Why so much fuss, everyone knew iPad 2 would be invincible? Look at it, it's polished in every way. Xoom has just about half its battery life and the software still seems glitchy. Did Motorola hope that people would buy into that only to have more "freedom"? I like freedom very much, and I also dislike Apple, but to tell you the truth, if I'd walk into a store where both are sold, I wouldn't give the Xoom more than a finger swipe. And the store clerk would probably agree with me. Apple are in their own league here. If you want to compete with them, you have to work really hard, and not just in one department...
It would help Anonymous' professional reputation if they also uploaded the leak to the BitTorrent network... Then we wouldn't have to deal with the good old HTTP/1.1 Service Unavailable status code while someone leaches the data from the their site.
To back my reasoning with a simple situation: Person A has a good ear and does not download MP3s, in fact they make humming sound in his ears and spoil his listening experience. Person A wants music in FLAC. They go to piratebay.org and look up some music they like. It's most often found available as MP3s only, unless it's Pink Floyd or something. Obviously, its availability is a violation on part of whoever put up the torrent on Pirate Bay, so we have one pirate already. However, the key here is that we don't have a second pirate stealing the music BECAUSE IT'S IN MP3 FORMAT. If FLAC would be the format of choice circulating in the wild, the amount of music pirates would be higher, because all the FLAC-only audiophiles would join in on the pirating. More revenue lost for the traditional record labels.
I am pretty sure most music execs have been to at least 1 meeting each where FLAC was discussed. I am inclined to believe one of the reasons they have dismissed it is exactly because they or the tech savvy people who advise them know that no ripper or audiophile with respect for their occupation will ever consider converting MP3 files to ANYTHING. MP3s are made for listening by humans, it's not an archive file format. They (the execs) have been advised how FLAC excels in both playback quality as well as archiving, and have figured that offering full-quality, essentially master, copies of copyrighted music over the wire electronically as FLAC files is a whole lot worse for their business than even CDs, although they know perfectly well that any vanilla Audio-CD can be 'ripped'. Human psychology, go figure. To sum up - they are afraid of FLAC much like cavemen were afraid of lightning...
There was some dude here not long ago with a comment on how JavaScript/XML and all that "mostly-interpreted" hallabaluja (which IS a life saver often, I'll admit) doesn't matter with UIs in particular. Wonder where he is now:-)
Then again, since it was exactly JS speed that is improved in FF4, assuming they apply it to their XUL as well (i know they do), it can only mean that the UI should get the speed benefit as well.
Well, at least I corrected OP notion that '2.5D raytracing is raycasting' which is completely without merit or sense. I was explaining why Doom/Wolfenstein engines are called 2.5D - yes its because among other things Wolfenstein used same wall height everywhere and Doom went a step further and carried the height in the map, something that also made impossible to have two floors on top of one another. I don't see why you paint me clueless here. Yes, when I was experimenting with raytracing algorithms back in the days, I actually hadn't read a single book (much less an English one) about it - I came to it myself after we had our first physical optics class in high school. And I haven't read Wikipedia prior to posting, I am not even sure WHICH article you claim I had read? On Doom? On raytracing?
It's not the direction that counts actually, it's the steps involved - raycasting does not compute any rays between scene objects themselves, only rays that cross a given projection plane and a source of light or a scene object. Raytracing adds to this interplay between scene objects in the form of rays that are emitted in pretty much all directions from each point on any scene object, ideally even INSIDE it (light penetrates human skin f.e.) This makes raycasting immensely faster than raytracing (which is why real-time raytracing is such a big deal obviously) but does not produce the image quality raytraced images are known for.
