You root for Microsoft, of course. If you don't like Microsoft, you can choose not to use their software. But everyone is affected by the ridiculous state of the patent system right now. I'm not optimistic that the Supreme Court can/will restore any sanity, but it's a much bigger problem than any one company.
Seconding this. My US power strip not only fried itself, but cut the power for half the hotel I was staying at. This happened late Friday night, and it was almost 2 days before they fixed it.
We live in a world where thousands of children starve to death every day, people are killed or imprisoned for expressing their beliefs, women/minorities/everybody are oppressed, and few people really care about any of it, because it's all someone else's problem. I find it kind of funny (and more than a little sad) that the use of a driver can be blithely written off as "immoral" just because you can't download the source.
Sure, the rendering equation isn't ray tracing specific (it's a core graphics equation, independent of any one image generation method) but it's much easier to directly apply in ray tracing. There aren't many rasterization techniques that even attempt to solve it... the goal usually is just to add some ambient light effects which look like a plausible attempt at global illumination. AFAIK, even the latest, greatest game engines still stop short at something like baked-in ambient occlusion or screen-space darkening using the depth buffer. It looks cool, but physically accurate it ain't. It's much more natural to get "perfect" results in ray tracing, but that was kinda my point: getting those accurate results is pretty costly. If people don't notice the difference, why bother? Stick with the cheap approximation.
And about scalability, you're right, of course; ray tracing does scale better with scene complexity than rasterization does, and as computing power increases it will make more and more sense to use ray tracing. However, the ray tracing vs. rasterization argument has been going on for decades now, and while ray tracing researchers always seem convinced that ray tracing is going to suddenly explode and pwn the world, it hasn't happened yet and probably won't for the forseeable future. Part of it is just market entrenchment: there are ray tracing hardware accelerators, sure, but who has them? And although I've never worked with one, I'd imagine they'd have to be a bit limited, just because ray tracing is a much more global algorithm than rasterization... I can't see how it'd be easy to cram it into a stream processor with anywhere near as much efficiency as you could with a rasterizer. On the other hand, billions are invested into GPU design every year, and even the crappiest computers one nowadays. With GPUs getting more and more powerful and flexible by the year, and ray tracing basically having to rely on CPU power alone, the balance isn't going to radically shift anytime soon.
For the record, although I do research with both, I prefer ray tracing. It's conceptually simple, it's elegant, and you don't have to do a ton of rendering passes to get simple effects like refraction (which are a real PITA for rasterization). But when these articles come around (as they periodically do on Slashdot) claiming that rasterization is dead and ray tracing is the future of everything, I have to laugh. That may happen but not for a good long while.
For games, at least, shadows don't need to be perfect. Neither do reflection and (especially) refraction. The goal is all about rendering something that looks plausible, not perfect (although it's a bonus if you can get it). For things like caustics, most people (and especially gamers) just aren't going to notice if the shadows or caustics or what-not are a tiny bit "off".
Current rasterization approaches use a lot of approximations, it's true, but they can get away with that because in interactive graphics, most things don't need to look perfect. It's true that there's been a lot of cool work done lately with interactive ray tracing, but for anything other than very simple renderings (mostly-static scenes with no global illumination and hard shadows), ray tracers *also* rely on a bunch of approximations. They have to: getting a "perfect", physically correct result is just not a process that scales well. (Check out The Rendering Equation on wikipedia or somewhere else if you're interested; there's a integral over the hemisphere in there that has to be evaluated, which can recursively turn into a multi-dimension integral over many hemispheres. Without cheating, the evaluation of that thing is going to kick Moore's law's ass for a long, long time.)
By the way, the claim that with a "physically correct environment, you can achieve high levels of quality very quickly" doesn't really make much sense. What's a "physically correct environment" and what is it about rasterization that can't render one? How are we defining "high levels of quality" here? And "very quickly" is just not something that applies much to ray tracers at the moment, especially in the company of "physically correct".:-)
Re:How are these numbers calculated?
on
Storm Worm Rising
·
· Score: 1
Speaking of typos, I find it funny that the crack editorial staff of Network World managed to let a typo slip through in the *2nd word* of the article. All fear "the swifly spiking onslaught of the Storm Worm!"
Grad-student worshiping? Really? I've been a grad student for several years and not once have I been worshipped. I have been told that I'm crazy for not being out there making money, though. Where are you getting this from?
