I'll take what you wrote at face value (Hi Dr Awktagon!)... "mtv" (here) has a "Play VCD" option on the menus, but I haven't tried it (no VideoCDs to hand).
People can play VHS tapes on inexpensive consumer devices. People can play DVD on inexpensive consumer devices. Must everything on/. be reduced to the same tired old cliches? Sigh.
although I still cannot figure out how keep the darned KDE from installing
I can't recall how I worked this out, or indeed even if I've got the facts straight, but here goes anyway, FWIW...
Using YaST, look in the xwm "Wondow manager and Desktop" packages for something called dyde. It needs KDE. IIRC, if you uninstall dyde you can uninstall KDE. It's confusing 'cos it isn't listed with the other KDE packages and doesn't have a name beginning with K. Hope this helps.
Re:"Intellegence" != Awareness (Penrose != Right)
on
Son of HAL For Sale
·
· Score: 1
Just to say I'm afraid I didn't phrase my previous reply very well. I'd ask people to disregard what I wrote, to read Penrose's books (ENM, SOTM) if they have the opportunity and to make their own minds up.
Re:"Intellegence" != Awareness (Penrose != Right)
on
Son of HAL For Sale
·
· Score: 1
I have read and re-read ENM and the follow-up, Shadows of the Mind. I understand Penrose is what is known as a Platonist. My take is that the whole edifice he constructs is a smokescreen for the Platonist -belief- (almost an axiom) he holds, that somehow consciousness is an ideal that really is too cute to be merely the product of a machine (and of evolution). Hence construct a smokescreen to shore up said belief, garnish with big words, etc. You can read for and against reviews of his books all over the WWW: for example
Re:WOW! Gflops apples and oranges
on
Nvidia's NV20
·
· Score: 1
The chip can do 100 gigaflops
Thanks to the/.er who pointed out to me you -can- compare apples and oranges, but I'll run with the metaphor for a while anyway
The nVIDIA figure is obtained by adding together operations in what is essentially a hardwired pipeline, and chances are not every so called floating point operation is done at even single precision. It would be a waste of silicon if nothing else. So an NV20 Gflop isn't the same as a CPU Gflop.
Someone will point out its not strictly a hardwired pipeline, what with pixel shaders and stuff, but my point is that if you did treat it as a programmable device, you'd likely only be able to get an order or two of magnitude less floating point performance on any other application than what it's designed to do.
Re:3D Realism is becoming dangerous.
on
Nvidia's NV20
·
· Score: 1
would like to see a token symbol placed on the screen
Why didn't you (or whoever your family left in charge) take responsibility for your younger sister and stop her? Any single activity done for 14 hours is bad for you. There's something very wrong when society excuses itself from performing its basic obligations with the excuse that there isn't a warning label. Sigh.
If you've ever been in a foreign city and -really- needed to use the toilets, you'd kill to know where a public toilet is. More so if you'd recently found you were incompatible with the local gut bacteria and had just had a 4 minute alarm. Do you know the etiquette for walking into a restaurant or bar in say Tokyo (chosen as an example 'cos I don't speak Japanese and can't read the signs) and just using the loo, or what the fine is for peeing in the street?
At lunch today, a German colleague opened a banana from the bottom (the end not connected to the tree), saying it provided a useful handle. We have people from all over the world at my work, and no-one else opens their banana this way. Does
anyone else open bananas from the bottom end?
This really happened. It isn't offtopic, read Gulliver's Travels.
Sigh... doesn't anyone spend 15 seconds on a search engine?
Thanks for that. Even though you're perfect, it's nice to see the gods coming down to our human, fallible level.
I recently replied in Slashdot to someone who couldn't find (IIRC) an nVIDIA TNT PCI card. I pointed this person to the Creative Labs site, said person kindly replied, pointing out that the card is no longer available.
