"Damn, I'm only about a 5 minute walk away from the Convention Center! Consider it marked on my calendar!"
We'll be glad to see you there! For others interested in attending Otakon 2000, the convention will be held August 4-6 (Friday through Sunday) at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, MD. Registration for all three days is $45 at the door ($40 if you pre-register by May 27th). Single-day memberships and groups discounts are also available, see Otakon's website for details.
For more information, please visit Otakon's website at www.otakon.com, or write: OTAKON(TM) 2000 PO Box 149 Morristown, PA 19067
I don't know if Lionhead studios is still planning to follow through on this, but originally they had an interesting plan for their product launch, where the game asks you an ethical question before you even bring it home.
The game was to ship in two different formats, either in a black box or a white box. The white box would be more expensive, but a portion of the proceeds would go to charity. There would be no donation if you bought the cheaper black box.
Well, that's a pretty eclectic selection. We've got:
Lain: Complex and surreal, at times expressionistic. A classmate of the main character, Lain, commits suicide. Shortly afterwards, members of the class start receiving e-mails claiming to be from the deceased girl. That's not what Lain is about, but to explain further would require interpretation on my part. I highly recommend you watch it and make your own interpretations. Requires patience. Also recommended for viewers of Lain: Key the Metal Idol, Angel's Egg, Neon Genesis Evangelion. (Plug from an Otakon staffer: Both the creator and character designer for Lain will appear at Otakon 2000, the East Coast's biggest anime convention, located in Baltimore, MD.)
DBZ: Journey to the West meets the WWF, anime style with some SF thrown in. Loosely based on the ancient Chinese tale of a monkey king who was born from a stone, and I do mean loosely. Fun, but not very cerebral. The story breaks down in later episodes as characters spend much of their time hurling chi-blasts at each other. Also recommended for DBZ fans: Er... I haven't a clue what would appeal to DBZ fans.
Battle Athletes: Cute schoolgirls compete for the "Cosmo Beauty" prize. A little silly, takes a while for the story to kick in. Animation quality is pretty good, on par with most of Pioneer's other stuff. Also recommended for Battle Athletes fans: Sailor Moon, Gunbuster.
Sick of UO? Think you could make a quick buck building your character and selling it? Until one of these games has whores you can visit, it will simply not be real world enough for erik.
Rebuttal from erik, GED:
What the hell are you talking about? The only reason I play UO is for all the "Britishing": paying real world dollars to people for cyber-sex, then player killing them as I climax. That's the only reason anyone plays UO - all the violent sex. Jesus, man, where have you been?
I just had a thought on a little "harmless" prank that could make things interesting for WAVE. Of course I'm not actually advocating that anybody do this, oh no--just pointing out a possible vulnerability.
Congress has 100 senators and 435 representatives. At least a few of them have teenaged kids. I'm sure they'd appreciate the early warning from anonymous sources that have fingered junior as a depressed violent druggie anarchist.
I've been trying to overclock my lightbulb, and I thought I'd ask you gurus on Slashdot for some pointers. My bulb says "60W" on it, and I want to get it up to 75 or 100.
I'm having a heck of a time getting the heatsink to stay put, it keeps sliding off the top of the bulb. Any suggestions?
Microsoft Lightswitch keeps crashing. Do I need to up the voltage to keep it stable? I've got a 220V line that I could try plugging it into.
My lightbulb is currently running at 60 Hz. I've heard that when you increase the frequency, the lightbulb will start emmitting ultraviolet or even X-rays. My friends tell me I can protect myself by painting the lightbulb black. I need to know how many coats of paint to use, please help!!!
This particular document happens to be related to the US portion of the HGP, but as you can see it has been standard policy, for several years now, to release data as it is generated to public databases. For example, the NCBI Genome Guide, which has both sequence and general information.
DOE-NIH Guidelines for Sharing Data and Resources
At its December 7, 1992, meeting, the DOE-NIH Joint Subcommittee on the Human Genome approved the following sharing guidelines, developed from the DOE draft of September 1991.
The information and resources generated by the Human Genome Project have become substantial, and the interest in having access to them is widespread. It is therefore desirable to have a statement of philosophy concerning the sharing of these resources that can guide investigators who generate the resources as well as those who wish to use them.
A key issue for the Human Genome Project is how to promote and encourage the rapid sharing of materials and data that are produced, especially information that has not yet been published or may never be published in its entirety. Such sharing is essential for progress toward the goals of the program and to avoid unnecessary duplication. It is also desirable to make the fruits of genome research available to the scientific community as a whole as soon as possible to expedite research in other areas.
Although it is the policy of the Human Genome Project to maximize outreach to the scientific community, it is also necessary to give investigators time to verify the accuracy of their data and to gain some scientific advantage from the effort they have invested. Furthermore, in order to assure that novel ideas and inventions are rapidly developed to the benefit of the public, intellectual property protection may be needed for some of the data and materials.
After extensive discussion with the community of genome researchers, the advisors of the NIH and DOE genome programs have determined that consensus is developing around the concept that a 6-month period from the time the data or materials are generated to the time they are made available publicly is a reasonable maximum in almost all cases. More rapid sharing is encouraged.
