Re:Python to perl interpreter
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Perl 6 Showcase
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· Score: 1
The point is, why not? As computers get faster, the overhead of te interpretation operation will get smaller and smaller. Compare this loss of productivity (if I may call it that) with the gain in productivity realized by not having to make a programmer LEARN Perl if he wants to USE Perl. Or C++. Or Java. Or PHP. If I know PHP, and the shop I work in uses Perl to do the same task, it would be easier to load up the little interpretation module and program everything I wanted to do in PHP rather than pick up a whole new language.
Think of it as code reuse. Why learn another language when you don't have to? As long as a translation module is written, why learn another language?
That's what makes Python Python. It is very structured. That enforced structure makes it at once beautiful to look at and quite inflexible.
Somewhere I read about the slogans for the two languages, and I think that those slogans state the situation quite nicely:
Perl: "There's more than one way to do it!"
Python: "There's a right way to do it."
Case in point: you can write functional Perl code in several different ways. You can write Perl like you write Python, perfectly structured and pretty. you can also make Perl look like complete TRASH.
Try to write python that looks as bad as the worst Perl. Good luck:)
-inq
Re:Python to perl interpreter
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Perl 6 Showcase
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· Score: 1
That's the point. Let's say that you like what Perl can do. You like to program in Python better. If Perl is the metalanguage, a small module can be written in Perl that would parse Python syntax and dynamically translate that Python syntax into Perl. Tada! YGP! (You've Got Perl!)
Practical Extraction and Reporting Language... it's what it was originally made for. Perl as a metalanguage is a natural evolution.
I don't think that "splintering" is what you want to call it. Think of Perl as a "backbone". Now, wouldn't it be handy if you could access the power of Perl by using whatever syntax you felt like using? Since Perl is so good at parsingother text, there is no reason why you couldn't code in another language and have Perl translate that language into Perl. Just tell Perl how, and it'll do it.
Now, maintainability nightmare?? I defy you to show me one non-trivial Perl script that is not practicaly read-only. If you are hired to maintain perl, realize that they hired you because you can maintain this read-only code garbage.
Of course, since the Sanskrit garbage that the person wrote in the first place can be easily translated into readable, basic Perl by using the same module that just did the translation in the first place.
Sanskrit -> Perl code -> Interpreter
Instead of sending it all the way to the interpreter, just stop it after the perl conversion stage. Tada! You have perl.
Of course, one could also argue that Slashdot is a DDoS tool. The master (CmdrTaco and the rest) order the "zombies" (eheremm, us) to attack a site (our poor little mom and pop businesses that get posted on the front page o-so-often) and takeit offline.
Now wouldn't it be funny if one of these sites sued/. for bringing their site offline and hampering sales?
I have heard this silly argument so much that I can't stand hearing it anymore.
First of all, notice the game that this mad optimazation is being done for: Q3A. It is well known in the Q3A community that in the current version of Q3A (1.17) the physics model is frame based; that is, physics in the game world is calculated once for each frame ON EACH CLIENT. Therefore, those people that are getting 200fps are recalculating game physics 200 times a second, whereas those people only getting 30 or 60 or "72" are only getting their physics recalculated that many times per second. This is why professional Q3A players tweak their rigs to such an insane extent: you can pull off some insane moves when you get 200 frames that you can't when you only get 30. Keep this in mind when you watch someone that is really hardcore into Q3A play.
Also, this "the eye can only see 72 frames" crap needs to be debunked NOW. First, assume that you have a monitor and a vid card that support refresh rates so amazingly sillily high that no video card will ever be able to pump polys that fast (say 10,000 hz). Now, say that you are getting 72 fps. Let's say that you are running around in CS, and you start getting shot from behind. Say you pull a 180 to face your enemy in say a quarter of a second. A quick calculation will show that there are 18 frames of animation in this quarter of a second that you are turning. Therefore, a frame will be drawn each 10 degrees that you turn. Now, while this may be imperceptible at extreme range, realize that objects at close range are going to get choppy. Like, say that you were looking at a door jamb that may only be visible for 30 degrees of your field, but that is physically quite close to you. That door jamb will be rendered on three frames on your screen. It will be choppy.
If you don't understand what I am trying to get at, start up CS (providing you use Windows, of course;) ) and go to a stage like cs_italy. Provided that you have a vid card that will push enough polys, set your fps_max to the hypothetical 72. Go to the wine cellar, that has lots of objects in a constrained area. Do a quick 360. You will notice that because your visual field is spinning so fast, each object will only be on the screen for a limited period of time, and therefore will get so few frames that it will appear choppy.
This is the choppiness that modern GFX cards and monitors will help smooth out.
So, please, all of youall, STOP spreading the "your eyes can only see X frames per second" myth. It simply is not true.
I don't know about everyone else in the studio audience, but all I'm interested in is good games.
For example, I am not pumped about Neverwinter Nights because it is being developed for Linux as well as for Windows, I am pumped about NWN because if they pull off everything they were trying to pull off, it has the potential to totally revolutionize the role playing game industry. Think of it as the perfect graphical MUD.
Now, good games are not necessairily all going to be produced by the huge production houses that can afford to pay the $$$ and sign three layers of NDAs to get access to the APIs of the XBox and the PS2. The licensing and NDA schemes of these two consoles effectively lock out small publishing houses because there is NO WAY they could afford to pay the up front fees necessary to be able to develop for these systems. This is not to say that their game idea is bad, just that with these consoles it would not be possible to implement their vision.
