In response to (1), good for them. People have a right to be stupid.
In resposne to (2), killing others while driving drunk, shooting people, stealing money, and so forth are already illegal. It's not the taking of drugs that is wrong, but the illegal acts which follow or are done in pursuit of drugs. These acts should be punished; but there are many individuals who use drugs responsibly and don't go out and kill people or steal from them.
I just sent the following letter to Motorola's ethics e-mail address:
Dear Sir/Madam:
I recently read an article at
http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6 061,2637528-2,00.html
concerning your demands for detailed customer information from dealers
of your 2-way radios. I find these demands extremely distasteful. They
also do not seem to mesh with your Code of Business Conduct, one facet
of which is
Constant respect for people means we treat others with dignity,
as we would like to be treated ourselves. Constant respect applies
to every individual we interact with around the world.
[ http://www.motorola.com/code/code.html para 4 ]
You also state in the same document
CUSTOMER INFORMATION
We must protect customer information that is sensitive, private
or confidential just as carefully as our own. Only those who have
a need to know should have access to confidential information.
...
Joint Ventures and Alliances
Motorola will strive to ally with companies that share our
commitment to ethics. We will also work to make the standards of
our joint ventures compatible with our own.
Do you not feel that your vendors should have this same right? This to
me seems the height of hypocrisy. Perhaps your ethics department is
unaware of this shameful treatment of your vendors and customers; if so,
I hope that the situation will be made right. Unfortunately, I find it
more likely that your company has disregarded it's ethics policy over
the course of the last few years in regards to gathering customer
information from vendors.
I do not appreciate this and in the future will avoid Motorola products
and those products which use Motorola parts to the best of my ability
and will encourage my friends, acquaintances, and people I meet on the
street to avoid Motorola products, including your semiconductor products,
personal communications products, and if at all possible, your broadband
communications products.
Sincerely and regretfully,
Acy Stapp
Former Customer
Arrgh! Microsoft is slowly and surely butchering the windows user interface. There is no indication of whether something is clickable or not. I personally do not want to move the mouse over every single object on screen, waiting for the cursor to change or for pop-up help to appear just so I can tell what's clickable or not. Computers are supposed to save time, not make you waste hours flicking the mouse this way and that for no reason other than the determine what is a button and what isn't when it would have been just as easy to UNDERLINE FUCKING CLICKABLE TEXT OR EVEN (GASP!) MAKE A FUCKING BUTTON!
WTF? There is no freakin' way that my.mp3.com kept people from buying 10 million CDs.
According to the article, they copied 5-10K CDs from Universal. That's $12K per CD, and at $15 per CD, that's 787 people per CD who would have bought 2 CDs (because they already have 1) if not for my.mp3.com. Yeah right. Like I'm going to buy another copy of each of my favorite CDs.
Bastard idiot f*ckhead moron stubdick pencilneck piece of sh*t judges should break out a fscking calculator every once in a while.
Thanks for the correction. I'm really only familiar with block truncation, but I did some research, and now am familiar with VQ as well:) I guess in the image domain the easiest way to imagine it is palettizing an image using multiple-pixel blocks.
Do you think there's a future for VQ texture compression? As you pointed out, for bigger images you will need a larger codebook to achieve acceptable quality. What is the hardware overhead of having that extra indirection to lookup the pixels in the
Hmmm. After doing a little more research, I find that your are generally correct. Image compression by S3 and 3DFX is a special case where you don't compress the whole image at once, but compress 4x4 or 4x8 cells. The "codebook" for each cell contains two "codewords"; the voronoi diagram for each region is a plane in color space. It probably should be called something besides "Vector Quantization" since there is additional information stored to interpolate between the two codewords. On the other hand, PowerVR does use real VQ, see
http://www.pvr-net.com/hardware/compression/vect or.html
I don't think this is how Vector Quantization works. Each texture is broken down into 4x4 blocks, which is true, and then it is analyzed. Two "best" colors are picked out for each block, and then 2 or more bits/pixel are used to blend between the two colors. It is called "Vector Quantization" because you are quantizing pixel colors at points along a vector in color-space. For two good overviews of the prevailing texture compression standards, see
http://www-dev.3dfx.com/fxt1 or http://linux.3dfx.com/open_source/fxt1/technical_s pecs.htm and
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/p rint/140/
This is especially useful for numeric programming. A programmer's mental model of numbers is such that assignment = copying. Say you have a complex number class, 'complex'
Which is more error-prone:
(good c++ code, bad java code)
complex a;
complex b;
a=b;
b.imaginary = 1.0;
(a is not changed if you have copy by value, but is changed if you have copy by reference (as in java))
or
(good java code)
complex a;
complex b;
a=new complex(b);
b->imaginary = 1.0;
(a is not changed, but this is nasty looking)
(pardon my probably incorrect java syntax, but the idea should be clear)
The other issue is memory usage. An object with an embedded complex number will use sizeof(complex) (probably 16 bytes). But an object with a reference to a complex numbers will take (sizeof(complex)+allocation overhead+reference size), typically 28 bytes, or almost twice as much memory! Not to mention cache coherency issues.
