The interesting thing about the processor on an AGEIA card is it's similair in design to an IBM Cell processor. Just a fewer number of SPE's...
I can't seem to find the link to the paper that discussed it in detail, if I can find it I'll post it later...
Re:More Fuel For The Nvidia CPU Fire.
on
NVIDIA To Buy AGEIA
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Just look at Intel's rather quick turn around from the P4 to the Core architecture. They were headed down the same road GPU makers are going, yet reversed course. Sure it's mostly thanks to the Israeli development team that produced the Pentium M. Which was in turn based the Pentium 3. The fact of the matter is nVidia has shown time and time again they can make a killer product. I believe they could make a highly efficient CPU with performance to watt ratios well inline with current products. If not even better.
But on another note... The heat issue with GPUs really does need to be resolved. I'm using a x1800 XT ATI card... And I've come pretty close to 100C at times... I'm not quite sure how current gen cards are doing in this area, but I doubt it's been anything like the P4 > Core turn around.
More Fuel For The Nvidia CPU Fire.
on
NVIDIA To Buy AGEIA
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
It's long been speculated that nVidia has been developing an x86 processor. I think they great work they did on the 8xxx series cards and the fantastic chipsets they have produced really lend credence to this theory. They could make a very strong processor, especially as it appears we're heading to CPU's with heavy GPU integration. AMD Fusion... It's not so much to put a graphics card in a chip. It's to make a CPU do what GPU's excel at. Very exciting times for hardware enthusiasts indeed!
I was thinking more about this... It wouldn't be a perfect system, it would only have to react to limited things. You would still be required to input say the data from you die rolls, or you can use the pc for that. Regardless you are going to have to input data for the program to react to...w It wouldn't be that hard to have a text based response from the computer to allow the campaign to progress. I'm thinking this would be most useful for small groups 2 or 3... And in a sense someone would still be the 'pseudo DM' and it would limit the freedom of your campaign... But I think something could be made to lesson the need of a dedicated DM. It would be complex yes, but when you look at the budget for most mainstream games being released today. I think it's well within the realm of possibility. It could also be used to say, beta test a custom campaign you might be working on to share with your group. I may regret even bringing this up as some of the people here on/. are much much smarter or observant than myself... Still food for thought, eh?
Also the turing test is kind of irrelevant as you aren't trying to fool anyone, just trying to ensure campaign progression without a true DM.
As far as I am aware there is no proof in any credible scientific, peer reviewed journals that states conclusively marijuana is an unhealthy habit aside from the act of smoking. Which is going to have consequences regardless of the material being smoked.
That is the problem with The War On Drugs, there is no hard science to base their claims on for most substances. It's mostly a do as I say because I said it kind of thing.
I believe a well informed populace, free to choose what they want to put in their bodies is the key to a more stable society. At least in regards the effects illicit drug use are having in this day and age.
I've had experience with the various releases of D&D rule sets over the years. So I say if this one doesn't improve the game in any meaningful way for you, just play with you're favorite rule set or even modify your favorite edition. It is a game of imagination after all.
But on a slightly different note I have always found the core problem of the game, wasn't pacing or power curves or sweet spots. It was finding a competent DM. I grew up in a small dairy community on the Oregon Coast... So let's just say the pool of available and likable D&D players was quite small. And even smaller still were those willing to DM. I've often pondered why no one has made a software program that could DM once certain parameters were established. It seems AI in gaming has advanced to the point where this is at least feasible. Of course it wouldn't be anything as great as a competent human DM, but for those of us outside large urban centers it would of been a god send. Unfortunately for WoTC that is a chapter in my past that has long since been closed. I moved on to other endeavors, I'm just glad to have experiance the legendary D&D first hand as part of my adolescent life.
All that being said, Baldur's Gate 1, 2 & ToB was the pinnacle of electronic D&D experiance thus far. IMHO
Flickr is fantastic in my opinion. I love the site, the way it works, and it's style. It's very low on clutter yet has plenty of features to keep it interesting... if only Yahoo! could take that same sense of style and, oh I don't know apply it to there main page?