The Indrema is different, and that's why I am pumped about it. It purposefully lowers one of the barriers of entry into the console gaming market, namely the barrier erected by the benefactor of the console. The benefactor makes anyone who wants to develop for it pay out the ass by default in today's market. I mean, hell, some estimates show that Sony is eating 100$ for each PS2 sold. That's a lot of $$$ when you multiply that by 500,000 PS2s sold. They make that back by leeching money away from game developers.
Indrema does not do this by necessity. When it comes down to it, you can produce a game that works on Indrema and not have to pay Indrema a cent or even communicate for them at all. Which is a great luxury for the smaller game developers, who may have the idea for the next killer game for any system but are stopped by these barriers to entry into the market. It is hard enough to push your title into the retail space, why compound the difficulty by playing chicken with the owner of the console?
Of course, this whole theory is completely fantasy. Indrema, the console itself, has two huge barriers to overcome.
1) The Microsoft hype machine and Huge Pile Of Cash
2) The Sony hype machine and Huge Pile Of Cash
If Indrema can overcome these two difficulties, they have a good chance of revolutionizing the console gaming markets and bringing all those wanna-be game developers out of the woodwork to bring the best games to the Indrema.
My, aren't we being optimistic about the Indrema today!!!
Then again, you don't have the people that buy into the clock speed fallacy and that buy their computers at Best Buy buying Alphas or UltraSparcs. Of course, you and I know that Alphas and UlraSparcs LAY WASTE over anything that either Intel OR AMD have out right now, but to the (l)users that buy their computers at Best Buy 'Clock Speed Is King'(R)(TM)(C).
now THAT will be something I will enjoy seeing. I think I was ranting about this on the zdnet message boards one day. It was a Transmeta article and some fanboy took it as an opportunity to bash on everything that was non-Intel. Needless to say, he was flamed to a crispy golden brown.
I'm not a fanboy for any player in this war, but unless AMD has an ace up its sleeve, they are going to have trouble taking mindshare away from the p3 launch. I mean, this damn thing is launching at 1.5ghz... the public will OOH and AAH, and then go buy it, even though p4 + RDRAM will be slower than athlon 1.2 + DDR SDRAM. Clockspeed is EVERYTHING to the buying public, even though the DDR platform might THRASH the p4.
Of course, knowing AMD, they DO have an ace up their sleeve... they might pull the same stunt that they did when Intel was releasing their first ghz chip. Now THAT was a laugh. Intel ate crow for that one:)
My prediction: on the p4 launch date, AMD will announce something BIG, like
1) Athlon SMP chipset, with benchmarks showing that a cheaper Athlon DDR SMP rig will RAIL UPON a p4 rig,
2) Mustang (mmmm, 2MB on die cache)
3) TBird in 1.6, 1.5, 1.4, and 1.3 ghz flavors:) How would THAT be for catchup?
Methinks I remember somewhere that the KT133 Northbridge/Southbridge combo was something like 25$ in 1k quantities, which ain't bad, considering that Intel has said that the Tehama (or however you spell it) will cost like 50$ in 1k quantities. However, if you look at the prices of the boards right now, you will see that the top of the line boards will come out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 145$ - 155$.
Abit KT7-RAID, top of the line, 150$, Add 760 chipset, add 15$ price. Lose the Highpoint controller, lose 20$ (?) price. Of course, you lose the RAID, but you keep the ATA-100.
Then again, it might be cheaper just to use the Via southbridge than it would be to use the AMD 766... that might shave another 5$ off the price or so, and I would expect that you would lose a little disk performance under win2k because of the driver support.
This is a popular misconception. The granularity of RDRAM makes it an attractive solution for Sony, and at the price that Rambus must sell it to them for, it must be almost as cheap if not cheaper than if they had to go out and buy SDRAM.
Also, for the kind of work that the memory does, RDRAM trumps SDRAM. Read about how it works into the PS2 model on Ars. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/paedia/3dtech.html">l ink</a>
OMG, Sony is using RDRAM for what it is supposed to be used for!!!
First, I want to qualify this: I drink on occasion, but I have never done and don't plan to ever do any prohibited drugs.
When the DARE program began, it had a more pure mission of _educating_ school-age children as to the dangers of drugs. However, as it has aged they began to realize that their program of education was not as effective as they liked, for the simple reason that as you start teaching younger and younger children, teaching by way of logical argument gets harder and teaching by way of rote memorization gets easier. Therefore, the DARE education to middle-school aged children has degenerated into cartoon propaganda booklets and endless waves of police officers saying "Drugs are bad, mmkay?"
I consider this educational shift unfortunate and dangerous. It is no longer education, it is indoctrination, and done before an age that most of the subjects are even able to understand why they are being indoctrinated without an authority figure to shove it down their throat.
Now, let me tell you why I consider this indoctrination bad. When you are very young, think kindergarten, first grade, your brain is just not ready to think about things logically, and some "programming" is necessary to be able to get you to that point. Thus, learning multiplication tables, singing your ABCs, etc. However, middle-school age is where the logical parts of your brain start to kick in, and I think that this growth should be encouraged instead of being indoctrinated away.
So I guess you could say that my objection is not to DARE itself, but as to how the program is taught. IMHO, the ends do not justify the means. I mean, in 1984, everyone was "happy", but at what cost? Is this a cost you are willing to pay?