Whenever possible, data should be deposited in public databases and materials in public repositories. Where appropriate repositories do not exist or are unable to accept the data or materials, investigators should accommodate requests to the extent possible.
The NIH and DOE genome programs have decided to require all applicants expecting to generate significant amounts of genome data or materials to describe in their application how and when they plan to make such data and materials available to the community. Grant solicitations will specify this requirement. These plans in each application will be reviewed in the course of peer review and by staff to assure they are reasonable and in conformity with program philosophy. If a grant is made, the applicant's sharing plans will become a condition of the award and compliance will be reviewed before continuation funding is provided. Progress reports will be asked to address the issue.
Your post reminded me of a story that appeared in Nature (Login Required), in the 3/02/00 issue. For Slashdot readers not familiar with Nature, it is a well-respected science journal (The type with peer-reviewed articles in it).
What was unique about the article, entitled "Danger -- hard hack area", is that it was a piece of SF that speculated on the future of Biotech and the hacking community. Here's a little excerpt below:
"Sequence your genome at home, and set science free!" cry the biopunks.
Many people predicted that VirCon 2010, the first open meeting of the biopunk movement, would end in a riot. In truth, it was as privately exciting and as publicly dull as any science conference. From their besieged underground culture, the clandestine surfers of the new wave in biology are emerging blinking into the daylight and, dare one say, into respectability.
But VirCon 2010, held in a dilapidated midtown New York hotel, was not without friction. Despite the rule that no biological material could be brought in, there was a ruthless but futile inspection by officers of the Food and Drug Agency. Several people suspected of being undercover federal agents or snoops from biotech companies were summarily ejected, and the press was barred, which led to strange scenes outside the hotel as TV journalists were videoed typing into a laptop to communicate with conference delegates just inside the lobby.
I was allowed to cover the event from the inside because of personal contacts made while covering the pursuit and arrest of Kevin 'Freaky-Deaky' Miles, the man who claimed to have turned the Amazon rainforest luminescent -- and because I'm a science fiction writer, and biopunks love SF.
The delegates were mostly young, white males under 25, dressed in everything from baggies and T-shirts, through goth black and multiple piercings, to business suits. All had self-inflicted gene hacks: feathers or scales instead of hair; bands of chromatophores on their foreheads; motile tattoos. And of course, unlike the pasty-faced, overweight cliché of computer hackers, the biopunks were bursting with health, their skin and eyesight perfect, their muscle definition superb, their energy seemingly boundless...
Might I recommend the National Biotechnology Information Facility (NBIF)? They maintain a list of ~7,000 links, ranging from the general to the very in-depth. Of particular interest to Slashdot readers may be their listing of FAQs. Here's a quick listing of catagories from the NBIF site below:
Research Tools and Databases - Web based research-specific tools as well as a list of links to databases broken down into relevant categories.
Software - A list of free software packages that can be downloaded from the web or acquired through other means. The majority of the software packages are related to molecular biology and chemistry while the remaining packages vary from web-authoring to graphics support.
Educational Resources - Instructional materials offered to the public by NBIF, educational sites covering different subjects in science, and resources for teachers to help in their science curriculum.
Images and Multimedia - Repository for a variety of animations, movies, and colorful as well as black-and-white images representing organisms of the five kingdom system. A variety of viruses particular to certain species are listed as well.
Journals and Bibliographic Databases - An immense library of on-line journals covering a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from animal biochemistry to zoology. (Journals may be free, subscription, or offer a trial period.)
Legal and Regulatory Links - Standards and related to biotechnology issues such as patents, permits, trademarks, etc.
Conferences, Symposia, and Workshops - Contains lists of New Mexico State University sponsored workshops and as well as lists of workshops and conferences located around the world. There is also a set of links to sites where calendars of biotechnology events are updated continuously.
Career Information - These links are especially useful for the scientist seeking a job with a biotechnology company. Included is a list of well known biotechnology companies and employment search engines. For the future scientist, there is also general information for a career in the sciences, as well as resources for student employment and scholarships.
Industry- Biotechnology company registers, general industry news, and links to industrial associations.
Biotechnology News - A source of headline news for current research and emerging issues of concern in the biotechnology discipline.
Other Resources - A list of various links to sites containing information on different aspects of biotechnology.
Here's a little quote from "The Difference Between the Sexes", by E. Balaban (ed) and R. V. Short (ed):
"Perhaps the lifespan of a species is inversely proportional to its degree of intellectual development? The probability that a species that has evolved to be as intelligent and all-conquering as ours could survive for long is remote indeed. We may live in a silent universe for a very good reason. Paradoxically, evolution may have ensured that we have one of the shortest survival times of any species, since it has made us, effectively, our own executioner."
The Toyota Prius is a 66 mpg gas/electric hybrid that has received the United Nations Environmental Protection Award. It has been available in Japan for about two years now, and is scheduled to be released in the US sometime this year. Toyota's site doesn't currently list the MSRP, but it sold in Japan for about $16,500 USD. There is a review of the Prius at TopGear.
