And now to piss off a lot of readers, let's not forget that Japan began this chapter in history with the admirable goal of freeing their Asian bothers from the tyranny of Western colonialism. "Asia for Asians" was their slogan.
This was the great co-prosperity sphere. Of course what that actually meant was "Asia for Nippon" since the other people of Asia while not as low as non Asians were still Untermenschen (or whatever their term for it was). Which led to the well documented abuse that still gives rise to the occasional diplomatic tension in the area today (in stark contrast to what happened in Western Europe).
Likewise. I'm 38, and I think my upper limit's dropped to below 17KHz, but still above the CRT flyback frequency (15.6?). Worse.. I seem to recall that exposure to high-frequency noise is what -causes- the loss of high-frequency hearing as we age (the hair cells become brittle and eventually snap, or something like that).
Here you go then, the problem elegantly solves itself.
I'm willing to bet $10 million that no one is going to get laid off over this.
When a company starts to have unexpected costs here and there, 10 million at a time, it adds up to real money after a while and can end up having some real life consequences.
Then before you know it, some exec will run a PowerPoint presentation going "Well, last year we had to pay out 65 millions to various litigious annoying people, but if we close this plant here and relocate it to this Chinese work camp, our profit will still be up by 13.8% which is above predictions for the sector. So I suggest we all give ourselves a raise".
Granted, keyboards aren't exactly multi-touch (except for modifier keys like SHIFT)
But that's four possible keys right there - Shift-Ctrl-Meta plus a normal key In Emacs land Meta was also Alt for a while because of PC keyboards, but I seem to recall some original keyboards (probably on Lisp machines) also having a real Meta key just as we have Windows/Apple keys today, so we really have five possible (though on keyboards really three modifiers are the most practical to use at once).
Not to mention Super and Hyper (and Top and Front). Of course you'd need a proper keyboard.:) In any Unixy system, you can easily map the various Alt, leftAlt (or AltGr), RightWin, LeftWin and Menu to any combination of Alt, Meta, Super and Compose (the latter from Sun keyboards) which are the only really useful ones...
I've used Opera exclusively for 7 years and was used to having to fire up IE every now and again.
As a long time desktop Linux user I don't even have IE to run if other browsers don't work (I guess I could set it up in Wine or in a VM if I was really desperate) and it's been ages since I've seen a broken site as well. I can only think of one off the top of my head which was set up by some clueless people some years ago and which the org running it is now apparently kind of stuck with since they don't seem to understand how it works (no techs there and no funds).
ASites "optimised for IE"... What is this ? 2002 ? That writer ought to get an Internet connection some day.
What is so hard to understand about my post? 3D modeling programs are still a 2D representation because they are on a flat screen. A 3D display would increase the realism by making you change focal planes.
On a 3D display the webcam could check where you are looking and focus the appropriate distance accordingly.
Here I get 3mb cable with a 20gb monthly cap for $70 per month, and it's the fastest and highest value I can get for straight internet.
I could get 10mb with no cap from the same company for about $80 per month, but I would also have to buy a cable and phone service package.
Here (France) the domestic deals are typically built ADSL2+ so up to 20-ish Mbps (I get roughly 13/1), plus DVB over ADSL (15 channels + 100 more weird ones nobody has ever heard of) and free telephone, domestic and international. They typically also throw in a set top box with WiFi that has a digital TV recorder built-in. That's 30 € / month. If you're in one of the currently few locations being upgraded, you can switch to fibre at no cost which boosts you to 100/50. The price remains the same.
However a number of rural locations (mostly small villages) are stuck with dialup here too despite the huge population density.
Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I want to be Pony trekking or camping Or just watching TV Finland, Finland, Finland It's the country for me
Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I quite want to be Your mountains so lofty Your treetops so tall Finland, Finland, Finland Finland has it all
Star Trek wasn't really about science, imo, so much as about society.