It's true that Betamax had superior picture quality, but unfortunately, each tape only ran a single hour. Early VHS tapes could hold (IIRC) 3.5 hours, so in that aspect at least, VHS was the "better" technology. (Sony later came out with Betamax tapes capable longer recording times, but it was too late...) Also, a big factor in the success of VHS was that it could be licensed by multiple manufacturers, whereas Betamax was pretty much a Sony-proprietary technology. So yeah, marketing may have had something to do with it, but it was Sony's marketing vs. everybody else.
"Simple as that" is rarely that simple, and there are multiple ways of comparing technologies... a fact that gets lost around here. Microsoft's software may be technologically inferior in many areas but like VHS, it has advantages... wide availability, familarity, compatibility. Don't get me wrong, not trying to be a MS-fanboy here... just sayin'.
Not sure whether you're objecting to the fact that C++ is being taught, or that I'm the one teaching it. If you're implying that I don't know what I'm talking about... well, in a lot of areas, true, I'm no expert. But I know C++ well enough to impart the basics to a bunch of sophomores. It's not high-level stuff we're talking, here.
The idea that gcc or any other C or C++ compiler initialises automatic variables to zeroes is a completely unfounded and laughable rumor.
Except it actually does happen sometimes. I couldn't tell you under what circumstances it happens, because I've been using C++ so long that initializing variables is a pretty burned-in habit for me right now. But, sometimes g++ does init them to zero on its own (as others in this thread have said). It was one of my students that brought this to my attention, actually, and I was surprised: I've been harping on the dangers of uninitialized pointers and variables for the whole semester and she apparently wanted to tell me that I was full of it. Which is why it annoys me. Sure, gcc sometimes zeroes it for you, but I don't want them thinking they can count on this kind of behavior...
I'm teaching a C++ class right now, and actually, this behavior bugs me. I keep stressing that everything needs to be initalized because otherwise you don't know what kinds of garbage values you're going to get, and when g++ goes and initializes stuff to zero, it makes it harder for me to get this point across. People write sloppy code when they expect zero-initialization, especially since in C++, you don't always get it.
Your thinking is good, but g++ (we're talking about Apple machines here, so g++ is the compiler of choice) will auto-initalizes variables to x to zero, so the loop does nothing. So the output of this program is... 10. Hardly something you'd need 64 bits for. Or even 8, for that matter.:-)
Are YOU an archaeologist? You seem to know some history, sure, but cut the people some slack. This is a very very important discovery in the land of Egyptology, and believe me, they know that. They get to publish their findings and be subjected to the gauntlet of peer review, from peers who know a whole lot more about how to handle these things than you do. I'm not saying they're doing everything perfectly, but I'd be wary of condemning the entire team as "ham-fisted and incompetent" based on a frickin' MSN article.
My sister, by the way, is ON that team - a fact which is causing me and my family no small amount of pride! She's a grad student, so definitely doing more grunt work than actual discovering right now... but she's a careful person, and she has literally been preparing for this for most of her life. We are just so far beyond excited for her.:-)
Let's be real here. Maybe you're not a pirate. Maybe you know people who are. But if we're defining piracy as downloading digital copies of music, movies, software, etc. that would not legally be available for free, then I'd wager that the vast majority of P2P users *are* pirates.
Yes, I *do* recognize that P2P has other uses. Torrent in particular is gaining popularity as a distribution method (especially among the nerdly). And no, I don't generally support the actions of those who would define the value of a tool by its more negative uses. But... come on. Many, many people are using P2P to pirate stuff. If this were not the case, there wouldn't be nearly the fuss over all this.
Because for whatever reason, perceptually, it seems to be the number of vertical scanlines that matters most. That's why anamorphically encoded widescreen DVDs are actually stored with full vertical resolution, while the horizontal is squished and then scaled during playback. That way you get a whole bunch of perceived extra resolution for the entire picture, even though you don't have any extra horizontal resolution.
Hey, they renewed Arrested Development for a third season, and who saw that one coming? AD is perhaps the funniest TV show ever, although you do have to watch it from the start to catch a lot of the jokes. And have a brain - lots of it is kinda subtle. I'd be shocked if AD lasts out the season, and yes, the way Firefly was treated is reprehensible, but they occasionally do keep good stuff around. For a few months, at least.
