Check out "bobby" here. I believe it is a govenment sponsored (IBM is government, right;) ) program to find and repair potential barriers to people with disabilities. To test it, make sure to click the "Bobby" link in the upper-left corner. You can choose which set of guidelines to use: Web Content Accessibility 1.0, or U.S. Section 508 guidelines.
It, and the W3C's modified HTML 4 spec, seem to be trying to distance the presentation from the data, so that the data can be presented in a variety of formats, depending on the needs of the client.
This is a good thing, as affirmed in The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt, David Thomas; Pub. Addison Wesley 10/1999; ISBN 0-201-61622-X, $37.99) reviewed here. I own this book, and find it to be an extremely practical, applicable, enjoyable and easy read.
I piped the output of Bobby and found it to be uncompliant. I thought that was funny.
I know you probably have a substantial investment in your present phone system; but I think you should check out Altigen here. We have an Altigen system managing communications in our office. Our sys admin dropped a couple of VOIP cards in the box for long-distance communication with remote offices. Granted, the remote office needed a matching VOIP card, but any phone in our office, when dialing certain extensions, became VOIP phones. These phones are standard phones, too.
I'm pretty sure that your local telco can set up a "hardwire" connection between your two offices. I'm not sure of the terminology anymore, but I believe it to be exceptionally reasonable.
But, c'mon, have you considered the benefits of having cable draped across a 100' span? Christmas lights, anyone?
As I understand "AGP Aperture Size", it is basically a portal in system RAM to your Video RAM, a range of memory addresses. When anything is written to this memory range, it is automatically transferred to the Video Card's RAM. By your post, the G200 used 8 MB of System RAM for it's Video memory? I wonder what led you to set the AGPAS to 256MB (review, tech articles and such), and what actually was going on (if the BIOS/OS decided to overried your settings), and why there is instability with your GeForce2 (I have the same card, with a 64MB AGPAS). Anyway, just curious.
I used IDE drives (or ATA, whateever) and have always complained that drive accesses take 100% of my CPU time. When I was using SCSI, I didn't have this problem since the controller was separate. Kind of like I/O acceleration. SCSI is expensive, though.
The previous poster mentioned Burn-Proof technology, I'd like to second that notion.
Have you ever wondered why, if our eyes are an analog interface, we see the wheels on vehicles appearing to rotate in the opposite direction they should? I wonder why, and I've never found a satisfactory answer.
Why not limit games to 28 or 30 fps and work on building things like accurate motion blurs? It's possible to calculate an object's change in position over 1/30th of a second and blur accurately in that time, producing a more photorealistic image. I know 3Dfx was working on the motion-blur and depth of field effects (T-buffer effects?) before they went under. The pictures I saw of their motion blurs were not terribly impressive.
I remember an old animation package I had bootlegged on my Apple IIE... the name escapes me, but it was my first exposure to "tweening": the process of interpolation between two or more end points. It would create smooth rotations and movement arcs.
I don't know how one would go about rendering a motion-blurred scene. I think the software would have to compare the end mesh to the start mesh and determine the distance moved, use the z-buffer to determine how to render in a foreground to background fashion for all moved object. Use a pre-defined max-distance-to-rerender to determine how many interpolated objects to render, and the alpha-blend and radially blur all of the layers?
I'm sure the more I write the more obvious it becomes how little I know about the rendering process.
My only concern is that more frames per second may not be the best way to increase realism, but that mimicing the visual process is.
What's the chronology of the bible? About 6000 years? Genesis imparts "In the beginning was God, and the Word was with God." The "Word" is mentioned in the New Testament (John, I believe) and is interpreted to mean "Jesus Christ". Off topic... anyway, The next few verses:
"And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the earth."
It does not say that "the earth did not exist." I could interpret this as "The earth had no example or direction."
I believe a passage in Romans describes God as "light"... so, when God says, "Let there be light." Was he speaking himself into existance? Was He saying, "I am here," or "Let me be the example." It's always interpreted as literally.
At any rate, when I walk into a room I say, "Let there be J.D."
Slingshot's work pretty well with a washer secured to a string, but I've had a lot of luck with a mini-crossbow (which may be illegal in your state... sorry if that's the case) mini-Crossbows may be a bit wider than your standard fare slingshot, though.
Every business has their own language. As a programmer, I understand a large subset of the IT the vernacular. Because my mother is a nurse, I understand a very small subset of the medical vernacular. With any task, there is a huge number of possible solutions. Sometimes the right language makes finding the best solution easier. Why do we need another scripting language? Because we need to solve new problems.