Better yet.
Let's take the sense of design from www.flickr.com Some of the content from www.yahoo.com and add it to search.yahoo.com
Not quite the no nonsense beauty of Google, but hopefully not the cluster fuck of links that Yahoo currently is. And at the same time they would be distinguishing themselves somewhat from their main competitor.
Once the passengers of United 93 learned what had happened to the other plans, they realized this, and they fought back. I hate to play the tinfoil hat card here, but it's never been explicitly proven that these guys really did try and mount an offense. Seems a lot of the material pertaining to that situation was not released in it's entirety. I could be wrong, if so, please link me some uncensored material that shows this wasn't merely patriotic hoopla.
hehe, i did the two finger thing for years... even while taking typing classes in each year of school middle and high school, hey easy A!, but yeah IM'ing eventually got me using all my digits. With HTML/CSS editing in notepad further refining my skills to 80+ wpm
still I concur, I was rather speedy with two fingers
I used to be a big fan of Tom's Hardware. Back when Tom Pabst was actually involved with the day to day operations of the site, last I remember they sold the whole shebang to some other company, good for them. But it's been mess for a long time now, I can't bring myself to read a full article there anymore... It's a shame really. IMHO
I personally believe all health care, including R&D should be government ran. That's not to say that private industry has no place in health care. I just believe the government should be at the fore front in terms of research and patient care.
From a purely hardware standpoint, the dream cast was my favorite. SNES had the greatest gaming however, with SimCity, Civ, Mario, Zelda, FZero, Pilotwings, Secret of Mana, Earthbound... Countless hours of my time were spent there. I had mario paint, superscope six, damn near every first party game. I love the NES for it's simplicity, it's easy to hop in and out of... I loved the 64, had it 3rd day of release, but 3rd party support was lacking and RPGs werent really anywhere to be found... I currently play the shit out of my xbox 360, you can't beat it's online support... SNES all the way in retrospect.
I say that with confidence because at one point or another I've owned, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, SNES, PlayStation1, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360. I avoided PS2 like the plague for it's failure rate... Plenty of friends had it for me to play. Which is about where I'm at with the 360, but it rocked as a MCE (Media Center Extender) initially now its scratching my discs and I'm sick of all the FPS's on it. It's ridiculous. I need RPGs damnit!
Ok, not to state the obvious here, but if they're offering it free, that means it wasn't stealing.
Not to mention the fact that downloading is not stealing, illegal or not. No one is deprived of their property through a download as has been pointed out many times before.
If my understanding of Botnets is corrected IRC is heavily involved in the issuing of commands... And considering some of the stuff I used to see on DALnet a few years back... Nasty stuff. Maybe it's time we just get rid of IRC altogether? Is it truly serving a purpose in this day and age?
Same thing happened to me, several times... Eventually old Mr. Bill Sali did send a reply, and it didn't seem like a form letter. I can only assume a staffer typed it up. But I was impressed nonetheless.
* UAC - annoying and not remotely secure. People will be trained to always click yes, or just disable it. Further more, it prevented me from installing legit software, and copying files in certain directories. Prevented you? You do realize it can be disabled?
* Drivers - People say an OS is only as good as the software for it, and I'd argue an OS is only as good as the drivers. If you can't support your hardware, then software isn't even an issue. Now all drivers MUST be signed, yet many signed drivers don't work very well, if at all. I think it would be a good idea to have all drivers in one central repository (like the Linux kernel) so you won't have to worry about tracking down drivers for old hardware, but make sure the drivers work. And here is an idea, make the drivers modular. Drivers cause more BSODs and crashes than anything else. Don't let a single driver bring down a system. This is just basic common sense. Wow, I know Vista drivers have been a little slow out the gate... But to compare it to Linux... ATI/Nvidia driver installation is not fun, and those are by far the most important drivers IMHO. Well maybe not to Linux. As there are no games worth a damn for the most part...
