I totally agree with what you're saying, although does have implications with regard to free software. Say I write a really snazzy piece of software that has no bugs whatsoever (a hypothetical). I release it under some free software license. Someone else takes that, and makes some other snazzy software with it that does have bugs. If something breaks down with that system, who's liable?
Do what I do. Go into preferences and give "troll" and "flamebait" a mod boost. Sure, "Score: 4, Troll" will take some getting used to, but you'll be able to savour the glory.
The CPUs are arranged in a Torus shape, according to here. I've seen a lot of these parallel computers with this shape. I can't think of how to make Google tell me this, so perhaps someone here could. What is it about the torus that makes it a good shape for this situation? Have other shapes been tried?
I have the feeling that an arrangement where the connectivity of vertices (CPUs) was distributed according to a power law (i.e. a few vertices with lots of edges, most with not many at all) would minimize the distance between any vertex. I don't think a torus gives you that. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way though.
You're on the right track. Lots of people have already put a lot of thought into achieving this. You could design models at different scales. You can do a trick where you make a model at different scales, and use a higher-detailed version to generate bump maps for a lower-detailed version. I think this is pretty common nowadays, but I don't know what the technique is called.
However, you don't need to do it manually. There are a number of general techniques that you can use for dynamically controlling how detailed your models render. Some are quick and dirty, like turning faraway models into sprites, others are fancy and complicated, like foveated 3d model simplification. Google "level of detail" and you're probably only a few clicks away from something you could use.
I made a resolution to learn some new languages. I happened to make Lisp my first choice, and I'm surprised by how smoothly it's going.
There's a really basic tool I've written in a number of languages before as a first project type exercise. It parses a series of command line options and interprets them in a getopts fashion. In Java, I split the problem into three classes, each consisting of about 100 lines of code on average. It wasn't particularly flexible, and specifying and interpreting the options was a bit messy.
Well, yesterday and today I've been writing the Lisp version, and I'm very impressed by what the language has allowed me to do. The whole thing is less than 100 lines of code and I've been able to put a lot more power and flexibility into the system. It presents a more concise and easier to understand interface to the world. Probably took about the same amount of time to write, but I was having to learn about a language paradigm with which I wasn't familiar, which isn't really the case with the other languages I've done this for.
Before I began this, I expected it would be something like the article recommends against, but having actually made something, however modest, I'm not so sure.
So I tested it out. Tried two programmes, both stopped streaming after going 2/3 of the way through and refused to start again. It looks nice and all, but I'm going to give it a while before I actually try watching anything on it.
Flash is proprietary. On Linux, there was a bug in Flash 9 on some window managers where only the first click on the flash pane after it had received focus registered as a click. You had to click outside the pane in between every click, which made playing games quite difficult and annoying. They have fixed this bug in a later release, however I as a user was powerless to correct this, as control over the software lay with Adobe.
Flash is a pretty good piece of software. There are some performance issues, but it's ubiquitous and provides a single platform, and is pretty flexible. Your accolades of the software are justified. However, these technical aspects do not affect the legal status of the software.
It can mean cigarette. It can also mean homosexual, or young public schoolboys* who have to do menial tasks for older boys, although I don't know whether fagging is an extant practice. It originally was short for faggot/fagot, which is a bundle of sticks or herbs, an ancient means of measurement, and a kind of meatball.
Truly a versatile word.
* For those not in the know, a public school in the UK is a privately-run institution, not run by the state. It gets this name because when public schools started, they were open to the public, meaning practically anyone could apply and study there, providing they had the cash.
I remember going on a science trip with this really pretty lass when I was about 14. We went to Anglesey and designed some kind of power station based on renewable energy. As there was a lot of wind and water, we decided on a wave plant. The design of the plant was fairly crude, (hey, this was a weekend). But I designed and built a turbine that would spin in the same direction whatever the direction of the air flowing through it, while maintaining some degree of efficiency, which I was fairly proud of.
From the article:
I will say that the continued evolution of the shell shows just how crufty a language can get when you just keep adding on ad hoc syntactic features. PKB! PKB! PKB!!!!
