How long until history catches up with the X Windows System, and I can get an X server that renders entirely to the OpenGL API?
The XFree86 server already does that. Create a window with the appropriate visual, occupy the root window, render with GLX, bingo... you're now rendering entirely with OpenGL.
I'd love all those panel edges, drop shadows, animated buttons, textured skins, and other 3D "embossed" window decorations to come from my video card.
What you're really asking for is for a desktop environment and/or window manager to use the OpenGL API. XFree86 offers the feature but it's up to the software above XFree86 to use it.
Think of it this way. XFree86 offers features from the 80s (Xlib) and features from the early 90s (Display Postscript) and modern features like Direct Rendered OpenGL (GLX + DRI). Applications like GNOME and KDE choose to use technology from the 80s despite modern technology being available to them. There are good reasons why they do this, but blaming XFree86 is misguided. The XFree86 team is doing everything they can to cater for modern desktops but the XFree86 team does not write the desktop!
The article cites that, among other things, traditional 2D takes too long, and somehow looks dated. Hrm. Someone should inform Hiyo Miazaki that Priness Mononoke & Spirited Away are behind the times.
Spirited Away was produced on computer.
Spirited Away was digitally produced, so there were no cels used for this film. Because of that, Spirited Away was able to incorporate new technology such as 3D evironment. In a sense, Spirited Away's a tradigital film, even though it's a lot more traditional than Western offerings. Studio Ghibli's computer department, responsible for digital paint and 3D, consisted of around 21 people for this film. They mainly used Softimage 3D for the 3D environments used in the film.
If you doubt this, you need to read the books. There's a LOT more stuff in
there than the movies portrayed. Six books, actually -- bundled as two books
per volume, traditionally, with the appendix added to the last volume. There
ought to have been six movies: "Flight to Rivendell", "The Nine Walkers",
"Isengard", "Road to Mordor", "Gondor's Defense", "Mount Doom".
I don't doubt it in the slightest! I trust you're speaking to the "royal you" and not to me in particular.
I agree with your 40+ hour estimate. However I also understand why the studios didn't fund such an extravagence. Trilogies are acceptable but anything longer becomes the object of ridicule. Consider the number of snide jokes about Jaws and Rocky films. The majority of movie viewers will pay to see three movies but will balk at the fourth. The studios were constrained by what the majority of people were willing to watch.
Also I suspect some parts from the LOTR would not work well on the silver screen. I'm thinking specifically of the swathes of poetry and unusual characters like Tom Bombadil. The parts that have been kept for the movie are well suited for special effects and suspense: that's what keeps the paying customers happy!
That said, I think Peter Jackson and the script writers Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens did a fantastic job with the 9+ hours they were given. Considering how much material they've had to slash it's amazing that the movies are as complete as they are. The movies don't capture every detail from the books and some liberties have been taken but the overall feel of the story has been retained. I think that's a feat worth applauding.
The universe in which the robots and humans reside is a *simulation* (not another matrix, but a simulation). The robots are vaguely aware of this, and have developed methods which allow them to manipulate the *real* universe a little.
Uh, god, please no. That would be a terrible solution to the questions in the movie. It's only one step removed from Neo waking up and saying "woah, it was all a dream".
Hollywood, I am your messiah and I'm unemployed:)
I suggest you don't attempt a job as a writer if you intend to change your employment status.
If you're going to argue that there could be a matrix within a matrix you might as well also argue that the whole movie is just a dream, and that this entire world is just a pretend world within another.
Mmmmm... and? I don't really follow what you're trying to say here. Certainly it's the Wachowskis intention that you leave the film with questions exactly like that.
Because it's a lame plot device. It's called a deus ex machina; literally "god from the machine". The "It was all a dream!" version is the most cliched of them all. Any writer who uses that particular deus ex machina is a hack.
The Matrix series isn't so much about Neo defeating an artificial intelligence that has enslaved humanity as it is about the consequences of a virtual world. It has a story that's supposed to make you think about that scenario.
