I think Matrox is a sitting duck waiting to be hit soon. 2D rawpixel performance is what 3dfx was good at, and nVidia is keeping that brandname and technology alive as well, so I suppose they have more plans for 3dfx and it`s strategy. ATI is much stronger than Matrox, because they can rely on the OEM market which is allways tough to dig into once relationships are going. They also allready have a retail history, and know how to build 3d cards for, so they have the best angle to play nVidia. I hope the can put the pressure on.
But I agree on the self-marketting stragety of nVidia, as you pointed out. The recent Xbox deal must sound like a dream to nVidia`s PR management.
Frankly I don`t think putting things like this on the Marsian soil is going to give us a propper mapping of the surface. The terrain they can cover is practically unsignifficant, I suspect they`re not really protected from crashing into holes or gliding from slopes, and their broadcasting resources are limitted. It`s probably better if we could put bigger and more robust wheeled vehicles on the surface since they have better navigation capacities. But I agree that the distributed peer 2 peer broadcasting approach would be a nice angle:)
This sounds like a very union-esque concept. and, perhaps, it is. But i can't stress enough the fact that if every employee of a company fails to sign an
agreement (to do|not to do) X, then there's nothing the company can do. They can threaten all they want, they may even fire one or two people just to show
how sharp their sword is. But, at the end of the day, the company will be forced to scrap the agreement
[..]
Well I think this is only possible because you`re talking about the IT & software sector. People can excercise a certain pressure on the company because IT companies have trouble in getting people, and then keeping them. Good people are hard to find and companies try to trade benefits, collegiality, respect and responsabilities for additional time withing the company, while trying to limit the interest of their employees in other areas/markets/companies. IT people are indeed scarce thes days, but I suspect this situation will end in maybe 5 to 8 years. So while it might be opportune to go job-(s)hopping now, it can`t hurt to try and build a more depending relationship with your company while you still can get the most benefits out of it. They won`t be as willing to render you some benefits once the booming is over.
Personally I don`t like that strategy one bit either, but I`m afraid that`s the way it`s supposed to go. I`m not really an IT-er (more interested in the science part of things) so this doesn`t really apply to me.
Got a bit carried away here, as usual, but I probably care too much about important stuff to turn it into a joke, and I still don't think it's appropriate in some way.. not this anyway.. limits are bad aren't they.. ah well..
I had a better quote related to yours btw, goes something like:
"Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive anyway"
Forgot whose it was though,
Cheers!
PS: you should try some belgian beer sometime:) That's not Heiniken but Duvel, Palm, Hoegaerden, etc..:)"
First they laugh at you
then they mock you
then they respect you
then you win.
Haha, you`re so funny dude.. really... If you want to mock us belgians, try to find something clever instead of dissing on media advertised pedophiles who don`t mean shit. For instance you probably don`t know that Paris - Brussels is a 1 hour drive, which should tell you something about our cultural background. You probably never heard of Pragha Kahn doing the club-music in Basic Instinct. You probably don`t even know we once had the biggest uranium supply in the world, or that your french fries actually have a belgian origin, not a french one. Who first put foot on Nova Zembla, what was the hometown of medieval Emperor Charles V, maybe Rubens and Horta ring a bell, Waterloo is where exactly, and who the hell is Dirk Frimout anyway.. You probably don`t know anything about us belgians, and that`s probably for the best because frankly we like our cozy little country with its peculiarities. Some things are awfully wrong here, just as they are everywhere else.. so fuck your arrogant media consumed attitude.. I`m sure your beloved american president will be very good to america. Closed minded hogwash.. hah! Atleast we can still count, and eh.. we even use.. ehm.. yeah.. [evil word]computers[/evil word] for that..
Seriously the description _is_ a bit out of line. For instance we arrested Marc Dutroux and the whole string of people attached to it, along with a few other creeps and now this Morkhoven guy is due for court as well. I think it`s pretty weird that belgian court is all over everybody`s television. We`re a very proud (and that`s not the same as stupid or narrow minded) people and the sad story of a few kids being tortured to death in a cellar isn`t exactly something you want to be remembered by. Get it ? Compare it to VietNam or Hiroshima if you like. It`s not funny, and I hope slashdot was mature enough to refrain from box-thinking.
