What this article fails to mention is one of the reasons Vortex2 even got a go was partially because of the success and semi-stardom Dr. Josh Wurman got from participating in "Storm Chasers".
The publicity that show generated for them no doubt helped lube the federal funding money chute.
Besides, you can't just declare martial law and saw "No one can storm chase". There's no solution that will ever be enacted that ends with making it illegal, so you may as well stop bitching about it and simply work with the other guys. I'm amazed there isn't a federal call center or something for these chasers to all phone in to, and a website with realtime dopplar radar provided to them. The faster these guys report a tornado on a ground, the easier it is for the weather people to push a button for a siren or some other event.
This just sounds like sour grapes. You could see the annoyance on the part of the "funded" scientist when that little no-name crew successfully flew a model airplane around a tornado and dropped sensors into it. The fact that was done on a budget put together by selling Tornado videos to news channels sounds like a win/win for me. Took none of my tax dollars, and reaped novel data.
I feel a bit back stabbed by the XBMC core developers for cutting lose the whole reason for the project in the first place. Granted, it has many limitations, but limitations like these help make software more robust. When you have to worry about something like the FATX file system and it's limitations on characters and character length, the solutions you come up with help you solve other problems later on. Yes it takes more work, but it generally forces you to abstract out another level and really think about what you are building and the flow through the different modules.
I've seen game engines keep around TTY plugins just for this reason.
The XBOX port should be kept around as the bare minimum scalability test for all code. If your particular plugin is too CPU intensive to run even in a redacted state, then meta data should flag that with some sort of required minumum clacs/second threshold. Some people have moded their xbox with faster CPUs, more memory, etc...
I appreciate the work the xbmc4xbox guy is putting into it. I run TECH builds non stop on my xbox's and have them setup to auto update from the tech installer. I really like the tech builds because they seemed to simply 'just work'. If you two can collaborate and make us build toned down for XBOX that'd be great.
To the XBMC developers, I'd say look at ROCKBOX and CrystalSpace and other projects that have had to deal with limited hardware while trying to keep pace with new features and better hardware.
I have to agree with parent. STEAM works pretty flawlessly for me. Online/Offline and on three different computers.
Lately, it works even better, because games can write settings to the cloud. So my latest config settings for some games auto-magically appear at my other home when I log in there. Same with the laptops.
I've actually had my remote home PC in 'offline' mode for steam to play Bioshock or something, and left it in Offline mode ( still playable) while my main PC in the city was online and I could in theory play in both locations at the same time ( one offline, on online ). I took this to the next level by logging my steam account into a family members PC, and download some of my games to that PC, then putting it in offline mode.
I'm pretty happy with steam, for the services the cloud services and matchmaking it provides it balances the restrictiveness of DRM just right.
Beleive it or not, LOL is more geared to casual gamers. It's not really for the super-competitive demographic HON is geared towards. Last hitting in LOL gets you about 1/2 the gold you would get in HON. Also, LOL gives more gold per tick. Honestly, LOL is like HON with bad graphics on EM (easy mode).
So, LOL is you want an easy learning curve, HON if your willing to put in the time, or you already know all the DOTA characters.
Laugh, I'm in that pic. Rainz, Helios and I, I think maybe a few others RoF are in that shot. I remember that day pretty well. What's odd thinking back is how we didn't have Vent/Team-speak, so instead of ear shattering shouts after LB crumbled, we instead had 10 pages of IRC/text spam.
This was end of the beta, so baning him had no real effect, they did however, relay to us that he was banned from UO Release. It was pretty funny. One of the dev's who was responsible for setting the imortal flag on LB char after server reset (and failed too) pretty much said "Rainz will never be allowed to purchase and play Ultima Online" or along those lines. Talk about rage. I wonder where Grimli is these days...
I think Starr was the one who eventually laughed it all up and said no hard feelings.
Pandora's jar was opened as soon as always-online systems became the norm. Software producers can ship code that has been less throughly tested, knowing they can patch or send out an update if they find something. Even console games, the once most ironclad software 4th only to military, medical, and flight software, now ships expecting patches to be available by the time the user gets it installed.
The good news is we get software more quickly. The bad news is we get software more quickly.
