Oh, thanks. I read the article (most of it, not every word) so I must have missed that point. I guess to watch full hidef content, most computers will need help for a few years (dual 2+ ghz computers are not quite the "mainstream" yet), so maybe mpeg decoder cards will become more popular again.
OK, interesting gadget. I just have a few questions.
Why do you need such a great CPU? The article says it's because the hidef MPEG2 content is decoded in software. Huh? I though graphics cards started doing MPEG2 assist and later complete MPEG2 decoding years ago? It that feature just not in the drivers, or was it dropped due to cost and faster CPUs? Guess you should budget in some more for an MPEG2 decoder card, but they are not easy to find anymore (at least not as easy as they were), they tend to require passthrough (I've never seen pass-through DVI, and would it handle dual link for 30" screens?), etc. Seems like a big problem.
Only an antenna? If this thing can record HD and SD content (as long as it's digital), why not give it an HDMI connector so I could record off equiptment that has HDMI out? Or give it a DVI in for recording off that? Just an antenna seems.... measly.
Interesting though. The CPU problem is not as bad as it sounds considering how many people would currently want to use their computer to timeshift full glory HD content. If you have the TV and such for that and you can afford this box, you can probably afford a computer to play the file (or at least an MEPG2 decoder card).
I think this is a great idea. Mario could stand to lose some weight.
Of course, with all the exercise he gets (Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Baseball, Mario Trout Fishing-xTreme), you think he'd be in better shape. Just what IS his diet anyway?
PS: I like Mario Golf, etc, but this just seems like they are renting Mario out for money. Why not just make Mario Basketball if you want him to play?
Why sell people what they WANT when we can sell them something LIKE it and charge them EXTRA for what they should get in the first place.
This is all too common. People should boycott Verizon (or at least the v710) untill they decide to get their act together. It's easier to teach one phone company a lesson NOW before some genius exec at Cingular finds a way to increase proffits by "borrowing" this idea and soon ALL the phone companies are doing it. It would be much harder to stop then.
Also, in the article there is a note of a class-action suit in the state of Californa against Verizon for their promises on this phone. I'd like everyone who qualifys to sign up (unless of course you LIKE being walked on). That's the only way things will change unfortunatly.
Now for a question: on CDMA networks, the phones have their ID number imbeded in them and you are tied to a specific carrier without reprogramming, right? Are problems like this as common with GSM phones (since in theory it should be easier for customers to switch providers/phones since they can take out the little SIM card)? I know things are supposed to be MUCH better overseas (Japan, Europe, etc) with phone features, but how much difference does GSM/CDMA make here in the states in regard to getting walked on by the phone companies?
Well things like x86-64 are a dramatic improvement over standard x86 although still not perfect.
That said, I think we'll keep x86 (or at least x86 support, think of a chip that had an "x86 emulation mode" that worked at a great speed) untill we switch off this one/two processor thing. I don't think it will change untill we all have 32 or 64 little processors in our computers. They will be dynamically assigned tasks (one handles the flash ad at the top of this page, one screen drawing, one the network and disk tasks, one decodes songs for iTunes, one is running an AV scan, etc) where each is a simple (maybe quite RISC like) little thing. There may be one "big" processor that is in charge of the little processors and general OS function. At that point such a "big" instruction set and all the history won't be worth much (as long as much software would be rewritten to take advantage of the new arch anyway). Of course none of it would matter if we all moved onto an independant bytecode system (Java,.NET, Python/Perl/whatever).
Random musings: In fact, we'll name 'em after the army! We'll have one big "Seargent" processors and lots of little "Private" processors. If they are specialized in some task (say audio or video manipulation) we can make 'em "Private First Class" processors. We could call it the "Platoon" architecture.
OK, SERIOUSLY screwed up the VGA file size. That should be 87KB, not 875KB. That means about 1 second to download. That's not so bad at all, for a single picture to a cell phone now and then.
Also found the camera, here. Also note that while my times were theroretical (and ideal), they achieved about 10KBps (or 80kbps out of the theoretical 721kbps). That would make the 128MB take nearly 4 hours. Two mega pixel image? About two minutes. So the 5MP would be something like 5 minutes. Ouch.
Short story: The camera is a simple little thing that doesn't take good pictures (IIRC). The ONLY stand out thing on the camera is that it has Bluetooth. Only problem? Bluetooth is SLOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW. It's what, 721Kbps? So to download 128MB of memory, you would be waiting 1420 seconds (about 24 minutes). Just a single 2MP image is what, 1.2MB? That would be about 14 seconds. God help you if you had a high quality 5MP image or bigger. That would be what, nearly 30 seconds for one nice image to download? If you are sending a picture over a phone, that would be VGA at best (640x480). Those are about 875KB, so that's about 10 seconds.