As others have already commented, they have thought about that particular scenario and moved onto loftier thoughts several decades before the first Matrix movie was released.
I mean, sure, it's a moderately interesting story, but does it need 9+ hours to be told?
Even 9+ hours isn't enough.
but are there subtle metaphors, philosophical references, and character dualities (besides Golem, obviously) that I'm missing?
Sure seems that way.
Why do people bitch and complain that the Matrix was too much gobbledygook (translation: they didn't understand, and hate movies that challenge them to think about it anywhere beyond the concession stand on their way out)
I enjoyed the first two Matrix movies, and I'll probably enjoy the third, but honestly they are not that deep. There's enough intellectual content to occupy the after-movie coffee and cake. Then you move on.
... then act like LotR is this untouchable masterpiece?
Because the LOTR is a masterpiece. In case you haven't noticed, it's the second most read book after the Christian Bible. It has been translated into 50+ languages. It's been around for 50 years and people still buy it and read it in droves. The movies have been a boxoffice smash attracting both young and old. It looks poised to take in $1,000,000,000 in ticket sales. The story and the detail behind the LOTR is simply brilliant. If you can't recognise that... there's simply no hope for you.
I'd be very surprised if the Matrix is still popular in 50 years.
It uses sampling, but nyquist says that by using 44.1 KHz sampling frequency we can reproduce everything from 0 Hz to 22.05 KHz exactly.
Only if the samples have infinite precision. If one particular sample is 0.792 then you will get error from your CD-reproduced signal, because your 16-bit samples can be either 0.791992 or 0.792007 but not exactly 0.792.
Consider a 20 KHz square wave. It's below the 22 KHz cutoff so it will be duplicated perfectly, correct? Nope. The 20 KHz square wave is made up of higher frequency sinusoidal waves: 20 KHz sine wave, 60 KHz sine wave, 100 KHz sine wave and so on. Your 20 KHz square wave will be reproduced as a 20 KHz sine wave instead.
I'd add that it doesn't matter. Normal people can't hear the high order harmonics of a 20kHz square wave anyway. To our ears the 20kHz square wave and 20kHz sinusoidal wave sound the same.
I still believe that a CD has higher fidelity sound than any vinyl I've heard.
This is a good point for the time being, but Apple has the same applications barrier to entry on the Motorola 68000/PowerPC line of PC operating systems.
Correct. But having a monopoly is not illegal. Abusing that monopoly is illegal.
Microsoft has a monopoly in Intel-PC operating systems and abused it to wrest control of the browser market. That's what they got in trouble for.
If Apple ever abuses their monopoly of the PowerPC desktop market then I'd expect them to receive the same treatment.
Just because Microsoft is the most distributed OS and has the most applications built around it today doesn't mean that the software market doesn't turn around really fast.
I hope you appreciate that's irrelevant. Having and abusing a monopoly doesn't cease to be illegal simply because the monopoly is short-lived.
Legally tying Microsoft's hands will actually do more to hurt that ecosystem (most people who use it) than to help it. Since this computing ecosystem has 90+% of all the worlds computers, it is a standard. People gravitate towards the standard, which makes it more of a standard.
Microsoft didn't get into trouble because they were popular. They got into trouble because they threatened OEMs into not using Netscape Navigator (back when Navigator was worth using).
and a company with 90% market share like Netscape can be an also ran the next day.
And in case you missed the point of the court case, Microsoft was found guilty of contributing to the collapse of Netscape by abusing their monopoly power over the Intel-PC operating system market.
Is not the Macintosh OS X OS a commercially viable alternative to Windows? It seems to be the #2 OS in the consumer space, but even though it is dwarfed by Windows, that doesn't make it irrelevant.
You did read the link I provided, right? Try reading just the first line (#53).
Most? Isn't that cable TV. And most people don't watch cable TV.
I had cable TV. It had ads. I got rid of it once the fixed-term contract expired.
Whats the point of offering an option that doesn't exist.
Duh. The point is to offer the third option when it does exist.
