POV ray definately has its place. However, it really is not a replacement for 3dsmax and a real artist.
Someone who can't draw, use colors and compose will not be a good 3D artist regardless of the tools used. In the same way that a novice photographer can't (normally) compose artistically interesting photographs, a programmer won't be able to make an interesting raytrace without artistic skills even when the tools are perfectly photorealistic.
As far as commerical packages go, they have really nice tools for "massaging" forms like nurbs which are like 3d splines. Artists need to be able to make innumerable iterative adjustments to forms, colors and positions. You can't do that efficiently by only typing equations or adjusting numbers in property boxes.
"...Ironically, for such a high tech nation, there hasn't been a major quality improvement in TV broadcast images for a half-century until the 2006 changeover to HDTV..."
No improvements??!! Don't you remember "vert. hold" and having to adjust that up until sometime in the 80's. IC-based PLL circuitry has really improved TV since the transistor and tube days.
Working as a bus-boy in a fancy restaurant will teach him a lot of very useful bullshit and put some money in his pocket....or he could be a clerk at a punk-rock record store, or whatever, the point is everyone should interact with the general public at some time in their lives.
That is most likely 1.5 tons of de-ionized water. That is probably why they were able to get an actual number.
I could be wrong but I think that producing de-ionized water probably takes a lot of energy. So it may be a relevant number but that is not clear from the report.
The numbers were probably obtained by looking at the physical plant of various factories and dividing their raw material consumption by the number of units produced.
I doubt that people lose an hour of daily productivity because of a virus. Most workers with a computer on their desk work more than 8 hours a day although they are paid for only 8. Furthermore, your analysis assumes that time without a computer is lost time-- thats not the case.
And you can't really factor in the cost of IT staff, that is their job (among other things). If there weren't a new virus every once in a while, there would be fewer IT jobs.
If the IT specialist does their job right, the virus never makes it to a cubicle or at worst affects email for some people for a while. If a company is overrun by a virus, that cost is real, but I would hesitate to even attempt to put a number on it. In such a situation, the company should consider replacing their IT specialist.
I'm glad that netbsd is trying to change their logo. While many people may think this is a trivial issue, logos and names are critical for public acceptance.
Too many free software project have logos that from a graphic design perspective are a total joke. The gnu logo is a good example. It looks like a pencil sketch scanned from the back of the beer coaster (so does the netbsd logo BTW).
Get some decent logos please. Graphic designers spend years developing their skills. Pay them and let them do their work.
I live in a neighborhood with multiple registered sex offenders (100+ in my zip code in Baltimore-- walking distance from my house).
Its really great to push for hard time and appropriate punishment for criminals, but the reality is that the jails are bursting at the seams with all kinds of violent criminals. The justice system in Baltimore and in many other cities has become a farcical failure. Violent offenders are routinely released by judges who inappropriately exercise their discretion to release offenders far, far before their sentence is up.
It is simply foolish to put trust in the "system" to keep the thousand upon thousands of repeat violent offenders under control. Trusting the system might be fine in small communities but everything falls apart in distressed urban environments.
The sex offender registry is simply a good tool for community associations to keep an eye on what is going on. Every little bit helps.
Re:The main issue with XML is performance
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 1
The advantage of xml is strong when you have complex data that is semantically rich.
For example, cheml, is an XML schema for representing arbitrary chemical structures. Such an undertaking using "header" files would be major undertaking. In chemL, using a well-established peer-reviewed schema, its a simple job (including validation features). In addition to that, your files are now accessible to a wide variety of software. This makes it vastly easier to add rich features quickly.
Try that with you custom header format-- assuming you can get someone to even read it and your documentation about it!:-)
Re:What are you talking about?
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Have you ever tried storing a picture in it?
Actually, yes.
Its called SVG, it is a very nice way to represent graphics.
Re:The main issue with XML is performance
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Doe, John 1234567 12/1/2001 "
If you think about it that is a useless piece of information without lots and lots of context surrounding it.
* What is Doe? * What is " John"? * What is 1234567 * 12/1/2001 looks like a date. Is it Dec 1 or Jan 12? * How do I know if this record is complete? * Is my field separator a " " or ","?
Problem: The year is 2023, we now use format "x" in our records, you need to onvert all records to format "x" -- there are 233 different types of records. 7,220,134 records need to be translated in 2 weeks. Which formats will be the easiest to convert??
XML allows you to beat the above problems by being a somewhat self-describing format. For a few extra bytes you get a lot more functionality, interoperability and future-proof-ness
Re:The main issue with XML is performance
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 1
"Performance" is only one of a long list of things to consider when putting together a complex system. As processor, network and storage speeds get faster and bigger, raw performance becomes less of an issue and often laughably irrelevant.
XML buys you interoperability and a vast continuum of well-tested standardized tools to work with. Also, xml and the tools that work with it are somewhat future-proof-- the standards have been designed intelligently from the ground up to deal with change.