If you want a 2nd video card, or your platform doesn't do AGP at all, a PCI graphics card comes in handy. With some on-board memory, the PCI bandwidth isn't necessarily a bottleneck. If only I could find a GeForce or Kyro with PCI. At least 3Dfx do^H^H did PCI versions
If anyone who actually designs these things is listening, I understand that the same chip is used on PCI and AGP boards. Are there any modern AGP graphics chips that can support PCI with a pin strap or a register setting? Building a board isn't the issue for me
Take a look here. It seems that LaserDiscs are analog too - as I read it they're putting an FM signal on the disk. This figures, since building digital video in the '70's would have been hard work at consumer prices.
I think there are examples of RCA and Philips video disk machines still on show at the Science Museum in London, but I haven't visited for a year or so.
Everyone else here seems to think they're fab, you're welcome to your opinions, and they were beautifully engineered keyboards for sure, but I -hated- them because the person in the cube next to me would be hammering away and it trashed my concentration. What really wound me up was "the guy who couldn't do keyboard macros" hitting the same two keys a few hundred times (these were hardware designers, not programmers).
the implications are that realistic cloth simulation remains out of reach for today's processors.
Depends what you mean by realistic. I once pointed out to some X-Box advocates that the Pentium III 600 MHz (I know its 733 MHz this week) might be a trifle underpowered for physics simulations and received a withering look. In this case I happened to have a colleague who has used a considerably slower processor to create an animated dress as a benchmark, it's since been turned into a cute tech demo. Understanding algorithms and appreciating the machine architecture are at least as important as processor cycles.
Also, even though I think the X-Box CPU is underpowered wrt to its GPU, something tells me there will be some kickass cloth demos on it.
I'm -not- a Christian, but not all that childhood indoctrination was wasted, there's a parable about the "Widow's mite" that seems relevant to this discussion. Of course you can't buy your way into heaven, no such place, but any fool with too much money will end up doing philanthropy eventually. Philanthropy on a budget, now that's cool.
Jamie worked on XEmacs didn't he, so for the purposes of this comment, he's done his philanthropy up-front in my opinion.
file managers have always, and will always, make lousy subjects in 3-space.
File managers are like editors, everyone starts by writing one. 3Dsia say as much:
3Dsia is NOT only a File-system visualization, as many people think because of the prototype. It aims to be a general...
Humans have a strong ability to visualise things spatially. So if you've got 10,000 files (useful data, excluding system files) to organise, many people would benefit from being able to organise them as they would real world objects such as books, CDs, video tapes. Certain people are messy and untidy, yet can find stuff hidden in mountains of their junk in seconds. I err on the side of excessive tidiness (people think I must be an axe murderer), and I'm hosed if I lose or misfile something. On the other hand, mastering "find" or a database doesn't come easily.
i just don't get it. what exactly is so unusual outrageous, cool about this?
Go read the books Neuromancer by william Gibson ISBN 0-586-06645-4 and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson ISBN 0-14-023292-3. It's cool because (respected, quality) science fiction is turning into fact, albeit it isn't quite there yet. (I'm still downloading 3Dsia...)
Finally, it's not too bad a user interface metaphor. Many people can happily run around huge virtual worlds (Doom Quake), so squirrelling away data in rooms, picking up and dropping tools might work well when we're knee deep in data in a decade or so.
I'm with Arthur C Clarke (Songs of Distant Earth) - keyboards will be with us for a thousand years - as will the command line. We'll just walk up to 1 zillion polygon models of teletypes and dumb ttys and type away on them.
I just acquired an 18" LCD at work, a Philips. It's impressive at 1280x1024 so the IBM must be awesome. However, with all the emphasis on high resolution, what do we know about the IBM's ability to display colours? I ask because my LCD seems not to do greens very well, they look a little washed-out.
Scientific American for Nov 2000 article "Creating Convergence" page 37 explains very well. MPEG2, unlike many multimedia formats/protocols, has been agreed on worldwide and is used worldwide. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Huh? tolan-b gets a cheap laugh out of my use of the expression "apples and oranges", but redeems himself by posting a funny link, one that can be used as he did to constructive effect. So I reply saying ha ha well done. I get moderated down as overrated for that?
So punish me more. I've got 5 points and I'll try bring some joy into the world with them.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, but I never said anything about a DVD decoder that works in Linux, legal or otherwise, did I? Tee hee!