Obviously any fast and self-respecting raytracing OR raycasting algorithm does not actually emit anything, mathematically speaking - instead it immediately proceeds to finding a point where a ray crosses a scene object and in case it's a raytracer or a photon mapper steps into a recursion where it 'emits' rays from that point again, with each ray producing an 'emitter' again and so on and so on until you run out of stack space or abort recursion with some trigger;-)
Eh, I don't know about your (if any) experience with computer graphics, but as far as I know, and I did my fair share of CG programming, raycasting has nothing to do with the mentioned '2.5D'. DOOM was '2.5D' because of the pecularities and limitation of its supposed 3-D engine where level maps were stored in memory in such a way (BSP) as to make it impossible to put two floors on top of one another (if I am not mistaken), and it also couldn't handle sloped surfaces. That's why it is called 2.5D. Basically it was another revision of the Wolfenstein 3D engine they had created earlier.
Raycasting is simply emitting rays from camera source through its image projection plane, as opposed to raytracing where the rays are emitted from light sources and are 'caught' by a light-sensitive element such as an eye or a camera. Anyway, Wikipedia explains both concepts very aptly, for those curious.
Goddamned monolithic systems... Insecure components breaking entire installations, where the components themselves are not used more than once a year perhaps. Way to go, Microsoft, seems you're religious about all of it.
Call me Mr. Raider, call me Mr. Wrong Call me insane, call me Mr. Vain Call me what you like As long as you call me time and again
Re:What functionality are we BSD users ...
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 0
Excuse me please, but that sounds like an utopian rant of a neocommunist or something along those lines. The reason there are so much of similar stuff is rooted in human psychology, and nobody is going to argue with human psychology - it has survived thousands of years mostly unchanged, certainly not changing in the course of decades. Simpler put, people do what they want not what you want. And that will continue to be so, and even more so since people are different. Nobody is going to unite all flavours of open source products into one giant blob of does-it-all for your pleasure.
What a wise man would root for instead, is to agree on STANDARDS or INTERFACES with which all the myriads of computer systems we employ can cooperate and communicate. It's a fundamental difference, and a proven concept. Again, simpler put, no two implementation need to copy each other as long as they include "cross-sections" that makes it possible to "fit" them onto common parts so that seamless operation is achieved.
We have many such standards - HTTP, XML, DNS, TCP/IP - this is how a Windows user fetches and uses a webpage in their browser that was sent by a say Unix server. I just don't see why we should abandon this way in favour of some "perfect" operating system you propose. Take cue from nature - it's all about diversity, and the environment(s) this diversity creates.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
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Xfce 4.8 Released
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· Score: 1
Hilarious post - it sums up modern desktop computing.
"X has become bloated and now I use Y which is great unless you use Z with it, which I have to because I like it, and it's the only thing that W works with."
No offense, after all we're all users, but you have to see the irony of it all here...
I personally think Mr. Assange did commit rape. I think it's not about being a pig or not being a pig - it's not black and white - men can be rude. Of course this wouldn't apply to slashdotters, as nerds are known to be on the gentler side, but Assange is a different character. Doesn't mean he is a scumbag - I think he met two attractive and liberated women and sort of failed to well, show his better side. Also, consider that Anna Ardin has withdrawn her charges and apparently holds little to no grudge against him, in light of the proportions this has taken. It is irrelevant what character she is - people have had sex and quarreled, something didn't go very much in a gentlemen-like manner. Pity. That said, I think Wikileaks needs to proceed, and Assange SHOULD be imprisoned FOR RAPE (not whatever U.S. would love to put on him while he is in the process of risking jail in Sweden.)
Has anyone of you by chance had sex with Swedish women? They're completely out of control in bed, like furias or something. It's fireworks all the way. Imagine you're a guy exclusively preoccupied with waging war on unrighteous and the liars and idealistic enough to stand up to U.S. government, you come to Sweden, hook up with friends, they take you to a bar, are infatuated with you and you get to get under the bed sheets with hot Swedish young women who can't get enough of you. Oh gee, a condom broke - let's lock this asshole up for 100 years in prison and i dunno, whip his feet with iron rods. Because media can't make up their mind and neither can we - should we hate or love Assange? Well, how about a dose of reality - people make mistakes, sometimes really ugly mistakes, but the world is not black and white. This doesn't mean that the rich and powerful get to keep their secrets though - everyone can benefit from forced change and venting off once in a while, including and ESPECIALLY a government gone too comfortable with the darker side of politics. So I say put yourself in Assange shoes and imagine what would it take for you to end up where he end up.