That said, I'd encourage everybody to go see Serenity, whether you've been a Firefly fan or not. The movie ain't perfect but it's damned entertaining - even the old ladies next to me were having a great time. "Screw this! I wanna live!" - that line actually got thunderous applause (funnier in context). More than that, decent box office for this one may actually encourage decent sci-fi farther down the road. There's certainly a lack of it right now.
I saw the first couple episodes of Odyssey 5 when it was on... and although I don't remember details, I remember the pilot being kind of interesting but after that, it just wasn't well done at all. Maybe it got better, I don't know... it lost me. Sadly I can't argue details, seeing as I don't remember any, which is kind of the point. It didn't stick with me long enough. In comparison, it's been about that long since I've seen any B5 and I could still spout plot details. It was just way more involving (although the show has aged pretty badly, I'll give you that).
Mind you, I don't mean to imply that Trek is anything special either; on the contrary, Enterprise has been a snoozer its entire run. Although there are a few episodes of TNG that I've seen that were pretty good.
I just bought a 512 MB Creative MuVo TX FM... got it yesterday, actually. I've read good reviews, but overall... meh. It's got good features, I like the built in FM radio, but it feels a little flimsy overall. And worst of all there's a very high-frequency buzz that I can hear almost all the time, but especially when the backlight is on. That and, the first time I transferred songs to it, it only caught "chunks" of a few songs and refused to play the whole thing. Anyway, I think it's going back... in favor of an iPod shuffle.:-)
Also, the shuffle is actually quite a bit cheaper than the MuVo anyway. I paid $130 for 512 MB MuVo, I'll only pay $150 for a 1 GB Shuffle. I doubt the lack of screen will be a problem, I rarely look at the screen on my Audible Otis anyway, which is what this will replace.
I really like the MX-500. Fully programmable, hard-key, you can hook it up and program it with your PC (w/ some extra hardware, I think, but not too expensive), and everyone I've heard of who has one just loves the thing. It's a slightly older remote, so you can get one for 70 bucks now: http://www.bluedo.com/bluedocgi/product.cgi? model= MX-500
Also, tip for your HTPC... pick up one of these: http://www.notestation.com/ack571_2.htm
It's a USB infrared keyboard w/ mouse built in, both of which work perfectly w/ just about any OS, since the computer sees it as a regular USB keyboard and mouse. But the really nice thing is, since the keyboard is IR, you can use it to train your remote to "press keys", and then not have to deal with lirc (assuming your HTPC is running Linux, although you'd have similar issues with Windows). Then you can stick the keyboard in the closet w/ your older remotes and still have a full keyboard available when you need one. It's a nifty solution.
Wow, thanks for that! I've been wondering for years what that movie was... saw it probably a decade ago on cable when I was home sick from school... and I've never been able to find it again.
I remember some great scenes (as in bad)... the robot electrocuting herself as they rolled around in dish suds about to have sex... "Cherry, I want you to get me a Pepsi!"... horrible movie! I'd love to see it again.
Yeah, and you know that the first time there's a significant crash that can be blamed on the computer (whether it's true or not), safety folks will raise holy hell, and who knows what'll happen then to the whole concept then?
Although this argument never held much water with me. Consider all the tired drivers, drunk drivers, old people, teenagers, and in general crappy drivers on the roads. There's like, what, 60,000 deaths a year due to car crashes, and that's nearly all human error. Can't imagine computers doing worse job than we're doing already.
Something that's bugged me about the blogging scene is how self-important certain parts of it seem to be. Some of the more prominent blogs/newslogs seem to be story after story, self-congratulatory pieces about how exciting and important blogging is ("Wow, look! We're important!") and for some reason that attitudes drives me nuts. Because... well... yeah, in some respect blogging and "the voice of the people" and so on is important, although not nearly so much as they'd like to have us believe sometimes. Especially when blogs cease being about something, and instead being about... blogging. Ah well.
Slashdot Mirror
You root for Microsoft, of course. If you don't like Microsoft, you can choose not to use their software. But everyone is affected by the ridiculous state of the patent system right now. I'm not optimistic that the Supreme Court can/will restore any sanity, but it's a much bigger problem than any one company.