I'm under the impression that when the author used the word "powerful", they meant "umatched in purpose."
I agree that if you were to take a specialized tool out of its envirnoment, it would not necessarily do well at all. Generalized tools are great at being applied to new problems. Once a solution is found, a period of time passes in which the generalized tool is tweaked for speed at addressing the problem for which it was retrofitted.
The benefit of a completely specialized modular design is specifically the modularity. If there is a problem, your debugging is generally isolated to the module that caused the error. Configurations are extremely specified, and the chance for user error is significantly reduced.
At my office, we have several servers that divide up the general task of "running our web site," but that is a group of many specialized tasks such as: expiring objects, maintaining/editing objects, creation of new objects, creation of new object interaction, translation, transmitting data from test servers to production and so on.
Our entire interface is web-based (yes, we use IIS and Apache) but very modular in design. The author to which you rebut is simply stating the enormous complexity and power that can be achieved with simply, elegantly designed tools.
Thanks for you post... talk to you later, -J.D.
Is it like super-sampling, where the OS and Video card generate 4 times the information and then downsample and anti-alias?
Why couldn't monitors come with enough RAM to store 2 frames at the highest resolution at 32 bpp? At 1600x1200, that'd be 7.5 MB. 8MB of RAM coupled with a processor that runs fast enough to blend pixels for and 85Hz refresh rate.
Actually, this might be a bad idea. Can someone really build a device to antialias a bitmap and actually gain detail? I remember seeing articles in old MacWorld's about software that did just that, but I never saw it beyond paper.
Make a monitor that has some sort of alternate interface, like IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0, that could be used to transmit a vector language. Make monitors like printers. (Althought the page-per-minute would be nearer to 5100 (85 Hz refresh), but the resolution is considerably less!)
Give these screens the ability to autoswitch input, perform video mixing and such.
How long would your case be clear? My experience with Acryllic is that it collects static electricity. They should call this the "Swiffer" case. If you think dust bunnies are gross, imagine your case as one big one. They could call this the "Chia-PC"... say, that's not a bad idea...
Could the static charge collected be used to supplement the power supply, or just shock and amuse friends and family. "Hey, touch my computer... right here."
I agree with the previous post when it says, "Clear cases are cool and all, but clear components would be cooler."
I hated Apple's translucent cases simply because they were faddish. If the computer's performance was as consistant and stylish as the cases, perhaps I would like them better. For people whose concerns are less geeky than my own; however, the cases are not a problem.
Clear cases are decidedly cool, but what would be cooler and give ultimate upgrade access would be a desk-drawer case.
I read somewhere that DirectX-8 is going to further abstract the z-buffer out of the programmer's hands. The article from which I gleaned this tidbit was exceptionally poorly written and I've not backed this up with real reasearch. Perhaps this was a bit of forward-thinking on NEC's part?
I completely agree. I don't own a console entertainment system. I don't even own a computer. I spend most of my time in my office, so I've invested money in my office PC. So what if I have two monitors (on 2 nVidia cards... great drivers), S-PDIF sound piped to a 500 watt AC-3/DTS stereo receiver and a 250 Watt subwoofer. Have you ever used gcc with surround sound? ahhh yeah.
I saw someone selling external usb cases designed to receive 3.5" half-height hard drives. You could get them in different flavors: scsi, IDE... I've forgotten who makes them, though...
You might be better served (and slightly more legal) if you:
Use a single computer as your Firewall/Proxy/Vpn and connect its NIC to the cable modem
Install a second NIC in the FPV and connect it to your wonderful little LinkSys hub to which all of you other network devices are connected.
Run a private network behind your FPV using non-routable Class C (192.168.1.*?) IP addresses
If @home sends you a broadcast packet, or portscans your network, only one computer will answer, rather than n computers, where n is the number of computers connected to your hub and the cable modem.
If you have a 4 port hub, with one port used by your cable modem, and one by your proxy server, and two by other network devices, any packets delivered over the cable modem are visible to all devices.
Although, now that I re-read your comment, you did say LinkSys router...
For some reason, I still have a better feeling about having 2 NICs...
A lack of keyboard shorcuts (at which bindability has already been hinted) is a serious complaint. The bittersweet realization with any pure GUI is not only wha-choo-see-iz-wha-choo-get, but it's also all you get.
It very well could be as you say. When I make sweeping comments as I did earlier, I tend to err on the side of, "Awww, everybody's nice."