-inq
(Note: Full permission to quote segments of this passage or reprint it in its entirety are unconditionally granted.)
a hell of a lot, considering that the Galileo mission has gone on for much longer than it was really supposed to. Also, empty space does not provide a good barrier to radiation, no matter how you cut it.
rough conversion:
transcontinental airplane flight = 10 - 100 chest exrays. Realize that a) Galileo has been in space for a lot longer than you are on an airplane flight and b) Galileo can't have much more shielding than you would have in that plane (airplane skin + atmosphere + earth's magnetic field)
The aliens that finally find that little satellite will have to take care so that they don't burn their fingers!
I don't know about any of you out there, but THIS scares the CRAP out of me. I heard it said before that there are two kinds of people that use Bugtraq: those that just READ it (to get 'sploits) and those that POST to it (to reveal 'sploits and how they can be fixed).
I mean, let's say that I am a network admin and I am setting up a Whistler Advanced Server box. Without the check that is Bugtraq, do you think that Microsoft would EVER release a patch for a security vulnerability?? If you answer this 'yes' there is a bridge I want to sell you in San Francisco. Chances are this Whistler box will be rooted every which way before I could even throw a firewall up.
I hope that the United States realizes what a valuable service "hackers" provide to the country. Without Bugtraq, there would be thousands of network admins that would be bald from pulling their hair out trying to secure their boxes.
Of course, without Bugtraq, who in their right mind would ever use Windows NT?
At about 5:45am PST, our web server was brought down by a veritable tsunami of hits. [translation: "we were slashdotted into oblivion"]
We ask your patience while our best people are reconfiguring the server and bringing her back up; we are working as quickly as possible and we will keep all openoffice.org community members apprised of the situation via our general discuss and announce lists. [they are (or WERE) running the newest development version of Apache. I wonder if they will release the logs so we can see what kind of punishment this new version of Apache can take;)]"
Of course, this could have all been averted if people had been using that <a href="http://www.opera.com">OTHER</a> browser and disabled the loading of pictures, like I did. I found the site quite snappy and responsive up until the time they finally took it down.
here are some things I found interesting and why I found them so.
page 39 line 25 - page 40 line 11
25 A. I'm sorry. I did not download the
2 materials I reviewed that is attached here. I did 3 not do the downloading. I reviewed downloaded 4 materials, which is what I said in my affidavits, 5 but I did not, myself, download these materials. 6 Q. Your colleagues did? 7 A. They did not. 8 Q. Who did? 9 A. My client did. 10 Q. Which client? 11 A. That would have been MPAA.
hmm... so that means that the lawyer only got to see hand-picked posts by 1337 warez d00dz... the signal-to-noise ratio on some lists can be quite low.
page 66 line 18 - page 68 line 16
18 Q. Other than conversations that you
19 have had with Proskauer or any of their clients, 20 and the reference that you just made to the Toronto 21 Star, have you ever heard of anyone or know the 22 name of anyone who has used DeCSS to download a DVD 23 and watch a DVD? 24 A. I have certainly seen much, I guess, 25 ancillary evidence of it occurring. 2 Q. Specific evidence. 3 MR. GOLD: I am going to object to 4 the form of the question. 5 Q. When you say ancillary -- 6 MR. GOLD: If you want to ask the 7 witness what evidence he has seen, ask 8 him that. 9 Q. What ancillary evidence have you 10 seen? 11 A. A variety of websites that describe 12 copy and share your movies. 13 Q. Do you know if anyone has acted on 14 those websites, what is said in the websites, 15 mainly copy and share your movies? 16 A. I have no personal knowledge. 17 RL Q. As of today, you have no personal 18 knowledge of whether or not anyone has ever shared 19 a movie by using DeCSS to decrypt a DVD? All you 20 know is that the websites tell people to do it? 21 DI MR. GOLD: The witness' answers 22 stand for themselves. 23 Q. Is that right? 24 MR. GOLD: I have already taken 25 objection to a part of this question, so 2 I am going to object to this question, 3 but you have all of the information at 4 the time that you ask direct questions. 5 Q. Have you ever seen a movie that had 6 been on DVD on the internet? 7 A. Have I ever seen a movie that had 8 been on DVD on the internet? 9 Q. Yes. 10 MR. GOLD: By "seen," I think he 11 means watched. Is that what you mean? 12 MR. GARBUS: Yes. 13 A. Have I ever watched one off the 14 internet? 15 Q. Yes. 16 A. No.
translation: supposedly "piracy" happens, but I have never seen it happen for myself.
oh yea, and a special bonus, following right after the previous quote:
17 Q. Do you know of anyone who has? 18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Who? 20 A. I know of a cousin of mine. 21 Q. Do you know how it got on the 22 internet? 23 A. I do not. 24 Q. Do you know if it came from DeCSS? 25 A. In that particular case, it almost 2 certainly did not come from DeCSS.
oh, so i've seen a pirated DVD. but it was not from CeCSS.
that's all for this episode... damn this thing is long...
...what kind of demand they have for their little LCD box. If I were in Netpliance's shoes, and I saw the field day that hackers had with those boxes, I would have no idea how to begin because apparently people want to use my box for things other than dedicated net access. What would be the easiest way to see what people want to do with the boxes?
Why, just what they are doing now, of course. If you look on that page, you see all the things that people (potential customers) would like to do with the i-opener if they had the chance. It is a marketing coup: you get 1) free programming through the power of open source, 2) free promotion throughout a possible target audience, and 3) happy potential customers. What more could a company ask for?