Seconding this. My US power strip not only fried itself, but cut the power for half the hotel I was staying at. This happened late Friday night, and it was almost 2 days before they fixed it.
It was a crappy hotel, but the point stands. :-)
We live in a world where thousands of children starve to death every day, people are killed or imprisoned for expressing their beliefs, women/minorities/everybody are oppressed, and few people really care about any of it, because it's all someone else's problem. I find it kind of funny (and more than a little sad) that the use of a driver can be blithely written off as "immoral" just because you can't download the source.
Sure, the rendering equation isn't ray tracing specific (it's a core graphics equation, independent of any one image generation method) but it's much easier to directly apply in ray tracing. There aren't many rasterization techniques that even attempt to solve it... the goal usually is just to add some ambient light effects which look like a plausible attempt at global illumination. AFAIK, even the latest, greatest game engines still stop short at something like baked-in ambient occlusion or screen-space darkening using the depth buffer. It looks cool, but physically accurate it ain't. It's much more natural to get "perfect" results in ray tracing, but that was kinda my point: getting those accurate results is pretty costly. If people don't notice the difference, why bother? Stick with the cheap approximation.
And about scalability, you're right, of course; ray tracing does scale better with scene complexity than rasterization does, and as computing power increases it will make more and more sense to use ray tracing. However, the ray tracing vs. rasterization argument has been going on for decades now, and while ray tracing researchers always seem convinced that ray tracing is going to suddenly explode and pwn the world, it hasn't happened yet and probably won't for the forseeable future. Part of it is just market entrenchment: there are ray tracing hardware accelerators, sure, but who has them? And although I've never worked with one, I'd imagine they'd have to be a bit limited, just because ray tracing is a much more global algorithm than rasterization... I can't see how it'd be easy to cram it into a stream processor with anywhere near as much efficiency as you could with a rasterizer. On the other hand, billions are invested into GPU design every year, and even the crappiest computers one nowadays. With GPUs getting more and more powerful and flexible by the year, and ray tracing basically having to rely on CPU power alone, the balance isn't going to radically shift anytime soon.
For the record, although I do research with both, I prefer ray tracing. It's conceptually simple, it's elegant, and you don't have to do a ton of rendering passes to get simple effects like refraction (which are a real PITA for rasterization). But when these articles come around (as they periodically do on Slashdot) claiming that rasterization is dead and ray tracing is the future of everything, I have to laugh. That may happen but not for a good long while.
For games, at least, shadows don't need to be perfect. Neither do reflection and (especially) refraction. The goal is all about rendering something that looks plausible, not perfect (although it's a bonus if you can get it). For things like caustics, most people (and especially gamers) just aren't going to notice if the shadows or caustics or what-not are a tiny bit "off".
:-)
Current rasterization approaches use a lot of approximations, it's true, but they can get away with that because in interactive graphics, most things don't need to look perfect. It's true that there's been a lot of cool work done lately with interactive ray tracing, but for anything other than very simple renderings (mostly-static scenes with no global illumination and hard shadows), ray tracers *also* rely on a bunch of approximations. They have to: getting a "perfect", physically correct result is just not a process that scales well. (Check out The Rendering Equation on wikipedia or somewhere else if you're interested; there's a integral over the hemisphere in there that has to be evaluated, which can recursively turn into a multi-dimension integral over many hemispheres. Without cheating, the evaluation of that thing is going to kick Moore's law's ass for a long, long time.)
By the way, the claim that with a "physically correct environment, you can achieve high levels of quality very quickly" doesn't really make much sense. What's a "physically correct environment" and what is it about rasterization that can't render one? How are we defining "high levels of quality" here? And "very quickly" is just not something that applies much to ray tracers at the moment, especially in the company of "physically correct".
Speaking of typos, I find it funny that the crack editorial staff of Network World managed to let a typo slip through in the *2nd word* of the article. All fear "the swifly spiking onslaught of the Storm Worm!"
Whatever happened to LoseNotLooseGuy? He'd have been all over this, but I haven't seen him around for a couple of years.
Grad-student worshiping? Really? I've been a grad student for several years and not once have I been worshipped. I have been told that I'm crazy for not being out there making money, though. Where are you getting this from?
