels the same way you could out of pixels, it would just be a 3d one

To clarify:

A pixel is a picture-element, one of the squares of color that make up a digital image. If you have a 640x480 picture, then you have a matrix of 640 pixels by 480 pixels arranged in a grid, each with a specific color value.

A voxel is a volume element, instead of squares of color, you have cubes, and you build your picture the same way you would build something out of legos.

A sprite is an image that moves around the screen programicaly... Like a video game character, in fact, the term 'sprite' is used almost exclusively when talking about video games. A sprite can be a picture, (like a picture of Mario) or a volume (imagine a 3d Mario built out of blocks). It really doesn't matter.

A Voxel is not a set of sprites stuck together, there is no version of the term that means this, and whoever told that to you was totally wrong.

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hrm from 90 voxels, to 100 million. in about 6 months. can we expect a 10 billion voxel display for chrismas? :P

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Do you understand the Mandelbrot set? I mean really understand how it works and how to compute it? And how it was conceived? I don't mean to be rude, but I really doubt you do.

e always seemed like an amazing number, when I was taking math in high school. I mean, here was this number that that shows up everywhere, in all these equations in the world I wondered about it, and heard that it had something to do with calculus. And I always thought that it would be some mystery, like pi or something.

But then I took calculus, and I learned how it really worked, and where it really came from, and I found out it was nothing. Just a number people put in their equations to make the math easier, (a lot easier). Similarly, PI, is just the arc-length integration of the equation of a circle, nothing spectacularly magical.

Yes, the Mandelbrot set equation is pretty simple, z=z^2 + C where C is a complex constant. But, what you have to realize is how this equation is actually evaluated. It's not a simple y = f(x) function. C is a constant, and z is both a dependant and independent variable. So, how do you do it?

Well, the fact is, it's a recursive function, starting out with z=0, and increasing with each loop, so, for, say, 0.8, you would do
z = 0+0.8 = .8; now z = .8
z = .8^2+ .8 = .64 + .8 = 1.44
z = 2.07 + .8 = 2.87
Now, once z gets past 2, it's all over, and C is not part of the Mandelbrot set. Some numbers will never get past 2. Not to complicated at all is it?

Ok, now that we know what Z is, what's C? Well, if you're trying to graph the Mandelbrot set, then C is the pixel you're currently calculating. If it's in the set, draw it black, otherwise color the pixel based on how many times you had to loop to get past two.

I have no idea why you would expect to see a circle, or some other kind of sinusoidal image.

I have no idea why the image is self-similar. But I suppose that if I knew something about fractal theory, I would probably understand. And it would seem simple and unmagical to me.



that demonstrates insane amounts of complexity that clearly don't come from the numbers you feed it.

Well, the numbers are already complex right? Actually, 'the numbers you feed it' are every single complex number. Why wouldn't you expect infinite complexity from infinite numbers.

Anyway, while it's interesting, I could probably come up with some formulas that produced 'beautiful' images if I worked at it for a while, but that wouldn't prove that I created the universe or anything, or that anyone else did.

Of course, when you get right down to it, saying that the universe came about through random chance, isn't any more feasible then that it came about through a 'great intelligence' I'd be more apt to say that concepts such as random chance and intelligence had no meaning before the universe was formed, and all we can really prove is that we're thinking to hard.

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I'm forced to agree. Check out fractals sometime if you want to read God's handwriting.

What?

Something looks nice, therefor there must be a god?

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This is a Red Herring due to the way the Hebrews wrote numbers an aproximation for pi is actually embedded directly in the text.

This is a run-on sentance and unfortunetly due to that I can not read it I am mojojojo

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Note that human evolution is obviouslly more advanced than any other species and thus has more historical steps on the ladder so to speak.

Why would you say that? humans may be more intelegent then other animals, but not more 'avanced' then other mamals in anyway.

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It looks like I attached my comment to the wrong thread. Sorry, I actualy agreed with you. :P

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Besides, the mandelbrot set relies on a pretty recent advancement in mathematics: the use of complex numbers as (x,y)-coordinates on a plane.

We didn't even have the X,Y plain back then, either.

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No one said anything about carbon dating, you idiot. These samples are millions of years old, and carbon dating dosn't go back anywhere near that far.

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I wish "science" publications would separate facts from speculation when they report new findings/discoveries

Well, the problem is, every respectable scientist already buys into evolution and carbon dating, so they present them as fact in their papers. Actually, it's not really that much of a problem, because it's true. It's just that idiots like you have been mislead. These papers are not trying to prove evolution at all, any more then you're average Linux HOWTO is trying to prove that Linux exists. It's not supposed to try to convince you.

