Just idle speculation - would there be any practical use of redefining zero as the following -
1. Real zero value itself is a discontinuity in the number line 2. For practical purposes positive zero is the smallest possible positive floating point number we can assign 3. Negative zero is just the largest posible negative floating point number we can assign.
I am sure that this might be quite stupid in several ways, but my maths education was a long while back, so please excuse in advance.
Hmm, so the xcp client gets its banners from connected.sonymusic.com I wonder if the tech community cant teach SonyBMG a lesson by cracking Sony's DNS server and only redirecting the XCP banner requests to a banner that tells users about XCP flaws. The rest of connected.sonymusic.com.. could still be transparently directed to the original site I suppose.
That would certainly be a case of cracking for some social good. If Sony wont/cant do the right thing, a case of tech vigilantism could be justifiable
It seems hardocp is on the job already. They had a full technical review of the geforce3 and on their website but nvidia requested them to take the article down.
Hehe, whats so gripping about a video card that does nothing more than draw dots on the screen?
Madhu
Just because we would all love to believe that Windows 2000 really sucks so bad that Microsoft itself won't use, we can't fall for every other ex-Microsoft employee's statement. I have used Win2k myself, and it is way more stable than anything from Microsoft so far.
On the other hand, this just might be the occasion for somebody in MS to speak up and tell us exactly what kind of software they are using for all their net initiatives,
Madhu
Register array for utilizing burst mode transfer on local bus (5,687,357)
Apparatus adapted to be joined between the system I/O bus and I/O devices which translates addresses furnished directly by an application program (5,721,947)
DMA controller translates virtual I/O device address received directly from application program command to physical i/o device address of I/O device on device bus (5,758,182)
Method and apparatus for accelerating the transfer of graphical images (6,023,738)
Method and apparatus for accelerating the rendering of images (6,092,124)
The final two patents were finally granted by the US Patent Office in February and July of this year; the others are somewhat older. That suggests Nvidia has been hanging on to them for some time, presumable awaiting the right time to set the lawyers onto 3dfx.
Nvidia will no doubt argue that it has only just discovered the alleged violation, but that argument is scarcely credible in the cutthroat world of 3D graphics, where competitors' technologies are quickly dissected and scrutinised. We might give Nvidia the benefit of the doubt when it comes to 3dfx's VSA-100 chip, but the Voodoo 3? It will have had that chip in bits in its labs for over a year, so old (in 3D terms) is that processor.
That suggests Nvidia's legal move is tactical, either to force 3dfx to cough up royalties or attempt to take it to the cleaners when it refused to pay up. We expect 3dfx and Nvidia to come to an arrangement on this one - patent cases like these are usually settled out of court, primarily because it's cheaper in the long run.
And let's not forget that, back in 1998, 3dfx tried legal tactics against Nvidia, alleging the latter's Riva TNT chip's multi-texturing capability owed rather too much to the Voodoo 2's own. Earlier that year, both SGI and S3 separately sued Nvidia for patent violations. Nvidia dubbed the 3dfx suit "nuisance litigation". Is it now trying the same thing against its old rival? ®
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Just idle speculation - would there be any practical use of redefining zero as the following -
1. Real zero value itself is a discontinuity in the number line
2. For practical purposes positive zero is the smallest possible positive floating point number we can assign
3. Negative zero is just the largest posible negative floating point number we can assign.
I am sure that this might be quite stupid in several ways, but my maths education was a long while back, so please excuse in advance.
Hmm, so the xcp client gets its banners from connected.sonymusic.com
I wonder if the tech community cant teach SonyBMG a lesson by cracking Sony's DNS server and only redirecting the XCP banner requests to a banner that tells users about XCP flaws. The rest of connected.sonymusic.com.. could still be transparently directed to the original site I suppose.
That would certainly be a case of cracking for some social good. If Sony wont/cant do the right thing, a case of tech vigilantism could be justifiable
Regds
It seems hardocp is on the job already. They had a full technical review of the geforce3 and on their website but nvidia requested them to take the article down. Hehe, whats so gripping about a video card that does nothing more than draw dots on the screen? Madhu
Here is an alternative view on this whole affair.
Read this article on Register
Though it seems like flamebait, some of the points seem valid
Just because we would all love to believe that Windows 2000 really sucks so bad that Microsoft itself won't use, we can't fall for every other ex-Microsoft employee's statement. I have used Win2k myself, and it is way more stable than anything from Microsoft so far. On the other hand, this just might be the occasion for somebody in MS to speak up and tell us exactly what kind of software they are using for all their net initiatives, Madhu
Madhu