Naivety is fun! In all seriousness, I am aware of and do not support unethical business practice. This appears to be capitalism at its best. If only I was a chip manufacturer... If only I have purchased Rambus at 40, and sold at 400... (or OneVoice ($2 - $22, 3 months), or Xybernaut, same time frame...)
I don't think you are being paranoid. Manufacturers base their estimates on history (obvious, I know). In order for these same manuf. to make money, the have to be able to meet demand. If I order a computer with 1GB of RAM, I want 1GB of RAM, not 128MB and some money back.
Boy, I'd really like my desktop to have 1GB of RAM. I'd also like computers to be made out of milk chocolate so they can be recycled easily. There might be some thermal tolerance issues there, but with low voltage devices, that shouldn't be a problem...
In order to meet a demand, that demand must be anticipated. It is only good business practice that chip manufs. are expecting this surge around September.
I was discussing with some people "bacterial evolution"-- a subject which admittedly I have limited exposure to. I brought up an argument of "Better Bacteria Through Natural Selection." and was met with, "That's just pharmeceuticals trying to sell you something."
It stands to reason (to me, anyway) that disinfectants, if not applied properly, cannot guarantee destruction of 100% of bacteria and viral strains. My mother is a nurse, and has seen first hand this evolution. A brand of staph infection (MRSA? I believe) that exists only in hospitals, which became a breeding ground for the naturally selected vermin. (people have called me that, too.)
Talk about off-topic! I'll try to bring this around...
When a manufacturer asserts a demand which said manuf. may profit from, granted the goal of any manuf. is to make money, but the manuf. industry is also about service, and satisfying their market, without which the industry would not survive. If you don't want manufacturers to make money, don't buy anything.
Which would be more valuable, 3-D imagery or peripheral vision? What if the even/odd pixels were rendered as images you would see out of the corners of your eye, and you wore mirrors on glasses-frames to create the illusion of periphery?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm... were you intentionally making an allusion to the "Tao of Steve"?
Check out "bobby" here. I believe it is a govenment sponsored (IBM is government, right ;) ) program to find and repair potential barriers to people with disabilities. To test it, make sure to click the "Bobby" link in the upper-left corner. You can choose which set of guidelines to use: Web Content Accessibility 1.0, or U.S. Section 508 guidelines.
It, and the W3C's modified HTML 4 spec, seem to be trying to distance the presentation from the data, so that the data can be presented in a variety of formats, depending on the needs of the client.
This is a good thing, as affirmed in The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt, David Thomas; Pub. Addison Wesley 10/1999; ISBN 0-201-61622-X, $37.99) reviewed here. I own this book, and find it to be an extremely practical, applicable, enjoyable and easy read.
I piped the output of Bobby and found it to be uncompliant. I thought that was funny.
I know you probably have a substantial investment in your present phone system; but I think you should check out Altigen here. We have an Altigen system managing communications in our office. Our sys admin dropped a couple of VOIP cards in the box for long-distance communication with remote offices. Granted, the remote office needed a matching VOIP card, but any phone in our office, when dialing certain extensions, became VOIP phones. These phones are standard phones, too.
I'm pretty sure that your local telco can set up a "hardwire" connection between your two offices. I'm not sure of the terminology anymore, but I believe it to be exceptionally reasonable.
But, c'mon, have you considered the benefits of having cable draped across a 100' span? Christmas lights, anyone?
As I understand "AGP Aperture Size", it is basically a portal in system RAM to your Video RAM, a range of memory addresses. When anything is written to this memory range, it is automatically transferred to the Video Card's RAM. By your post, the G200 used 8 MB of System RAM for it's Video memory? I wonder what led you to set the AGPAS to 256MB (review, tech articles and such), and what actually was going on (if the BIOS/OS decided to overried your settings), and why there is instability with your GeForce2 (I have the same card, with a 64MB AGPAS). Anyway, just curious.
I used IDE drives (or ATA, whateever) and have always complained that drive accesses take 100% of my CPU time. When I was using SCSI, I didn't have this problem since the controller was separate. Kind of like I/O acceleration. SCSI is expensive, though.
The previous poster mentioned Burn-Proof technology, I'd like to second that notion.
I've observed strobe effects on angular motion before. I've also observed this "temporal aliassing" phenomena in direct sunlight.
Holes and tunnels into the moon? Now the moon really will look like swiss cheese... and that's not gouda!
Have you ever wondered why, if our eyes are an analog interface, we see the wheels on vehicles appearing to rotate in the opposite direction they should? I wonder why, and I've never found a satisfactory answer.