"If you're suggesting that the comparitive market caps have anything to do with the "size" of the companies as you refer to them in the first paragraph, you're mistaken."
I'm well aware of that, but I didn't have any hard statistics on hand for the more interesting data, like marketshare. I was researching this a few days ago, but I can't seem to find my source again.
Anyway, skipping the hard statistics, in terms of 3D accelerator market share (IE, who sells the most $$ worth of cards/chipsets), nVidia is number one. I forget who comes next, but I believe it's ATI, then S3, then Intel (Big with OEMs). Then way in the back comes everyone else, including 3dfx and Matrox. 3dfx has a pretty strong retail presence, but that's a small slice compared with OEM pie.
Here's to hoping that 3dfx dies a miserable death.
I have a hard time understanding the anger directed towards 3dfx. They don't have any monopoly power over the market (Never did), have released just about all of their source code, and their cards offer a pretty good bang for the buck.
At any rate, you could very well get your wish. 3dfx has been experiencing severe and accelerating losses for the last few quarters. They just had a layoff a few weeks ago. At the current rate, they only have enough cash to last for a year or two.
And one less 3D company means less competition in the marketplace. In the past few years we've seen a huge number of companies leave the field--Tseng Labs (Out of Business), Cirrus (Now doing audio/modem chips instead), Trident (Still around but miniscule), Real3D (Remains bought by Intel), Rendition (Remains bought by Micron), Hercules (Remains bought by Gullimot), Number9 (Still around, but just a brand that sells S3/nVidia chips), and Chromatics (Bought by ATI). I think Permedia might be out too.
That's a pretty big number of companies that used to design chips, but no longer. Now everbody else like Diamond and Creative just slaps a label and an S3/nVidia chip onto a board. A lot of industry analysts think the consolidation is going to continue.
Think nVidia wouldn't try to establish a lock on the market if they get big enough? Intel, ATI, and nVidia have all been looking at integrated chipsets--in the short term as a low-cost part, but in the long term as a possible way to get that lock. And their investors seem to like the idea.
I'm sorry for your loss. My mother died of lung cancer also.
"If we want fast development of new drugs, abolish the FDA and get the gov out of the Human Genome business. "
I think you have a perspective that is untainted by history. The creation of the FDA around the turn of the century (Although the FDA will not bear that name until 1930) was one of several responses to the appalling state of the pharmaceutical and food industries that preceeded it.
In those days, adulteration of food with sometimes dangerous dyes, preservatives, and fillers was extremely common (Look up Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and the history of "Swill Milk"), and the pharmaceutical market was flooded with quack cures and patent medicines whose main ingredients were often alcohol or laudanum.
A number of laws were passed in response to this situation (in particular Roosevelt's Food and Drugs Act). The FDA began as an agency that provided chemical analysis and support for these laws. It quickly gained an international reputation for effectiveness, and became the model for many similar agencies in other developed countries.
The FDA is a rarity in government, an agency that is both highly competent and beneficial. I happen to work as a scientist in the commercial pharmaceutical industry, and the FDA regulates oversees us very tightly, both in research and production environments. It generates mounds of paperwork and adsorbs lots of extra time and labor--but this is a *good* thing. Thanks to the FDA, you can be assured that medicines you buy have been tested for purity and potency both before (materials), during, and after manufacture, and that there's a full trail of accountabiliy for the both the end product, the materials, and everyone who handled them. Believe me, few companies would take these quality control steps if it weren't for the FDA.
I do think that fast-track development needs to be extended for certain severe diseases. In the case of AIDS, it was not just the existence of a powerful lobbying group that allowed fast-track to occur. It was also the complete absence of any conventional treatment for the disease, coupled with a 100% progression to terminal illness that did it, and the FDA does tend to be more lenient with trials for other 100% fatal diseases.
The main arguement against extension to something like cancer is that there exists a conventional treatment that has some effectiveness, even if it's not a whole lot. The problem is, the majority of experimental medicines are not better than conventional treatment. The majority are worse, and nobody ever hears about the failures unless they are spectacular--and that's the problem with "Kill or Cure".
This is all fine and dandy, but this is hardly hardware support for things like depth of field. It requires that you render the scene n-times just to achieve a single frame. Real hardware support (for depth of field) would allow you to specify the focal length and the hardware would automatically blur non-focussed areas automatically.
I'm not too familiar with the details of 3dfx's approach (not being a 3d programmer myself), but my understanding is that what the VSA-100 does is use hardware method for producing "jittered" samples slightly off from the target pixel, which are then blended together in the accumulation buffer.
The "T-Buffer" effects can then be specified to be applied to certain objects, but not others. If a sub-pixel jitter is specified, then you get anti-aliasing. A larger jitter gives softening, and a very large jitter gives blurring. So far as I can tell, a program does not need to perform"n-renderings". The program still needs to specify the object (Or it can specify a mask and just do an area, I think), and the degree and quality of jittered samples, but from their I believe the chip does the rest automatically.