Now with Bluetooth 2.0, things might be better. It should go 3x as fast. But for anything more than tiny (maybe QIF) images, Bluetooth would be useless for downloading (now for CONTROLLING the camera, like use your phone as a remote to take a picture so you can be in it, that could be cool).
They said in the interview that they were doing that becuse it's not currently in the kernel and it sounded like it would be supported when it gets in the kernel.
So I understand why their 2.4 and 2.6 kernels don't support it (they are both "vanilla" kernels). That said, I think they should have an option (not unlike the bf24 "boot floppies" kernel that they have now on Woody). Offering a special kernel where that was the only change (kernel-image-2.6.xx-arch-reiser4 or some such) seems a little extreme for just one filesystem. But if they had a special "optomized" kernel (not unlike the gentoo-sources under gentoo) I could see that (not that I can see Debian maintaining an "optomized" kernel).
Just wait untill it hits the main kernel, or compile your own 'till then. They support Reiser3. Can you convert from Reiser 3 to 4 "live" like you can convert ext2 to ext3? Then it would be even less of a problem.
Elephants know all. There is a story about elephants that would give tourists rides that got nervous that day and then grabbed a few tourists and ran for the hills just before the tsunami.
I agree. Games get ported at two times. When they are developed (easiest time if you plan ahead), and after they are hits that you want to sell on another platform to make money on (like Macs or Linux). Unless you game is that big/popular or you planned ahead to make porting easy, you're right, it probably won't get ported (unless some programmer or two gets permission to do it in his spare time from management, which I would expect to be rare).
I think the lag was even longer than that. It would be interesting to find out.
Personally, I doubt it. It would require (among other things) that people first hit had hams around (may or may not be true depending on how remote the area was), that the hams were prepaired to operate without power and such (may or may not be true depending on how reliable power is), and that their station stood up to the force of the tsunami. The ham would also have to operate that soon after a disaster (could you find all you equiptment, get things running, have checked who was still alive in their faimly/neighbords, etc. Past that, they would have to raise someone else in the path of the storm (let's assume not hard) and tell them. That would warn one person (plus whoever is listening). Then that person would have to get the word out (as the first ham continued to contact others). This would be slow (unless the second ham knew a radio DJ or something like that who could get the word out).
All this assumes that the ham who was hit knew that the wave would continue and where it would hit. It is entirely possible that something like this DID take place, and the recieving ham said "oh that's too bad" and neither one realized that guy #2 was in danger.
Would have been one HECK of a good PR moment for hams if that had happened and some tiny village was saved though, huh?
Well, idealy you would have hams already there, not flying in.
Hams (at least those with interest) can be well trained in this area. They are trained to do everything from serve as simple phones for wellness traffic ("Hi mom, my house is gone but the dog is OK.") to assisting emergency relief personel (operating their radios for them to keep hands free, helping co-ordinate the operation by keeping information on everyone up to date on people's position, how many more people a relief station can handle so those in the field know where to take new ones, that there are X people with Y injuries that need to be medivaced, etc.)They are much more than normal people with "magic cell phones" that still work without the infrastructure.
In the US you can find them doing ARES and RACES (I think those are the big two) which are disaster relief and such training to do the kind of things mentioned above. Not only do they do drills simulating traffic and operating without power and normal communications and stuff, the practice regularly by helping out with the running of parades and other public events to keep their skills sharp in doing that kind of thing.
On my local repeater (RACES repeater, I think) every so often (Wed nights at some time) they practice carrying traffic between people. It's usually unimportant stuff (saying "hi" to friends, party invites, happy birthday, etc.) but they practice. Someone is incharge and they ask for messages and they go through them one by one. The guy with the message will say "this is ____ and I have a message for _____ in _____, can anyone carry it" (or something like that). Someone will volunteer (either they know the person or they will just call them or pass it on to the next 'net). The person sending the message and the person who volunteered will then chat (either there, or more frequently on a nearby empty frequency so things can keep moving along) and the message gets sent. It's all quite interesting actually.
Hams do alot (besides just chat and also neat expirmatents trying to bounce signals off various layers of the atmosphere, the moon, mars, commets, asteroid showers, balloons, and anything else more than 5 feet in the air).
Re:What's with all this Direct X for Linux nonsens
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Does Linux Have Game?