I think you are a bit confused about early/late binding. Early binding is the process of determining the address of the function to call (given it's name) at compile, link, or load time. This happens once, so it is fast. Late binding is the process of determining the address of the function to call each time it is called. In C++, late binding is used for virtual functions, and early binding for non-virtual functions.
There are optimizations that enable late-binding to be more efficient (such as a vtable). Java implementations should be able to determine (via the final attribute) that a function can be early-bound instead of late-bound. There are also C++ compilers that can eliminate virtual function calls by doing link-time program analysis.
Actually, there are more standard windows directories than that; the suggested standard is:
c:\Program Files\Company\Appname - the executable
c:\Program Files\Company\Appname\System - non-shared DLLs, config, everything else
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Company or C:\Program Files\Company\Shared Files - DLLs shared between products of the company
C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents - User documents
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/shellcc/she ll/Functions/ShGetFolderPath.htm for more.
Is there a Linux or *BSD distribution that does away with C programs as much as possible? I would feel more secure having the services I want to be up (httpd, ftpd, dns, proxy, etc.) if they were written in a safer language.
I would really like a language which had and extended perl's notion of "taint"; this would probably double the security of the system by making it very difficult to do something bad.
You need to store intermediate results without losing precision for multipass rendering effects. Most multipass rendering effects can be accomplished in one pass on the PSX2, but there are still places (transparency being the most obvious) where you are modifying an existing value in the back buffer.
I would like a floating point color buffer personally, with stencil and accumulation buffers hardware accelerated.
The great part is that it is impossible for them to fix this in Win2K without issuing a service pack because of the system files protection. Man, microsoft really rocks.
I was thinking "wow, those cars seem pretty fast for production cars", when I realized that you were talking about the 0-60 and not quarter mile. 11 seconds is not too bad for 0-60 but not great. I'll take my MR2's 5 second 0-60 any day of the week, though:)
Slashdot Mirror
What if you make one backup and then your original is destroyed? You have the right to make another backup but can't. Voilá! Fair use out the window.
The simple solution is for AMD to claim 2.4Ghz for 2 1.2Ghz chips.
Actually, "Standard C++" has three of the above. MSVC does not support return type covariance or design by contract.
In response to (1), good for them. People have a right to be stupid.
In resposne to (2), killing others while driving drunk, shooting people, stealing money, and so forth are already illegal. It's not the taking of drugs that is wrong, but the illegal acts which follow or are done in pursuit of drugs. These acts should be punished; but there are many individuals who use drugs responsibly and don't go out and kill people or steal from them.
Damn, I wish I had moderator points.
I just sent the following letter to Motorola's ethics e-mail address:
6 061,2637528-2,00.html
...
Dear Sir/Madam:
I recently read an article at
http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,
concerning your demands for detailed customer information from dealers
of your 2-way radios. I find these demands extremely distasteful. They
also do not seem to mesh with your Code of Business Conduct, one facet
of which is
Constant respect for people means we treat others with dignity,
as we would like to be treated ourselves. Constant respect applies
to every individual we interact with around the world.
[ http://www.motorola.com/code/code.html para 4 ]
You also state in the same document
CUSTOMER INFORMATION
We must protect customer information that is sensitive, private
or confidential just as carefully as our own. Only those who have
a need to know should have access to confidential information.
Joint Ventures and Alliances
Motorola will strive to ally with companies that share our
commitment to ethics. We will also work to make the standards of
our joint ventures compatible with our own.
Do you not feel that your vendors should have this same right? This to
me seems the height of hypocrisy. Perhaps your ethics department is
unaware of this shameful treatment of your vendors and customers; if so,
I hope that the situation will be made right. Unfortunately, I find it
more likely that your company has disregarded it's ethics policy over
the course of the last few years in regards to gathering customer
information from vendors.
I do not appreciate this and in the future will avoid Motorola products
and those products which use Motorola parts to the best of my ability
and will encourage my friends, acquaintances, and people I meet on the
street to avoid Motorola products, including your semiconductor products,
personal communications products, and if at all possible, your broadband
communications products.
Sincerely and regretfully,
Acy Stapp
Former Customer
Arrgh! Microsoft is slowly and surely butchering the windows user interface. There is no indication of whether something is clickable or not. I personally do not want to move the mouse over every single object on screen, waiting for the cursor to change or for pop-up help to appear just so I can tell what's clickable or not. Computers are supposed to save time, not make you waste hours flicking the mouse this way and that for no reason other than the determine what is a button and what isn't when it would have been just as easy to UNDERLINE FUCKING CLICKABLE TEXT OR EVEN (GASP!) MAKE A FUCKING BUTTON!
WTF? There is no freakin' way that my.mp3.com kept people from buying 10 million CDs.