But then so is science fiction. It's typically on the effects of technology or science on society. And Star Trek has some pretty astounding science that has little or no effect on its society. It could be taking place on sailships with little or no difference.
Of course at the time it was a pretty cheap show that reused leftover sets from other shows and mostly used science fiction for its novelty value. But it seems that the more recent incarnations still haven't evolved from this, presumably to stay in the spirit of the original.
As someone mentionned above, a society where a matter transporter was commonly available would undergo tremendous changes. Yet we see nothing of this.
While Star Trek might sometimes be entertaining, it seriously fails at science fiction in my opinion. So I side with Stross on that one.
I think for a lot of the real young guys (I suppose college age) its pretty strange seeing women with so much pubic hair. All the porn girls these days seem to be shaved, including/especially the amateurs, and my parents-of-high-school-age-girls sources tell me that shaving is pretty much the standard and no girl would be caught dead these days with a full bush.
Girls have a hatred of hair these days since it's the current trend (apparently started by the porn industry's desire to get their actresses "more naked"). Presumably they'll shave their head next (probably also because it's "hygienic" as that's their current nonsensical explanation) then fashion will swing again as those things are bound to do and things will return to normal... Until next time.
The driver apparently detects "crysis.exe" and inflates performance metrics by offloading processing, whereas renaming the executable to "crisis.exe" gives realistic performance scores. Please RTFA before replying.
Thanks for the tip, I've now renamed all my games to "crysis.exe" and am now enjoying a major speed boost. You've given my laptop a new youth !
I can finally get rid of that cumbersome i7 box with that noisy nVidia !
Oh, ATI was one of the first to cheat on a graphics benchmark quack.exe anyone?
Oh this type of thing has been going on for a VERY long time.
I even remember teapot based hacks (although not the details unfortunately, probably something along the lines of having the teapot hardwired somewhere) back when displaying rotating GL teapots was all the rage to test graphics hardware (ancient history, obviously). Of course something like Quake was still the stuff of science fiction at the time.
I know Steam has its detractors as they do not allow resale of titles, but it also has its benefits.
That and the fact that the prices are typically a bit higher on Steam than elsewhere are pretty much the only things I could hold against them.
Despite that, most of the games I buy today, I get through Steam (I don't own any consoles) and they're way better than any of the alternatives (digital distributors) I've tried such as EA or the Metaboli store.
Of course, people who are hooked up to one of those weird ISPs that cap their usage won't find digital distribution of media a very attractive prospect. As an aside, I still don't get the point of those capped contracts for broadband in this day and age. What's the point (beyond the obvious screwing the customer, ok, stupid question really) ? Extra-fast email display ?
Under the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006, the suggested EU VAT rate for books (and children's nappies!) is the reduced rate of 5%. Many countries, such as Ireland, the UK, and Poland, for example, have charged zero percent VAT on books for years. Amazon is, as usual, full of it.
But, there's also the exchange rate, they'll be selling in euros and as we all know, $1 = 1.5 € (roughly) so they have to adjust their prices accordingly (same for UKP), as all of the other US companies routinely do.
VAT is just one aspect. Besides it might only be 5% on books but there's the sales tax, which in the US is more like 10%. So you have to fit that in somewhere as well.
So you end up with prices that are around 170% US prices. It all makes sense.
Intel's integrated graphics can not handle 1080p decoding as well as nVidia's ion and ATIs integrated GPUs. That will be the new minimum GPU requirement IMHO.
I don't really see this as a problem. But then I don't really watch TV on my laptop (I have a USB thingie that could grab the DVB-T stuff, but then I'd need an antenna that actually works on the road which it why it permanently lives on my workstation) and it cannot read BR disks. And there just isn't that much HD content online so far. I even wonder if the screen display 1080 pixels vertically... I think it's 1200x800 or something.
So IMO not a big issue at the moment although it will probably be one of these days when the format becomes ubiquitous. Then it's really a question of having the right decoder (or at least enough of the costly bits, cycle-wise) hardwired somewhere as a lot of chipsets do nowadays.