I'll take what you wrote at face value (Hi Dr Awktagon!) ... "mtv" (here) has a "Play VCD" option on the menus, but I haven't tried it (no VideoCDs to hand).
People can play VHS tapes on inexpensive consumer devices. People can play DVD on inexpensive consumer devices. Must everything on /. be reduced to the same tired old cliches? Sigh.
RenderMan in real-time.
although I still cannot figure out how keep the darned KDE from installing
I can't recall how I worked this out, or indeed even if I've got the facts straight, but here goes anyway, FWIW ...
Using YaST, look in the xwm "Wondow manager and Desktop" packages for something called dyde. It needs KDE. IIRC, if you uninstall dyde you can uninstall KDE. It's confusing 'cos it isn't listed with the other KDE packages and doesn't have a name beginning with K. Hope this helps.
Just to say I'm afraid I didn't phrase my previous reply very well. I'd ask people to disregard what I wrote, to read Penrose's books (ENM, SOTM) if they have the opportunity and to make their own minds up.
I have read and re-read ENM and the follow-up, Shadows of the Mind. I understand Penrose is what is known as a Platonist. My take is that the whole edifice he constructs is a smokescreen for the Platonist -belief- (almost an axiom) he holds, that somehow consciousness is an ideal that really is too cute to be merely the product of a machine (and of evolution). Hence construct a smokescreen to shore up said belief, garnish with big words, etc. You can read for and against reviews of his books all over the WWW: for example
Dodn't Penrose do something to do with tiling the plane?
The chip can do 100 gigaflops
Thanks to the /.er who pointed out to me you -can- compare apples and oranges, but I'll run with the metaphor for a while anyway
The nVIDIA figure is obtained by adding together operations in what is essentially a hardwired pipeline, and chances are not every so called floating point operation is done at even single precision. It would be a waste of silicon if nothing else. So an NV20 Gflop isn't the same as a CPU Gflop.
Someone will point out its not strictly a hardwired pipeline, what with pixel shaders and stuff, but my point is that if you did treat it as a programmable device, you'd likely only be able to get an order or two of magnitude less floating point performance on any other application than what it's designed to do.
Still, you can use a single OpenGL rendering pass as a SIMD instruction if it takes your fancy.
would like to see a token symbol placed on the screen
Why didn't you (or whoever your family left in charge) take responsibility for your younger sister and stop her? Any single activity done for 14 hours is bad for you. There's something very wrong when society excuses itself from performing its basic obligations with the excuse that there isn't a warning label. Sigh.
If you've ever been in a foreign city and -really- needed to use the toilets, you'd kill to know where a public toilet is. More so if you'd recently found you were incompatible with the local gut bacteria and had just had a 4 minute alarm. Do you know the etiquette for walking into a restaurant or bar in say Tokyo (chosen as an example 'cos I don't speak Japanese and can't read the signs) and just using the loo, or what the fine is for peeing in the street?
Well done Oz
You fool! You've given MS an excuse for not shipping Xbox on time - they have other product divisions draining resources.
At lunch today, a German colleague opened a banana from the bottom (the end not connected to the tree), saying it provided a useful handle. We have people from all over the world at my work, and no-one else opens their banana this way. Does anyone else open bananas from the bottom end?
This really happened. It isn't offtopic, read Gulliver's Travels.
sad bastard
Sigh... doesn't anyone spend 15 seconds on a search engine?
Thanks for that. Even though you're perfect, it's nice to see the gods coming down to our human, fallible level.
I recently replied in Slashdot to someone who couldn't find (IIRC) an nVIDIA TNT PCI card. I pointed this person to the Creative Labs site, said person kindly replied, pointing out that the card is no longer available.
If you want a 2nd video card, or your platform doesn't do AGP at all, a PCI graphics card comes in handy. With some on-board memory, the PCI bandwidth isn't necessarily a bottleneck. If only I could find a GeForce or Kyro with PCI. At least 3Dfx do^H^H did PCI versions
If anyone who actually designs these things is listening, I understand that the same chip is used on PCI and AGP boards. Are there any modern AGP graphics chips that can support PCI with a pin strap or a register setting? Building a board isn't the issue for me
Take a look here. It seems that LaserDiscs are analog too - as I read it they're putting an FM signal on the disk. This figures, since building digital video in the '70's would have been hard work at consumer prices.