Luckily, the auto-update software is becoming better at it's job. More and more systems are being designed to hot-update. This is normally a result of modular architecture inside the software, allowing plugins to be unloaded at runtime, and new version loaded. This is even creeping into the OS. If you have the right mix of OS and Hardware, you may already be doing live video driver updates. Some RAID controllers allow you to swap drivers at runtime if the OS isn't on that controller.
The people of Iran better hope this "punch" is not in anyway directed at Israel.
Israel is the sober angry Krav Maga expert being held back by his friends at the end of the bar which houses a drunk Iran and his orange tanned Persian 'guido' friends.
I think we're about to have A Situation Here....on the Persian Shore.
From a pure technical perspective, Verizon will get you the best coverage. But the sales people are vicious.
AT&T has iPhone obviously, but shitty coverage. I lend my phone to friends on AT&T in a couple different cities.
T-Mobile is worse coverage then AT&T. But has more open phones.
If you've got nothing right now, I'd go Droid on Verizon, pay 40 bucks for the unlimited data and use Google Voice for routing of your calls and LD service.
Keep watching the Tech Talk, he 'rails' on rail guns.
Basically, world record for rail gun right now is 5.5 km/s, after 200 million being spent on it. World record for Hydrogen gas gun is 11.2 at a fraction of the cost. Energy storage costs and other factors kill using electric for so large of a project.
He spends quite a bit of time discussing it when he goes over the history of rocket/guns, about 25mins in I think.
Also, he was paid by the navy to make gauss guns and rail guns, he just doesn't seem them as the right tool for this.
Min orbital velocity = 7.6 km/s Earth Escape Velocity = 11.2 km/s
Funny coincidence, world record for hydrogen gun == 11.2 km/s
These guys plan to have the gun propel the projectile to 6.0 km/s, and then the projectiles themselves are rocket motors that will add an additional 3.0 km/s. That gives them enough acceleration to reach orbital velocity and take into account friction/gravity losses.
The reason they plan to limit the gun to 6.0 km/s is because that requires the hydrogen gas to only reach 1700 kelvin, which after taking into account heat exchange with the barrel, it ends up being a few hundred kelvin below the melting point of steel ( the barrel ).
10 mins into the Google Tech Talk he gives a slide with the amortization cost per lb. About 20 mins in, he breaks the project up into phases and costs needed to complete each phase.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IXYsDdPvbo It's worth watching the video for more info on G-Force hardening, Hydrogen re-capture, per-lb cost and project milestone/costs.
If a Canadian was helping Iran with a ballistic weapon capable of hitting the US, i'd have no problem if my tax dollars went to the seal team that bagged him.
Not to mention, because it's all captured digitally, and all the CGI is by definition digital, it's output format matters little. His raw 3ds max or whatever he used could be reprocessed to output in any format/resolution. Sure, at some point if he used really really shitty metal textures (instead of shader logic to emulate the metal at infinite resolutions) you might be able to spot a seam or a repeat of random noise.
Either way, take what he has and render it already on someone's very large farm that was built and paid for with 2012 earnings == free to a studio. $30.00 == $300,000.00 for a studio. That's still 'free'. Anything south of 300k I bet a senior VP at a studio could sign off on w/o extra due diligence.
Imagine if the form factor and plug type for lithium batteries was legally mandated to be 3"x1"x8" with a standard six wire plug. In this case, standard lithium batteries would compete based on cost and charge duration. Given standard batteries, it would be very likely that recycling and reuse programs could develop.
That would pretty much kill innovation. Imagine if early in the Cell phone race, say late 90's early 00's, they standardized the cell phone battery. The smaller form factors would have been locked out of competition because they wouldn't work with the battery size that got chosen. And you have to realize, if you are going to choose a battery size for an industry, it's likely to take at least a year, and more likely 2 years to pick and vote. So your products will come to market with old technology.
There are countries which tried this. I believe France has rules like this for certain public telecommunication equipment. They all had to support a certain type of power adapter. It kept them constantly a few years behind the market.
Slashdot Mirror
What this article fails to mention is one of the reasons Vortex2 even got a go was partially because of the success and semi-stardom Dr. Josh Wurman got from participating in "Storm Chasers".
The publicity that show generated for them no doubt helped lube the federal funding money chute.