There are only three people involved in TV. The Viewer, the Content Provider and the Advertiser.
There are more than three people. I can think of at least the Content Producers (many), the Benevolent Sponsor (PBS), and the Government Tax Man (BBC), in addition to your three.
If you constrain your thinking then you will never discover the third option. You only considered the current model and then concluded there is no other choice. No lateral thinking.
This is a sentiment I have never understood..."Apple is cool, so people only use Apple computers to be cool"...It almost defies logic...If Apple were "cool" why wouldn't they have more market share, or at least mindshare?
Porsche 911s are cool but most people around here drive Fords. Do you think that defies logic too?
Does this mean that everything rotten thing a company does is permissible UP TO the point they achieve market dominance (as long as they provide a helpful EULA)?
Yes, because you can't abuse your monopoly power until you actually have that monopoly power.
If asked I'm sure most people would rather watch their favorite TV show with annoying commercials than have that TV show go off the air.
Only because you presented them with just two choices, thus setting up a false dichotomy.
If you had offered a third choice "the TV station creates a new model of being paid and you still get your TV show without the annoying ads" then I'm sure most people would choose that option.
I don't know what the "new model" actually is but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The websites that rely on ads are faced with a similar dilemna. We don't want the ads. They need the money to run their websites. They're claiming there are only two choices: live with the ads, or no more website. I'm saying there's a third choice that they haven't discovered yet.
However, if you block ads (other than potentially harmful ads like ActiveX or popups) then you are essentially stealing from the site.
I can't even imagine the confusion that must exist for you to say such nonsense.
As an avid Linux user who doesn't use any Microsoft products, allow me to play devil's advocate here: Is Microsoft a monopoly?
Since I'm sitting here typing this on my Linux machine, my response is no.
Thus demonstrating your complete inability to understand that a monopoly does not require 100% of the market.
If there is a viable alternative to a product, then how can said product have a monopoly?
Judge Jackson said there "exists no commercially viable alternative [to Windows]". Obviously you know more about the case than he does. Also you clearly know something that was unknown to the appellate court because they did not disagree with Judge Jackson's findings. Maybe you should ring up the DOJ and report a miscarriage of justice, based on your superior understanding of the facts.
Though before making a fool of yourself any further, perhaps you'd like to read this.
What amazes me are the parallels between the anti-environmentalists and the creationists. Both crazy groups believe that there is a conspiracy of vilification and censorship.
I just read the article posted, and it doesn't appear to have a single relevant statistics.
Offer up statistics that counter his arguments.
Otherwise, you're just saying his arguments are wrong, and basically doing the same thing he is...
No. He's saying that the troll's arguments are uncorroborated. The troll made the claims so the troll has to provide the evidence. It's not up to the Slashdotter to provide evidence to disprove the claims.
So the big bad nuclear power plants so reviled by hippies may cure AIDS. Oh the irony.
How is that ironic? Perhaps if the hippies had protested the nuclear power plants because they claimed nuclear power gave you AIDS, and as part of the protest they had a big love-in, and as a result of the love-in a scientist got distracted, tripped over a nyobium stack that was carelessly lying in the corridor, hitting his head on a nearby toilet, thus creating the concept of the flux capacitor, which led to the discovery of the cure for AIDS... maybe that would be ironic. But by itself, it's not ironic.
So? You could have been bitten buy assuming that a function called IncrementValue() doesn't divide the value by 12. You could have been bitten by assuming that the comment above the function accurately describes the contents. There is no programming technique whatsoever that can stop you from being bitten by the mistakes of dumb cow orkers.
I think, without reservation, that was entirely my point.
This does not mean that meaningful function names, accurate comments and a judicious amount of type info in var names are bad things.
It does mean that the person I was responding to was incorrect when they claimed that Hungarian notation overcomes the type safety "flaw" in C. It does not.
I mean, the PS2 had only an 8MB frame buffer. If it needed more then 8MB for textures (which happened ALL the time) it had to swap out of the main 32MB memory. Thats not enough.