I think there are examples of RCA and Philips video disk machines still on show at the Science Museum in London, but I haven't visited for a year or so.
Drill another for me!
Everyone else here seems to think they're fab, you're welcome to your opinions, and they were beautifully engineered keyboards for sure, but I -hated- them because the person in the cube next to me would be hammering away and it trashed my concentration. What really wound me up was "the guy who couldn't do keyboard macros" hitting the same two keys a few hundred times (these were hardware designers, not programmers).
da ka da ka daka daka daka daka .... grrr
the implications are that realistic cloth simulation remains out of reach for today's processors.
Depends what you mean by realistic. I once pointed out to some X-Box advocates that the Pentium III 600 MHz (I know its 733 MHz this week) might be a trifle underpowered for physics simulations and received a withering look. In this case I happened to have a colleague who has used a considerably slower processor to create an animated dress as a benchmark, it's since been turned into a cute tech demo. Understanding algorithms and appreciating the machine architecture are at least as important as processor cycles.
Also, even though I think the X-Box CPU is underpowered wrt to its GPU, something tells me there will be some kickass cloth demos on it.
I'm -not- a Christian, but not all that childhood indoctrination was wasted, there's a parable about the "Widow's mite" that seems relevant to this discussion. Of course you can't buy your way into heaven, no such place, but any fool with too much money will end up doing philanthropy eventually. Philanthropy on a budget, now that's cool.
Jamie worked on XEmacs didn't he, so for the purposes of this comment, he's done his philanthropy up-front in my opinion.
file managers have always, and will always, make lousy subjects in 3-space.
File managers are like editors, everyone starts by writing one. 3Dsia say as much:
3Dsia is NOT only a File-system visualization, as many people think because of the prototype. It aims to be a generalHumans have a strong ability to visualise things spatially. So if you've got 10,000 files (useful data, excluding system files) to organise, many people would benefit from being able to organise them as they would real world objects such as books, CDs, video tapes. Certain people are messy and untidy, yet can find stuff hidden in mountains of their junk in seconds. I err on the side of excessive tidiness (people think I must be an axe murderer), and I'm hosed if I lose or misfile something. On the other hand, mastering "find" or a database doesn't come easily.
i just don't get it. what exactly is so unusual outrageous, cool about this?
Go read the books Neuromancer by william Gibson ISBN 0-586-06645-4 and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson ISBN 0-14-023292-3. It's cool because (respected, quality) science fiction is turning into fact, albeit it isn't quite there yet. (I'm still downloading 3Dsia ...)
displays are still two dimensional
Displays are mostly 2D, but affordable 3D displays are available.
Finally, it's not too bad a user interface metaphor. Many people can happily run around huge virtual worlds (Doom Quake), so squirrelling away data in rooms, picking up and dropping tools might work well when we're knee deep in data in a decade or so.
I'm with Arthur C Clarke (Songs of Distant Earth) - keyboards will be with us for a thousand years - as will the command line. We'll just walk up to 1 zillion polygon models of teletypes and dumb ttys and type away on them.
I just acquired an 18" LCD at work, a Philips. It's impressive at 1280x1024 so the IBM must be awesome. However, with all the emphasis on high resolution, what do we know about the IBM's ability to display colours? I ask because my LCD seems not to do greens very well, they look a little washed-out.
why to hell use ... an old codec like mpg2
Scientific American for Nov 2000 article "Creating Convergence" page 37 explains very well. MPEG2, unlike many multimedia formats/protocols, has been agreed on worldwide and is used worldwide. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Huh? tolan-b gets a cheap laugh out of my use of the expression "apples and oranges", but redeems himself by posting a funny link, one that can be used as he did to constructive effect. So I reply saying ha ha well done. I get moderated down as overrated for that?
So punish me more. I've got 5 points and I'll try bring some joy into the world with them.
first they ban gays
I remember when it was all about the camping
Is this camp humour? Or is this expression only funny to us Brits?