First of all, I would like to say that this was an enlightening interview, and I would like to thank Lars for speaking with Slashdot. You can talk with "experts" and the like, but it still more enlightening to get it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Secondly, this post is going to be based on what I thought Lars' objections were... if I'm wrong on some point, then this whole post will be thrown off.
1. Metallica never asked for their music to be on Napster; therefore, it should not be on Napster.
2. Metallica objects to the quality (methinks he said "perfect digital" or "first generation digital" somewhere) and the ease-of-acquisition of.mp3 files through Napster.
This being said, I would like to address first the opt-in vs. opt-out aspect of Napster; that is, Metallica never asked for their songs to be on Napster. The point that Lars is missing is that Metallica would not exist or be successful as a band without its fans. When a Metallica song is shared on Napster, that song is shared by a fan of the band. When I first started using Napster, I would share my entire music library of 600+... however, I found that all the Napster users leeching off of my library ate up waaaay too much bandwidth. Because of this, I cut down to sharing only about 25 or 30 songs; one or two of those songs were Metallica's. I would not have shared a Metallica song if I did not like the song and if I did not want other people to hear it.
Think of it like this. There are really two different types of Metallica fans: those casual fans who like to hear Sandman on the radio now and then, and those fans that really love the older stuff and are interested in knowing where Metallica is going as a band. Those more casual fans would only have a few Metallica.mp3s, and they probably wouldn't own a Metallica CD. The more hardcore fans would probably be sharing a huge library of Metallica songs (and own a bunch of Metallica CDs) and share the songs because they _like_ the band and because they _want_ people to listen to Metallica. I shared Blackened. Try searching on Napster for _that_ and see what you find.
Lars then goes on and compares.mp3 copies of music to tape copies and objects as to the quality of the.mp3 copy. I give this challenge: take any Metallica song (which are pretty aurally complicated anyway), in.mp3 format encoded in whatever bit rate you want. Compare that copy to a CD copy and see which one is better. I did this myself, and I found that I had to encode a song like Battery at 192kbps before I could ignore any difference between the.mp3 and the CD. For something off of S&M, I had to encode at 256kbps, and I could _still_ tell the difference between the encoded song and the CD... and these file sizes were _huge_..mp3s are not perfect copies by any stretch of the imagination, and the more perfect they become the more _restrictively large_ the file sizes become. The only _perfect_ copy of a song possible is in a full size raw audio file (.wav), and even then errors will be introduced through the CD-ripping process.
Metallica's other objection is that songs are too easy to obtain through a service like Napster. The thing Lars is missing here is that Napster users don't just arbitrarily download songs. I believe Lars would agree with me if I said that it is hard to buy a CD these days from an unknown band because you don't know if there are any good songs on the CD other than the one you saw on MTV. Napster is invaluable for me because it offers me the opportunity to see what else the band has to offer before I spend 18$ on a CD that could have only two decent songs on it. Case in point: 3 Doors Down. I had heard Kryptonite on the radio, and I loved that song enough to consider buying the CD. So, I hopped on Napster and got Kryptonite along with three or four other songs (Duck and Run, Not Enough, and something else). I loved those songs too... so I went to the bookstore and ordered the CD. I would not have bought that CD without the ability to preview the other songs using a service like Napster... and I am not talking 30 second crappy quality Real Audio clips; I am talking full length, redistributible songs that I can email to someone down the hall with the subject line: "Listen to this!". Ease-of-acquisition and redistribution is the draw of Napster. Who here has heard of a band called A Perfect Circle? I heard their name dropped in a Napster chat room a month and a half ago. I downloaded their new CD that day. I have been talking them up to my friends for a month. Two of my close friends already own the CD, and I am going to buy it with part of my next paycheck. Easily accessible.mp3s let me sort the good bands from the bad and make informed purchasing decisions.
I understand Lars is concerned about proteting his intellectual property... but maybe he shouldn't. Maybe he should encourage "piracy", and maybe make a few more die hard, t-shirt buying, pile-of-CD owning fans. Wouldn't that be a good idea?
...that AOL would be actively blocking sites that expressed any anti-corporation slant??
rant
IMHO, Microsoft was not a dangerous monopoly. I know I am going to get flamed for this, but M$ could not position themselves as the thought police. AOL is the internet service provider for something like 20 million people. (That's a good 6% of the population of the US, computer owning or not.) AOL, with their purchase of Time Warner, can be the thought police. I would hypothesize that they reach into the homes of at least 35% of the US population on a daily basis.
Any entity with that kind of power is an active danger to freedom in this country. Political parties and lobbyist groups and other political bodies are just things that are talked about in the news. To a great many people in this country, AOL / Time Warner are the news, and are implicitly trusted.
Letting them get away with this act of thought control would be a travesty.
/rant
the inquisitor has spoken.
slashdot ate my HTML tags... sorry :( [nt]
on
WinDSL Coming?
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[nt]
you are all missing the point
on
WinDSL Coming?