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SDL is still around. It's a very nice little library. It can handle 2D graphics (and 3D though OpenGL). It handles sound, networking (I think), timing, input (mouse, keyboard), and some other things (like finding and accessing CDs). It is very nice to program in. I think it's even used in some real commercial games (but I'm not sure). It's what I like to program in (as a library). Makes game development easier (MUCH easier) than if I had to implement all that stuff (input code, WM code, sound code, etc) and it's cross platform to boot. Windows, OS X, Linux, and more!
This is a bit off topic, but it is also indicitive of the problem.
I love Debian, it's one of my favorite distros, but unless you really know what you're doing, I'd stay away from it for gaming. Mandrake, Xandros, Ubuntu, Fedora, and others will have newer versions of X and should give you a much easier time on this stuff. Debian is great, but it's a server/geek's distro (IMHO). Out of the box, it's not well setup for gaming. If you otherwise like Debian, Xandros and Ubuntu are both Debian based (I think) and should give you an easier time. They might even install the right drivers at OS install.
Also, give Knoppix a try. It can detect and install the drivers for nVidia cards (it's based on Debian and can be installed to a hard drive also). It should include TuxRacer and other 3D games to mess with.
That said, I've never liked TuxRacer. It's cute, but I just don't see any appeal to it as a game (maybe the commercial version, but I don't care enough by any stretch to buy it and find out).
Yep. Id is like Steven Spielburg. After a certain ammount of success, you earn enough respect and credit that you are allowed free reign (or at least much more controll) over your projects. I mean, do you think Activision would have said "No" to publishing Quake3 because very few linux copies would be sold (relative to windows)? I doubt it. Plus (as parrent noted), they have enough money to go it alone untill they need it published (at which point it's already "ported" so the publisher just has to manufacture the disks).
But when you're a little company making a new little game, I can see the reasoning behind going Windows only, but if you just used OpenGL instead of D3D, it would make things easier to port later to Mac (a big enough platform) and anything else (a console maybe?).
Direct3D is exactly like OpenGL. You can argue features (vertex shaders integral or an add-on, etc.), but they are both graphics APIs.
Your point is valid, but you are thinking of DirectX. DirectX contains Direct3D (graphics), DirectSound (um... sound;), DirectInput (keyboard, mouse, joystick, whatever), DirectPlay (or at least it used to, networking code), and others (I think).
So your right. I doubt many games use just Direct3D. If you are going to use D3D, why not use DirectSound and DirectInput too? They are much better than just programming Win32 for that stuff (I would imagine). Even Quake2/3 used DirectX for everything but graphics (I think).
As the parrent said, there is more to the problem than just Direct3D, there is all of DirectX (which WineX/Cedega/whatever is working on alongside D3D). If more games were written with OpenGL+SDL (or any other cross platform combination that may exist) things would be easier to port.
I know nothing about this field or the question (with the exception that ATT's Natural Voices sounds amazing), but I think I know the answer to this question.
Economies of Scale
Sure you could make these devices and sell 'em for $20 proffit each, but where would that get you? Only a few thousand of these things must get sold each year (at most). So you company that makes these things needs more than $10000 (assuming 500 sales at $20) proffit to stay afloat. Also, the research on interfaces and such for those who can't use a keyboard might make these things loss leaders. If they make any proffit, they would want to make LOTS to cover all the expenses (again, without the economies of scale, they can't be built too cheaply).
It's that rarity that I would think would make it more expensive. Is there greed involved? Maybe. Maybe they overcharge so when people put it on medicare or insurance and the insurance company doesn't pony up all the dough they still get enough to make a proffit (I've heard of this in prices for other medial instruments and treatments).
I used to love TSS, back in the ZDTV days. I liked alot of the shows. TechTV got some other good shows near the end of their life (I liked Invent This! tons). I'd never heard these aligations (I stoped watching TSS back in the TechTV days), but I can't say that I'm suprised at all.
But G4 bought them out. The ONLY thing they have done right (in my opinion) is keep X-Play running (new episodes and they don't seem to have changed it much if at all). TSS is terrible. As far as I can tell (and my TiVo) there are no new episodes of Invent This!, Fresh Gear, or a few other shows since G4 took over. The G4 content (the only one I've ever really watched is Filter) seems amaturish (like a high budget public access cable show) and like marketing smothered it with "love". The host is an idiot, it's full of "cool stuff" (acording to marketing) and the show is just terrible. The show would be MUCH better if they would just drop the host. I've found nothing else on G4 that I like (with the exception of the occational episode of Icons).