A lot of Scientists might have cared what you thought, a long time ago, but now they just try to avoid thinking about people like you.

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How would encrypting his messages protect him from having to turn over the documents under the Freedom of information act?

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Nope, the NVidia card in the Xbox is going to be at least one generation ahead of the one they're going to be selling to consumers.

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The site said photoshop, but the slashdoterotii were claming that the site was wrong and the image was a 3d render.

But whatever, almost every image looks 'doctored' if you look close enough.

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Why wouldn't it be able to run photoshop filters? You don't think adobe would license their code?

Anyway, the final lens flair might look a little diffrent, but probably not by much.

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What Microsoft is actually advertising is a Photoshop doctored picture, something which X-Box will never be able to create.

Are you saying that the Xbox won't be able to do simple 2d image transformations that I could do on my Pentium 75? Adobe premiere was capable of doing the lens flair effect in better then real time on a 60mhz PPC Mac back at my high school. In fact, most lens flair effects in video games don't have anything to do with 3d. Just a couple of alpha blended circles being drawn on the screen. I'm sure the X-box would be capable of it.

A lens flair is totally within the realm of the X-Box's graphic capability.

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I think what the poster meant was that if you had a rod a mile long, you would be able to record more data on it then a rod an inch long, beacuse you could get a more precise mesurement.

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http://www.google.com/search?q=1984+orwell+text+fu ll+download

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There is a huge difference between using electricity to extract oil, and using it to extract hydrogen from water. In the first case, you're going to be using a lot less energy then you're going to be putting in, the energy is already there in the form of carbohydrates. You'll be able to get all the electricity you need to power the drill (or whatever) by using a tiny fraction of the oil you just got. On the other hand, there isn't any readily available chemical energy in water, the only thing you get out of it, is what you put in. It's more like charging a battery then anything else, and you're always going to loose some energy a long the way. You'll never be able to power a hydrogen creation plant off of the energy you get from burning the hydrogen you just got.

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Ok, lets take this real slow and simple. When you burn something, you're combining with oxygen at a lower energy level. The energy you release is the difference between energy in the old chemical bonds and the new ones. Now these cars work by burning hydrogen, what do you get when you combine Hydrogen and Oxygen? That's right, water. Water is the byproduct of burning hydrogen (or, usually water vapor). In order to extract the hydrogen from the oxygen, you need to put energy back into the system... Burning the hydrogen would get you exactly as much energy as you put in to make it. Of course, you would loose tons of energy along the way (gas seeping out, mechanical ineffectiveness, etc). In other words, its not going to happen, and thinking that it could is ridicules.

If you think you can somehow power a car by simply converting hydrogen and oxygen into water over and over again, well then, you are an idiot. Please stop telling people what they need to do.

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You should look into postgresql! I mean, I realize this is a troll, but postgres is a much nicer database.

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The american civl liberties union? The people who faught the the CDA? I don't seem them trying ot ban anything anytime soon.

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While there is no 'god' just like there is no Xenu, there was a guy named Jesus just like there was a guy named L.Ron Hubbard. Asside from the Christian teaching, a few Roman court documents have surfaced as well.

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Peddle your angry-with-God crap elsewhere

Trying to claim that humans respected the lives of others and were capable of producing art music and sciance without christian influance means that you're angry with god?

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Hitler himself was a devout Catholic and several times referred to what he was doing (the Holocaust) as God's work

This is false

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Not that I don't like Christians, but you really can't really blame the Holocaust on Christians, or on any Christian sect, The anti-Semitism at the time was really more race-based rather then religion-based. And while Hitler did mention god one or two times in his speeches, he was not any kind of 'actively' religious person.

Actually Nazism under Hitler was very similar to a cult or religion in its own rights, and I doubt Hitler would want to defer to a 'higher power' other them himself.

Yes, Christianity has caused a lot of problems in the past, but the holocaust wasn't one of them

Scientology itself is a weird case, in that it's a 'vicious' religion like some branches Christianity and Islam, one who's tenants is to spread, and to attack its deriders. On the other hand, it came about in a more civilized world, and only asks people to sue and harass people, rather then kill them.

So, while scientology is evil, it isn't really that bad at least at this point (I wouldn't want to see what would happen if they ever got any real power). Compared to Christianity and Islam (etc), which are less evil but cause more problems and death.

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I think you're confusing the hollywood left with the hollywood right.

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On your website, you mention that HTML tags should always be in uppercase. Not only is this stylistically wrong, but according to the xhtml specification, it is now technically wrong as well. In other words, HTML with uppercase tags, is no longer HTML

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I would disagree. If the action that is demanded by law is wrong, then it is the duty of a citizen to have no part of the law.