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All the comments on this thread are all like "win-anything is going to suck processor cycles, so this software DSL modem is going to blow." The fact that everyone is missing is that Linux support was explicitly stated in the press release. Now, what does this mean? I put forth this hypothesis. Let's say Motorola wants to get a chunk of the forthcoming "internet appliance" market, and they see that the future is clearly broadband. They want to make a cheap broadband communications device that they can sell to every company that makes an "internet appliance". What is their target market? CERTAINLY NOT WINDOWS SYSTEMS!!! Honestly, who is ever going to create a win32 based embedded system?? Linux is the natural choice, and if Motorola does not realize this, then they are shooting themselves in the foot. In fact, I bet that they could care less if a wintel box would even boot with the thing in as long as the Linux boxes will work well with it in. My predictions: 1. Motorola is going to get a large pile of money. If (some would say when) this "internet appliance" paradigm gets off the ground, its rise will probably coincide with the rise of the cheap broadband that would be necessary for these devices to work. Since you are trying to keep costs low on these appliances, you are not going to want to by components that are at a premium. Instead you buy a bunch of cheaper things so you can keep your prices low. If Motorola is first out of the gate with this they will have people practically throwing cash at them from all sides. 2. Linux performance will not be as bad as everyone fears. I admit that winmodems suck badly, really really badly when compared to their hardware counterparts. ON A WINDOWS MACHINE. Seriously, I have not seen a win32 machine (except for a few tweaked out NT boxes) that ever have had enough spare resources AT ANY TIME to be able to handle the winmodem overhead satisfactorially, much less a home system. However, we are not talking home systems, we are talking IAPPLIANCES with dedicated tasks. Open your eyes people; they are not trying to sell this to you. The inquisitor has spoken.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, why not? As computers get faster, the overhead of te interpretation operation will get smaller and smaller. Compare this loss of productivity (if I may call it that) with the gain in productivity realized by not having to make a programmer LEARN Perl if he wants to USE Perl. Or C++. Or Java. Or PHP. If I know PHP, and the shop I work in uses Perl to do the same task, it would be easier to load up the little interpretation module and program everything I wanted to do in PHP rather than pick up a whole new language.
Think of it as code reuse. Why learn another language when you don't have to? As long as a translation module is written, why learn another language?
-inq
That's what makes Python Python. It is very structured. That enforced structure makes it at once beautiful to look at and quite inflexible.
:)
Somewhere I read about the slogans for the two languages, and I think that those slogans state the situation quite nicely:
Perl: "There's more than one way to do it!"
Python: "There's a right way to do it."
Case in point: you can write functional Perl code in several different ways. You can write Perl like you write Python, perfectly structured and pretty. you can also make Perl look like complete TRASH.
Try to write python that looks as bad as the worst Perl. Good luck
-inq
That's the point. Let's say that you like what Perl can do. You like to program in Python better. If Perl is the metalanguage, a small module can be written in Perl that would parse Python syntax and dynamically translate that Python syntax into Perl. Tada! YGP! (You've Got Perl!)
Practical Extraction and Reporting Language... it's what it was originally made for. Perl as a metalanguage is a natural evolution.
-inq
I don't think that "splintering" is what you want to call it. Think of Perl as a "backbone". Now, wouldn't it be handy if you could access the power of Perl by using whatever syntax you felt like using? Since Perl is so good at parsingother text, there is no reason why you couldn't code in another language and have Perl translate that language into Perl. Just tell Perl how, and it'll do it.
Now, maintainability nightmare?? I defy you to show me one non-trivial Perl script that is not practicaly read-only. If you are hired to maintain perl, realize that they hired you because you can maintain this read-only code garbage.
Of course, since the Sanskrit garbage that the person wrote in the first place can be easily translated into readable, basic Perl by using the same module that just did the translation in the first place.
Sanskrit -> Perl code -> Interpreter
Instead of sending it all the way to the interpreter, just stop it after the perl conversion stage. Tada! You have perl.
-inq
Of course, one could also argue that Slashdot is a DDoS tool. The master (CmdrTaco and the rest) order the "zombies" (eheremm, us) to attack a site (our poor little mom and pop businesses that get posted on the front page o-so-often) and takeit offline.
/. for bringing their site offline and hampering sales?
;)
Now wouldn't it be funny if one of these sites sued
Nope, it wouldn't
-inq
I have heard this silly argument so much that I can't stand hearing it anymore.
;) ) and go to a stage like cs_italy. Provided that you have a vid card that will push enough polys, set your fps_max to the hypothetical 72. Go to the wine cellar, that has lots of objects in a constrained area. Do a quick 360. You will notice that because your visual field is spinning so fast, each object will only be on the screen for a limited period of time, and therefore will get so few frames that it will appear choppy.
First of all, notice the game that this mad optimazation is being done for: Q3A. It is well known in the Q3A community that in the current version of Q3A (1.17) the physics model is frame based; that is, physics in the game world is calculated once for each frame ON EACH CLIENT. Therefore, those people that are getting 200fps are recalculating game physics 200 times a second, whereas those people only getting 30 or 60 or "72" are only getting their physics recalculated that many times per second. This is why professional Q3A players tweak their rigs to such an insane extent: you can pull off some insane moves when you get 200 frames that you can't when you only get 30. Keep this in mind when you watch someone that is really hardcore into Q3A play.
Also, this "the eye can only see 72 frames" crap needs to be debunked NOW. First, assume that you have a monitor and a vid card that support refresh rates so amazingly sillily high that no video card will ever be able to pump polys that fast (say 10,000 hz). Now, say that you are getting 72 fps. Let's say that you are running around in CS, and you start getting shot from behind. Say you pull a 180 to face your enemy in say a quarter of a second. A quick calculation will show that there are 18 frames of animation in this quarter of a second that you are turning. Therefore, a frame will be drawn each 10 degrees that you turn. Now, while this may be imperceptible at extreme range, realize that objects at close range are going to get choppy. Like, say that you were looking at a door jamb that may only be visible for 30 degrees of your field, but that is physically quite close to you. That door jamb will be rendered on three frames on your screen. It will be choppy.
