Here I thought I'd learn something about Firefly the TV show...
Re:Building them like they used to
on
Goodbye, Galileo
·
· Score: 4, Informative
What are you talking about. Hubble was not built cheaply. And since its repair it has been one of the best things NASA has ever done. By the time they plan to retire it (~2010 I believe?), it will have been in use for just under 20 years and the Jack Webb telescope should be ready.
Good point, other than Metroid Prime I can't think of any genre changing games in the last 3 years. I'm probably missing one (and of course you can always argue that Metroid Prime is just an fps with heavy exploration emphasis, although I personally feel it is one of the most perfect 3D transitions ever in terms of preserving the 2D game's feel).
I suppose you could say GT3 and soon GT4, but racing games in general benefit vastly from increases in processing power.
This will probably be modded down as a troll, but I think this needs to be said.
No one cares whether you think old games are better!
"Pure gameplay"? The vast majority of old games have 1 or 2 buttons and endless repetition. I enjoy these types of games (I own 5 arcade boards of various old games and my own cab to play them), but everyone who waxes nostalgic for the "good old days" of videogames needs to take a hard look at what they're saying. The power of modern consoles opens up genres that never could have existed before. Look at RPGs on the PSX and SNES vs the offerings on NES and its ilk. You can call FF1, DQ1, and DW1 classics all you like, but the NES was too constrained for decently varied location graphics, orchestrated soundtracks, or even a decently realized storyline.
Similarly, Joust, Defender, Pacman, and others have their place, but to claim that they are gaming in its "purest" form is denying the possibility that the advancement of technology has improved gaming at all. Blends of multiple genres were not possible in the past. FPS, RTS, and more simply didn't exist! If gaming was purest in the 70s and very early 80s, why does anybody play Starfox, Xenogears, Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasies past 3, Metal Gear Solid, Counter-strike, Baldur's Gate, etc?
Remember, technology is a tool to allow the developer to more fully realize the world he/she desires to create. Older is not necessarily better.
Mike Pinkerton as well as others continue to work on Camino. It is by no means dead, but nightlies are highly variable in quality.
That said, the bug button in Safari still exists (it is disabled by default in 1.0) so report those bugs so it can get even better! This will help KHTML advance more quickly as well!
Yes, in scalar FP. If you vectorize this same app then the G5 trounces everything by nearly 10x. Of course only scientific applications (and very few of those at that) can really be vectorized in that fashion.:) But if you're doing vector fluid dynamics calculations you can't beat any machine with Altivec!
Interesting because the HQ 1024 benchmarks on firingsquad.com are at just under 400 for a 3.2ghz P4 clocked to 3.5ghz with a radeon 9800 pro. WTF is Tom's Hardware doing?
I want to know if that's really Apple's new idea of Aqua for window title bars, etc. It does not gel consistently with the background bars. Look at the system prefs pic, it has pinstripes whereas the others do not. The background bars are usually slightly translucent in 10.2 as well, why is that gone in this 10.3 shot? Also, why would Apple leave a more obvious pinstripe on the menu bar and remove it elsewhere? Either Apple has abandoned consistency within Aqua itself or this is a horrible theming job (like most themes are).
Expose also appears to be just minimize in place (the old 10.2 "feature" that was removed at the last minute) made to work for all things at once. I will be interested to see if it actually proves to be useful or just a gimmick to show off the power of Quartz Extreme.
I do believe these screenshots are real, but I hope to god the interface has been themed in some fashion and Apple isn't doing this to their UI...
I'm pleased that XD2 is striving for complete UI consistency. This is something I've always felt was lacking in the overall user experience for linux. Having a coherent set of human interface guidelines ala Apple's materials for OS X can do nothing but help.
When Apple makes a public beta release they release the new improvements to Webcore (KHTML) as well. So any and all contributions they make are released when the public binary appears. Just because you don't get it instantly doesn't mean they aren't releasing "all" of the improvements. This is fully in compliance with the LGPL that KHTML is licensed under.
In addition to that, why don't we ask a KHTML developer about how much communication is going on between teams right now before you start complaining about the situation?
Oops before somebody corrects me I should mention it's $5/mo for DirecTiVos unless you have a high level of service and then it becomes free. So not quite free, but $5/mo is a standard DirecTV mirroring fee for an extra box anyway.
...but DirecTiVos already have no extra fees involved, and you can buy a $250 lifetime that eliminates all fees for standalone tivos as well. Older ReplayTVs also had no monthly program guide fee of any kind.
The EyeTV, a USB MPEG-1 PVR for mac/windows also uses a free online guide, so this is not even close to the first PVR/DVR to do that. ReplayTV probably takes that honor, but many have followed since.