While the 3dfx "T-Buffer" affects are nice, I can't imagine developers using them, since it would lock the developers into certain hardware (again!). This is something that I thought was insane when Glide first came around. These type of proprietary extensions are exactly why I have never and will never buy 3dfx-only games or 3dfx video cards. You said it above, "basically an accumulation buffer", instead of using this type of thing, why not make an open extension to OpenGL/Direct3D to support these type of effects.
When the Voodoo 1 was first introduced, competing accelerators included the S3 Virge (The most numerous by a wide margin), the Rendition Verite, the nVidia NV1, etc... Good, fast OpenGL support was still the providence of ultra-high end professional accelerators, while Direct3D (Still below version 3 at that time, I think) was slow and glitchy. As a result, in addition to OpenGL and D3D, *everyone* at the time everyone had their own proprietary API which matched their own hardware closely, thus giving a sometimes substantial performance boost. nVidia had one for their NV1, PowerVR was pushing their PowerSGL, and I sort of remember S3 and ATI had their own as well. You still see PowerSGL support in Unreal, and I think S3 still pushes programmers to use Metal for the Savage2000, but of all the cards from that era only the Voodoo1 is still somewhat fast enough to be useable today, and only Glide is still programmed for.
Glide survived because it appeared at a time when consumer-level 3D was first starting to appear, plus the hardware was good, plus it was fast, and doubleplus because it was easier to learn and program for than D3D at the time. I think 3dfx held onto Glide far too tightly for too long, but it's existence is due more to history than any monopoly power on 3dfx's part (In fact, ATI and S3, both then and now, are each several times larger than 3dfx, both in terms of market cap and number of card shipped. nVidia has something like 5x the marketshare that 3dfx has.)
Both the V4 and the V5 use the same chip, 3dfx's VSA-100. The V4 uses one chip, while the V5 uses 2 or 4 chips, depending on the model. The two cards should come out about the same time.
"We have placed orders for production silicon already. Our software development is right on track. We are on the same release schedule as when the VSA-100 product was introduced at Comdex, which we stated would be in the Spring. That product will include all the features that have been promised. It will deliver real time, full scene anti aliasing. It will support dazzling cinematic effects via our t-buffer. It will feature 32-bit color depth, SLI implementations and astronomical fill rates. Despite the outstanding state of this first silicon, the boards used in the Cebit demonstrations do not represent production silicon. Shortly after GDC, we expect to be demonstrating Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 boards that are much closer to production quality."
The GDC is being held right now, March 8-12, so we should be getting some reports soon. Right now it looks like 3dfx is shooting for late April or May.
There are persistent rumors on investing boards that several companies are working with Voxel acceleration. One particularly interesting rumor concerns 3dfx's Rampage chip, scheduled for the end of this year. In one interview with 3dfx's European Product Manager, Luciano Alibrandi, the interviewer asked if 3dfx was working on Voxel technology. Mr. Alibrandi replied "No"--but several days later the interview was updated at 3dfx's request, with the "No" struck out and replaced with a "Can't Comment".
Anyway, we may find out if any of the rumors are true at the Game Developer's Conference that is taking place March 8-12.
The article details what happened when Jon "Hannibal" Stokes, a writer for Ars Techica, posted a negative article on an ArtX trade show appearance. Afterwards, a number of Anonymous posts appeared on the Ars Technica forum which appeared to support ArtX, but which turned out to be from an ArtX's Director of Marketing.
Depth of Field effects will be supported in hardware by 3dfx's Voodoo5 series, scheduled to be be released sometime this spring (most likely in late April/early May). The Voodoo5 has a feature 3dfx calls the "T-Buffer", basically an accumulation buffer which can also be used for Full Screen Anti-Aliasing, Motion Blur, Soft Shadows, and Soft Reflections. All effects require the software to support the feature, except for anti-aliasing, which can be done automatically.
Everybody likes to compare nVidia and 3dfx as the two top companies, but in reality 3dfx is a small fraction of nVidia's size. I don't have exact numbers offhand, but nVidia currently has about 45-50% of the graphics market while 3dfx has something like 10-15%, and I believe Matrox is even smaller than 3dfx.
Here's a comparision of some market caps (data from The Motley Fool).
ATI: 4,141.51 million S3: 1,607.80 million nVidia: 1,808.46 million TDFX: 218.09 million
It's a shame, but the PR-rating system was actually a great idea. It could have gotten consumers away from the idea that More Mhz=Faster, which simply isn't true. Now we have manufacturers playing the numbers game, in which "speed demon" chips (Which run at a high clock speed) have an advantage over "braniac" chips (Which do more per clock cycle). We've now cut off a promising avenue of R&D, solely for marketing reasons.
It's not a problem now, but in the future we could run into a brick wall with Mhz and memory speed limits, which might be solved in part by making Braniac chips. By that time it may not be possible to pursue such chips, because the public will have become fixated on Mhz, and will not buy them.