If you don't understand what I am trying to get at, start up CS (providing you use Windows, of course
This is the choppiness that modern GFX cards and monitors will help smooth out.
So, please, all of youall, STOP spreading the "your eyes can only see X frames per second" myth. It simply is not true.
-inq
This is the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life.
Click here to look at a BO2K "bug"
if you are not laughing yet, you need to get your pulse checked.
-inq
Be careful about putting these small companies on the front page, you might break them!
Google cache of the front page: http://www.cana kit.com
-inq
I don't know about everyone else in the studio audience, but all I'm interested in is good games.
For example, I am not pumped about Neverwinter Nights because it is being developed for Linux as well as for Windows, I am pumped about NWN because if they pull off everything they were trying to pull off, it has the potential to totally revolutionize the role playing game industry. Think of it as the perfect graphical MUD.
Now, good games are not necessairily all going to be produced by the huge production houses that can afford to pay the $$$ and sign three layers of NDAs to get access to the APIs of the XBox and the PS2. The licensing and NDA schemes of these two consoles effectively lock out small publishing houses because there is NO WAY they could afford to pay the up front fees necessary to be able to develop for these systems. This is not to say that their game idea is bad, just that with these consoles it would not be possible to implement their vision.
The Indrema is different, and that's why I am pumped about it. It purposefully lowers one of the barriers of entry into the console gaming market, namely the barrier erected by the benefactor of the console. The benefactor makes anyone who wants to develop for it pay out the ass by default in today's market. I mean, hell, some estimates show that Sony is eating 100$ for each PS2 sold. That's a lot of $$$ when you multiply that by 500,000 PS2s sold. They make that back by leeching money away from game developers.
Indrema does not do this by necessity. When it comes down to it, you can produce a game that works on Indrema and not have to pay Indrema a cent or even communicate for them at all. Which is a great luxury for the smaller game developers, who may have the idea for the next killer game for any system but are stopped by these barriers to entry into the market. It is hard enough to push your title into the retail space, why compound the difficulty by playing chicken with the owner of the console?
Of course, this whole theory is completely fantasy. Indrema, the console itself, has two huge barriers to overcome.
1) The Microsoft hype machine and Huge Pile Of Cash
2) The Sony hype machine and Huge Pile Of Cash
If Indrema can overcome these two difficulties, they have a good chance of revolutionizing the console gaming markets and bringing all those wanna-be game developers out of the woodwork to bring the best games to the Indrema.
My, aren't we being optimistic about the Indrema today!!!
-inq
Then again, you don't have the people that buy into the clock speed fallacy and that buy their computers at Best Buy buying Alphas or UltraSparcs. Of course, you and I know that Alphas and UlraSparcs LAY WASTE over anything that either Intel OR AMD have out right now, but to the (l)users that buy their computers at Best Buy 'Clock Speed Is King'(R)(TM)(C).
-inq
now THAT will be something I will enjoy seeing. I think I was ranting about this on the zdnet message boards one day. It was a Transmeta article and some fanboy took it as an opportunity to bash on everything that was non-Intel. Needless to say, he was flamed to a crispy golden brown.
-inq
whoops, sorry for the messed up link.
linkified
-inq
I'm not a fanboy for any player in this war, but unless AMD has an ace up its sleeve, they are going to have trouble taking mindshare away from the p3 launch. I mean, this damn thing is launching at 1.5ghz... the public will OOH and AAH, and then go buy it, even though p4 + RDRAM will be slower than athlon 1.2 + DDR SDRAM. Clockspeed is EVERYTHING to the buying public, even though the DDR platform might THRASH the p4.
:)
:) How would THAT be for catchup?
Of course, knowing AMD, they DO have an ace up their sleeve... they might pull the same stunt that they did when Intel was releasing their first ghz chip. Now THAT was a laugh. Intel ate crow for that one
My prediction: on the p4 launch date, AMD will announce something BIG, like
1) Athlon SMP chipset, with benchmarks showing that a cheaper Athlon DDR SMP rig will RAIL UPON a p4 rig,
2) Mustang (mmmm, 2MB on die cache)
3) TBird in 1.6, 1.5, 1.4, and 1.3 ghz flavors
-inq
Methinks I remember somewhere that the KT133 Northbridge/Southbridge combo was something like 25$ in 1k quantities, which ain't bad, considering that Intel has said that the Tehama (or however you spell it) will cost like 50$ in 1k quantities. However, if you look at the prices of the boards right now, you will see that the top of the line boards will come out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 145$ - 155$.
Abit KT7-RAID, top of the line, 150$, Add 760 chipset, add 15$ price. Lose the Highpoint controller, lose 20$ (?) price. Of course, you lose the RAID, but you keep the ATA-100.
Then again, it might be cheaper just to use the Via southbridge than it would be to use the AMD 766... that might shave another 5$ off the price or so, and I would expect that you would lose a little disk performance under win2k because of the driver support.
-inq
This is a popular misconception. The granularity of RDRAM makes it an attractive solution for Sony, and at the price that Rambus must sell it to them for, it must be almost as cheap if not cheaper than if they had to go out and buy SDRAM.
l ink</a>
Also, for the kind of work that the memory does, RDRAM trumps SDRAM. Read about how it works into the PS2 model on Ars. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/paedia/3dtech.html">
OMG, Sony is using RDRAM for what it is supposed to be used for!!!
/me faints.
-inq
First, I want to qualify this: I drink on occasion, but I have never done and don't plan to ever do any prohibited drugs.