If your application needs to consume a configuration file upon starting up what difference does it make if that takes 10 millseconds or 1 millisecond? Not much. However by using xml instead of an ini file you now have all kinds of tools to validate, parse and manipulate your configuration file.
A PDA is not supposed to be a "little" laptop. It is supposed to be a durable and portable device that you can whip out of your pocket, turn on, and get a phone number or other piece of info in a few seconds. You can't do that with a laptop, and you can't take a laptop where you can take a PDA because the hard drive would be wrecked after short time.
That said, I still agree that fancy PDA's are too expensive. But my Palm V still fits the bill.
My group has tried to use java (jeode) on an IPAQ. The performance was awful. Supposedly, NSIcom's creme is much better, but it STILL uses the old personaljava 1.2 spec (JDK 1.1.8 subset). We switched to.NET CF. Performance is good and we can use web services.
SUN doesn't help matters by continuing to push a J2ME marketing blitz without a real and fast development effort behind it. All those dreamy J2ME whitepapers add up to little more than a small number of java apps on some cell phones (never actually saw one BTW), and ZILCH on PDA's.
Its a shame. J2ME could have really flourished, but now.NET CF is poised to take over.
V-shaped cantilevers work fine. People can obtain atomic resolution with them. What more could you want?
I have used both straight and V-shaped. If there is a difference in performance, the difference is mostly likely very small and over-shadowed by other factors.
...for serious copyright infringement, buy a CD replication line for US $1M. Cycle time is ~4 seconds per disk with a materials/energy cost of pennies.
Indeed. These are workstations that have been configured for very specific kinds of work-- and that is great, linux is perfect for that. But, I'll bet most of the desks also have a PC or mac on them for everyday office stuff.
Also, MS will not bend over backwards for any entity-- in fact, big companies have lucarative support deals with MS, complete with forced upgrades.
I would say that this inflexibility of MS is one of their biggest weaknesses. If linux continues to catch up, we will see real and successful companies that make their money on providing expert customization and support of free software systems. Not quite there yet, but it can happen.
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POV ray definately has its place. However, it really is not a replacement for 3dsmax and a real artist.
Someone who can't draw, use colors and compose will not be a good 3D artist regardless of the tools used. In the same way that a novice photographer can't (normally) compose artistically interesting photographs, a programmer won't be able to make an interesting raytrace without artistic skills even when the tools are perfectly photorealistic.
As far as commerical packages go, they have really nice tools for "massaging" forms like nurbs which are like 3d splines. Artists need to be able to make innumerable iterative adjustments to forms, colors and positions. You can't do that efficiently by only typing equations or adjusting numbers in property boxes.
Lots of parents do great work. Many are quite practiced at being efficient in their work.
It may be that he simply lost interest in the job-- and that you interpret this as "new parents aren't well-suited to work".
What do you mean "...especially in Italy..."?
Please drop the stereotype, man, you clearly don't have a clue about Italians.
If it happened in small town in rural America, people would be acting the same.
No improvements??!! Don't you remember "vert. hold" and having to adjust that up until sometime in the 80's. IC-based PLL circuitry has really improved TV since the transistor and tube days.
Working as a bus-boy in a fancy restaurant will teach him a lot of very useful bullshit and put some money in his pocket.
That is most likely 1.5 tons of de-ionized water. That is probably why they were able to get an actual number.
I could be wrong but I think that producing de-ionized water probably takes a lot of energy. So it may be a relevant number but that is not clear from the report.
The numbers were probably obtained by looking at the physical plant of various factories and dividing their raw material consumption by the number of units produced.
I doubt that people lose an hour of daily productivity because of a virus. Most workers with a computer on their desk work more than 8 hours a day although they are paid for only 8. Furthermore, your analysis assumes that time without a computer is lost time-- thats not the case.
And you can't really factor in the cost of IT staff, that is their job (among other things). If there weren't a new virus every once in a while, there would be fewer IT jobs.
If the IT specialist does their job right, the virus never makes it to a cubicle or at worst affects email for some people for a while. If a company is overrun by a virus, that cost is real, but I would hesitate to even attempt to put a number on it. In such a situation, the company should consider replacing their IT specialist.
This outsourcing madness is just a prelude to most IT people being outsourced by increasing levels of software automation.
That will happen far, far before wages rise to American levels in India.
I would prefer that the configs be all in XML.
Of course, no one would have to actually type it because it could be easily taken care of by a nice gui.
I'm glad that netbsd is trying to change their logo. While many people may think this is a trivial issue, logos and names are critical for public acceptance.
Too many free software project have logos that from a graphic design perspective are a total joke. The gnu logo is a good example. It looks like a pencil sketch scanned from the back of the beer coaster (so does the netbsd logo BTW).
Get some decent logos please. Graphic designers spend years developing their skills. Pay them and let them do their work.