When the PR ratings first came out, AMD and Cyrix were pretty conservative in their ratings--AMD even rated one of their 133 Mhz chips as a "PR 75". But with insufficiently rigid definitions of "PR" and no way of enforcing them, "PR" quickly turned into Public Relations. As Cyrix watched their margins and market share shrink, they began to play fast and loose with the ratings. Eventually Cyrix chips matched their Intel counterparts only under the most ideal circumstances. Towards the end Cyrix even moved the goalposts, by quietly redefining "PR" to match the average speed of "competing CPUs" in the market (ie, whoever else was slowest at the time).
Slashdot Mirror
"Damn, I'm only about a 5 minute walk away from the Convention Center! Consider it marked on my calendar!"
We'll be glad to see you there! For others interested in attending Otakon 2000, the convention will be held August 4-6 (Friday through Sunday) at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, MD. Registration for all three days is $45 at the door ($40 if you pre-register by May 27th). Single-day memberships and groups discounts are also available, see Otakon's website for details.
For more information, please visit Otakon's website at www.otakon.com, or write:
OTAKON(TM) 2000
PO Box 149
Morristown, PA 19067
I don't know if Lionhead studios is still planning to follow through on this, but originally they had an interesting plan for their product launch, where the game asks you an ethical question before you even bring it home.
The game was to ship in two different formats, either in a black box or a white box. The white box would be more expensive, but a portion of the proceeds would go to charity. There would be no donation if you bought the cheaper black box.
"Lain, DBZ and Battle Athletes"
Well, that's a pretty eclectic selection. We've got:
Lain: Complex and surreal, at times expressionistic. A classmate of the main character, Lain, commits suicide. Shortly afterwards, members of the class start receiving e-mails claiming to be from the deceased girl. That's not what Lain is about, but to explain further would require interpretation on my part. I highly recommend you watch it and make your own interpretations. Requires patience. Also recommended for viewers of Lain: Key the Metal Idol, Angel's Egg, Neon Genesis Evangelion.
(Plug from an Otakon staffer: Both the creator and character designer for Lain will appear at Otakon 2000, the East Coast's biggest anime convention, located in Baltimore, MD.)
DBZ: Journey to the West meets the WWF, anime style with some SF thrown in. Loosely based on the ancient Chinese tale of a monkey king who was born from a stone, and I do mean loosely. Fun, but not very cerebral. The story breaks down in later episodes as characters spend much of their time hurling chi-blasts at each other. Also recommended for DBZ fans: Er... I haven't a clue what would appeal to DBZ fans.
Battle Athletes: Cute schoolgirls compete for the "Cosmo Beauty" prize. A little silly, takes a while for the story to kick in. Animation quality is pretty good, on par with most of Pioneer's other stuff. Also recommended for Battle Athletes fans: Sailor Moon, Gunbuster.
Close the World. Otakunize the Next
Nope, not the music patent -- they need to lose a suit on the 1-click patent, thus setting a precedent for music case.
Ok, so it's definitely smaller. Could also be faster with sufficient amounts of dietary fiber.
Don't know if it's cheaper -- but it better be, considering each mission ends with the probe going down the swirly black hole...
OK, after reading the definition of "Britishing", I have to wonder what kind of sick stuff CowboyNeal is into.
From Old Man Murray's RPG reviews:
Sick of UO? Think you could make a quick buck building your character and selling it? Until one of these games has whores you can visit, it will simply not be real world enough for erik.
Rebuttal from erik, GED:
What the hell are you talking about? The only reason I play UO is for all the "Britishing": paying real world dollars to people for cyber-sex, then player killing them as I climax. That's the only reason anyone plays UO - all the violent sex. Jesus, man, where have you been?
I just had a thought on a little "harmless" prank that could make things interesting for WAVE. Of course I'm not actually advocating that anybody do this, oh no--just pointing out a possible vulnerability.
Congress has 100 senators and 435 representatives. At least a few of them have teenaged kids. I'm sure they'd appreciate the early warning from anonymous sources that have fingered junior as a depressed violent druggie anarchist.
Is Planet a true Marxist critique of colonial extremism, or a hyperreal rationalization of Malthusian diametrics?
I have no idea what you're talking about, but I recommend you submit your letter to the editors of Social Text.
I've been trying to overclock my lightbulb, and I thought I'd ask you gurus on Slashdot for some pointers. My bulb says "60W" on it, and I want to get it up to 75 or 100.
This particular document happens to be related to the US portion of the HGP, but as you can see it has been standard policy, for several years now, to release data as it is generated to public databases. For example, the NCBI Genome Guide, which has both sequence and general information.
DOE-NIH Guidelines for Sharing Data and Resources
At its December 7, 1992, meeting, the DOE-NIH Joint Subcommittee on the Human Genome approved the following sharing guidelines, developed from the DOE draft of September 1991.
The information and resources generated by the Human Genome Project have become substantial, and the interest in having access to them is widespread. It is therefore desirable to have a statement of philosophy concerning the sharing of these resources that can guide investigators who generate the resources as well as those who wish to use them.
A key issue for the Human Genome Project is how to promote and encourage the rapid sharing of materials and data that are produced, especially information that has not yet been published or may never be published in its entirety. Such sharing is essential for progress toward the goals of the program and to avoid unnecessary duplication. It is also desirable to make the fruits of genome research available to the scientific community as a whole as soon as possible to expedite research in other areas.