The PS2 streams textures from the 32MB of main memory. It doesn't have dedicated texture memory.
The framebuffer isn't 8MB. I think it is 4MB split between z-buffer and framebuffer.
Keep in mind that the bus designs in a PS2 are completely different to Xbox. Especially once you consider the DMACs and the split GPUs in the PS2. Comparing memory sizes is pointless.
Slashdot Mirror
The XFree86 server already does that. Create a window with the appropriate visual, occupy the root window, render with GLX, bingo... you're now rendering entirely with OpenGL.
What you're really asking for is for a desktop environment and/or window manager to use the OpenGL API. XFree86 offers the feature but it's up to the software above XFree86 to use it.
Think of it this way. XFree86 offers features from the 80s (Xlib) and features from the early 90s (Display Postscript) and modern features like Direct Rendered OpenGL (GLX + DRI). Applications like GNOME and KDE choose to use technology from the 80s despite modern technology being available to them. There are good reasons why they do this, but blaming XFree86 is misguided. The XFree86 team is doing everything they can to cater for modern desktops but the XFree86 team does not write the desktop!
Kill Bill Vol 1 was brilliant. Easily the best movie I've seen since... well, to be blunt, since Pulp Fiction. What didn't you like about it?
Spirited Away was produced on computer.
Article here.
I don't doubt it in the slightest! I trust you're speaking to the "royal you" and not to me in particular.
I agree with your 40+ hour estimate. However I also understand why the studios didn't fund such an extravagence. Trilogies are acceptable but anything longer becomes the object of ridicule. Consider the number of snide jokes about Jaws and Rocky films. The majority of movie viewers will pay to see three movies but will balk at the fourth. The studios were constrained by what the majority of people were willing to watch.
Also I suspect some parts from the LOTR would not work well on the silver screen. I'm thinking specifically of the swathes of poetry and unusual characters like Tom Bombadil. The parts that have been kept for the movie are well suited for special effects and suspense: that's what keeps the paying customers happy!
That said, I think Peter Jackson and the script writers Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens did a fantastic job with the 9+ hours they were given. Considering how much material they've had to slash it's amazing that the movies are as complete as they are. The movies don't capture every detail from the books and some liberties have been taken but the overall feel of the story has been retained. I think that's a feat worth applauding.
Gah, I haven't seen it yet, don't tell me.
Uh, god, please no. That would be a terrible solution to the questions in the movie. It's only one step removed from Neo waking up and saying "woah, it was all a dream".
I suggest you don't attempt a job as a writer if you intend to change your employment status.
Because it's a lame plot device. It's called a deus ex machina; literally "god from the machine". The "It was all a dream!" version is the most cliched of them all. Any writer who uses that particular deus ex machina is a hack.
As others have already commented, they have thought about that particular scenario and moved onto loftier thoughts several decades before the first Matrix movie was released.
Yes.
Even 9+ hours isn't enough.
Sure seems that way.
I enjoyed the first two Matrix movies, and I'll probably enjoy the third, but honestly they are not that deep. There's enough intellectual content to occupy the after-movie coffee and cake. Then you move on.
Because the LOTR is a masterpiece. In case you haven't noticed, it's the second most read book after the Christian Bible. It has been translated into 50+ languages. It's been around for 50 years and people still buy it and read it in droves. The movies have been a boxoffice smash attracting both young and old. It looks poised to take in $1,000,000,000 in ticket sales. The story and the detail behind the LOTR is simply brilliant. If you can't recognise that... there's simply no hope for you.
I'd be very surprised if the Matrix is still popular in 50 years.
Only if the samples have infinite precision. If one particular sample is 0.792 then you will get error from your CD-reproduced signal, because your 16-bit samples can be either 0.791992 or 0.792007 but not exactly 0.792.
This particular error is called quantization.
I'd add that it doesn't matter. Normal people can't hear the high order harmonics of a 20kHz square wave anyway. To our ears the 20kHz square wave and 20kHz sinusoidal wave sound the same.