Well thank god we have another pretentious reviewer bragging about how the ending of the Sixth Sense was so obvious. His analytical mind is clearly far superior! I bow before his massive intellect.
God I'm sick of that phrase. I want to beat anyone who says it to death with a blunt instrument.
Anyway I disagree about the Bond film. I suppose michael loved World is Not Enough and Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist though. (Which one was really more believable?) I thought that despite how over the top it went Bond was overall a very entertaining action film. It was pure Bond and that's all I ask. Of course, I did have some grievances with the instances of slow motion, but I can't have everything I guess.:)
Mod the parent up. I disagree with his conclusion but his comparison of MS's and Sony's angles on net gaming is very good.
That said, the (extremely likely) monthly fee after the first year is a deal breaker for me. I have not had any real problems with net games on my PS2 (although TM:Black Online is obviously a quickly slapped together free game), but I am not willing to pay another monthly fee on top of my net access. I think as people realize this Xbox Live is going to be looked upon with less favor than it is now. The headset requirements bother me too, I'm afraid I would have to squelch 10 people every time I got on a game...
Then again, there are precisely zero titles that compel me to pay for Xbox Live or even fork over the dough for an Xbox of my own so if/when a killer title comes out I'll continue to play on the one Xbox a foolish friend purchased.;)
In answer, they are not using typical astronomical terminology in describing the resolving power of the KH12. The KH12 can resolve 5" objects so they call it a "5-6 inch resolution". They aren't speaking in angular resolution.:)
Skinny triangle is a result of very small angles not having any appreciable curve on the short end (so no sin/cos/tan is needed). D is indeed the long side (distance from you to target).
Looking at your math I see no mistake, so that is indeed an impressive angular resolution. Of course, is that raw image or via image processing, and how advanced is their technology vs that of traditional astronomy, etc. I suppose another thing that would account for it is that a spy sat can take a very quick snapshot so distortion created by the atmosphere would not be nearly the issue it is for ground-based telescopes that take hours for exposures.
Of course as a final disclaimer thanks to computers the angular resolving power of ground-based scopes is improving dramatically with each passing year. Also, the wavelength of light you are observing drastically changes angular resolution. A formula to calculate this is angular resolution (arcsec) = 0.25(wavelength (um)/mirror diameter (m)).
Take the pictures at night? Please say you're joking. What you meant is take the pictures at new moon when the side of the moon that *always* faces us (tidally locked orbit/rotation) is not bathed in light. Of course, the Hubble was never meant to look at things that are that close so I doubt it could resolve properly. In the case of ground-based telescopes, ~1 arcsec of resolution is all you're going be able to get out of them thanks to the wonders of atmospheric distortion (although that is being eliminated via interferometry and new telescopes with thousands of tiny computer-controlleed mirrors that adjust based on data given by a laser pulse through the atmosphere to try to reduce distortion).
The moon is about 1/2 of a degree in the sky. Utilizing some back of the napkin calculations:
radius of the moon is 3.4E3 km
lunar rover would be less than 4m long
(arcseconds of resolution) = 2E5(arcsecs)*d/D (skinny triangle approximation)
1/2 degree is 30 minutes of arc which is multiplied by 60 secs per min to get 1800 arcsec
1800arcsec = 2E5*(3.4E3km)/D D = 3.7E5 km or so (actual distance is somewhat greater)
So, now that you see the skinny triangle works let's find out the angular resolution of a 4m object at a distance of 3.7E5km
(angular resolution) = 2E5*(.004km/3.7E5km)
This comes out to about 2.1E-3 arc seconds. So...how are we going to find a rover again?
Of course, this whole point is moot because the Apollo missions left a reflective piece of material that astronomers use to measure the earth/moon distance (laser ranging). So there's already proof we've been there.
Actually it does have to do with the OS (or at least it appears on every Mac I own). Dragging 3000+ files from a column/list/icon view to another window won't even respond on my iMac 800. It stalls out for about 30 seconds and then eventually tries to drag. The outlines will stutter around horribly. This appears on my iMac, G3/450, and pismo G3/500.
It is really irritating, but other than that my complaints with the Finder are almost all gone.
I would assume they're worried that it will set a precedent for people who sell any kind of mods in Australia. If the PS2 guy gets off, how can MS stop the evil guy who does it with their precious Xbox?;)
The trial in question was actually about a man who sold PS2 mod chips to allow PS2s to play imported and copied games. Not some magical chip that allows the Xbox to play PS2 games.
Slashdot Mirror
Here I thought I'd learn something about Firefly the TV show...
What are you talking about. Hubble was not built cheaply. And since its repair it has been one of the best things NASA has ever done. By the time they plan to retire it (~2010 I believe?), it will have been in use for just under 20 years and the Jack Webb telescope should be ready.