Although it is the policy of the Human Genome Project to maximize outreach to the scientific community, it is also necessary to give investigators time to verify the accuracy of their data and to gain some scientific advantage from the effort they have invested. Furthermore, in order to assure that novel ideas and inventions are rapidly developed to the benefit of the public, intellectual property protection may be needed for some of the data and materials.
After extensive discussion with the community of genome researchers, the advisors of the NIH and DOE genome programs have determined that consensus is developing around the concept that a 6-month period from the time the data or materials are generated to the time they are made available publicly is a reasonable maximum in almost all cases. More rapid sharing is encouraged.
Whenever possible, data should be deposited in public databases and materials in public repositories. Where appropriate repositories do not exist or are unable to accept the data or materials, investigators should accommodate requests to the extent possible.
The NIH and DOE genome programs have decided to require all applicants expecting to generate significant amounts of genome data or materials to describe in their application how and when they plan to make such data and materials available to the community. Grant solicitations will specify this requirement. These plans in each application will be reviewed in the course of peer review and by staff to assure they are reasonable and in conformity with program philosophy. If a grant is made, the applicant's sharing plans will become a condition of the award and compliance will be reviewed before continuation funding is provided. Progress reports will be asked to address the issue.
Your post reminded me of a story that appeared in Nature (Login Required), in the 3/02/00 issue. For Slashdot readers not familiar with Nature, it is a well-respected science journal (The type with peer-reviewed articles in it).
What was unique about the article, entitled "Danger -- hard hack area", is that it was a piece of SF that speculated on the future of Biotech and the hacking community. Here's a little excerpt below:
"Sequence your genome at home, and set science free!" cry the biopunks.
Many people predicted that VirCon 2010, the first open meeting of the biopunk movement, would end in a riot. In truth, it was as privately exciting and as publicly dull as any science conference. From their besieged underground culture, the clandestine surfers of the new wave in biology are emerging blinking into the daylight and, dare one say, into respectability.
But VirCon 2010, held in a dilapidated midtown New York hotel, was not without friction. Despite the rule that no biological material could be brought in, there was a ruthless but futile inspection by officers of the Food and Drug Agency. Several people suspected of being undercover federal agents or snoops from biotech companies were summarily ejected, and the press was barred, which led to strange scenes outside the hotel as TV journalists were videoed typing into a laptop to communicate with conference delegates just inside the lobby.
I was allowed to cover the event from the inside because of personal contacts made while covering the pursuit and arrest of Kevin 'Freaky-Deaky' Miles, the man who claimed to have turned the Amazon rainforest luminescent -- and because I'm a science fiction writer, and biopunks love SF.
The delegates were mostly young, white males under 25, dressed in everything from baggies and T-shirts, through goth black and multiple piercings, to business suits. All had self-inflicted gene hacks: feathers or scales instead of hair; bands of chromatophores on their foreheads; motile tattoos. And of course, unlike the pasty-faced, overweight cliché of computer hackers, the biopunks were bursting with health, their skin and eyesight perfect, their muscle definition superb, their energy seemingly boundless...
Might I recommend the National Biotechnology Information Facility (NBIF)? They maintain a list of ~7,000 links, ranging from the general to the very in-depth. Of particular interest to Slashdot readers may be their listing of FAQs. Here's a quick listing of catagories from the NBIF site below:
Here's a little quote from "The Difference Between the Sexes", by E. Balaban (ed) and R. V. Short (ed):
"Perhaps the lifespan of a species is inversely proportional to its degree of intellectual development? The probability that a species that has evolved to be as intelligent and all-conquering as ours could survive for long is remote indeed. We may live in a silent universe for a very good reason. Paradoxically, evolution may have ensured that we have one of the shortest survival times of any species, since it has made us, effectively, our own executioner."
...that are on the road now.
The Honda Insight is a 70 mpg gas/electric hybrid that has won the Sierra Club's Excellence in Environmental Engineering Award. Base model MSRP is $18,880. You can read Carpoint's review of the Insight here.
The Toyota Prius is a 66 mpg gas/electric hybrid that has received the United Nations Environmental Protection Award. It has been available in Japan for about two years now, and is scheduled to be released in the US sometime this year. Toyota's site doesn't currently list the MSRP, but it sold in Japan for about $16,500 USD. There is a review of the Prius at TopGear.
"If you're suggesting that the comparitive market caps have anything to do with the "size" of the companies as you refer to them in the first paragraph, you're mistaken."
I'm well aware of that, but I didn't have any hard statistics on hand for the more interesting data, like marketshare. I was researching this a few days ago, but I can't seem to find my source again.
Anyway, skipping the hard statistics, in terms of 3D accelerator market share (IE, who sells the most $$ worth of cards/chipsets), nVidia is number one. I forget who comes next, but I believe it's ATI, then S3, then Intel (Big with OEMs). Then way in the back comes everyone else, including 3dfx and Matrox. 3dfx has a pretty strong retail presence, but that's a small slice compared with OEM pie.
Here's to hoping that 3dfx dies a miserable death.