So for me, G4 has become the X-Play channel. Becuase they don't seem to want to make new episodes of the shows that they said they would keep (see above), that's the only thing I watch on the channel. When I first got satellite TV (DirecTV), one of the big reasons was so I could watch ZDTV. I got to watch The Screen Savers and all sorts of other interesting stuff (remember the show that would show computer animations made by people? That's how I discovered Animusic). Over the years, the channel has deciled (as TechTV although that wasn't SO bad) to being about as high on my list of "good" as SpikeTV (I used to think the constant banner on the bottom of TNN was bad, how I wish for those days).
All they have to do is mess up X-Play to lose me forever. Put someone with a BRAIN who is in touch with the AUDIENCE in charge of the channel, huh? Give it to Leo or SOMEONE. Because marketing is about to market me OUT of their audience.
Sorry. Meant to give a link to "N". You can find it here. I don't know how they came up with it, but it's just so much fun (and the graphics are very simple in a clean and elegant kind of way).
This is a troll. Those are NOT the top three games. Those are NOT EVEN ON THE LIST. The site seems to be working now, but here is the REAL LIST anyways:
10. I of the Enemy
9. Revolved
8. Smugglers 3
7. Global Defense Network
6. Anito: Defend a Land Endangered
5. BreakQuest
4. Outpost Kaloki
3. Hamsterball
2. Wik & The Fable of Souls
1. Gish (by the fantastic Chronic Logic)
That's the REAL list. Gish is the only one I've heard of, though some of those look interesting (and many have GREAT graphics). The one game I wish was on there is N by metanet software. I was addicted to that game for weeks. Very cool little game - "play as a ninja trapped in a world of well-meaning, inadvertantly homicidal robots. " Give it a try!
This is definatly a good thing in my opinion. While it may cause trouble for sports (as the title says) it should help the rest of us.
I think that the human race has basically reached the point where we aren't controlled by natural selection. Thanks to modern medicine we can save people who are in serious car wrecks and such, people who would otherwise be alive. But we also save people who have problems of their own doing or genetics. People get organ trasplants who are born with otherwise debilitating (and therefor fatal in "caveman times") or fatal (as in actually fatal) problems. We can help people who get sick even if the virus would otherwise kill them (see smallpox, polio, etc.) We can even save (prolong the life of) people WITHOUT an immune system (AIDS/HIV). People who would in "caveman times" (to use the term again) never survive (300+ pound people, diabetics, etc.)
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should stop helping people if we have the technology (that would be cruel, thus the problem). But because of our ability to save so many people and all the problems that people can get through today, there is very little genetic pressure (IMHO) on humans. Only more extreme problems genetics works on. We also see things that natural selection would never cure (like Alzehimers) because people are living so long.
So it's a good thing that science will soon be able to improve things, because if we continue like this, what pressure is there to keep hemophelia from becomming common if we can find a cure for it (for example). I think this is one of the reasons that the eyesight of people seems to be declining. As glasses have gotten better and to be less of a problem (contacts, laser eye surgery), needed glasses at a young age isn't the problem it used to be (say 150-200 years ago). I think this is one of the reasons behind the "fatening of America" (although it's only a VERY tiny part, I think it's mostly a self-controll/diciplin issue).
Just something to think about. I don't think I species would get much better if we were permanantly stuck at our current technological level. I think the health of the average person would actually DECLINE.
The ability to have nano-bots that improve our immune system would be a great thing. Not only for those without it (AIDS/HIV/transplant paitents), but for normal people (never get sick, don't have to worry about Typhoid or Denge Fever or anything else, who needs a cure the nano bots could help). Things like that would be fantastic.
Although 30 years seems a little optomistic to me. I'd guess closer to 50.
I disagree. I LIKE the little gamecube. I think it's cute and the games are fantastic. Their attitude doesn't bug me at all. Everyone complained about the lack of online on the 'cube, but online isn't that big on consoles yet. Yes there are a few good games (Halo 2!), but by and large it's not that big. They'll put it in their next system, when it's ready.
I was thinking about Nintendo the other day. I trust Sony alot, but Nintendo is the only company I would buy from sight-un-seen. Pretend there is no DS, and Nintendo announces a new system to replace the GBA (the Game Boy Ultra or whatever). No picutres of it anywhere. It's a total myster the specs, the form, the games, everything. You just show up at a store on launch day with your $100 or $150 and buy a system and any games they have. Would you buy that system? I would. I trust Nintendo. They've earned it. I would do the same thing with the successor to the GameCube. I'll almost certanly buy a PS3, and will look hard at a Xbox 2, but I won't hesitate on the Nintendo system.