They did do this. With Microsoft. when M$ asked them to take down the spec to their Kerberos extensions, they didn't, even though Microsoft threatened to shut them down in 48 hours if they didn't. But this is different, this is the COS. Those people will stop at nothing to get what they want, even breaking the law. It would have been a lot more then legal fees for the Andover boys.

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actualy, every pic on there is 'default' Right now, my pic is at http://picture-rate.com:8080/hello/viewpic.jsp?sys tem=happy&owner=default&picture=i170, although, that could cange. I would link directly to it, but chad hasn't put in the ablity to select which picture to rate, otherwise I owuld put that link in my sig.

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actualy, every pic on there is 'default' Right now, my pic is at http://picture-rate.com:8080/hello/viewpic.jsp?sys tem=happy&owner=default&picture=i170, although, that could cange. I would link directly to it, but chad hasn't put in the ablity to select which picture to rate, otherwise I owuld put that link in my sig.

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Sorry. If I could type traditional in on this keyboard, I would. but I can't, so deal.

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Well, maybe not by the time I get this up. Actually, win98 and ME don't support dual processors at all, so you're second one will just be sitting on the motherboard turned off.

As far as SMT goes, I think it's a good idea (well, obviously, why wouldn't it be). You really can only get so much out of Instruction level parallelism, and I've always thought that splitting CPU time up by thread rather then by instruction parallelism would be a lot more effective.

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I mean, the click-through rate on banner advertizing is less then 1% right now, a lot less. so, if 1% of the people who view/download fonts is 1% I'd say you're doing pretty good.

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presumably, you could get the graphic down to just 3 or 4k, and you could always hotlink to somone elses copy of the graphic :P

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What the fuck is bomis.com?

I mean, it just looks like a port of the DMOZ open directory with some paid links, and annoying popups. Why the hell would anyone want to use that page?

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Who is the other guy you pasted on?

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The prime reason this will fail utterly is that Windows was not designed as a multiuser system.

That may be true for windows 95 and 98, but not for NT or 2000, it's a true multiuser system, but almost every home user uses the 'root' account.

I still don't think it would be posible to make this totaly secure, though.

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It wasn't until I read the article itself that I realized you guys were talking about more then one person, it seemed like you were referring to 'Sue Wilcox' as the author, and as both 'she' and 'he' interchangeably.

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good point...

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Actualy... * It's not signed by a person (but was sent by email? what was the email address in the relevant headers?) A lawyer would sign his/her name. or perhaps the current efront legal dept. consists of Sam in his boxers and a google search for cease and desist letters.

I've read some of the excerpted logs, and that actualy isn't to far from the truth. One of the guys on ICQ, I think it was bryant or tim actualy did a search and found a sample C&D to send to the PA guys "fill in the relevent details, and put out lawers name on it."

These guys acted like children.

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Maybe in the UK, but not here in the US, in order to be gulty of libel, you need to know that what you are saying false. In order to be convicted, it needs to be proven that you knew it. If slashot dosn't already know wether or not these are valid, they arn't betting anything

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Libel

How is /. not a party to libel if the allegations prove untrue?

You can't be liable for libel unless it can be proven that you knew what you were saying was false.

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Free long distance :) If you're paying $700 in phone bills you could probably get one of those 'super-biz-rate' plans for a $100/month or something

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As far as getting porn from them, well I wouldn't know. I doubt that it was really that good, though.

On the other hand, getting money from them, well that was a different story. A few years back me and my friends wrote some http client emulators and raped that company for a lot of money, a lot. More then he got for ousting this patent, anyway. (Almost as bad as he raped his 'customers') Hey, the agreement was based on unique IPs not people, and I was a crusader against bad porn and unethical companies, um, yeh.

sigh if only the money was as free now as it was thing,



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No it dosn't, but a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD would be nothing more then white noise, completly useless. I wish you people would actualy learn how CSS worked before flapping your jaws like idiots.

The decryption keys are on a physicaly seperate part of the disk, if you do a 'bit-for-bit' copy, you simply won't ever be able to decrypt the signal. So go ahead, I doubt the MPAA would care.

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If the people are giving the tool away for free, then the RIAA dosn't even need to reverse enginer it, they just have to download it.

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In fairness, this is moderately useful, I could run Apache/PHP locally for development work on my standard desktop,

Hrm, I've been running Apache on my windows desktop for years, it wasn't really hard, seening as how they've had a windows port available. You can getphp for windows as well.

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Is she his daughter then?

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Those databases used two bytes to store a value from 0 to 99, or one hundred values. But, two bytes are capable of holding 2^16, or 65,536. In other words, there is no techical reason that the dates needed to end 2000, rather then 67536AD, other then short-signtedness.

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appears to be in Larry wall's family

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