No, 'we' haven't proven much. Some governmental agencies around the world have proven that THEY can orbit the Earth, while you and I haven't done all that much to participate in that (buttefly effect does not count for much here.) SpaceX is a first here. Generalization - tool of choice of any critic.
I did right after I read the header and before I posted a comment here, although I am sitting with a feeling of being very naive and wondering how long my private boycott of PayPal may last. I have been thinking how am I going to be able to order stuff from eBay where PayPal is a de-facto payment method, and even more so, where people won't sell you stuff if you don't have PayPal (which could be considered discrimination on the part of the seller and attempt at commercial coercion of sorts on part of eBay.)
Not fully correct - if they refuse to decrypt your PC even after you pay them, you tell everybody who would listen, if even out of frustration, that paying for virus X does not help, leading to the criminals having no trust from their victims. And nobody likes to pay $120 for nothing, so they will most likely loose potential revenue from their scheme. When people pay, they expect something in return (that's what paying means) - if they don't get anything, they tell other people and it matters little whether the salesman is a criminal - the whole setup is built on trust, even the victim-criminal relationship. So, yes they WOULD LOOSE money if they try to get greedy and not decrypt as promised. I mean, if you know that your data will not be decrypted, why would you pay? People know how to cope, it's a survival instinct.
It's a bit like robbing a bank - robbers take hostages and ask for a plane. They might get it, but if they kill the hostages nevertheless, they just give more incentive to the law enforcement to hunt them down like dogs afterwards. It's the human element.
Slashdot Mirror
Why so much fuss, everyone knew iPad 2 would be invincible? Look at it, it's polished in every way. Xoom has just about half its battery life and the software still seems glitchy. Did Motorola hope that people would buy into that only to have more "freedom"? I like freedom very much, and I also dislike Apple, but to tell you the truth, if I'd walk into a store where both are sold, I wouldn't give the Xoom more than a finger swipe. And the store clerk would probably agree with me. Apple are in their own league here. If you want to compete with them, you have to work really hard, and not just in one department...
It would help Anonymous' professional reputation if they also uploaded the leak to the BitTorrent network... Then we wouldn't have to deal with the good old HTTP/1.1 Service Unavailable status code while someone leaches the data from the their site.
To back my reasoning with a simple situation: Person A has a good ear and does not download MP3s, in fact they make humming sound in his ears and spoil his listening experience. Person A wants music in FLAC. They go to piratebay.org and look up some music they like. It's most often found available as MP3s only, unless it's Pink Floyd or something. Obviously, its availability is a violation on part of whoever put up the torrent on Pirate Bay, so we have one pirate already. However, the key here is that we don't have a second pirate stealing the music BECAUSE IT'S IN MP3 FORMAT. If FLAC would be the format of choice circulating in the wild, the amount of music pirates would be higher, because all the FLAC-only audiophiles would join in on the pirating. More revenue lost for the traditional record labels.
I am pretty sure most music execs have been to at least 1 meeting each where FLAC was discussed. I am inclined to believe one of the reasons they have dismissed it is exactly because they or the tech savvy people who advise them know that no ripper or audiophile with respect for their occupation will ever consider converting MP3 files to ANYTHING. MP3s are made for listening by humans, it's not an archive file format. They (the execs) have been advised how FLAC excels in both playback quality as well as archiving, and have figured that offering full-quality, essentially master, copies of copyrighted music over the wire electronically as FLAC files is a whole lot worse for their business than even CDs, although they know perfectly well that any vanilla Audio-CD can be 'ripped'. Human psychology, go figure. To sum up - they are afraid of FLAC much like cavemen were afraid of lightning...