GTA is not GT. Gran Turismo, not Grand Theft Auto.
Metroid Prime is the 3D transition of the Metroid series from NES/SNES on the cube.
Good point, other than Metroid Prime I can't think of any genre changing games in the last 3 years. I'm probably missing one (and of course you can always argue that Metroid Prime is just an fps with heavy exploration emphasis, although I personally feel it is one of the most perfect 3D transitions ever in terms of preserving the 2D game's feel).
I suppose you could say GT3 and soon GT4, but racing games in general benefit vastly from increases in processing power.
This will probably be modded down as a troll, but I think this needs to be said.
No one cares whether you think old games are better!
"Pure gameplay"? The vast majority of old games have 1 or 2 buttons and endless repetition. I enjoy these types of games (I own 5 arcade boards of various old games and my own cab to play them), but everyone who waxes nostalgic for the "good old days" of videogames needs to take a hard look at what they're saying. The power of modern consoles opens up genres that never could have existed before. Look at RPGs on the PSX and SNES vs the offerings on NES and its ilk. You can call FF1, DQ1, and DW1 classics all you like, but the NES was too constrained for decently varied location graphics, orchestrated soundtracks, or even a decently realized storyline.
Similarly, Joust, Defender, Pacman, and others have their place, but to claim that they are gaming in its "purest" form is denying the possibility that the advancement of technology has improved gaming at all. Blends of multiple genres were not possible in the past. FPS, RTS, and more simply didn't exist! If gaming was purest in the 70s and very early 80s, why does anybody play Starfox, Xenogears, Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasies past 3, Metal Gear Solid, Counter-strike, Baldur's Gate, etc?
Remember, technology is a tool to allow the developer to more fully realize the world he/she desires to create. Older is not necessarily better.
Mike Pinkerton as well as others continue to work on Camino. It is by no means dead, but nightlies are highly variable in quality.
That said, the bug button in Safari still exists (it is disabled by default in 1.0) so report those bugs so it can get even better! This will help KHTML advance more quickly as well!
Interesting that Apple's notebooks (and mp3 player) are now the standard others are compared against. A big shift since the 90s...
Yes, in scalar FP. If you vectorize this same app then the G5 trounces everything by nearly 10x. Of course only scientific applications (and very few of those at that) can really be vectorized in that fashion. :) But if you're doing vector fluid dynamics calculations you can't beat any machine with Altivec!
Well one tape = 166709 units * 64 (k) / 1024 / 1024 = ~10.175GB. 10.175GB a week is not particularly impressive. :)
Interesting because the HQ 1024 benchmarks on firingsquad.com are at just under 400 for a 3.2ghz P4 clocked to 3.5ghz with a radeon 9800 pro. WTF is Tom's Hardware doing?
I want to know if that's really Apple's new idea of Aqua for window title bars, etc. It does not gel consistently with the background bars. Look at the system prefs pic, it has pinstripes whereas the others do not. The background bars are usually slightly translucent in 10.2 as well, why is that gone in this 10.3 shot? Also, why would Apple leave a more obvious pinstripe on the menu bar and remove it elsewhere? Either Apple has abandoned consistency within Aqua itself or this is a horrible theming job (like most themes are).
Expose also appears to be just minimize in place (the old 10.2 "feature" that was removed at the last minute) made to work for all things at once. I will be interested to see if it actually proves to be useful or just a gimmick to show off the power of Quartz Extreme.
I do believe these screenshots are real, but I hope to god the interface has been themed in some fashion and Apple isn't doing this to their UI...
I'm pleased that XD2 is striving for complete UI consistency. This is something I've always felt was lacking in the overall user experience for linux. Having a coherent set of human interface guidelines ala Apple's materials for OS X can do nothing but help.
When Apple makes a public beta release they release the new improvements to Webcore (KHTML) as well. So any and all contributions they make are released when the public binary appears. Just because you don't get it instantly doesn't mean they aren't releasing "all" of the improvements. This is fully in compliance with the LGPL that KHTML is licensed under.
In addition to that, why don't we ask a KHTML developer about how much communication is going on between teams right now before you start complaining about the situation?
Oops before somebody corrects me I should mention it's $5/mo for DirecTiVos unless you have a high level of service and then it becomes free. So not quite free, but $5/mo is a standard DirecTV mirroring fee for an extra box anyway.
...but DirecTiVos already have no extra fees involved, and you can buy a $250 lifetime that eliminates all fees for standalone tivos as well. Older ReplayTVs also had no monthly program guide fee of any kind.
The EyeTV, a USB MPEG-1 PVR for mac/windows also uses a free online guide, so this is not even close to the first PVR/DVR to do that. ReplayTV probably takes that honor, but many have followed since.
