I can't understand the appear of iXXXX's either. Locked proprietary technology with limited scope for a geek to truly enjoy.
What I've noticed though is that the people who buy them don't seem to care...
You answered yourself with the second sentence; iPods and iPhones aren't targetted at geeks.
I'm no (current) Apple fan and don't own any Apple products. However, from a consumer POV, Apple got an awful lot of things 'right first time' with the iPod and iPhone. They're intuitive and stylish and give you the right functionality as simply as possible. It's like Nokia did when cellphones became popular a few years ago - deliver a 'must have' consumer product that feels right.
Woz is a remarkable guy, a bit of a hero to me. But he's no consumer product guru.
My favourite early-AI bot is Parry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARRY. I'm sure you could program it up with some 9/11 tinfoil-hat responses and it would BEAT some real-world conspiracy theorists in a Turing Test.
There was a suggestion made that this might be a booster from a mars probe because its orbit does take it close to mars, Another possibility is that it is a fragment of mars.
The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million-to-one.
It's so that F.A.C.T. can send you their latest (unskippable) advert telling you to buy genuine discs (like the one you've just bought and are currently watching) rather than download them from The Pirate Bay or buy copies off Knock-Off Nigel at a car-boot sale.
You can resell a ticket before a movie performance.
What you're paying for is the theatre experience. You're paying for the employees of the theatre, the rent, the heating, a/c, maintenance and eventually, the movie itself.
I could have D/L'ed and watched a camcorder version of The Dark Knight a few days after release. I wanted the full-on theatre experience and even went as far as waiting for an IMAX ticket. It's like the difference between seeing a band live from within the crowd and watching the concert on DVD at home afterwards.
Concluding sentence in the last paragraph ? No, not even close to acceptable. You can only replicate a theatre experience at home with a seriously spec'ed system, whether it be games or movies on DVD. The only option available should be outright purchase to do with as you see fit.
And as for my book recommendation, I suggest "Code Complete"
A fantastic book. I'm just surprised to see so many/.ers recommending something issued by Microsoft !
Another good one is 'The Art of Unix Programming' by Eric S. Raymond (yeah, that one). You can read it online, too. http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/
With Windows, once you have tweaked it, you then have to install anti-virus anti-malware subscription ware which will kill all the hard-won performance, and then you have to outlay as much again as you originally paid for the whole machine to get any Windows proprietary applications onto it. Then over time your registry will clog, and the performance will degrade further.
That's just not true any more. So long as you set up an admin account and make all your everyday accounts Limited Users, you don't need any anti-virus/anti-spyware/3rd party firewall software. Our family machine has been running XP like that for nearly two years and it still boots as fast as it did just after installation.
We dual-boot with Ubuntu Hairy Hardon and frankly I don't see any speed difference on the two systems. I do like Ubuntu for Synaptic and easy access to loads of free (as in beer) useful apps; Whereas on Windows I'd have to buy AnyDVD to backup my movies, you can grab libdvdcss and k9copy and Bob's yer uncle.
Here's another one, then - I program simulators and a large part of that work involves integrating accelerations to find current velocity and integrating velocities to find current position. Also, when doing 3D rotations, you'll encounter discontinuities on one of your axes at 90 and 270 degrees. By transforming your three axes into quaternions, you can avoid those discontinuities when calculating your next orientation.
I think the point of the article is that computing paradigms are merging. You won't have a CPU and a GPU. You'll have one thing that looks like both. In other words, you'll have a multicore, parallel, vector machine.
And that, absolutely, positively, will happen. Larrabee, or something like it, is the future. If you hold AMD stock, sell now, because Fusion doesn't sound anything like Larrabee and is going to seem positively draconian by the time it comes out.
In the '80s and '90s, if you wanted decent sound, you had to fork out for a dedicated soundcard. Something like the Creative AWE32 springs to mind. These days, all the sample replay, effects processing and mixing is done by the CPU and a buffer's worth of data is placed in memory waiting for a DMA transfer to a pair of DAC's.
From what I could gather from TFA, Sweeney is predicting that the processes which are currently handled by a dedicated 'Graphics Processor' will instead be executed by the main general-purpose CPU(s) and fed to a frame buffer for final display on the monitor.
BUT it seems foolish to promote this study around the concept of the Big Bang when that is a HIGHLY contested theory
It gains more support through gathered evidence with each passing year. Who's going to supply a better theoretical framework which is supported by the same evidence ?
I love the fact that you can't stop using punctuation comma even when you're spelling it out period You're doubling up comma and you even used an exclamation mark and followed it up with a period period I'd also like to point out that my primary school teachers always told me that using and as the first word in a sentence was bad form period I certainly agree with your observation about the linesman's entry into the system comma i can think of better ways of pulling a scam like this period
I wonder if they had such a thing as 'telegram sex' in olden days ?
FILL ME WITH YOUR LOVE JUICE STOP DONT STOP STOP OH YEAH BIG BOY STOP KEEP GOING STOP
Slashdot Mirror
He mentioned Glasgow in his article which well says a lot...
I grew up in Glasgow, you insensitive clod !
I can't understand the appear of iXXXX's either. Locked proprietary technology with limited scope for a geek to truly enjoy.
What I've noticed though is that the people who buy them don't seem to care...
You answered yourself with the second sentence; iPods and iPhones aren't targetted at geeks.
I'm no (current) Apple fan and don't own any Apple products. However, from a consumer POV, Apple got an awful lot of things 'right first time' with the iPod and iPhone. They're intuitive and stylish and give you the right functionality as simply as possible. It's like Nokia did when cellphones became popular a few years ago - deliver a 'must have' consumer product that feels right.