It may have fewer games, but when the games come out, they are often awesome. Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, Super Smash Brothers, Mario Golf/Tennis, Viewtiful Joe, Donkey Konga, Metroid Prime, and on and on and on. I own more 'cube games than PS2 or X-Box games by far. I just find more games that I really like and are worth more than a 2 day rent on the 'cube.
Analysts can pick at Nintendo all they want. They are no Sega (in that their hardware will stay around). They make great systems, and great games.
Three cheers for Nintendo. Great games and systems since 1984 (that was when the Famicom was released, right)? That's TWO DECADES. Get back to me when Sony and MS have been around making great stuff for TWO DECADES and continue to do it.
PS: I LIKED the virtual boy, I think it died due to mismarketing (shouldn't have been called "virtual boy", that implied portability. It had some fantastic games (Mario Tennis, Mario Crash, the Wario game). You may call it a failure, but I really liked it. They only things they don't deliver on (64DD, SNES-CD, etc.) never got released (at least here in the states) so I can't count them as failures as they were never on the market (again, in the states).
Yeah, but you you had to PAY for Solaris, while Linux is free. If I PAY for something, I expect that they would make it support more hardware than I would expect from a free project where people tend to only write a driver if they need it themselves.
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Why do you need such a great CPU? The article says it's because the hidef MPEG2 content is decoded in software. Huh? I though graphics cards started doing MPEG2 assist and later complete MPEG2 decoding years ago? It that feature just not in the drivers, or was it dropped due to cost and faster CPUs? Guess you should budget in some more for an MPEG2 decoder card, but they are not easy to find anymore (at least not as easy as they were), they tend to require passthrough (I've never seen pass-through DVI, and would it handle dual link for 30" screens?), etc. Seems like a big problem.
Only an antenna? If this thing can record HD and SD content (as long as it's digital), why not give it an HDMI connector so I could record off equiptment that has HDMI out? Or give it a DVI in for recording off that? Just an antenna seems.... measly.
Interesting though. The CPU problem is not as bad as it sounds considering how many people would currently want to use their computer to timeshift full glory HD content. If you have the TV and such for that and you can afford this box, you can probably afford a computer to play the file (or at least an MEPG2 decoder card).
Of course, with all the exercise he gets (Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Baseball, Mario Trout Fishing-xTreme), you think he'd be in better shape. Just what IS his diet anyway?
PS: I like Mario Golf, etc, but this just seems like they are renting Mario out for money. Why not just make Mario Basketball if you want him to play?
This is all too common. People should boycott Verizon (or at least the v710) untill they decide to get their act together. It's easier to teach one phone company a lesson NOW before some genius exec at Cingular finds a way to increase proffits by "borrowing" this idea and soon ALL the phone companies are doing it. It would be much harder to stop then.
Also, in the article there is a note of a class-action suit in the state of Californa against Verizon for their promises on this phone. I'd like everyone who qualifys to sign up (unless of course you LIKE being walked on). That's the only way things will change unfortunatly.
Now for a question: on CDMA networks, the phones have their ID number imbeded in them and you are tied to a specific carrier without reprogramming, right? Are problems like this as common with GSM phones (since in theory it should be easier for customers to switch providers/phones since they can take out the little SIM card)? I know things are supposed to be MUCH better overseas (Japan, Europe, etc) with phone features, but how much difference does GSM/CDMA make here in the states in regard to getting walked on by the phone companies?
That said, I think we'll keep x86 (or at least x86 support, think of a chip that had an "x86 emulation mode" that worked at a great speed) untill we switch off this one/two processor thing. I don't think it will change untill we all have 32 or 64 little processors in our computers. They will be dynamically assigned tasks (one handles the flash ad at the top of this page, one screen drawing, one the network and disk tasks, one decodes songs for iTunes, one is running an AV scan, etc) where each is a simple (maybe quite RISC like) little thing. There may be one "big" processor that is in charge of the little processors and general OS function. At that point such a "big" instruction set and all the history won't be worth much (as long as much software would be rewritten to take advantage of the new arch anyway). Of course none of it would matter if we all moved onto an independant bytecode system (Java, .NET, Python/Perl/whatever).
Random musings: In fact, we'll name 'em after the army! We'll have one big "Seargent" processors and lots of little "Private" processors. If they are specialized in some task (say audio or video manipulation) we can make 'em "Private First Class" processors. We could call it the "Platoon" architecture.
Must you be so pedantic?
Also found the camera, here. Also note that while my times were theroretical (and ideal), they achieved about 10KBps (or 80kbps out of the theoretical 721kbps). That would make the 128MB take nearly 4 hours. Two mega pixel image? About two minutes. So the 5MP would be something like 5 minutes. Ouch.