Infringement has been widespread for a long time (check out LPs from the 80s with "home taping is killing music" on them -- you can go further back with radio &c.) the only difference was that this infringement was largely uncontrollable and untraceable, so long as it wasn't done commercially. The opportunities for tracking and shaping use of digital stuff over the internet are far greater now.
Because using something in digital form inevitably means copying that information, all use of copyrighted works in this realm are now under the purview of copyright legislation. Combine that with technologies for DRM &c., and you could have an enormous amount of control over what people experience, and what they have to do in order to experience it.
Of course, that control is far from absolute, and the architecture of the internet often works against these attempts at control. Because the relevant companies do want absolute control, they'll never be satisfied. It is, however, closer than it was. And it will continue to be so. Even now, what might be considered normal behaviour (the equivalent of telling someone a joke you've heard) could make you an outlaw, and there doesn't seem to be any change of direction.
People are doing what they've always been doing. It's just that now they can be prevented from, or observed, doing it with greater ease.
No guarantee of safety? If someone steals your property (ie. the game or its fake money) would the poilce not deal with it as theft? It's exactly the same thing with Second Life, someone buys a product (game money) and that is taken from them without consent. Just because you don't value their property doesn't mean it has no value.
The man's right. It is the most logical thing to do. It's got some tradition. I can vaguely remember this being one of the main reasons why the pay of judges was increased sharply in Britain in the early 19th Century or something. Oh I'm useless when I'm stoned.
I'm more interested in the possibility that some species of dinosaur became sentient, built a technological civilization, and then erased all traces of themselves from the planet (causing mass extinctions in the process) before moving out into space. It's no more likely than ape-humping pyramid-building aliens, but sentient space dinosaurs would be a lot cooler.
And then, in a few hundred years, after a really bizarre sequence of events, a load of humans meet up with them and get caught up in some iffy alien politics?
Slashdot Mirror
I totally agree with what you're saying, although does have implications with regard to free software. Say I write a really snazzy piece of software that has no bugs whatsoever (a hypothetical). I release it under some free software license. Someone else takes that, and makes some other snazzy software with it that does have bugs. If something breaks down with that system, who's liable?
I'm not sure which part of this is the troll, the abusive tone or the terrible Latin.
I watched the video that was (indirectly) posted here a few days ago. It was about 0.6%.
December used to be the tenth month, but then someone (guess who) added July and August.
Do what I do. Go into preferences and give "troll" and "flamebait" a mod boost. Sure, "Score: 4, Troll" will take some getting used to, but you'll be able to savour the glory.
The CPUs are arranged in a Torus shape, according to here. I've seen a lot of these parallel computers with this shape. I can't think of how to make Google tell me this, so perhaps someone here could. What is it about the torus that makes it a good shape for this situation? Have other shapes been tried?
I have the feeling that an arrangement where the connectivity of vertices (CPUs) was distributed according to a power law (i.e. a few vertices with lots of edges, most with not many at all) would minimize the distance between any vertex. I don't think a torus gives you that. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way though.
You're on the right track. Lots of people have already put a lot of thought into achieving this. You could design models at different scales. You can do a trick where you make a model at different scales, and use a higher-detailed version to generate bump maps for a lower-detailed version. I think this is pretty common nowadays, but I don't know what the technique is called.
However, you don't need to do it manually. There are a number of general techniques that you can use for dynamically controlling how detailed your models render. Some are quick and dirty, like turning faraway models into sprites, others are fancy and complicated, like foveated 3d model simplification. Google "level of detail" and you're probably only a few clicks away from something you could use.
I made a resolution to learn some new languages. I happened to make Lisp my first choice, and I'm surprised by how smoothly it's going.
There's a really basic tool I've written in a number of languages before as a first project type exercise. It parses a series of command line options and interprets them in a getopts fashion. In Java, I split the problem into three classes, each consisting of about 100 lines of code on average. It wasn't particularly flexible, and specifying and interpreting the options was a bit messy.
Well, yesterday and today I've been writing the Lisp version, and I'm very impressed by what the language has allowed me to do. The whole thing is less than 100 lines of code and I've been able to put a lot more power and flexibility into the system. It presents a more concise and easier to understand interface to the world. Probably took about the same amount of time to write, but I was having to learn about a language paradigm with which I wasn't familiar, which isn't really the case with the other languages I've done this for.