It should be noted that you can opt-out of any data mining whatsoever as well. I leave mine on though, I want tivo to know I love firefly!
Well thank god we have another pretentious reviewer bragging about how the ending of the Sixth Sense was so obvious. His analytical mind is clearly far superior! I bow before his massive intellect.
God I'm sick of that phrase. I want to beat anyone who says it to death with a blunt instrument.
:)
Anyway I disagree about the Bond film. I suppose michael loved World is Not Enough and Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist though. (Which one was really more believable?) I thought that despite how over the top it went Bond was overall a very entertaining action film. It was pure Bond and that's all I ask. Of course, I did have some grievances with the instances of slow motion, but I can't have everything I guess.
Mod the parent up. I disagree with his conclusion but his comparison of MS's and Sony's angles on net gaming is very good.
;)
That said, the (extremely likely) monthly fee after the first year is a deal breaker for me. I have not had any real problems with net games on my PS2 (although TM:Black Online is obviously a quickly slapped together free game), but I am not willing to pay another monthly fee on top of my net access. I think as people realize this Xbox Live is going to be looked upon with less favor than it is now. The headset requirements bother me too, I'm afraid I would have to squelch 10 people every time I got on a game...
Then again, there are precisely zero titles that compel me to pay for Xbox Live or even fork over the dough for an Xbox of my own so if/when a killer title comes out I'll continue to play on the one Xbox a foolish friend purchased.
Ah, glad to know you were just joking. :)
:)
In answer, they are not using typical astronomical terminology in describing the resolving power of the KH12. The KH12 can resolve 5" objects so they call it a "5-6 inch resolution". They aren't speaking in angular resolution.
Skinny triangle is a result of very small angles not having any appreciable curve on the short end (so no sin/cos/tan is needed). D is indeed the long side (distance from you to target).
Looking at your math I see no mistake, so that is indeed an impressive angular resolution. Of course, is that raw image or via image processing, and how advanced is their technology vs that of traditional astronomy, etc. I suppose another thing that would account for it is that a spy sat can take a very quick snapshot so distortion created by the atmosphere would not be nearly the issue it is for ground-based telescopes that take hours for exposures.
Of course as a final disclaimer thanks to computers the angular resolving power of ground-based scopes is improving dramatically with each passing year. Also, the wavelength of light you are observing drastically changes angular resolution. A formula to calculate this is angular resolution (arcsec) = 0.25(wavelength (um)/mirror diameter (m)).
Take the pictures at night? Please say you're joking. What you meant is take the pictures at new moon when the side of the moon that *always* faces us (tidally locked orbit/rotation) is not bathed in light. Of course, the Hubble was never meant to look at things that are that close so I doubt it could resolve properly. In the case of ground-based telescopes, ~1 arcsec of resolution is all you're going be able to get out of them thanks to the wonders of atmospheric distortion (although that is being eliminated via interferometry and new telescopes with thousands of tiny computer-controlleed mirrors that adjust based on data given by a laser pulse through the atmosphere to try to reduce distortion).
The moon is about 1/2 of a degree in the sky. Utilizing some back of the napkin calculations:
radius of the moon is 3.4E3 km
lunar rover would be less than 4m long
(arcseconds of resolution) = 2E5(arcsecs)*d/D (skinny triangle approximation)
1/2 degree is 30 minutes of arc which is multiplied by 60 secs per min to get 1800 arcsec
1800arcsec = 2E5*(3.4E3km)/D
D = 3.7E5 km or so (actual distance is somewhat greater)
So, now that you see the skinny triangle works let's find out the angular resolution of a 4m object at a distance of 3.7E5km
(angular resolution) = 2E5*(.004km/3.7E5km)
This comes out to about 2.1E-3 arc seconds. So...how are we going to find a rover again?
Of course, this whole point is moot because the Apollo missions left a reflective piece of material that astronomers use to measure the earth/moon distance (laser ranging). So there's already proof we've been there.
Actually it does have to do with the OS (or at least it appears on every Mac I own). Dragging 3000+ files from a column/list/icon view to another window won't even respond on my iMac 800. It stalls out for about 30 seconds and then eventually tries to drag. The outlines will stutter around horribly. This appears on my iMac, G3/450, and pismo G3/500.
It is really irritating, but other than that my complaints with the Finder are almost all gone.
I would assume they're worried that it will set a precedent for people who sell any kind of mods in Australia. If the PS2 guy gets off, how can MS stop the evil guy who does it with their precious Xbox? ;)
The trial in question was actually about a man who sold PS2 mod chips to allow PS2s to play imported and copied games. Not some magical chip that allows the Xbox to play PS2 games.
:)
Excellent editing there.
Because your "free" PVR is going to be a hacked up inferior substitute for the simplicity, power, and elegance of a TiVo unit.