Short story: The camera is a simple little thing that doesn't take good pictures (IIRC). The ONLY stand out thing on the camera is that it has Bluetooth. Only problem? Bluetooth is SLOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW. It's what, 721Kbps? So to download 128MB of memory, you would be waiting 1420 seconds (about 24 minutes). Just a single 2MP image is what, 1.2MB? That would be about 14 seconds. God help you if you had a high quality 5MP image or bigger. That would be what, nearly 30 seconds for one nice image to download? If you are sending a picture over a phone, that would be VGA at best (640x480). Those are about 875KB, so that's about 10 seconds.
Now with Bluetooth 2.0, things might be better. It should go 3x as fast. But for anything more than tiny (maybe QIF) images, Bluetooth would be useless for downloading (now for CONTROLLING the camera, like use your phone as a remote to take a picture so you can be in it, that could be cool).
So I understand why their 2.4 and 2.6 kernels don't support it (they are both "vanilla" kernels). That said, I think they should have an option (not unlike the bf24 "boot floppies" kernel that they have now on Woody). Offering a special kernel where that was the only change (kernel-image-2.6.xx-arch-reiser4 or some such) seems a little extreme for just one filesystem. But if they had a special "optomized" kernel (not unlike the gentoo-sources under gentoo) I could see that (not that I can see Debian maintaining an "optomized" kernel).
Just wait untill it hits the main kernel, or compile your own 'till then. They support Reiser3. Can you convert from Reiser 3 to 4 "live" like you can convert ext2 to ext3? Then it would be even less of a problem.
Weird (and cool) stuff.
I agree. Games get ported at two times. When they are developed (easiest time if you plan ahead), and after they are hits that you want to sell on another platform to make money on (like Macs or Linux). Unless you game is that big/popular or you planned ahead to make porting easy, you're right, it probably won't get ported (unless some programmer or two gets permission to do it in his spare time from management, which I would expect to be rare).
PS: I'm KC0QBP, although I haven't been on for quite a while and have never participated in RACES/ARES/etc.
Personally, I doubt it. It would require (among other things) that people first hit had hams around (may or may not be true depending on how remote the area was), that the hams were prepaired to operate without power and such (may or may not be true depending on how reliable power is), and that their station stood up to the force of the tsunami. The ham would also have to operate that soon after a disaster (could you find all you equiptment, get things running, have checked who was still alive in their faimly/neighbords, etc. Past that, they would have to raise someone else in the path of the storm (let's assume not hard) and tell them. That would warn one person (plus whoever is listening). Then that person would have to get the word out (as the first ham continued to contact others). This would be slow (unless the second ham knew a radio DJ or something like that who could get the word out).
All this assumes that the ham who was hit knew that the wave would continue and where it would hit. It is entirely possible that something like this DID take place, and the recieving ham said "oh that's too bad" and neither one realized that guy #2 was in danger.
Would have been one HECK of a good PR moment for hams if that had happened and some tiny village was saved though, huh?
Hams (at least those with interest) can be well trained in this area. They are trained to do everything from serve as simple phones for wellness traffic ("Hi mom, my house is gone but the dog is OK.") to assisting emergency relief personel (operating their radios for them to keep hands free, helping co-ordinate the operation by keeping information on everyone up to date on people's position, how many more people a relief station can handle so those in the field know where to take new ones, that there are X people with Y injuries that need to be medivaced, etc.)They are much more than normal people with "magic cell phones" that still work without the infrastructure.
In the US you can find them doing ARES and RACES (I think those are the big two) which are disaster relief and such training to do the kind of things mentioned above. Not only do they do drills simulating traffic and operating without power and normal communications and stuff, the practice regularly by helping out with the running of parades and other public events to keep their skills sharp in doing that kind of thing.
On my local repeater (RACES repeater, I think) every so often (Wed nights at some time) they practice carrying traffic between people. It's usually unimportant stuff (saying "hi" to friends, party invites, happy birthday, etc.) but they practice. Someone is incharge and they ask for messages and they go through them one by one. The guy with the message will say "this is ____ and I have a message for _____ in _____, can anyone carry it" (or something like that). Someone will volunteer (either they know the person or they will just call them or pass it on to the next 'net). The person sending the message and the person who volunteered will then chat (either there, or more frequently on a nearby empty frequency so things can keep moving along) and the message gets sent. It's all quite interesting actually.
Hams do alot (besides just chat and also neat expirmatents trying to bounce signals off various layers of the atmosphere, the moon, mars, commets, asteroid showers, balloons, and anything else more than 5 feet in the air).