Besides, you can't just declare martial law and saw "No one can storm chase". There's no solution that will ever be enacted that ends with making it illegal, so you may as well stop bitching about it and simply work with the other guys. I'm amazed there isn't a federal call center or something for these chasers to all phone in to, and a website with realtime dopplar radar provided to them. The faster these guys report a tornado on a ground, the easier it is for the weather people to push a button for a siren or some other event.
This just sounds like sour grapes. You could see the annoyance on the part of the "funded" scientist when that little no-name crew successfully flew a model airplane around a tornado and dropped sensors into it. The fact that was done on a budget put together by selling Tornado videos to news channels sounds like a win/win for me. Took none of my tax dollars, and reaped novel data.
...Wasteland for the C64. That would be my favorite 'fallout'. ...You are taken to a small orchard by Sam and his farmer friends....
READ PARAGRAPH 63
How does a reader point something out when there's 1 comment on this article and it's not that "Reader"?
it's just text posted from http://www.softwareproblem.org/solution/catch-me-if-you-can.html
I feel a bit back stabbed by the XBMC core developers for cutting lose the whole reason for the project in the first place. Granted, it has many limitations, but limitations like these help make software more robust. When you have to worry about something like the FATX file system and it's limitations on characters and character length, the solutions you come up with help you solve other problems later on. Yes it takes more work, but it generally forces you to abstract out another level and really think about what you are building and the flow through the different modules.
I've seen game engines keep around TTY plugins just for this reason.
The XBOX port should be kept around as the bare minimum scalability test for all code. If your particular plugin is too CPU intensive to run even in a redacted state, then meta data should flag that with some sort of required minumum clacs/second threshold. Some people have moded their xbox with faster CPUs, more memory, etc...
I appreciate the work the xbmc4xbox guy is putting into it. I run TECH builds non stop on my xbox's and have them setup to auto update from the tech installer. I really like the tech builds because they seemed to simply 'just work'. If you two can collaborate and make us build toned down for XBOX that'd be great.
To the XBMC developers, I'd say look at ROCKBOX and CrystalSpace and other projects that have had to deal with limited hardware while trying to keep pace with new features and better hardware.
I have to agree with parent. STEAM works pretty flawlessly for me. Online/Offline and on three different computers.
Lately, it works even better, because games can write settings to the cloud. So my latest config settings for some games auto-magically appear at my other home when I log in there. Same with the laptops.
I've actually had my remote home PC in 'offline' mode for steam to play Bioshock or something, and left it in Offline mode ( still playable) while my main PC in the city was online and I could in theory play in both locations at the same time ( one offline, on online ). I took this to the next level by logging my steam account into a family members PC, and download some of my games to that PC, then putting it in offline mode.
I'm pretty happy with steam, for the services the cloud services and matchmaking it provides it balances the restrictiveness of DRM just right.
If you can stand the LOL graphics.
Beleive it or not, LOL is more geared to casual gamers. It's not really for the super-competitive demographic HON is geared towards. Last hitting in LOL gets you about 1/2 the gold you would get in HON. Also, LOL gives more gold per tick. Honestly, LOL is like HON with bad graphics on EM (easy mode).
So, LOL is you want an easy learning curve, HON if your willing to put in the time, or you already know all the DOTA characters.
There's a tutorial now, and an auto-matching making service for solo players ( you get dumped with 9 others into a 5v5).
Laugh, I'm in that pic. Rainz, Helios and I, I think maybe a few others RoF are in that shot. I remember that day pretty well. What's odd thinking back is how we didn't have Vent/Team-speak, so instead of ear shattering shouts after LB crumbled, we instead had 10 pages of IRC/text spam.
This was end of the beta, so baning him had no real effect, they did however, relay to us that he was banned from UO Release. It was pretty funny. One of the dev's who was responsible for setting the imortal flag on LB char after server reset (and failed too) pretty much said "Rainz will never be allowed to purchase and play Ultima Online" or along those lines. Talk about rage. I wonder where Grimli is these days...
I think Starr was the one who eventually laughed it all up and said no hard feelings.
Pandora's jar was opened as soon as always-online systems became the norm. Software producers can ship code that has been less throughly tested, knowing they can patch or send out an update if they find something. Even console games, the once most ironclad software 4th only to military, medical, and flight software, now ships expecting patches to be available by the time the user gets it installed.
The good news is we get software more quickly. The bad news is we get software more quickly.