* Design for productivity, and not looks. Sexy is sexy, and we all like sexy things. In the long run however, I want my computer to enable me to work, not prevent me from doing so. Usability studies have shown that Vista's UI slows people down performing the same tasks. Scrolling in the Start Menu? Again, the writing was on the wall here. Look at the UI changes in Windows Media Player, and you'll see a program that has become less user friendly, while prettier. Why should we expect Vista to be different? Why should Vista be different? So you haven't actually sat down with it for a few days and tried to get work done? Nice. Let's bitch some more. Oh and it does have a classic mode for us die hard Win2k GUI fans.
* Performance is piss-poor. Again, people like fast computers. Installing Vista is just a bad decision. Anytime you update an OS it's going to take advantage of new hardware with an eye to the future. This has always been the case an this point will be moot in a year, give or take.
* Vista's worst enemy is not OS X or Linux (as much as I love me some Linux). Vista's worst enemy is XP, which post-SP1 has been a pretty decent OS. For the end user, Vista provides no real benefits or new features besides better looks, while slowing your PC down considerably. And with projects like the Vista Transformation Pack, you can make XP look like Vista. Why would someone want Vista? I agree with you on this, but those transformation packs you mention can be a pretty iffy gamble. They are mucking about in places they generally don't belong and it can add many more variables to trying to troubleshoot a system.
Why would someone want Vista?
DirectX 10. Games. Easy media consumption. Something Linux has been very slow to provide. OSX is a better choice than Linux for most people. But even there, the no game thing... Call me what you will, but I like using my SLI, my massive amounts of RAM, my OC'd CPU/GPU. I like those things. And I like to be able to use them at their full potential (and don't get smart I'm not talking about the OS utilizing 100% of my hardware, I'm talking easy to use and readily available programs, games and media).
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The interesting thing about the processor on an AGEIA card is it's similair in design to an IBM Cell processor. Just a fewer number of SPE's...
I can't seem to find the link to the paper that discussed it in detail, if I can find it I'll post it later...
Just look at Intel's rather quick turn around from the P4 to the Core architecture. They were headed down the same road GPU makers are going, yet reversed course. Sure it's mostly thanks to the Israeli development team that produced the Pentium M. Which was in turn based the Pentium 3. The fact of the matter is nVidia has shown time and time again they can make a killer product. I believe they could make a highly efficient CPU with performance to watt ratios well inline with current products. If not even better.
But on another note... The heat issue with GPUs really does need to be resolved. I'm using a x1800 XT ATI card... And I've come pretty close to 100C at times... I'm not quite sure how current gen cards are doing in this area, but I doubt it's been anything like the P4 > Core turn around.
It's long been speculated that nVidia has been developing an x86 processor. I think they great work they did on the 8xxx series cards and the fantastic chipsets they have produced really lend credence to this theory. They could make a very strong processor, especially as it appears we're heading to CPU's with heavy GPU integration. AMD Fusion... It's not so much to put a graphics card in a chip. It's to make a CPU do what GPU's excel at. Very exciting times for hardware enthusiasts indeed!
I was thinking more about this... It wouldn't be a perfect system, it would only have to react to limited things. You would still be required to input say the data from you die rolls, or you can use the pc for that. Regardless you are going to have to input data for the program to react to...w It wouldn't be that hard to have a text based response from the computer to allow the campaign to progress. I'm thinking this would be most useful for small groups 2 or 3... And in a sense someone would still be the 'pseudo DM' and it would limit the freedom of your campaign... But I think something could be made to lesson the need of a dedicated DM. It would be complex yes, but when you look at the budget for most mainstream games being released today. I think it's well within the realm of possibility. It could also be used to say, beta test a custom campaign you might be working on to share with your group. I may regret even bringing this up as some of the people here on /. are much much smarter or observant than myself... Still food for thought, eh?
Also the turing test is kind of irrelevant as you aren't trying to fool anyone, just trying to ensure campaign progression without a true DM.