SDL is still around. It's a very nice little library. It can handle 2D graphics (and 3D though OpenGL). It handles sound, networking (I think), timing, input (mouse, keyboard), and some other things (like finding and accessing CDs). It is very nice to program in. I think it's even used in some real commercial games (but I'm not sure). It's what I like to program in (as a library). Makes game development easier (MUCH easier) than if I had to implement all that stuff (input code, WM code, sound code, etc) and it's cross platform to boot. Windows, OS X, Linux, and more!
I love Debian, it's one of my favorite distros, but unless you really know what you're doing, I'd stay away from it for gaming. Mandrake, Xandros, Ubuntu, Fedora, and others will have newer versions of X and should give you a much easier time on this stuff. Debian is great, but it's a server/geek's distro (IMHO). Out of the box, it's not well setup for gaming. If you otherwise like Debian, Xandros and Ubuntu are both Debian based (I think) and should give you an easier time. They might even install the right drivers at OS install.
Also, give Knoppix a try. It can detect and install the drivers for nVidia cards (it's based on Debian and can be installed to a hard drive also). It should include TuxRacer and other 3D games to mess with.
That said, I've never liked TuxRacer. It's cute, but I just don't see any appeal to it as a game (maybe the commercial version, but I don't care enough by any stretch to buy it and find out).
But when you're a little company making a new little game, I can see the reasoning behind going Windows only, but if you just used OpenGL instead of D3D, it would make things easier to port later to Mac (a big enough platform) and anything else (a console maybe?).
Direct3D is exactly like OpenGL. You can argue features (vertex shaders integral or an add-on, etc.), but they are both graphics APIs.
Your point is valid, but you are thinking of DirectX. DirectX contains Direct3D (graphics), DirectSound (um... sound ;), DirectInput (keyboard, mouse, joystick, whatever), DirectPlay (or at least it used to, networking code), and others (I think).
So your right. I doubt many games use just Direct3D. If you are going to use D3D, why not use DirectSound and DirectInput too? They are much better than just programming Win32 for that stuff (I would imagine). Even Quake2/3 used DirectX for everything but graphics (I think).
As the parrent said, there is more to the problem than just Direct3D, there is all of DirectX (which WineX/Cedega/whatever is working on alongside D3D). If more games were written with OpenGL+SDL (or any other cross platform combination that may exist) things would be easier to port.
Economies of Scale
Sure you could make these devices and sell 'em for $20 proffit each, but where would that get you? Only a few thousand of these things must get sold each year (at most). So you company that makes these things needs more than $10000 (assuming 500 sales at $20) proffit to stay afloat. Also, the research on interfaces and such for those who can't use a keyboard might make these things loss leaders. If they make any proffit, they would want to make LOTS to cover all the expenses (again, without the economies of scale, they can't be built too cheaply).
It's that rarity that I would think would make it more expensive. Is there greed involved? Maybe. Maybe they overcharge so when people put it on medicare or insurance and the insurance company doesn't pony up all the dough they still get enough to make a proffit (I've heard of this in prices for other medial instruments and treatments).
Those are my guesses anyway.
But G4 bought them out. The ONLY thing they have done right (in my opinion) is keep X-Play running (new episodes and they don't seem to have changed it much if at all). TSS is terrible. As far as I can tell (and my TiVo) there are no new episodes of Invent This!, Fresh Gear, or a few other shows since G4 took over. The G4 content (the only one I've ever really watched is Filter) seems amaturish (like a high budget public access cable show) and like marketing smothered it with "love". The host is an idiot, it's full of "cool stuff" (acording to marketing) and the show is just terrible. The show would be MUCH better if they would just drop the host. I've found nothing else on G4 that I like (with the exception of the occational episode of Icons).
So for me, G4 has become the X-Play channel. Becuase they don't seem to want to make new episodes of the shows that they said they would keep (see above), that's the only thing I watch on the channel. When I first got satellite TV (DirecTV), one of the big reasons was so I could watch ZDTV. I got to watch The Screen Savers and all sorts of other interesting stuff (remember the show that would show computer animations made by people? That's how I discovered Animusic). Over the years, the channel has deciled (as TechTV although that wasn't SO bad) to being about as high on my list of "good" as SpikeTV (I used to think the constant banner on the bottom of TNN was bad, how I wish for those days).
All they have to do is mess up X-Play to lose me forever. Put someone with a BRAIN who is in touch with the AUDIENCE in charge of the channel, huh? Give it to Leo or SOMEONE. Because marketing is about to market me OUT of their audience.