According to the article, they copied 5-10K CDs from Universal. That's $12K per CD, and at $15 per CD, that's 787 people per CD who would have bought 2 CDs (because they already have 1) if not for my.mp3.com. Yeah right. Like I'm going to buy another copy of each of my favorite CDs.
Bastard idiot f*ckhead moron stubdick pencilneck piece of sh*t judges should break out a fscking calculator every once in a while.
The only missing item would be to mention somewhere the word "geek". That reminds me, we haven't had a Jon Katz article in a while.
Soon all this computing power will BE an average person and vice versa.
Thanks for the correction. I'm really only familiar with block truncation, but I did some research, and now am familiar with VQ as well :) I guess in the image domain the easiest way to imagine it is palettizing an image using multiple-pixel blocks.
Do you think there's a future for VQ texture compression? As you pointed out, for bigger images you will need a larger codebook to achieve acceptable quality. What is the hardware overhead of having that extra indirection to lookup the pixels in the
Hmmm. After doing a little more research, I find that your are generally correct. Image compression by S3 and 3DFX is a special case where you don't compress the whole image at once, but compress 4x4 or 4x8 cells. The "codebook" for each cell contains two "codewords"; the voronoi diagram for each region is a plane in color space. It probably should be called something besides "Vector Quantization" since there is additional information stored to interpolate between the two codewords. On the other hand, PowerVR does use real VQ, seet or.html
http://www.pvr-net.com/hardware/compression/vec
I don't think this is how Vector Quantization works. Each texture is broken down into 4x4 blocks, which is true, and then it is analyzed. Two "best" colors are picked out for each block, and then 2 or more bits/pixel are used to blend between the two colors. It is called "Vector Quantization" because you are quantizing pixel colors at points along a vector in color-space. For two good overviews of the prevailing texture compression standards, sees pecs.htm and
p rint/140/
http://www-dev.3dfx.com/fxt1 or http://linux.3dfx.com/open_source/fxt1/technical_
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/
This is especially useful for numeric programming. A programmer's mental model of numbers is such that assignment = copying. Say you have a complex number class, 'complex'
Which is more error-prone:
(good c++ code, bad java code)
complex a;
complex b;
a=b;
b.imaginary = 1.0;
(a is not changed if you have copy by value, but is changed if you have copy by reference (as in java))
or
(good java code)
complex a;
complex b;
a=new complex(b);
b->imaginary = 1.0;
(a is not changed, but this is nasty looking)
(pardon my probably incorrect java syntax, but the idea should be clear)
The other issue is memory usage. An object with an embedded complex number will use sizeof(complex) (probably 16 bytes). But an object with a reference to a complex numbers will take (sizeof(complex)+allocation overhead+reference size), typically 28 bytes, or almost twice as much memory! Not to mention cache coherency issues.
In summary, value objects are good.
I think you are a bit confused about early/late binding. Early binding is the process of determining the address of the function to call (given it's name) at compile, link, or load time. This happens once, so it is fast. Late binding is the process of determining the address of the function to call each time it is called. In C++, late binding is used for virtual functions, and early binding for non-virtual functions.
There are optimizations that enable late-binding to be more efficient (such as a vtable). Java implementations should be able to determine (via the final attribute) that a function can be early-bound instead of late-bound. There are also C++ compilers that can eliminate virtual function calls by doing link-time program analysis.
Actually, there are more standard windows directories than that; the suggested standard is:
e ll/Functions/ShGetFolderPath.htm for more.
c:\Program Files\Company\Appname - the executable
c:\Program Files\Company\Appname\System - non-shared DLLs, config, everything else
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Company or C:\Program Files\Company\Shared Files - DLLs shared between products of the company
C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents - User documents
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/shellcc/sh
"a default judgement that Carnivore is unconstitutional until they do."
Yep, that's our country all right.
Is there a Linux or *BSD distribution that does away with C programs as much as possible? I would feel more secure having the services I want to be up (httpd, ftpd, dns, proxy, etc.) if they were written in a safer language.
I would really like a language which had and extended perl's notion of "taint"; this would probably double the security of the system by making it very difficult to do something bad.
Jabber
All of this stuff is already working as we speak. Check out jabber at http://www.jabber.org
You need to store intermediate results without losing precision for multipass rendering effects. Most multipass rendering effects can be accomplished in one pass on the PSX2, but there are still places (transparency being the most obvious) where you are modifying an existing value in the back buffer.
I would like a floating point color buffer personally, with stencil and accumulation buffers hardware accelerated.
Umm--Does TRS-80 ring a bell?
Flash Bios
The great part is that it is impossible for them to fix this in Win2K without issuing a service pack because of the system files protection. Man, microsoft really rocks.
91T, intake, exhaust, turbo upgrade, 15-18psi boost depending on mood, AFMLink fuel computer. Haven't dyno'd it yet, but I calculate about 230+ rwhp.
I was thinking "wow, those cars seem pretty fast for production cars", when I realized that you were talking about the 0-60 and not quarter mile. 11 seconds is not too bad for 0-60 but not great. I'll take my MR2's 5 second 0-60 any day of the week, though :)