When the DARE program began, it had a more pure mission of _educating_ school-age children as to the dangers of drugs. However, as it has aged they began to realize that their program of education was not as effective as they liked, for the simple reason that as you start teaching younger and younger children, teaching by way of logical argument gets harder and teaching by way of rote memorization gets easier. Therefore, the DARE education to middle-school aged children has degenerated into cartoon propaganda booklets and endless waves of police officers saying "Drugs are bad, mmkay?"
I consider this educational shift unfortunate and dangerous. It is no longer education, it is indoctrination, and done before an age that most of the subjects are even able to understand why they are being indoctrinated without an authority figure to shove it down their throat.
Now, let me tell you why I consider this indoctrination bad. When you are very young, think kindergarten, first grade, your brain is just not ready to think about things logically, and some "programming" is necessary to be able to get you to that point. Thus, learning multiplication tables, singing your ABCs, etc. However, middle-school age is where the logical parts of your brain start to kick in, and I think that this growth should be encouraged instead of being indoctrinated away.
So I guess you could say that my objection is not to DARE itself, but as to how the program is taught. IMHO, the ends do not justify the means. I mean, in 1984, everyone was "happy", but at what cost? Is this a cost you are willing to pay?
-inq
(Note: Full permission to quote segments of this passage or reprint it in its entirety are unconditionally granted.)
a hell of a lot, considering that the Galileo mission has gone on for much longer than it was really supposed to. Also, empty space does not provide a good barrier to radiation, no matter how you cut it.
rough conversion:
transcontinental airplane flight = 10 - 100 chest exrays. Realize that a) Galileo has been in space for a lot longer than you are on an airplane flight and b) Galileo can't have much more shielding than you would have in that plane (airplane skin + atmosphere + earth's magnetic field)
The aliens that finally find that little satellite will have to take care so that they don't burn their fingers!
-inq
I don't know about any of you out there, but THIS scares the CRAP out of me. I heard it said before that there are two kinds of people that use Bugtraq: those that just READ it (to get 'sploits) and those that POST to it (to reveal 'sploits and how they can be fixed).
I mean, let's say that I am a network admin and I am setting up a Whistler Advanced Server box. Without the check that is Bugtraq, do you think that Microsoft would EVER release a patch for a security vulnerability?? If you answer this 'yes' there is a bridge I want to sell you in San Francisco. Chances are this Whistler box will be rooted every which way before I could even throw a firewall up.
I hope that the United States realizes what a valuable service "hackers" provide to the country. Without Bugtraq, there would be thousands of network admins that would be bald from pulling their hair out trying to secure their boxes.
Of course, without Bugtraq, who in their right mind would ever use Windows NT?
-inq
"Please Excuse Our Technical Difficulties
;)]"
At about 5:45am PST, our web server was brought down by a veritable tsunami of hits. [translation: "we were slashdotted into oblivion"]
We ask your patience while our best people are reconfiguring the server and bringing her back up; we are working as quickly as possible and we will keep all openoffice.org community members apprised of the situation via our general discuss and announce lists. [they are (or WERE) running the newest development version of Apache. I wonder if they will release the logs so we can see what kind of punishment this new version of Apache can take
Of course, this could have all been averted if people had been using that <a href="http://www.opera.com">OTHER</a> browser and disabled the loading of pictures, like I did. I found the site quite snappy and responsive up until the time they finally took it down.
Oh, well. You live, you learn.
-inq
here are some things I found interesting and why I found them so.
page 39 line 25 - page 40 line 11
hmm... so that means that the lawyer only got to see hand-picked posts by 1337 warez d00dz... the signal-to-noise ratio on some lists can be quite low.
page 66 line 18 - page 68 line 16
translation: supposedly "piracy" happens, but I have never seen it happen for myself.oh yea, and a special bonus, following right after the previous quote:
oh, so i've seen a pirated DVD. but it was not from CeCSS.
that's all for this episode... damn this thing is long...
the inquisitor has spoken.
...what kind of demand they have for their little LCD box. If I were in Netpliance's shoes, and I saw the field day that hackers had with those boxes, I would have no idea how to begin because apparently people want to use my box for things other than dedicated net access. What would be the easiest way to see what people want to do with the boxes?
Why, just what they are doing now, of course. If you look on that page, you see all the things that people (potential customers) would like to do with the i-opener if they had the chance. It is a marketing coup: you get 1) free programming through the power of open source, 2) free promotion throughout a possible target audience, and 3) happy potential customers. What more could a company ask for?
The inquisitor has spoken.
First of all, I would like to say that this was an enlightening interview, and I would like to thank Lars for speaking with Slashdot. You can talk with "experts" and the like, but it still more enlightening to get it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Secondly, this post is going to be based on what I thought Lars' objections were... if I'm wrong on some point, then this whole post will be thrown off.
1. Metallica never asked for their music to be on Napster; therefore, it should not be on Napster.
2. Metallica objects to the quality (methinks he said "perfect digital" or "first generation digital" somewhere) and the ease-of-acquisition of .mp3 files through Napster.
This being said, I would like to address first the opt-in vs. opt-out aspect of Napster; that is, Metallica never asked for their songs to be on Napster. The point that Lars is missing is that Metallica would not exist or be successful as a band without its fans. When a Metallica song is shared on Napster, that song is shared by a fan of the band. When I first started using Napster, I would share my entire music library of 600+... however, I found that all the Napster users leeching off of my library ate up waaaay too much bandwidth. Because of this, I cut down to sharing only about 25 or 30 songs; one or two of those songs were Metallica's. I would not have shared a Metallica song if I did not like the song and if I did not want other people to hear it.