There was some dude here not long ago with a comment on how JavaScript/XML and all that "mostly-interpreted" hallabaluja (which IS a life saver often, I'll admit) doesn't matter with UIs in particular. Wonder where he is now :-)
Then again, since it was exactly JS speed that is improved in FF4, assuming they apply it to their XUL as well (i know they do), it can only mean that the UI should get the speed benefit as well.
Well, at least I corrected OP notion that '2.5D raytracing is raycasting' which is completely without merit or sense. I was explaining why Doom/Wolfenstein engines are called 2.5D - yes its because among other things Wolfenstein used same wall height everywhere and Doom went a step further and carried the height in the map, something that also made impossible to have two floors on top of one another. I don't see why you paint me clueless here. Yes, when I was experimenting with raytracing algorithms back in the days, I actually hadn't read a single book (much less an English one) about it - I came to it myself after we had our first physical optics class in high school. And I haven't read Wikipedia prior to posting, I am not even sure WHICH article you claim I had read? On Doom? On raytracing?
Yes, you're absolutely right. But I was simply talking about how raycasting stops where raytracing truly begins (forward or backward alike.)
It's not the direction that counts actually, it's the steps involved - raycasting does not compute any rays between scene objects themselves, only rays that cross a given projection plane and a source of light or a scene object. Raytracing adds to this interplay between scene objects in the form of rays that are emitted in pretty much all directions from each point on any scene object, ideally even INSIDE it (light penetrates human skin f.e.) This makes raycasting immensely faster than raytracing (which is why real-time raytracing is such a big deal obviously) but does not produce the image quality raytraced images are known for.
Obviously any fast and self-respecting raytracing OR raycasting algorithm does not actually emit anything, mathematically speaking - instead it immediately proceeds to finding a point where a ray crosses a scene object and in case it's a raytracer or a photon mapper steps into a recursion where it 'emits' rays from that point again, with each ray producing an 'emitter' again and so on and so on until you run out of stack space or abort recursion with some trigger ;-)
Eh, I don't know about your (if any) experience with computer graphics, but as far as I know, and I did my fair share of CG programming, raycasting has nothing to do with the mentioned '2.5D'. DOOM was '2.5D' because of the pecularities and limitation of its supposed 3-D engine where level maps were stored in memory in such a way (BSP) as to make it impossible to put two floors on top of one another (if I am not mistaken), and it also couldn't handle sloped surfaces. That's why it is called 2.5D. Basically it was another revision of the Wolfenstein 3D engine they had created earlier.
Raycasting is simply emitting rays from camera source through its image projection plane, as opposed to raytracing where the rays are emitted from light sources and are 'caught' by a light-sensitive element such as an eye or a camera. Anyway, Wikipedia explains both concepts very aptly, for those curious.
not a astornomy hater by any stretch, but this sure changed my weekend plans! :-)
It's good to hear that we finally can link the pwnage and the ownage together. It's only fair, after all (ref. owning the machine you just pwned)
Goddamned monolithic systems... Insecure components breaking entire installations, where the components themselves are not used more than once a year perhaps. Way to go, Microsoft, seems you're religious about all of it.
People die. Nothing eerie about it. A delegation from the shores of Ganges will do them good.
Call me Mr. Raider, call me Mr. Wrong
Call me insane, call me Mr. Vain
Call me what you like
As long as you call me time and again
Excuse me please, but that sounds like an utopian rant of a neocommunist or something along those lines. The reason there are so much of similar stuff is rooted in human psychology, and nobody is going to argue with human psychology - it has survived thousands of years mostly unchanged, certainly not changing in the course of decades. Simpler put, people do what they want not what you want. And that will continue to be so, and even more so since people are different. Nobody is going to unite all flavours of open source products into one giant blob of does-it-all for your pleasure.
What a wise man would root for instead, is to agree on STANDARDS or INTERFACES with which all the myriads of computer systems we employ can cooperate and communicate. It's a fundamental difference, and a proven concept. Again, simpler put, no two implementation need to copy each other as long as they include "cross-sections" that makes it possible to "fit" them onto common parts so that seamless operation is achieved.
