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User: noname444

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Comments · 84

  1. Re:The Right Thing (TM) on Another Java Exploit For Sale · · Score: 1

    That would escalate quickly.

  2. Thorium on the moon? on Nuclear Rocket Petition On White House Website · · Score: 1

    There's tons of thorium right here on earth. Mining it on the moon sounds pretty impractical.

  3. Benchmarks? on IBM Mainframe Running World's Fastest Commercial Processor · · Score: 2

    I'll believe their claims when I see some test results they can back it up with.

  4. Open SDK on Ask Slashdot: Understanding the SNES? · · Score: 1

    Not exactly what you asked for but snes-sdk is a tinycc-based C compiler and SDK for the SNES. Pretty cool if you want to write your own games and don't want t write everything in assembly.

    http://code.google.com/p/snes-sdk/

  5. Re:The stupid! It hurts! on Fedora Introduces Offline Updates · · Score: 2

    It had signed packages years before Debian

    I don't know who got what first but as you said, Debian has this too.

    and nice all in one file .srpm/.src.rpm files that build from pristine sources plus patches and a .spec.

    Same as Debian, you have a [package-source].orig.tar.gz, [package-description].dsc and [debian-specific-patches].diff.gz.

    And rpm specifically forbids (although clueless commerical vendors sometimes ignore it) interactive install/update, absolutely required for mass installs or unattended update.

    You can do unattended installs or updates in debian with

    DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -q -y dist-upgrade

    I think it's pretty safe to assume that the systems are equivalent nowadays.

  6. Re:The point? on First Steps With the Raspberry Pi · · Score: 2

    The difference is that the raspberry pi is/will be immensely popular. There will be a huge community supplying software solutions and hardware modifications for it. It doesn't matter that some random china-device has twice the power and a touchscreen when you're stuck on Android 2.1, closed kernel, and no updates in sight.

    It's the people that matter, not so much the hardware.

  7. Re:Part of it depends on what you choose to bench on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Benchmarked · · Score: 1

    I don't care for Anad's benches much because they seem to like synthetic compute benchmarks. That is really all kinds of not useful information for a game card. I want to see in game benchmarks. If any compute stuff is going to be benchmarked, let's have it be an actual program doing something useful (like Sony Vegas, which uses GPUs to accelerate a lot of what it does).

    But... They tested with 10 games, 1 raytracer and 0 synthetic benchmarks. I don't know what they usually do but this article was very focused on real world performance.

  8. IT deparment snafu? on Hacked Syrian Officials Used '12345' As Email Password · · Score: 1

    I can't find any reference in the article, but from the formulation in the summary it sounds like the IT department set up new accounts to have the 12345-password as default (without expiration), and then asked the users to change the password.

    If that's the case it sounds like a terrible idea to me. Better to generate default-passwords as complex random strings. Then it'll be in the users' interest to change their passwords because they're hard to remember and type. And if they don't, even better!

  9. Re:Asus Transformer TF101 on The (Mostly) Sad Fates of 32 First-Generation iPad Rivals · · Score: 1

    That's a weird point. It's not like you need to know what a single of those things mean to use an Eee Pad. Just like you don't have to know what iOS 4.3.5, Apple A5, PowerVR SGX543MP2, NEON SIMD, Objective C, jail breaking or capacities touchscreen is to use an iPad.

  10. Re:So... on Open Radeon 3D Driver Runs At 60~70% of Proprietary Driver Speed · · Score: 1

    My experience with closed source linux drivers is that they're usually very poorly integrated with the rest of the system. The companies usually like to solve everything their own way (tm), rather than using the frameworks all the open drivers use.

    When AMD dropped their support in fglrx for my radeon x1300-based GPU in my laptop (yes, they drop support for hardware whenever they feel like it) I had to start using the radeon driver on my ubuntu-machine. Everything has worked much better in the system since the switch. Suddenly I don't get some special AMD catalyst control center-thingie to change resolutions and set up external monitors etc. Instead the normal standardized gnome settings work like a charm. Also the system sets the correct resolution for my screen once, right after the kernel has been loaded (ie. before gdm/X).

    If the radeon driver from TFA gets included in ubuntu 11.10 I would definitely give it a shot for my desktop machine, which has a Radeon HD 6870 card. The fglrx support for this card is just terrible. Sure, performance wise the OpenGL works well in games, but the normal X11 2D acceleration is terrible. Here are some annoyances with it:

        * Whenever gksudo is activated it throws random garbage on all my monitors for about a second before displaying the password dialog
        * Random "holes" in windows at random times, ie. squares where the desktop background suddenly becomes visible instead of the window contents. This won't go away until the window is redrawn.
        * OpenGL and XV surfaces are always on top. So if I watch a video and put some window on top of the video surface, the video will be in front of the window regardless of Z-order.