You're so right, brute force is the way to go, but there's dumb brute force and smart brute force...
Hmm I see your point.. I looked it up and FSAAis probably the better method here. Still, as a "cheap" software replacement multi-sampling might proove usefull for modified versions with larger sample grids or things like that. As I mentioned before for simple surfaces you can e.g. work with gradient (1/z) encoded spans to search for the edges, to eliminate the 'brute' from brute force here.. just thinking aloud here now though..
You need to consider every pixel, because every pixel can be valid for an anti-aliassing operation. FSAA is a trick to increase overall picture quality. Applying the method to only parts would lead to ugly artifacts.. You
The anti-aliasing method discussed here detects edges in the model, not so much in the textures, so it presumes allready filtered or mipmapped textures. In that regard you could say that edges don't need to be detected for polygonal models that have smooth surfaces. But don't froget that any transformation can deform objects into hard-edged models which then again do need every pixel on the surface traced for possible hard edges.
So instead of having to worry about the nature of the surfaces ( which could no doubt be determined by examining normals and smoothing groups), 3D cards generally resort to brute-force algorithms in the image synthesis stages of the pipeline. It could actually be easy to generate gradients, but that only works economically for flat surfaces, and only for multi-sampling, not for any other type of sampling method.
Re:Genetic Engineering and Ubermensch
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Spidergoats
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· Score: 1
I say again: Human interference in nature is NORMAL. It is OK for me and I don`t care the slightest bit. Genetic Engeneering is not and I have given 4 decent reasons regarding the danger it implies. I don`t think I`m overreacting, just merely summing up the consequences of allowing GE. Playing god is just one. Aah, ignorance.. such bliss!
If you think I`m overreacting then there is something in you that labels these consequences I described as 'absurd', in any case, as unnatural. So you`re giving away yourself here in that you don`t really mean what you are writing:)
Re:Re-Re:Bring em on those steaks!
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Spidergoats
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B) Hmm, I get your point, but natural selection is not anymore part of human life. Consider our cattle: If it gets sick and we have a cure, we heal them. If we
can't we kill them and (hopefully) burn them. Natural selection my *ss! We did the selection on basis of our concepts of "Good" and "Bad".
As for human natural selection: that has gone a long time ago. Natural selection is based on the fact that many kids will be born and only the strongest
survive. (read: the others die) Now, how low has child-mortality dropped in our "civilised" countries? How many kids does a woman carry in her lifetime?
Two, three and all stay alive: if they have a heart-malformation or so....no problem we have surgery to "repair" them even tough they are very likely to give
those malformations over to their own kids. Only third-world countries still have real "natural selection".
Face it my friend: we have taken control a long time ago! If we lose control by creating something that will destroy us, then let it be that way: your cherished
natural selection will be back in place faster than you can say "human extinction"
Ah but you`re slightly changing the topic, here.:) The fact is, I don`t dispute or argue against the fact that man interferes in his environment and it`s evolution (which has allways been like this, only more so the last couple of decades), because it`s a very natural thing. Medicine, hospital care during childbirth, and breeding better cattle have been influenced by man`s standards wherever he could. But what is bothering me, is that GE wants to control the blueprints of life itself, not just the powerconsumtion and the weatherforecasts. The beauty and mistery of nature becomes a computer game which switches genes on and off, for better or.. well.. certainly not worse if we can help it. But we don`t really know now do we. Suppose eventually children are genetically programmed like.. (I`m just wildly guessing here).. blue eyes, blond hair, excellent skin, teeth, nose, no deseases, no deformations, no malfunctioning organs.. all I need to sell this on TV will be a black mustache, a red flag with random black lines, and the word "Ubermensch", and we`re back in business.
Surely humanity has learned from its mistakes.. or has it..