As far as I am aware there is no proof in any credible scientific, peer reviewed journals that states conclusively marijuana is an unhealthy habit aside from the act of smoking. Which is going to have consequences regardless of the material being smoked.
That is the problem with The War On Drugs, there is no hard science to base their claims on for most substances. It's mostly a do as I say because I said it kind of thing.
I believe a well informed populace, free to choose what they want to put in their bodies is the key to a more stable society. At least in regards the effects illicit drug use are having in this day and age.
I've had experience with the various releases of D&D rule sets over the years. So I say if this one doesn't improve the game in any meaningful way for you, just play with you're favorite rule set or even modify your favorite edition. It is a game of imagination after all.
But on a slightly different note I have always found the core problem of the game, wasn't pacing or power curves or sweet spots. It was finding a competent DM. I grew up in a small dairy community on the Oregon Coast... So let's just say the pool of available and likable D&D players was quite small. And even smaller still were those willing to DM. I've often pondered why no one has made a software program that could DM once certain parameters were established. It seems AI in gaming has advanced to the point where this is at least feasible. Of course it wouldn't be anything as great as a competent human DM, but for those of us outside large urban centers it would of been a god send. Unfortunately for WoTC that is a chapter in my past that has long since been closed. I moved on to other endeavors, I'm just glad to have experiance the legendary D&D first hand as part of my adolescent life.
All that being said, Baldur's Gate 1, 2 & ToB was the pinnacle of electronic D&D experiance thus far. IMHO
Flickr is fantastic in my opinion. I love the site, the way it works, and it's style. It's very low on clutter yet has plenty of features to keep it interesting... if only Yahoo! could take that same sense of style and, oh I don't know apply it to there main page?
Better yet.
Let's take the sense of design from www.flickr.com
Some of the content from www.yahoo.com
and add it to search.yahoo.com
Not quite the no nonsense beauty of Google, but hopefully not the cluster fuck of links that Yahoo currently is. And at the same time they would be distinguishing themselves somewhat from their main competitor.
Just my 2 cents!
Well yes, there's already a reason to dislike the dominant player in any given field. People root for the under dogs you know?
That's sad. I've always found Dish's UI to be vastly superior to DirecTV.
I like the dish service.. but aside from my PC I have no experience in the DVR world. Seems much ado about nothing to me.
I hate to play the tinfoil hat card here, but it's never been explicitly proven that these guys really did try and mount an offense. Seems a lot of the material pertaining to that situation was not released in it's entirety.
I could be wrong, if so, please link me some uncensored material that shows this wasn't merely patriotic hoopla.
I actually prefer not using the word "nipple" to describe an input device...
maybe he was referring to laptop sales overtaking desktop sales?
I seem to recall reading that recently...
hehe, i did the two finger thing for years... even while taking typing classes in each year of school middle and high school, hey easy A!, but yeah IM'ing eventually got me using all my digits. With HTML/CSS editing in notepad further refining my skills to 80+ wpm
still I concur, I was rather speedy with two fingers
I used to be a big fan of Tom's Hardware. Back when Tom Pabst was actually involved with the day to day operations of the site, last I remember they sold the whole shebang to some other company, good for them. But it's been mess for a long time now, I can't bring myself to read a full article there anymore... It's a shame really. IMHO
Or semen! Don't forget about semen!
I personally believe all health care, including R&D should be government ran.
That's not to say that private industry has no place in health care. I just believe the government should be at the fore front in terms of research and patient care.
From a purely hardware standpoint, the dream cast was my favorite. SNES had the greatest gaming however, with SimCity, Civ, Mario, Zelda, FZero, Pilotwings, Secret of Mana, Earthbound... Countless hours of my time were spent there. I had mario paint, superscope six, damn near every first party game. I love the NES for it's simplicity, it's easy to hop in and out of... I loved the 64, had it 3rd day of release, but 3rd party support was lacking and RPGs werent really anywhere to be found... I currently play the shit out of my xbox 360, you can't beat it's online support... SNES all the way in retrospect.