I agree.
Correct. But having a monopoly is not illegal. Abusing that monopoly is illegal.
Microsoft has a monopoly in Intel-PC operating systems and abused it to wrest control of the browser market. That's what they got in trouble for.
If Apple ever abuses their monopoly of the PowerPC desktop market then I'd expect them to receive the same treatment.
I hope you appreciate that's irrelevant. Having and abusing a monopoly doesn't cease to be illegal simply because the monopoly is short-lived.
Microsoft didn't get into trouble because they were popular. They got into trouble because they threatened OEMs into not using Netscape Navigator (back when Navigator was worth using).
And in case you missed the point of the court case, Microsoft was found guilty of contributing to the collapse of Netscape by abusing their monopoly power over the Intel-PC operating system market.
You did read the link I provided, right? Try reading just the first line (#53).
I had cable TV. It had ads. I got rid of it once the fixed-term contract expired.
Duh. The point is to offer the third option when it does exist.
There are more than three people. I can think of at least the Content Producers (many), the Benevolent Sponsor (PBS), and the Government Tax Man (BBC), in addition to your three.
If you constrain your thinking then you will never discover the third option. You only considered the current model and then concluded there is no other choice. No lateral thinking.
Isn't the pertinent question... was this the first?
You honestly have no idea what a "monolithic kernel" is, do you.
Or HIBT.
Porsche 911s are cool but most people around here drive Fords. Do you think that defies logic too?
Yes, because you can't abuse your monopoly power until you actually have that monopoly power.
Only because you presented them with just two choices, thus setting up a false dichotomy.
If you had offered a third choice "the TV station creates a new model of being paid and you still get your TV show without the annoying ads" then I'm sure most people would choose that option.
I don't know what the "new model" actually is but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The websites that rely on ads are faced with a similar dilemna. We don't want the ads. They need the money to run their websites. They're claiming there are only two choices: live with the ads, or no more website. I'm saying there's a third choice that they haven't discovered yet.
I can't even imagine the confusion that must exist for you to say such nonsense.
Thus demonstrating your complete inability to understand that a monopoly does not require 100% of the market.
Judge Jackson said there "exists no commercially viable alternative [to Windows]". Obviously you know more about the case than he does. Also you clearly know something that was unknown to the appellate court because they did not disagree with Judge Jackson's findings. Maybe you should ring up the DOJ and report a miscarriage of justice, based on your superior understanding of the facts.
Though before making a fool of yourself any further, perhaps you'd like to read this.
What amazes me are the parallels between the anti-environmentalists and the creationists. Both crazy groups believe that there is a conspiracy of vilification and censorship.
No. He's saying that the troll's arguments are uncorroborated. The troll made the claims so the troll has to provide the evidence. It's not up to the Slashdotter to provide evidence to disprove the claims.
How is that ironic? Perhaps if the hippies had protested the nuclear power plants because they claimed nuclear power gave you AIDS, and as part of the protest they had a big love-in, and as a result of the love-in a scientist got distracted, tripped over a nyobium stack that was carelessly lying in the corridor, hitting his head on a nearby toilet, thus creating the concept of the flux capacitor, which led to the discovery of the cure for AIDS... maybe that would be ironic. But by itself, it's not ironic.
I think, without reservation, that was entirely my point.
It does mean that the person I was responding to was incorrect when they claimed that Hungarian notation overcomes the type safety "flaw" in C. It does not.
The PS2 streams textures from the 32MB of main memory. It doesn't have dedicated texture memory.
The framebuffer isn't 8MB. I think it is 4MB split between z-buffer and framebuffer.
Keep in mind that the bus designs in a PS2 are completely different to Xbox. Especially once you consider the DMACs and the split GPUs in the PS2. Comparing memory sizes is pointless.
I would have thought philosophy was the first field to study intelligence.
I'm not disagreeing with you but the way you phrased it sounds like the "Not a True Scotsman" fallacy.
What distinguishes a "real" intelligence test from the unreal variety?