Why not limit games to 28 or 30 fps and work on building things like accurate motion blurs? It's possible to calculate an object's change in position over 1/30th of a second and blur accurately in that time, producing a more photorealistic image. I know 3Dfx was working on the motion-blur and depth of field effects (T-buffer effects?) before they went under. The pictures I saw of their motion blurs were not terribly impressive.
I remember an old animation package I had bootlegged on my Apple IIE... the name escapes me, but it was my first exposure to "tweening": the process of interpolation between two or more end points. It would create smooth rotations and movement arcs.
I don't know how one would go about rendering a motion-blurred scene. I think the software would have to compare the end mesh to the start mesh and determine the distance moved, use the z-buffer to determine how to render in a foreground to background fashion for all moved object. Use a pre-defined max-distance-to-rerender to determine how many interpolated objects to render, and the alpha-blend and radially blur all of the layers?
I'm sure the more I write the more obvious it becomes how little I know about the rendering process.
My only concern is that more frames per second may not be the best way to increase realism, but that mimicing the visual process is.
tee hee!
What's the chronology of the bible? About 6000 years? Genesis imparts "In the beginning was God, and the Word was with God." The "Word" is mentioned in the New Testament (John, I believe) and is interpreted to mean "Jesus Christ". Off topic... anyway, The next few verses:
"And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the earth."
It does not say that "the earth did not exist." I could interpret this as "The earth had no example or direction."
I believe a passage in Romans describes God as "light"... so, when God says, "Let there be light." Was he speaking himself into existance? Was He saying, "I am here," or "Let me be the example." It's always interpreted as literally.
At any rate, when I walk into a room I say, "Let there be J.D."
Slingshot's work pretty well with a washer secured to a string, but I've had a lot of luck with a mini-crossbow (which may be illegal in your state... sorry if that's the case) mini-Crossbows may be a bit wider than your standard fare slingshot, though.
Every business has their own language. As a programmer, I understand a large subset of the IT the vernacular. Because my mother is a nurse, I understand a very small subset of the medical vernacular. With any task, there is a huge number of possible solutions. Sometimes the right language makes finding the best solution easier. Why do we need another scripting language? Because we need to solve new problems.
I'm under the impression that when the author used the word "powerful", they meant "umatched in purpose."
I agree that if you were to take a specialized tool out of its envirnoment, it would not necessarily do well at all. Generalized tools are great at being applied to new problems. Once a solution is found, a period of time passes in which the generalized tool is tweaked for speed at addressing the problem for which it was retrofitted.
The benefit of a completely specialized modular design is specifically the modularity. If there is a problem, your debugging is generally isolated to the module that caused the error. Configurations are extremely specified, and the chance for user error is significantly reduced.
At my office, we have several servers that divide up the general task of "running our web site," but that is a group of many specialized tasks such as: expiring objects, maintaining/editing objects, creation of new objects, creation of new object interaction, translation, transmitting data from test servers to production and so on.
Our entire interface is web-based (yes, we use IIS and Apache) but very modular in design. The author to which you rebut is simply stating the enormous complexity and power that can be achieved with simply, elegantly designed tools. Thanks for you post... talk to you later, -J.D.
I think I know what it is... maybe.
Is it like super-sampling, where the OS and Video card generate 4 times the information and then downsample and anti-alias?
Why couldn't monitors come with enough RAM to store 2 frames at the highest resolution at 32 bpp? At 1600x1200, that'd be 7.5 MB. 8MB of RAM coupled with a processor that runs fast enough to blend pixels for and 85Hz refresh rate.
Actually, this might be a bad idea. Can someone really build a device to antialias a bitmap and actually gain detail? I remember seeing articles in old MacWorld's about software that did just that, but I never saw it beyond paper.
Make a monitor that has some sort of alternate interface, like IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0, that could be used to transmit a vector language. Make monitors like printers. (Althought the page-per-minute would be nearer to 5100 (85 Hz refresh), but the resolution is considerably less!)
Give these screens the ability to autoswitch input, perform video mixing and such.
But I'm off topic.
How long would your case be clear? My experience with Acryllic is that it collects static electricity. They should call this the "Swiffer" case. If you think dust bunnies are gross, imagine your case as one big one. They could call this the "Chia-PC"... say, that's not a bad idea...
Could the static charge collected be used to supplement the power supply, or just shock and amuse friends and family. "Hey, touch my computer... right here."
I agree with the previous post when it says, "Clear cases are cool and all, but clear components would be cooler."