Woz is a remarkable guy, a bit of a hero to me. But he's no consumer product guru.
My favourite early-AI bot is Parry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARRY. I'm sure you could program it up with some 9/11 tinfoil-hat responses and it would BEAT some real-world conspiracy theorists in a Turing Test.
There was a suggestion made that this might be a booster from a mars probe because its orbit does take it close to mars, Another possibility is that it is a fragment of mars.
The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million-to-one.
It's so that F.A.C.T. can send you their latest (unskippable) advert telling you to buy genuine discs (like the one you've just bought and are currently watching) rather than download them from The Pirate Bay or buy copies off Knock-Off Nigel at a car-boot sale.
Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate.
You can resell a ticket before a movie performance.
What you're paying for is the theatre experience. You're paying for the employees of the theatre, the rent, the heating, a/c, maintenance and eventually, the movie itself.
I could have D/L'ed and watched a camcorder version of The Dark Knight a few days after release. I wanted the full-on theatre experience and even went as far as waiting for an IMAX ticket. It's like the difference between seeing a band live from within the crowd and watching the concert on DVD at home afterwards.
Concluding sentence in the last paragraph ? No, not even close to acceptable. You can only replicate a theatre experience at home with a seriously spec'ed system, whether it be games or movies on DVD. The only option available should be outright purchase to do with as you see fit.
And as for my book recommendation, I suggest "Code Complete"
A fantastic book. I'm just surprised to see so many /.ers recommending something issued by Microsoft !
Another good one is 'The Art of Unix Programming' by Eric S. Raymond (yeah, that one). You can read it online, too. http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/
...and Man creates God by Intelligent Design.
"My life is a cake!"
That's a lie.
it doesn't do a god damn thing but pick up viruses and trojans on first boot
The Windows Firewall has been pretty good since XP SP2. The old "pwned in 4 minutes" scenario hasn't existed in years. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2004-11-29-honeypot_x.htm
Ob: http://xkcd.com/474/
That's one small error message for (a) man, one giant error message for mankind.
ZX81 - "0/4" ('Out of memory' for those who remember hitting the 1K limit).
With Windows, once you have tweaked it, you then have to install anti-virus anti-malware subscription ware which will kill all the hard-won performance, and then you have to outlay as much again as you originally paid for the whole machine to get any Windows proprietary applications onto it. Then over time your registry will clog, and the performance will degrade further.
That's just not true any more. So long as you set up an admin account and make all your everyday accounts Limited Users, you don't need any anti-virus/anti-spyware/3rd party firewall software. Our family machine has been running XP like that for nearly two years and it still boots as fast as it did just after installation.
We dual-boot with Ubuntu Hairy Hardon and frankly I don't see any speed difference on the two systems. I do like Ubuntu for Synaptic and easy access to loads of free (as in beer) useful apps; Whereas on Windows I'd have to buy AnyDVD to backup my movies, you can grab libdvdcss and k9copy and Bob's yer uncle.
Here's another one, then - I program simulators and a large part of that work involves integrating accelerations to find current velocity and integrating velocities to find current position. Also, when doing 3D rotations, you'll encounter discontinuities on one of your axes at 90 and 270 degrees. By transforming your three axes into quaternions, you can avoid those discontinuities when calculating your next orientation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternions_and_spatial_rotation
I've worked in games, too. Calculus is just as fundamental to 3D physics models, 3D graphics, collision detection, etc.
Scientists throughout the world use S.I. units.
How many Routemaster Buses would it be equivalent to ?
http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/the-twat-o-tron/
Reefer madness !
I've got facts I know the truth
You're all corrupt you're all depraved
A few devices around the place
I'll blow you all away
"God does not play dice with the world"
But things are'nt right in the outside world
But still there's vice in the world
I'll put things right
I think the point of the article is that computing paradigms are merging. You won't have a CPU and a GPU. You'll have one thing that looks like both. In other words, you'll have a multicore, parallel, vector machine. And that, absolutely, positively, will happen. Larrabee, or something like it, is the future. If you hold AMD stock, sell now, because Fusion doesn't sound anything like Larrabee and is going to seem positively draconian by the time it comes out.
In the '80s and '90s, if you wanted decent sound, you had to fork out for a dedicated soundcard. Something like the Creative AWE32 springs to mind. These days, all the sample replay, effects processing and mixing is done by the CPU and a buffer's worth of data is placed in memory waiting for a DMA transfer to a pair of DAC's.
From what I could gather from TFA, Sweeney is predicting that the processes which are currently handled by a dedicated 'Graphics Processor' will instead be executed by the main general-purpose CPU(s) and fed to a frame buffer for final display on the monitor.
Of course, I also believe that since the bad games from yesterday are forgotten, there *was* a lot of crap around then.
About 90% of games from yesterday were crap. Of course, as Theodore Sturgeon reminds us: "Ninety percent of [i]everything[/i] is crap".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law
BUT it seems foolish to promote this study around the concept of the Big Bang when that is a HIGHLY contested theory
It gains more support through gathered evidence with each passing year. Who's going to supply a better theoretical framework which is supported by the same evidence ?
I love the fact that you can't stop using punctuation comma even when you're spelling it out period You're doubling up comma and you even used an exclamation mark and followed it up with a period period I'd also like to point out that my primary school teachers always told me that using and as the first word in a sentence was bad form period I certainly agree with your observation about the linesman's entry into the system comma i can think of better ways of pulling a scam like this period
I wonder if they had such a thing as 'telegram sex' in olden days ?
FILL ME WITH YOUR LOVE JUICE STOP DONT STOP STOP OH YEAH BIG BOY STOP KEEP GOING STOP