We have many such standards - HTTP, XML, DNS, TCP/IP - this is how a Windows user fetches and uses a webpage in their browser that was sent by a say Unix server. I just don't see why we should abandon this way in favour of some "perfect" operating system you propose. Take cue from nature - it's all about diversity, and the environment(s) this diversity creates.
Hilarious post - it sums up modern desktop computing.
"X has become bloated and now I use Y which is great unless you use Z with it, which I have to because I like it, and it's the only thing that W works with."
No offense, after all we're all users, but you have to see the irony of it all here...
I personally think Mr. Assange did commit rape. I think it's not about being a pig or not being a pig - it's not black and white - men can be rude. Of course this wouldn't apply to slashdotters, as nerds are known to be on the gentler side, but Assange is a different character. Doesn't mean he is a scumbag - I think he met two attractive and liberated women and sort of failed to well, show his better side. Also, consider that Anna Ardin has withdrawn her charges and apparently holds little to no grudge against him, in light of the proportions this has taken. It is irrelevant what character she is - people have had sex and quarreled, something didn't go very much in a gentlemen-like manner. Pity. That said, I think Wikileaks needs to proceed, and Assange SHOULD be imprisoned FOR RAPE (not whatever U.S. would love to put on him while he is in the process of risking jail in Sweden.)
Has anyone of you by chance had sex with Swedish women? They're completely out of control in bed, like furias or something. It's fireworks all the way. Imagine you're a guy exclusively preoccupied with waging war on unrighteous and the liars and idealistic enough to stand up to U.S. government, you come to Sweden, hook up with friends, they take you to a bar, are infatuated with you and you get to get under the bed sheets with hot Swedish young women who can't get enough of you. Oh gee, a condom broke - let's lock this asshole up for 100 years in prison and i dunno, whip his feet with iron rods. Because media can't make up their mind and neither can we - should we hate or love Assange? Well, how about a dose of reality - people make mistakes, sometimes really ugly mistakes, but the world is not black and white. This doesn't mean that the rich and powerful get to keep their secrets though - everyone can benefit from forced change and venting off once in a while, including and ESPECIALLY a government gone too comfortable with the darker side of politics. So I say put yourself in Assange shoes and imagine what would it take for you to end up where he end up.
No, 'we' haven't proven much. Some governmental agencies around the world have proven that THEY can orbit the Earth, while you and I haven't done all that much to participate in that (buttefly effect does not count for much here.) SpaceX is a first here. Generalization - tool of choice of any critic.
Everything was coming to this. It's normal to assume that what was done by governments before will one day be done by commercial companies.
Word.
I did right after I read the header and before I posted a comment here, although I am sitting with a feeling of being very naive and wondering how long my private boycott of PayPal may last. I have been thinking how am I going to be able to order stuff from eBay where PayPal is a de-facto payment method, and even more so, where people won't sell you stuff if you don't have PayPal (which could be considered discrimination on the part of the seller and attempt at commercial coercion of sorts on part of eBay.)
Talk about having your head in the cloud...
Not fully correct - if they refuse to decrypt your PC even after you pay them, you tell everybody who would listen, if even out of frustration, that paying for virus X does not help, leading to the criminals having no trust from their victims. And nobody likes to pay $120 for nothing, so they will most likely loose potential revenue from their scheme. When people pay, they expect something in return (that's what paying means) - if they don't get anything, they tell other people and it matters little whether the salesman is a criminal - the whole setup is built on trust, even the victim-criminal relationship. So, yes they WOULD LOOSE money if they try to get greedy and not decrypt as promised. I mean, if you know that your data will not be decrypted, why would you pay? People know how to cope, it's a survival instinct.
It's a bit like robbing a bank - robbers take hostages and ask for a plane. They might get it, but if they kill the hostages nevertheless, they just give more incentive to the law enforcement to hunt them down like dogs afterwards. It's the human element.
Nicely abstracted UIs and awesome user experiences are two orthogonal concepts.
I don't think he/she knows that 2D is a plane in 3D space ;-)