I hated Apple's translucent cases simply because they were faddish. If the computer's performance was as consistant and stylish as the cases, perhaps I would like them better. For people whose concerns are less geeky than my own; however, the cases are not a problem.
Clear cases are decidedly cool, but what would be cooler and give ultimate upgrade access would be a desk-drawer case.
Talk to you later, - J.D.
I read somewhere that DirectX-8 is going to further abstract the z-buffer out of the programmer's hands. The article from which I gleaned this tidbit was exceptionally poorly written and I've not backed this up with real reasearch. Perhaps this was a bit of forward-thinking on NEC's part?
I completely agree. I don't own a console entertainment system. I don't even own a computer. I spend most of my time in my office, so I've invested money in my office PC. So what if I have two monitors (on 2 nVidia cards... great drivers), S-PDIF sound piped to a 500 watt AC-3/DTS stereo receiver and a 250 Watt subwoofer. Have you ever used gcc with surround sound? ahhh yeah.
I saw someone selling external usb cases designed to receive 3.5" half-height hard drives. You could get them in different flavors: scsi, IDE... I've forgotten who makes them, though...
Why are there no MacOS screen shots?
- Use a single computer as your Firewall/Proxy/Vpn and connect its NIC to the cable modem
- Install a second NIC in the FPV and connect it to your wonderful little LinkSys hub to which all of you other network devices are connected.
- Run a private network behind your FPV using non-routable Class C (192.168.1.*?) IP addresses
If @home sends you a broadcast packet, or portscans your network, only one computer will answer, rather than n computers, where n is the number of computers connected to your hub and the cable modem.If you have a 4 port hub, with one port used by your cable modem, and one by your proxy server, and two by other network devices, any packets delivered over the cable modem are visible to all devices.
Although, now that I re-read your comment, you did say LinkSys router...
For some reason, I still have a better feeling about having 2 NICs...
You know, I'd really like a parallel mouse...
A lack of keyboard shorcuts (at which bindability has already been hinted) is a serious complaint. The bittersweet realization with any pure GUI is not only wha-choo-see-iz-wha-choo-get, but it's also all you get.
talk to you later,
-J.D.
It very well could be as you say. When I make sweeping comments as I did earlier, I tend to err on the side of, "Awww, everybody's nice."
Naivety is fun! In all seriousness, I am aware of and do not support unethical business practice. This appears to be capitalism at its best. If only I was a chip manufacturer... If only I have purchased Rambus at 40, and sold at 400... (or OneVoice ($2 - $22, 3 months), or Xybernaut, same time frame...)
I don't think you are being paranoid. Manufacturers base their estimates on history (obvious, I know). In order for these same manuf. to make money, the have to be able to meet demand. If I order a computer with 1GB of RAM, I want 1GB of RAM, not 128MB and some money back.
Boy, I'd really like my desktop to have 1GB of RAM. I'd also like computers to be made out of milk chocolate so they can be recycled easily. There might be some thermal tolerance issues there, but with low voltage devices, that shouldn't be a problem...
In order to meet a demand, that demand must be anticipated. It is only good business practice that chip manufs. are expecting this surge around September.
I was discussing with some people "bacterial evolution"-- a subject which admittedly I have limited exposure to. I brought up an argument of "Better Bacteria Through Natural Selection." and was met with, "That's just pharmeceuticals trying to sell you something."
It stands to reason (to me, anyway) that disinfectants, if not applied properly, cannot guarantee destruction of 100% of bacteria and viral strains. My mother is a nurse, and has seen first hand this evolution. A brand of staph infection (MRSA? I believe) that exists only in hospitals, which became a breeding ground for the naturally selected vermin. (people have called me that, too.)
Talk about off-topic! I'll try to bring this around...
When a manufacturer asserts a demand which said manuf. may profit from, granted the goal of any manuf. is to make money, but the manuf. industry is also about service, and satisfying their market, without which the industry would not survive. If you don't want manufacturers to make money, don't buy anything.
Talk to you later, -J.D.
I'm supposed to be R&D'ing software for PalmPilots right about now, but am still waiting for mine (And have been for quite a while).
I suppose back-order is a good thingm, since I have a Monday deadline on another project anyway...
I wonder what the lag-time between chip manufacturers implementing new, more dense technology and top-tier manufacturers buying that technology is?
Which would be more valuable, 3-D imagery or peripheral vision? What if the even/odd pixels were rendered as images you would see out of the corners of your eye, and you wore mirrors on glasses-frames to create the illusion of periphery?
how long have you been waiting to use that? Rock on!