It's true that Betamax had superior picture quality, but unfortunately, each tape only ran a single hour. Early VHS tapes could hold (IIRC) 3.5 hours, so in that aspect at least, VHS was the "better" technology. (Sony later came out with Betamax tapes capable longer recording times, but it was too late...) Also, a big factor in the success of VHS was that it could be licensed by multiple manufacturers, whereas Betamax was pretty much a Sony-proprietary technology. So yeah, marketing may have had something to do with it, but it was Sony's marketing vs. everybody else.
"Simple as that" is rarely that simple, and there are multiple ways of comparing technologies... a fact that gets lost around here. Microsoft's software may be technologically inferior in many areas but like VHS, it has advantages... wide availability, familarity, compatibility. Don't get me wrong, not trying to be a MS-fanboy here... just sayin'.
You are teaching a C++ class? Frightening.
Not sure whether you're objecting to the fact that C++ is being taught, or that I'm the one teaching it. If you're implying that I don't know what I'm talking about... well, in a lot of areas, true, I'm no expert. But I know C++ well enough to impart the basics to a bunch of sophomores. It's not high-level stuff we're talking, here.
The idea that gcc or any other C or C++ compiler initialises automatic variables to zeroes is a completely unfounded and laughable rumor.
Except it actually does happen sometimes. I couldn't tell you under what circumstances it happens, because I've been using C++ so long that initializing variables is a pretty burned-in habit for me right now. But, sometimes g++ does init them to zero on its own (as others in this thread have said). It was one of my students that brought this to my attention, actually, and I was surprised: I've been harping on the dangers of uninitialized pointers and variables for the whole semester and she apparently wanted to tell me that I was full of it. Which is why it annoys me. Sure, gcc sometimes zeroes it for you, but I don't want them thinking they can count on this kind of behavior...
Huh... you're right. Weird; didn't know that.
I'm teaching a C++ class right now, and actually, this behavior bugs me. I keep stressing that everything needs to be initalized because otherwise you don't know what kinds of garbage values you're going to get, and when g++ goes and initializes stuff to zero, it makes it harder for me to get this point across. People write sloppy code when they expect zero-initialization, especially since in C++, you don't always get it.
Your thinking is good, but g++ (we're talking about Apple machines here, so g++ is the compiler of choice) will auto-initalizes variables to x to zero, so the loop does nothing. So the output of this program is... 10. Hardly something you'd need 64 bits for. Or even 8, for that matter. :-)
You are not getting nearly enough credit for that comment. Thanks for the laugh. :-)
Ah, where is LoseNotLooseGuy when you need him? Haven't seen that dude around in a long time... that saddens me. So much for the cause.
Are YOU an archaeologist? You seem to know some history, sure, but cut the people some slack. This is a very very important discovery in the land of Egyptology, and believe me, they know that. They get to publish their findings and be subjected to the gauntlet of peer review, from peers who know a whole lot more about how to handle these things than you do. I'm not saying they're doing everything perfectly, but I'd be wary of condemning the entire team as "ham-fisted and incompetent" based on a frickin' MSN article.
:-)
My sister, by the way, is ON that team - a fact which is causing me and my family no small amount of pride! She's a grad student, so definitely doing more grunt work than actual discovering right now... but she's a careful person, and she has literally been preparing for this for most of her life. We are just so far beyond excited for her.
Let's be real here. Maybe you're not a pirate. Maybe you know people who are. But if we're defining piracy as downloading digital copies of music, movies, software, etc. that would not legally be available for free, then I'd wager that the vast majority of P2P users *are* pirates.
Yes, I *do* recognize that P2P has other uses. Torrent in particular is gaining popularity as a distribution method (especially among the nerdly). And no, I don't generally support the actions of those who would define the value of a tool by its more negative uses. But... come on. Many, many people are using P2P to pirate stuff. If this were not the case, there wouldn't be nearly the fuss over all this.
Because for whatever reason, perceptually, it seems to be the number of vertical scanlines that matters most. That's why anamorphically encoded widescreen DVDs are actually stored with full vertical resolution, while the horizontal is squished and then scaled during playback. That way you get a whole bunch of perceived extra resolution for the entire picture, even though you don't have any extra horizontal resolution.
Hey, they renewed Arrested Development for a third season, and who saw that one coming? AD is perhaps the funniest TV show ever, although you do have to watch it from the start to catch a lot of the jokes. And have a brain - lots of it is kinda subtle. I'd be shocked if AD lasts out the season, and yes, the way Firefly was treated is reprehensible, but they occasionally do keep good stuff around. For a few months, at least.