So since Intel's GPUs are terrible we will just have to wait and see what comes of this.
I don't know why everybody hates Intel's basic integrated GPUs. While they certainly won't run Crysis, they're fine for a little laptop, use little power and manage to handle stuff like the OpenGL effects of the KDE or Gnome desktops (or presumably the current Windows desktops, which may be less demanding) just fine.
They aren't fit for high end games but work fine for casual office and network use. They're cheap and save power. I neither need nor want the same GPU in my laptop as in my desktop.
Having seen the trailer, I've probably seen as much of this project as I really want. But the concept is amusing enough that I'm glad they're doing it.
I too am not really convinced anybody could sit through 1 1/2 hours (or whatever the duration of that film was) of such a disjointed mishmash. I find the idea creative, wacky and fun, but I really wonder if it'll work for anything beyond 15 or 20 minutes (if that).
Good luck to them anyway, at least they're probably having fun doing it. That's the main thing after all.
Slashdot Mirror
And now to piss off a lot of readers, let's not forget that Japan began this chapter in history with the admirable goal of freeing their Asian bothers from the tyranny of Western colonialism. "Asia for Asians" was their slogan.
This was the great co-prosperity sphere. Of course what that actually meant was "Asia for Nippon" since the other people of Asia while not as low as non Asians were still Untermenschen (or whatever their term for it was). Which led to the well documented abuse that still gives rise to the occasional diplomatic tension in the area today (in stark contrast to what happened in Western Europe).
So, admirable... that's debatable.
Likewise. I'm 38, and I think my upper limit's dropped to below 17KHz, but still above the CRT flyback frequency (15.6?). Worse.. I seem to recall that exposure to high-frequency noise is what -causes- the loss of high-frequency hearing as we age (the hair cells become brittle and eventually snap, or something like that).
Here you go then, the problem elegantly solves itself.
I'm willing to bet $10 million that no one is going to get laid off over this.
When a company starts to have unexpected costs here and there, 10 million at a time, it adds up to real money after a while and can end up having some real life consequences.
Then before you know it, some exec will run a PowerPoint presentation going "Well, last year we had to pay out 65 millions to various litigious annoying people, but if we close this plant here and relocate it to this Chinese work camp, our profit will still be up by 13.8% which is above predictions for the sector. So I suggest we all give ourselves a raise".
Remember, you read it here first.
There's a very good reason few people listen to that fruitcake anymore.
He's an armed fruitcake though, he can force you to listen.
Granted, keyboards aren't exactly multi-touch (except for modifier keys like SHIFT)
But that's four possible keys right there - Shift-Ctrl-Meta plus a normal key In Emacs land Meta was also Alt for a while because of PC keyboards, but I seem to recall some original keyboards (probably on Lisp machines) also having a real Meta key just as we have Windows/Apple keys today, so we really have five possible (though on keyboards really three modifiers are the most practical to use at once).
Not to mention Super and Hyper (and Top and Front). Of course you'd need a proper keyboard. :)
In any Unixy system, you can easily map the various Alt, leftAlt (or AltGr), RightWin, LeftWin and Menu to any combination of Alt, Meta, Super and Compose (the latter from Sun keyboards) which are the only really useful ones...
I've used Opera exclusively for 7 years and was used to having to fire up IE every now and again.
As a long time desktop Linux user I don't even have IE to run if other browsers don't work (I guess I could set it up in Wine or in a VM if I was really desperate) and it's been ages since I've seen a broken site as well.
I can only think of one off the top of my head which was set up by some clueless people some years ago and which the org running it is now apparently kind of stuck with since they don't seem to understand how it works (no techs there and no funds).
ASites "optimised for IE"... What is this ? 2002 ? That writer ought to get an Internet connection some day.