I have a hard time understanding the anger directed towards 3dfx. They don't have any monopoly power over the market (Never did), have released just about all of their source code, and their cards offer a pretty good bang for the buck.
At any rate, you could very well get your wish. 3dfx has been experiencing severe and accelerating losses for the last few quarters. They just had a layoff a few weeks ago. At the current rate, they only have enough cash to last for a year or two.
And one less 3D company means less competition in the marketplace. In the past few years we've seen a huge number of companies leave the field--Tseng Labs (Out of Business), Cirrus (Now doing audio/modem chips instead), Trident (Still around but miniscule), Real3D (Remains bought by Intel), Rendition (Remains bought by Micron), Hercules (Remains bought by Gullimot), Number9 (Still around, but just a brand that sells S3/nVidia chips), and Chromatics (Bought by ATI). I think Permedia might be out too.
That's a pretty big number of companies that used to design chips, but no longer. Now everbody else like Diamond and Creative just slaps a label and an S3/nVidia chip onto a board. A lot of industry analysts think the consolidation is going to continue.
Think nVidia wouldn't try to establish a lock on the market if they get big enough? Intel, ATI, and nVidia have all been looking at integrated chipsets--in the short term as a low-cost part, but in the long term as a possible way to get that lock. And their investors seem to like the idea.
My father-in-law was one such case.
I'm sorry for your loss. My mother died of lung cancer also.
"If we want fast development of new drugs, abolish the FDA and get the gov out of the Human Genome business. "
I think you have a perspective that is untainted by history. The creation of the FDA around the turn of the century (Although the FDA will not bear that name until 1930) was one of several responses to the appalling state of the pharmaceutical and food industries that preceeded it.
In those days, adulteration of food with sometimes dangerous dyes, preservatives, and fillers was extremely common (Look up Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and the history of "Swill Milk"), and the pharmaceutical market was flooded with quack cures and patent medicines whose main ingredients were often alcohol or laudanum.
A number of laws were passed in response to this situation (in particular Roosevelt's Food and Drugs Act). The FDA began as an agency that provided chemical analysis and support for these laws. It quickly gained an international reputation for effectiveness, and became the model for many similar agencies in other developed countries.
The FDA is a rarity in government, an agency that is both highly competent and beneficial. I happen to work as a scientist in the commercial pharmaceutical industry, and the FDA regulates oversees us very tightly, both in research and production environments. It generates mounds of paperwork and adsorbs lots of extra time and labor--but this is a *good* thing. Thanks to the FDA, you can be assured that medicines you buy have been tested for purity and potency both before (materials), during, and after manufacture, and that there's a full trail of accountabiliy for the both the end product, the materials, and everyone who handled them. Believe me, few companies would take these quality control steps if it weren't for the FDA.
I do think that fast-track development needs to be extended for certain severe diseases. In the case of AIDS, it was not just the existence of a powerful lobbying group that allowed fast-track to occur. It was also the complete absence of any conventional treatment for the disease, coupled with a 100% progression to terminal illness that did it, and the FDA does tend to be more lenient with trials for other 100% fatal diseases.
The main arguement against extension to something like cancer is that there exists a conventional treatment that has some effectiveness, even if it's not a whole lot. The problem is, the majority of experimental medicines are not better than conventional treatment. The majority are worse, and nobody ever hears about the failures unless they are spectacular--and that's the problem with "Kill or Cure".
This is all fine and dandy, but this is hardly hardware support for things like depth of field. It requires that you render the scene n-times just to achieve a single frame. Real hardware support (for depth of field) would allow you to specify the focal length and the hardware would automatically blur non-focussed areas automatically.
I'm not too familiar with the details of 3dfx's approach (not being a 3d programmer myself), but my understanding is that what the VSA-100 does is use hardware method for producing "jittered" samples slightly off from the target pixel, which are then blended together in the accumulation buffer.
The "T-Buffer" effects can then be specified to be applied to certain objects, but not others. If a sub-pixel jitter is specified, then you get anti-aliasing. A larger jitter gives softening, and a very large jitter gives blurring. So far as I can tell, a program does not need to perform"n-renderings". The program still needs to specify the object (Or it can specify a mask and just do an area, I think), and the degree and quality of jittered samples, but from their I believe the chip does the rest automatically.
While the 3dfx "T-Buffer" affects are nice, I can't imagine developers using them, since it would lock the developers into certain hardware (again!). This is something that I thought was insane when Glide first came around. These type of proprietary extensions are exactly why I have never and will never buy 3dfx-only games or 3dfx video cards. You said it above, "basically an accumulation buffer", instead of using this type of thing, why not make an open extension to OpenGL/Direct3D to support these type of effects.
When the Voodoo 1 was first introduced, competing accelerators included the S3 Virge (The most numerous by a wide margin), the Rendition Verite, the nVidia NV1, etc... Good, fast OpenGL support was still the providence of ultra-high end professional accelerators, while Direct3D (Still below version 3 at that time, I think) was slow and glitchy. As a result, in addition to OpenGL and D3D, *everyone* at the time everyone had their own proprietary API which matched their own hardware closely, thus giving a sometimes substantial performance boost. nVidia had one for their NV1, PowerVR was pushing their PowerSGL, and I sort of remember S3 and ATI had their own as well. You still see PowerSGL support in Unreal, and I think S3 still pushes programmers to use Metal for the Savage2000, but of all the cards from that era only the Voodoo1 is still somewhat fast enough to be useable today, and only Glide is still programmed for.