I live in a neighborhood with multiple registered sex offenders (100+ in my zip code in Baltimore-- walking distance from my house).
Its really great to push for hard time and appropriate punishment for criminals, but the reality is that the jails are bursting at the seams with all kinds of violent criminals. The justice system in Baltimore and in many other cities has become a farcical failure. Violent offenders are routinely released by judges who inappropriately exercise their discretion to release offenders far, far before their sentence is up.
It is simply foolish to put trust in the "system" to keep the thousand upon thousands of repeat violent offenders under control. Trusting the system might be fine in small communities but everything falls apart in distressed urban environments.
The sex offender registry is simply a good tool for community associations to keep an eye on what is going on. Every little bit helps.
The advantage of xml is strong when you have complex data that is semantically rich.
For example, cheml, is an XML schema for representing arbitrary chemical structures. Such an undertaking using "header" files would be major undertaking. In chemL, using a well-established peer-reviewed schema, its a simple job (including validation features). In addition to that, your files are now accessible to a wide variety of software. This makes it vastly easier to add rich features quickly.
Try that with you custom header format-- assuming you can get someone to even read it and your documentation about it!
Have you ever tried storing a picture in it?
Actually, yes.
Its called SVG, it is a very nice way to represent graphics.
"Doe, John 1234567 12/1/2001 "
If you think about it that is a useless piece of information without lots and lots of context surrounding it.
* What is Doe?
* What is " John"?
* What is 1234567
* 12/1/2001 looks like a date. Is it Dec 1 or Jan 12?
* How do I know if this record is complete?
* Is my field separator a " " or ","?
Problem: The year is 2023, we now use format "x" in our records, you need to onvert all records to format "x" -- there are 233 different types of records. 7,220,134 records need to be translated in 2 weeks. Which formats will be the easiest to convert??
XML allows you to beat the above problems by being a somewhat self-describing format. For a few extra bytes you get a lot more functionality, interoperability and future-proof-ness
"Performance" is only one of a long list of things to consider when putting together a complex system. As processor, network and storage speeds get faster and bigger, raw performance becomes less of an issue and often laughably irrelevant.
XML buys you interoperability and a vast continuum of well-tested standardized tools to work with. Also, xml and the tools that work with it are somewhat future-proof-- the standards have been designed intelligently from the ground up to deal with change.
If your application needs to consume a configuration file upon starting up what difference does it make if that takes 10 millseconds or 1 millisecond? Not much. However by using xml instead of an ini file you now have all kinds of tools to validate, parse and manipulate your configuration file.
A PDA is not supposed to be a "little" laptop. It is supposed to be a durable and portable device that you can whip out of your pocket, turn on, and get a phone number or other piece of info in a few seconds. You can't do that with a laptop, and you can't take a laptop where you can take a PDA because the hard drive would be wrecked after short time.
That said, I still agree that fancy PDA's are too expensive. But my Palm V still fits the bill.
My group has tried to use java (jeode) on an IPAQ. The performance was awful. Supposedly, NSIcom's creme is much better, but it STILL uses the old personaljava 1.2 spec (JDK 1.1.8 subset). We switched to
SUN doesn't help matters by continuing to push a J2ME marketing blitz without a real and fast development effort behind it. All those dreamy J2ME whitepapers add up to little more than a small number of java apps on some cell phones (never actually saw one BTW), and ZILCH on PDA's.
Its a shame. J2ME could have really flourished, but now
Baloney,
Although it is true that there are some very talented developers out there who don't have degrees, that is a rare exception.
A far more common occurance is the insecure manager who will not hire anyone that may be brighter or more effective than himself.
Pasadena:
Marvac electronics: www.marvac.com
CandH Surplus: aaaim.com/CandH/index.htm
Van Nuys:
www.allcorp.com
All three have good paper catalogs too.
V-shaped cantilevers work fine. People can obtain atomic resolution with them. What more could you want?
I have used both straight and V-shaped. If there is a difference in performance, the difference is mostly likely very small and over-shadowed by other factors.
www.alice.org
Interactive 3D Graphics designed specifically for education.
tetris
crystal quest
bust a move (snood)
What exactly is it that these games do to people's minds??
Low latency Rocket area games in quake and unreal approach this level of addiction but they don't have that poetic minimal quality.
What other games have that minimal yet addictive quality??
They should have done that years ago-- its sad that it took this long for Radio Shack to realize that this practice was a bad idea.
I wonder how much business was lost?
Indeed. These are workstations that have been configured for very specific kinds of work-- and that is great, linux is perfect for that. But, I'll bet most of the desks also have a PC or mac on them for everyday office stuff.
Also, MS will not bend over backwards for any entity-- in fact, big companies have lucarative support deals with MS, complete with forced upgrades.
I would say that this inflexibility of MS is one of their biggest weaknesses. If linux continues to catch up, we will see real and successful companies that make their money on providing expert customization and support of free software systems. Not quite there yet, but it can happen.