That said, I'd encourage everybody to go see Serenity, whether you've been a Firefly fan or not. The movie ain't perfect but it's damned entertaining - even the old ladies next to me were having a great time. "Screw this! I wanna live!" - that line actually got thunderous applause (funnier in context). More than that, decent box office for this one may actually encourage decent sci-fi farther down the road. There's certainly a lack of it right now.
My favorite review:
0 blog/sith.html
"It was a groovy silent film. Pity they had to put dialogue into it."
Quoted in its entirety from this site:
http://userpages.chorus.net/jrod/random/not%20a%2
I saw the first couple episodes of Odyssey 5 when it was on... and although I don't remember details, I remember the pilot being kind of interesting but after that, it just wasn't well done at all. Maybe it got better, I don't know... it lost me. Sadly I can't argue details, seeing as I don't remember any, which is kind of the point. It didn't stick with me long enough. In comparison, it's been about that long since I've seen any B5 and I could still spout plot details. It was just way more involving (although the show has aged pretty badly, I'll give you that).
Mind you, I don't mean to imply that Trek is anything special either; on the contrary, Enterprise has been a snoozer its entire run. Although there are a few episodes of TNG that I've seen that were pretty good.
I just bought a 512 MB Creative MuVo TX FM... got it yesterday, actually. I've read good reviews, but overall... meh. It's got good features, I like the built in FM radio, but it feels a little flimsy overall. And worst of all there's a very high-frequency buzz that I can hear almost all the time, but especially when the backlight is on. That and, the first time I transferred songs to it, it only caught "chunks" of a few songs and refused to play the whole thing. Anyway, I think it's going back... in favor of an iPod shuffle. :-)
Also, the shuffle is actually quite a bit cheaper than the MuVo anyway. I paid $130 for 512 MB MuVo, I'll only pay $150 for a 1 GB Shuffle. I doubt the lack of screen will be a problem, I rarely look at the screen on my Audible Otis anyway, which is what this will replace.
I really like the MX-500. Fully programmable, hard-key, you can hook it up and program it with your PC (w/ some extra hardware, I think, but not too expensive), and everyone I've heard of who has one just loves the thing. It's a slightly older remote, so you can get one for 70 bucks now:? model= MX-500
http://www.bluedo.com/bluedocgi/product.cgi
Also, tip for your HTPC... pick up one of these:
http://www.notestation.com/ack571_2.htm
It's a USB infrared keyboard w/ mouse built in, both of which work perfectly w/ just about any OS, since the computer sees it as a regular USB keyboard and mouse. But the really nice thing is, since the keyboard is IR, you can use it to train your remote to "press keys", and then not have to deal with lirc (assuming your HTPC is running Linux, although you'd have similar issues with Windows). Then you can stick the keyboard in the closet w/ your older remotes and still have a full keyboard available when you need one. It's a nifty solution.
Wow, thanks for that! I've been wondering for years what that movie was... saw it probably a decade ago on cable when I was home sick from school... and I've never been able to find it again.
I remember some great scenes (as in bad)... the robot electrocuting herself as they rolled around in dish suds about to have sex... "Cherry, I want you to get me a Pepsi!"... horrible movie! I'd love to see it again.
Anybody know where I could get a copy?
Yeah, and you know that the first time there's a significant crash that can be blamed on the computer (whether it's true or not), safety folks will raise holy hell, and who knows what'll happen then to the whole concept then?
Although this argument never held much water with me. Consider all the tired drivers, drunk drivers, old people, teenagers, and in general crappy drivers on the roads. There's like, what, 60,000 deaths a year due to car crashes, and that's nearly all human error. Can't imagine computers doing worse job than we're doing already.
Something that's bugged me about the blogging scene is how self-important certain parts of it seem to be. Some of the more prominent blogs/newslogs seem to be story after story, self-congratulatory pieces about how exciting and important blogging is ("Wow, look! We're important!") and for some reason that attitudes drives me nuts. Because... well... yeah, in some respect blogging and "the voice of the people" and so on is important, although not nearly so much as they'd like to have us believe sometimes. Especially when blogs cease being about something, and instead being about... blogging. Ah well.