Glide survived because it appeared at a time when consumer-level 3D was first starting to appear, plus the hardware was good, plus it was fast, and doubleplus because it was easier to learn and program for than D3D at the time. I think 3dfx held onto Glide far too tightly for too long, but it's existence is due more to history than any monopoly power on 3dfx's part (In fact, ATI and S3, both then and now, are each several times larger than 3dfx, both in terms of market cap and number of card shipped. nVidia has something like 5x the marketshare that 3dfx has.)
"Where is Voodoo4?"
Both the V4 and the V5 use the same chip, 3dfx's VSA-100. The V4 uses one chip, while the V5 uses 2 or 4 chips, depending on the model. The two cards should come out about the same time.
Here's a quote from 3dfx's PR Manager:
"We have placed orders for production silicon already. Our software development is right on track. We are on the same release schedule as when the VSA-100 product was introduced at Comdex, which we stated would be in the Spring. That product will include all the features that have been promised. It will deliver real time, full scene anti aliasing. It will support dazzling cinematic effects via our t-buffer. It will feature 32-bit color depth, SLI implementations and astronomical fill rates. Despite the outstanding state of this first silicon, the boards used in the Cebit demonstrations do not represent production silicon. Shortly after GDC, we expect to be demonstrating Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 boards that are much closer to production quality."
The GDC is being held right now, March 8-12, so we should be getting some reports soon. Right now it looks like 3dfx is shooting for late April or May.
There are persistent rumors on investing boards that several companies are working with Voxel acceleration. One particularly interesting rumor concerns 3dfx's Rampage chip, scheduled for the end of this year. In one interview with 3dfx's European Product Manager, Luciano Alibrandi, the interviewer asked if 3dfx was working on Voxel technology. Mr. Alibrandi replied "No"--but several days later the interview was updated at 3dfx's request, with the "No" struck out and replaced with a "Can't Comment".
Anyway, we may find out if any of the rumors are true at the Game Developer's Conference that is taking place March 8-12.
Speaking of ArtX (Which ATI recently bought), there's an interesting article up at Ars Technica, "ArtX: Half-truths and Misrepresentation?".
The article details what happened when Jon "Hannibal" Stokes, a writer for Ars Techica, posted a negative article on an ArtX trade show appearance. Afterwards, a number of Anonymous posts appeared on the Ars Technica forum which appeared to support ArtX, but which turned out to be from an ArtX's Director of Marketing.
This incident appeared on Slashdot as ArtX, Hannibal and Consumer Fraud.
Depth of Field effects will be supported in hardware by 3dfx's Voodoo5 series, scheduled to be be released sometime this spring (most likely in late April/early May). The Voodoo5 has a feature 3dfx calls the "T-Buffer", basically an accumulation buffer which can also be used for Full Screen Anti-Aliasing, Motion Blur, Soft Shadows, and Soft Reflections. All effects require the software to support the feature, except for anti-aliasing, which can be done automatically.
Everybody likes to compare nVidia and 3dfx as the two top companies, but in reality 3dfx is a small fraction of nVidia's size. I don't have exact numbers offhand, but nVidia currently has about 45-50% of the graphics market while 3dfx has something like 10-15%, and I believe Matrox is even smaller than 3dfx.
Here's a comparision of some market caps (data from The Motley Fool).
ATI: 4,141.51 million
S3: 1,607.80 million
nVidia: 1,808.46 million
TDFX: 218.09 million
HotHardware has another article on the R6 "Charisma", as well as a copy of ATI's White Paper.
It's a shame, but the PR-rating system was actually a great idea. It could have gotten consumers away from the idea that More Mhz=Faster, which simply isn't true. Now we have manufacturers playing the numbers game, in which "speed demon" chips (Which run at a high clock speed) have an advantage over "braniac" chips (Which do more per clock cycle). We've now cut off a promising avenue of R&D, solely for marketing reasons.
It's not a problem now, but in the future we could run into a brick wall with Mhz and memory speed limits, which might be solved in part by making Braniac chips. By that time it may not be possible to pursue such chips, because the public will have become fixated on Mhz, and will not buy them.
When the PR ratings first came out, AMD and Cyrix were pretty conservative in their ratings--AMD even rated one of their 133 Mhz chips as a "PR 75". But with insufficiently rigid definitions of "PR" and no way of enforcing them, "PR" quickly turned into Public Relations. As Cyrix watched their margins and market share shrink, they began to play fast and loose with the ratings. Eventually Cyrix chips matched their Intel counterparts only under the most ideal circumstances. Towards the end Cyrix even moved the goalposts, by quietly redefining "PR" to match the average speed of "competing CPUs" in the market (ie, whoever else was slowest at the time).