I say that with confidence because at one point or another I've owned, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, SNES, PlayStation1, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360.
I avoided PS2 like the plague for it's failure rate... Plenty of friends had it for me to play. Which is about where I'm at with the 360, but it rocked as a MCE (Media Center Extender) initially now its scratching my discs and I'm sick of all the FPS's on it. It's ridiculous. I need RPGs damnit!
Not to mention the fact that downloading is not stealing, illegal or not. No one is deprived of their property through a download as has been pointed out many times before.
Or simply edit your hosts file with a line like
domain.tobeblocked.com 127.0.0.1
Not an all in one solution but worked well for me while reading cracked.com... I'm sick of those damn tshirt ads!
Doug Stanhope - MySpace Pedophiles http://youtube.com/watch?v=8APlx9btTn8
If my understanding of Botnets is corrected IRC is heavily involved in the issuing of commands... And considering some of the stuff I used to see on DALnet a few years back... Nasty stuff. Maybe it's time we just get rid of IRC altogether? Is it truly serving a purpose in this day and age?
Same thing happened to me, several times... Eventually old Mr. Bill Sali did send a reply, and it didn't seem like a form letter. I can only assume a staffer typed it up. But I was impressed nonetheless.
Prevented you? You do realize it can be disabled?
* Drivers - People say an OS is only as good as the software for it, and I'd argue an OS is only as good as the drivers. If you can't support your hardware, then software isn't even an issue. Now all drivers MUST be signed, yet many signed drivers don't work very well, if at all. I think it would be a good idea to have all drivers in one central repository (like the Linux kernel) so you won't have to worry about tracking down drivers for old hardware, but make sure the drivers work. And here is an idea, make the drivers modular. Drivers cause more BSODs and crashes than anything else. Don't let a single driver bring down a system. This is just basic common sense.
Wow, I know Vista drivers have been a little slow out the gate... But to compare it to Linux... ATI/Nvidia driver installation is not fun, and those are by far the most important drivers IMHO. Well maybe not to Linux. As there are no games worth a damn for the most part...
* Design for productivity, and not looks. Sexy is sexy, and we all like sexy things. In the long run however, I want my computer to enable me to work, not prevent me from doing so. Usability studies have shown that Vista's UI slows people down performing the same tasks. Scrolling in the Start Menu? Again, the writing was on the wall here. Look at the UI changes in Windows Media Player, and you'll see a program that has become less user friendly, while prettier. Why should we expect Vista to be different?
Why should Vista be different? So you haven't actually sat down with it for a few days and tried to get work done? Nice. Let's bitch some more. Oh and it does have a classic mode for us die hard Win2k GUI fans.
* Performance is piss-poor. Again, people like fast computers. Installing Vista is just a bad decision.
Anytime you update an OS it's going to take advantage of new hardware with an eye to the future. This has always been the case an this point will be moot in a year, give or take.
* Vista's worst enemy is not OS X or Linux (as much as I love me some Linux). Vista's worst enemy is XP, which post-SP1 has been a pretty decent OS. For the end user, Vista provides no real benefits or new features besides better looks, while slowing your PC down considerably. And with projects like the Vista Transformation Pack, you can make XP look like Vista. Why would someone want Vista? I agree with you on this, but those transformation packs you mention can be a pretty iffy gamble. They are mucking about in places they generally don't belong and it can add many more variables to trying to troubleshoot a system.
Why would someone want Vista?
DirectX 10. Games. Easy media consumption. Something Linux has been very slow to provide. OSX is a better choice than Linux for most people. But even there, the no game thing... Call me what you will, but I like using my SLI, my massive amounts of RAM, my OC'd CPU/GPU. I like those things. And I like to be able to use them at their full potential (and don't get smart I'm not talking about the OS utilizing 100% of my hardware, I'm talking easy to use and readily available programs, games and media).
Windows 98 is to Windows 95 as Windows 7 is to Windows Vista