Think of it like this. There are really two different types of Metallica fans: those casual fans who like to hear Sandman on the radio now and then, and those fans that really love the older stuff and are interested in knowing where Metallica is going as a band. Those more casual fans would only have a few Metallica .mp3s, and they probably wouldn't own a Metallica CD. The more hardcore fans would probably be sharing a huge library of Metallica songs (and own a bunch of Metallica CDs) and share the songs because they _like_ the band and because they _want_ people to listen to Metallica. I shared Blackened. Try searching on Napster for _that_ and see what you find.
Lars then goes on and compares .mp3 copies of music to tape copies and objects as to the quality of the .mp3 copy. I give this challenge: take any Metallica song (which are pretty aurally complicated anyway), in .mp3 format encoded in whatever bit rate you want. Compare that copy to a CD copy and see which one is better. I did this myself, and I found that I had to encode a song like Battery at 192kbps before I could ignore any difference between the .mp3 and the CD. For something off of S&M, I had to encode at 256kbps, and I could _still_ tell the difference between the encoded song and the CD... and these file sizes were _huge_. .mp3s are not perfect copies by any stretch of the imagination, and the more perfect they become the more _restrictively large_ the file sizes become. The only _perfect_ copy of a song possible is in a full size raw audio file (.wav), and even then errors will be introduced through the CD-ripping process.
Metallica's other objection is that songs are too easy to obtain through a service like Napster. The thing Lars is missing here is that Napster users don't just arbitrarily download songs. I believe Lars would agree with me if I said that it is hard to buy a CD these days from an unknown band because you don't know if there are any good songs on the CD other than the one you saw on MTV. Napster is invaluable for me because it offers me the opportunity to see what else the band has to offer before I spend 18$ on a CD that could have only two decent songs on it. Case in point: 3 Doors Down. I had heard Kryptonite on the radio, and I loved that song enough to consider buying the CD. So, I hopped on Napster and got Kryptonite along with three or four other songs (Duck and Run, Not Enough, and something else). I loved those songs too... so I went to the bookstore and ordered the CD. I would not have bought that CD without the ability to preview the other songs using a service like Napster... and I am not talking 30 second crappy quality Real Audio clips; I am talking full length, redistributible songs that I can email to someone down the hall with the subject line: "Listen to this!". Ease-of-acquisition and redistribution is the draw of Napster. Who here has heard of a band called A Perfect Circle? I heard their name dropped in a Napster chat room a month and a half ago. I downloaded their new CD that day. I have been talking them up to my friends for a month. Two of my close friends already own the CD, and I am going to buy it with part of my next paycheck. Easily accessible .mp3s let me sort the good bands from the bad and make informed purchasing decisions.
I understand Lars is concerned about proteting his intellectual property... but maybe he shouldn't. Maybe he should encourage "piracy", and maybe make a few more die hard, t-shirt buying, pile-of-CD owning fans. Wouldn't that be a good idea?
The inquisitor has spoken.
rant
IMHO, Microsoft was not a dangerous monopoly. I know I am going to get flamed for this, but M$ could not position themselves as the thought police. AOL is the internet service provider for something like 20 million people. (That's a good 6% of the population of the US, computer owning or not.) AOL, with their purchase of Time Warner, can be the thought police. I would hypothesize that they reach into the homes of at least 35% of the US population on a daily basis.
Any entity with that kind of power is an active danger to freedom in this country. Political parties and lobbyist groups and other political bodies are just things that are talked about in the news. To a great many people in this country, AOL / Time Warner are the news, and are implicitly trusted.
Letting them get away with this act of thought control would be a travesty.
the inquisitor has spoken.
[nt]
All the comments on this thread are all like "win-anything is going to suck processor cycles, so this software DSL modem is going to blow." The fact that everyone is missing is that Linux support was explicitly stated in the press release. Now, what does this mean? I put forth this hypothesis. Let's say Motorola wants to get a chunk of the forthcoming "internet appliance" market, and they see that the future is clearly broadband. They want to make a cheap broadband communications device that they can sell to every company that makes an "internet appliance". What is their target market? CERTAINLY NOT WINDOWS SYSTEMS!!! Honestly, who is ever going to create a win32 based embedded system?? Linux is the natural choice, and if Motorola does not realize this, then they are shooting themselves in the foot. In fact, I bet that they could care less if a wintel box would even boot with the thing in as long as the Linux boxes will work well with it in. My predictions: 1. Motorola is going to get a large pile of money. If (some would say when) this "internet appliance" paradigm gets off the ground, its rise will probably coincide with the rise of the cheap broadband that would be necessary for these devices to work. Since you are trying to keep costs low on these appliances, you are not going to want to by components that are at a premium. Instead you buy a bunch of cheaper things so you can keep your prices low. If Motorola is first out of the gate with this they will have people practically throwing cash at them from all sides. 2. Linux performance will not be as bad as everyone fears. I admit that winmodems suck badly, really really badly when compared to their hardware counterparts. ON A WINDOWS MACHINE. Seriously, I have not seen a win32 machine (except for a few tweaked out NT boxes) that ever have had enough spare resources AT ANY TIME to be able to handle the winmodem overhead satisfactorially, much less a home system. However, we are not talking home systems, we are talking IAPPLIANCES with dedicated tasks. Open your eyes people; they are not trying to sell this to you. The inquisitor has spoken.