    If I could get a driver that plays nice with the rest of the OS, gets regular updates with the rest of the system, and doesn't have weird bugs in its 2D rendering I would gladly sacrifice 50% OpenGL performance. It's not like I utilize the GPU that much anyway.

  11. Re:Long time coming on AMD Fusion System Architecture Detailed · · Score: 2

    While I agree with you regarding application programming, need, etc. I must clarify that I was talking about graphics/game applications that require the full hardware potential.

    If you compare this new architecture with an arguably over complicated architecture like the playstation 3 I'd argue that writing software that utilizes the hardware to its full potential is indeed hard. And in this context, making a more elegant, integrated GPU/CPU will make the lives of us poor indie game programmers a bit easier.

  12. Re:Long time coming on AMD Fusion System Architecture Detailed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Integrating CPU, GPU and unifying the memory address space will probably make things easier for programmers. So hopefully it'll help programmers utilize the hardware better.

  13. Re:Because... on Why We Have So Much "Duh" Science · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The "duh" in the population are those who believe that "duh" science is "duh" though. More often than not the outcome of a study is the expected results. When it's not, however, it challenges our preconceptions and we have to adjust to the new facts (or do another study ;).

    Just because our intention tells us that something works a certain way it doesn't mean we can accept this as a scientific fact. This is a strength of the scientific method, rather than a weakness.

  14. Re:Dissapointing on NASA Rejoins Space Race With Manned Deep Space Craft · · Score: 1

    if you're building spacecraft in orbit, I guess it would be nice to mine most of the raw materials in space.

  15. Re:Complicated rights issues on If You're Going To Kill It, Open Source It · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just release what you legally can. If someone is interested they can replace the floating point parts.

  16. Re:Not a new idea on Garry's Mod Catches Pirates the Fun Way · · Score: 1

    In the DOS game stunts the car breaks down with the message "You forgot to disable the security system" if the copy protection check fails.

    One of my favorites though is the game Operation Flashpoint where, if the copy protection fails, the game starts slowly fading to black. Eventually, when the screen is almost dark, the message "Real games don't fade" appears on the screen.

  17. Re:Correction Captain. on What Happens If You Get Sucked Out of a Plane? · · Score: 1

    Aww, came here to say this :)

  18. Re:Transmission instead of on-board recording on Robots Find Wreckage of AF447 · · Score: 1

    Isn't this why we have communication satellites?

  19. Transmission instead of on-board recording on Robots Find Wreckage of AF447 · · Score: 1

    Why isn't the data, or some subset of it, transmitted continuously during the flight?

  20. Re:No. Way. on How Europe Will Lower Emissions — Self Driving Cars · · Score: 1

    Also, two other hypothetical pros if this becomes a reality are that the car could drive you while you're intoxicated and that it could park itself. Basically it's like having a private chauffeur dropping you off right outside your destination. When you want to leave you'd just give it a call and it'd come pick you up.

  21. Re:oh darn on Craigslist Removes Its Controversial Adult Section · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Are you saying that sex being more intimate than flipping burgers is a religious argument?

  22. Re:Very, very small isolated domains on Toshiba Claims Bit-Patterned Drive Breakthrough · · Score: 2, Funny

    You're not being very discrete in the way you're handling this.

  23. Obligatory reference on Haptic Gaming Vest Simulates Punches, Shots, Stabbing · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Obligatory Perry Bible Fellowship reference. Or wait, maybe it's xkcd references that are obligatory. Whatever.

    http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF134-Game_System.gif

  24. Worst analogy ever? on Interstellar Hydrogen Prevents Light-Speed Travel? · · Score: 1

    I'd like to think that most people, like me, have no idea what happens if you stand in front of the beam of the large hadron collider. It might be that nothing happens or you might be vaporized on the spot. From the context I'm guessing more of the latter than the sooner but it's still a crappy analogy. Stick to what people can relate to, like:

    "It's like standing in front of a moving car" or "It's like standing in front of 56 libraries of congress".

  25. Re:This assertion lacks intelligence on When Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence? · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter how many transistors you throw at 'artificial' intelligence, it's still just that: artificial. It has no intelligence, just as it has no life.

    Artificial here means man-made or unnatural. It doesn't mean "not real" as you seem to be implying (that would be virtual intelligence). Your views seem to be more religious than scientific in nature.

    It's all about defining intelligence. If you define intelligence in this context as "a human", then a machine of course can't be intelligent. I'd argue though that if a machine could perfectly simulate all aspects of human intelligence, it would in fact be intelligent.