Luckily, the auto-update software is becoming better at it's job. More and more systems are being designed to hot-update. This is normally a result of modular architecture inside the software, allowing plugins to be unloaded at runtime, and new version loaded. This is even creeping into the OS. If you have the right mix of OS and Hardware, you may already be doing live video driver updates. Some RAID controllers allow you to swap drivers at runtime if the OS isn't on that controller.
Hey Mods, MOD points go THERE ( points up )
The people of Iran better hope this "punch" is not in anyway directed at Israel.
Israel is the sober angry Krav Maga expert being held back by his friends at the end of the bar which houses a drunk Iran and his orange tanned Persian 'guido' friends.
I think we're about to have A Situation Here....on the Persian Shore.
So Apple is taking on Amazon and Google.... ...so long Apple
That's an incentive for people to not share the bugs they find until the bounty is high enough.
I found this pretty funny as well. Apparently, some of the Slashdot editors are becoming more moderate as they age.
From a pure technical perspective, Verizon will get you the best coverage. But the sales people are vicious.
AT&T has iPhone obviously, but shitty coverage. I lend my phone to friends on AT&T in a couple different cities.
T-Mobile is worse coverage then AT&T. But has more open phones.
If you've got nothing right now, I'd go Droid on Verizon, pay 40 bucks for the unlimited data and use Google Voice for routing of your calls and LD service.
WTF, and you read Slashdot?
Yes, same guy. Project SHARP.
He makes fun of the early uses of it for testing SCRAMJETS and what a horrible project that was.
Keep watching the Tech Talk, he 'rails' on rail guns.
Basically, world record for rail gun right now is 5.5 km/s, after 200 million being spent on it. World record for Hydrogen gas gun is 11.2 at a fraction of the cost. Energy storage costs and other factors kill using electric for so large of a project.
He spends quite a bit of time discussing it when he goes over the history of rocket/guns, about 25mins in I think.
Also, he was paid by the navy to make gauss guns and rail guns, he just doesn't seem them as the right tool for this.
Min orbital velocity = 7.6 km/s
Earth Escape Velocity = 11.2 km/s
Funny coincidence, world record for hydrogen gun == 11.2 km/s
These guys plan to have the gun propel the projectile to 6.0 km/s, and then the projectiles themselves are rocket motors that will add an additional 3.0 km/s. That gives them enough acceleration to reach orbital velocity and take into account friction/gravity losses.
The reason they plan to limit the gun to 6.0 km/s is because that requires the hydrogen gas to only reach 1700 kelvin, which after taking into account heat exchange with the barrel, it ends up being a few hundred kelvin below the melting point of steel ( the barrel ).
10 mins into the Google Tech Talk he gives a slide with the amortization cost per lb. About 20 mins in, he breaks the project up into phases and costs needed to complete each phase.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IXYsDdPvbo
It's worth watching the video for more info on G-Force hardening, Hydrogen re-capture, per-lb cost and project milestone/costs.
mod parent, good link.
If a Canadian was helping Iran with a ballistic weapon capable of hitting the US, i'd have no problem if my tax dollars went to the seal team that bagged him.
It's running 1080p HD on youtube.
Not to mention, because it's all captured digitally, and all the CGI is by definition digital, it's output format matters little. His raw 3ds max or whatever he used could be reprocessed to output in any format/resolution. Sure, at some point if he used really really shitty metal textures (instead of shader logic to emulate the metal at infinite resolutions) you might be able to spot a seam or a repeat of random noise.
Either way, take what he has and render it already on someone's very large farm that was built and paid for with 2012 earnings == free to a studio. $30.00 == $300,000.00 for a studio. That's still 'free'. Anything south of 300k I bet a senior VP at a studio could sign off on w/o extra due diligence.
That would pretty much kill innovation. Imagine if early in the Cell phone race, say late 90's early 00's, they standardized the cell phone battery. The smaller form factors would have been locked out of competition because they wouldn't work with the battery size that got chosen. And you have to realize, if you are going to choose a battery size for an industry, it's likely to take at least a year, and more likely 2 years to pick and vote. So your products will come to market with old technology.
There are countries which tried this. I believe France has rules like this for certain public telecommunication equipment. They all had to support a certain type of power adapter. It kept them constantly a few years behind the market.