What is so hard to understand about my post? 3D modeling programs are still a 2D representation because they are on a flat screen. A 3D display would increase the realism by making you change focal planes.
On a 3D display the webcam could check where you are looking and focus the appropriate distance accordingly.
I know I'd probably never subscribe to a MMO. But this business model wouldn't make me feel "stuck" with a game I might, or not, like.
If it proves to be a success, it will likely be copied by numerous other actors in that field.
If that's supposed to be bad, I'm jealous.
Here I get 3mb cable with a 20gb monthly cap for $70 per month, and it's the fastest and highest value I can get for straight internet.
I could get 10mb with no cap from the same company for about $80 per month, but I would also have to buy a cable and phone service package.
Here (France) the domestic deals are typically built ADSL2+ so up to 20-ish Mbps (I get roughly 13/1), plus DVB over ADSL (15 channels + 100 more weird ones nobody has ever heard of) and free telephone, domestic and international. They typically also throw in a set top box with WiFi that has a digital TV recorder built-in.
That's 30 € / month. If you're in one of the currently few locations being upgraded, you can switch to fibre at no cost which boosts you to 100/50. The price remains the same.
However a number of rural locations (mostly small villages) are stuck with dialup here too despite the huge population density.
Right. I'm off to Finland.
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Pony trekking or camping
Or just watching TV
Finland, Finland, Finland
It's the country for me
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I quite want to be
Your mountains so lofty
Your treetops so tall
Finland, Finland, Finland
Finland has it all
Star Trek wasn't really about science, imo, so much as about society.
But then so is science fiction. It's typically on the effects of technology or science on society. And Star Trek has some pretty astounding science that has little or no effect on its society. It could be taking place on sailships with little or no difference.
Of course at the time it was a pretty cheap show that reused leftover sets from other shows and mostly used science fiction for its novelty value. But it seems that the more recent incarnations still haven't evolved from this, presumably to stay in the spirit of the original.
As someone mentionned above, a society where a matter transporter was commonly available would undergo tremendous changes. Yet we see nothing of this.
While Star Trek might sometimes be entertaining, it seriously fails at science fiction in my opinion. So I side with Stross on that one.
What about software? That's the big question here
The big question is where is my 41%, I'm getting screwed out of my 41% of pirated software and nobody seems to care !
I'm going to pirate all of KDE and OpenOffice, that'll be a good start.
I guess I'm in the minority, but I'm going to buy it. It's a few bucks, it's kinda unique, and why not?
Great, let us know what you think of the other models in that issue... I think they've got the PowerPuff girls, Snow White and Vera from Scooby-Doo.
I think for a lot of the real young guys (I suppose college age) its pretty strange seeing women with so much pubic hair. All the porn girls these days seem to be shaved, including/especially the amateurs, and my parents-of-high-school-age-girls sources tell me that shaving is pretty much the standard and no girl would be caught dead these days with a full bush.
Girls have a hatred of hair these days since it's the current trend (apparently started by the porn industry's desire to get their actresses "more naked").
Presumably they'll shave their head next (probably also because it's "hygienic" as that's their current nonsensical explanation) then fashion will swing again as those things are bound to do and things will return to normal... Until next time.
The driver apparently detects "crysis.exe" and inflates performance metrics by offloading processing, whereas renaming the executable to "crisis.exe" gives realistic performance scores. Please RTFA before replying.
Thanks for the tip, I've now renamed all my games to "crysis.exe" and am now enjoying a major speed boost. You've given my laptop a new youth !
I can finally get rid of that cumbersome i7 box with that noisy nVidia !
Oh, ATI was one of the first to cheat on a graphics benchmark quack.exe anyone?
Oh this type of thing has been going on for a VERY long time.
I even remember teapot based hacks (although not the details unfortunately, probably something along the lines of having the teapot hardwired somewhere) back when displaying rotating GL teapots was all the rage to test graphics hardware (ancient history, obviously).
Of course something like Quake was still the stuff of science fiction at the time.