Before I began this, I expected it would be something like the article recommends against, but having actually made something, however modest, I'm not so sure.
Can you do that? I have to pay big money to access my old university's library &c.
There are many hilarious sexual euphemisms, I must admit. And yeah, "fag" as homosexual isn't very common.
So I tested it out. Tried two programmes, both stopped streaming after going 2/3 of the way through and refused to start again. It looks nice and all, but I'm going to give it a while before I actually try watching anything on it.
Check out nspluginwrapper. That will allow you to use 32 bit plugins in a 64 bit browser.
Flash is proprietary. On Linux, there was a bug in Flash 9 on some window managers where only the first click on the flash pane after it had received focus registered as a click. You had to click outside the pane in between every click, which made playing games quite difficult and annoying. They have fixed this bug in a later release, however I as a user was powerless to correct this, as control over the software lay with Adobe.
Flash is a pretty good piece of software. There are some performance issues, but it's ubiquitous and provides a single platform, and is pretty flexible. Your accolades of the software are justified. However, these technical aspects do not affect the legal status of the software.
Hear that, penguins?
Out!
It can mean cigarette. It can also mean homosexual, or young public schoolboys* who have to do menial tasks for older boys, although I don't know whether fagging is an extant practice. It originally was short for faggot/fagot, which is a bundle of sticks or herbs, an ancient means of measurement, and a kind of meatball.
Truly a versatile word.
* For those not in the know, a public school in the UK is a privately-run institution, not run by the state. It gets this name because when public schools started, they were open to the public, meaning practically anyone could apply and study there, providing they had the cash.
I remember going on a science trip with this really pretty lass when I was about 14. We went to Anglesey and designed some kind of power station based on renewable energy. As there was a lot of wind and water, we decided on a wave plant. The design of the plant was fairly crude, (hey, this was a weekend). But I designed and built a turbine that would spin in the same direction whatever the direction of the air flowing through it, while maintaining some degree of efficiency, which I was fairly proud of.
There are other ways of seeing this.
Infringement has been widespread for a long time (check out LPs from the 80s with "home taping is killing music" on them -- you can go further back with radio &c.) the only difference was that this infringement was largely uncontrollable and untraceable, so long as it wasn't done commercially. The opportunities for tracking and shaping use of digital stuff over the internet are far greater now.
Because using something in digital form inevitably means copying that information, all use of copyrighted works in this realm are now under the purview of copyright legislation. Combine that with technologies for DRM &c., and you could have an enormous amount of control over what people experience, and what they have to do in order to experience it.
Of course, that control is far from absolute, and the architecture of the internet often works against these attempts at control. Because the relevant companies do want absolute control, they'll never be satisfied. It is, however, closer than it was. And it will continue to be so. Even now, what might be considered normal behaviour (the equivalent of telling someone a joke you've heard) could make you an outlaw, and there doesn't seem to be any change of direction.
People are doing what they've always been doing. It's just that now they can be prevented from, or observed, doing it with greater ease.
No guarantee of safety? If someone steals your property (ie. the game or its fake money) would the poilce not deal with it as theft? It's exactly the same thing with Second Life, someone buys a product (game money) and that is taken from them without consent. Just because you don't value their property doesn't mean it has no value.
The man's right. It is the most logical thing to do. It's got some tradition. I can vaguely remember this being one of the main reasons why the pay of judges was increased sharply in Britain in the early 19th Century or something. Oh I'm useless when I'm stoned.
As I recall, the folks who run OpenOffice.org need to stick that ".org" on the end for trademark reasons.
If you need to step out of the realms of bash builtins, you know something is wrong.
And then, in a few hundred years, after a really bizarre sequence of events, a load of humans meet up with them and get caught up in some iffy alien politics?
Yeah, Star Trek's done it.
Looking at the replies your nonsense solicited, I can see why you think everyone else is an idiot.
What the guys above said.
Aaaannd... Google's on Einstein's side.
** Ducks