RIP G4/TechTV, it's been a long, sad decline.
Sorry. Meant to give a link to "N". You can find it here. I don't know how they came up with it, but it's just so much fun (and the graphics are very simple in a clean and elegant kind of way).
10. I of the Enemy
9. Revolved
8. Smugglers 3
7. Global Defense Network
6. Anito: Defend a Land Endangered
5. BreakQuest
4. Outpost Kaloki
3. Hamsterball
2. Wik & The Fable of Souls
1. Gish (by the fantastic Chronic Logic)
That's the REAL list. Gish is the only one I've heard of, though some of those look interesting (and many have GREAT graphics). The one game I wish was on there is N by metanet software. I was addicted to that game for weeks. Very cool little game - "play as a ninja trapped in a world of well-meaning, inadvertantly homicidal robots. " Give it a try!
I think that the human race has basically reached the point where we aren't controlled by natural selection. Thanks to modern medicine we can save people who are in serious car wrecks and such, people who would otherwise be alive. But we also save people who have problems of their own doing or genetics. People get organ trasplants who are born with otherwise debilitating (and therefor fatal in "caveman times") or fatal (as in actually fatal) problems. We can help people who get sick even if the virus would otherwise kill them (see smallpox, polio, etc.) We can even save (prolong the life of) people WITHOUT an immune system (AIDS/HIV). People who would in "caveman times" (to use the term again) never survive (300+ pound people, diabetics, etc.)
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should stop helping people if we have the technology (that would be cruel, thus the problem). But because of our ability to save so many people and all the problems that people can get through today, there is very little genetic pressure (IMHO) on humans. Only more extreme problems genetics works on. We also see things that natural selection would never cure (like Alzehimers) because people are living so long.
So it's a good thing that science will soon be able to improve things, because if we continue like this, what pressure is there to keep hemophelia from becomming common if we can find a cure for it (for example). I think this is one of the reasons that the eyesight of people seems to be declining. As glasses have gotten better and to be less of a problem (contacts, laser eye surgery), needed glasses at a young age isn't the problem it used to be (say 150-200 years ago). I think this is one of the reasons behind the "fatening of America" (although it's only a VERY tiny part, I think it's mostly a self-controll/diciplin issue).
Just something to think about. I don't think I species would get much better if we were permanantly stuck at our current technological level. I think the health of the average person would actually DECLINE.
The ability to have nano-bots that improve our immune system would be a great thing. Not only for those without it (AIDS/HIV/transplant paitents), but for normal people (never get sick, don't have to worry about Typhoid or Denge Fever or anything else, who needs a cure the nano bots could help). Things like that would be fantastic.
Although 30 years seems a little optomistic to me. I'd guess closer to 50.
I was thinking about Nintendo the other day. I trust Sony alot, but Nintendo is the only company I would buy from sight-un-seen. Pretend there is no DS, and Nintendo announces a new system to replace the GBA (the Game Boy Ultra or whatever). No picutres of it anywhere. It's a total myster the specs, the form, the games, everything. You just show up at a store on launch day with your $100 or $150 and buy a system and any games they have. Would you buy that system? I would. I trust Nintendo. They've earned it. I would do the same thing with the successor to the GameCube. I'll almost certanly buy a PS3, and will look hard at a Xbox 2, but I won't hesitate on the Nintendo system.
It may have fewer games, but when the games come out, they are often awesome. Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, Super Smash Brothers, Mario Golf/Tennis, Viewtiful Joe, Donkey Konga, Metroid Prime, and on and on and on. I own more 'cube games than PS2 or X-Box games by far. I just find more games that I really like and are worth more than a 2 day rent on the 'cube.
Analysts can pick at Nintendo all they want. They are no Sega (in that their hardware will stay around). They make great systems, and great games.
Three cheers for Nintendo. Great games and systems since 1984 (that was when the Famicom was released, right)? That's TWO DECADES. Get back to me when Sony and MS have been around making great stuff for TWO DECADES and continue to do it.
PS: I LIKED the virtual boy, I think it died due to mismarketing (shouldn't have been called "virtual boy", that implied portability. It had some fantastic games (Mario Tennis, Mario Crash, the Wario game). You may call it a failure, but I really liked it. They only things they don't deliver on (64DD, SNES-CD, etc.) never got released (at least here in the states) so I can't count them as failures as they were never on the market (again, in the states).
Yeah, but you you had to PAY for Solaris, while Linux is free. If I PAY for something, I expect that they would make it support more hardware than I would expect from a free project where people tend to only write a driver if they need it themselves.