Apparently, they are sometimes forced to share computers....
This doesn't seem very sanitary to me.
Especially given the state of all the shared computers I've seen so far... (ew)
So people who use that software only live less than a year and a half afterwards? Now THAT is some malware...
But they can be saved if during that time they can convince somebody else to use the service. It's the only way to survive the malediction !
I know Steam has its detractors as they do not allow resale of titles, but it also has its benefits.
That and the fact that the prices are typically a bit higher on Steam than elsewhere are pretty much the only things I could hold against them.
Despite that, most of the games I buy today, I get through Steam (I don't own any consoles) and they're way better than any of the alternatives (digital distributors) I've tried such as EA or the Metaboli store.
Of course, people who are hooked up to one of those weird ISPs that cap their usage won't find digital distribution of media a very attractive prospect. As an aside, I still don't get the point of those capped contracts for broadband in this day and age. What's the point (beyond the obvious screwing the customer, ok, stupid question really) ? Extra-fast email display ?
Under the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006, the suggested EU VAT rate for books (and children's nappies!) is the reduced rate of 5%. Many countries, such as Ireland, the UK, and Poland, for example, have charged zero percent VAT on books for years. Amazon is, as usual, full of it.
But, there's also the exchange rate, they'll be selling in euros and as we all know, $1 = 1.5 € (roughly) so they have to adjust their prices accordingly (same for UKP), as all of the other US companies routinely do.
VAT is just one aspect. Besides it might only be 5% on books but there's the sales tax, which in the US is more like 10%. So you have to fit that in somewhere as well.
So you end up with prices that are around 170% US prices. It all makes sense.
Intel's integrated graphics can not handle 1080p decoding as well as nVidia's ion and ATIs integrated GPUs. That will be the new minimum GPU requirement IMHO.
I don't really see this as a problem. But then I don't really watch TV on my laptop (I have a USB thingie that could grab the DVB-T stuff, but then I'd need an antenna that actually works on the road which it why it permanently lives on my workstation) and it cannot read BR disks. And there just isn't that much HD content online so far.
I even wonder if the screen display 1080 pixels vertically... I think it's 1200x800 or something.
So IMO not a big issue at the moment although it will probably be one of these days when the format becomes ubiquitous. Then it's really a question of having the right decoder (or at least enough of the costly bits, cycle-wise) hardwired somewhere as a lot of chipsets do nowadays.
So since Intel's GPUs are terrible we will just have to wait and see what comes of this.
I don't know why everybody hates Intel's basic integrated GPUs. While they certainly won't run Crysis, they're fine for a little laptop, use little power and manage to handle stuff like the OpenGL effects of the KDE or Gnome desktops (or presumably the current Windows desktops, which may be less demanding) just fine.
They aren't fit for high end games but work fine for casual office and network use. They're cheap and save power. I neither need nor want the same GPU in my laptop as in my desktop.
There is a British parliament member that wishes to impose health warnings on digitally altered images.
"Warning: this photo is digitally enhanced at scale 4. People normally don't look like this."
A mandatory "This image has been digitally enhanced" would be a fair compromise IMO. It seems to me that a lot of people aren't even aware of this.
Having seen the trailer, I've probably seen as much of this project as I really want. But the concept is amusing enough that I'm glad they're doing it.
I too am not really convinced anybody could sit through 1 1/2 hours (or whatever the duration of that film was) of such a disjointed mishmash. I find the idea creative, wacky and fun, but I really wonder if it'll work for anything beyond 15 or 20 minutes (if that).
Good luck to them anyway, at least they're probably having fun doing it. That's the main thing after all.
The alternative is hiring competent middle managers that doesn't judge ideas based on presentation?
I think this has been tried already but they were all fired the next week by the upper level of management who couldn't stand their smugness.
Remember to tighten your ties, the more starved for oxygen your brain cells are, the easier it is to deal with corporate culture.