Klone versus Clone
Re:Bring em on those steaks!
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Spidergoats
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Ok, Jorg, this was asking for it =)
1) We DID change our eating habbits. In fact we don`t eat that much meat anymore at all, except for chicken and lambs. People of 25 years of age have died of Creutzfeld-Jacob allready, and knowing the incubation period varies with about 10-15 years depending on the person and the contamination, we`ll be seeing a lot more of that in years to come.
2) Genetical Engeneering from a science perspective should be ok, but selling genetically engeneered plants and seeds is bad, for multiple reasons: A] The companies that can generate this more resistent seeds and sell them to farmers are big and very kapitalistic. Their only concern is to be able to gain more crops per acre, easier to 'manufacture', and to get a better price overall. The quality of the item is not the issue. But what`s even more scaring is that they are pushing natural seeds out of the market, thus making farmers dependent on companies for their seeds. They can do that by rendering plants impotent, so they don`t reproduce new plantable seeds. Call it kapitalistic slavery if you want, or 'free market' at play. It fundamentally changes farming, not so much the product, or benefit to the consumer at the end of the chain. B] From a more philosophical standpoint, the plants and seeds we know today are what they are through natural selection. And while researches are pretty confident that they can turn genes into feature on/off switches, they don`t have the slightest clue what certain combinations mean for future generations. Natural reproduction and selection has made nature adaptaptable in natural ways. In the long term, letting nature take it`s course means things that are bad die. If our genetic engeneerd start to interfere, thy may be able to push flora or fauna through, regardless of deseases, infections, bacteria that should have destroyed the host long time ago. The only thing that won`t b genetically engeneered (protected), is you, the human. And you can see what question is coming now, don`t you?
As a general trend, chipmanufacturers are claiming all sorts of strange records in order to keep the attention and the "nr1" idea focussed on their company. Remember AMD and Intel fighting for first spot, Transmeta with it's paperware, XBOX selling future nVidia designs like they are here today, nVidia topping off 3DFX with really fast (and big, and dense) processors and very ugly image quality? So you see them putting out new designs and new chips that in reality don't make much sense, are even absurd in some cases, but that are put out nevertheless to play king of the hill with concurrents. The poublic can only enjoy glimpses of that wealth about 6 or 12 months later. This chip is no difference.
For instance, the chip Sony is proposing can only be put to work in a dedicated hardware environment, like a playstation II for instance. Even with this much memory on-chip, you still have bus issues, though they won't play as big a part. You should not forget that while this chip opens up new possibilities, games, by the time this chip arrives in full quantities (which will be in about 2 years, enough time to get revenue out of the PSII) will have evolved as well and will probably even be limitted by this kind of a design. My guess is dram on chip will help for games that exist today, but won't do for games that we'll play in 2 years time (as the 75million poly's per second rate suggests). I'm thinking firewire, and optical here. So clearly this chip is heading for dedicated and expensive platforms like the playstation III and possibly pc videocards as well, but I expect nVidia to have a serious advantage in performance by that time, because they know their designs inside out and know where the additional gains can be found in pc architectures, not to mention the experience they are getting from the XBox design, which will gain considerable market share from the PS II if it should proove to be stabel in gameplay. Let's hope all this designing and showing-off in the end does arrive where we want it, which is in our boxes!
Actually the resolution of a standard TV is far less accurate than that of any pc monitor out there. It's just that you don't notice it because you're too far away, the signal is analog instead of digital, and the pixels are auto-antialiassed. I think somebody once told me the resolution of a TV corresponds to something like 625 lines, 50 Hz, 2:1 interlace, 4:3 aspect ratio. So if you play your game on a regular TV you're wasting an awfull lot of detail (& computational power), still all these powerfull and expensive gaming consoles usually are connected to home TV's.. strange thing, no ?
You're laughing, but in the old european metropole that is close to where I live, they have these little digital information kiosks & boots where you can get touristic information about the city centre. When I tried them out once, I immediately wondered why the print button was on the screen, as ofcourse there wasn't a printer to be seen anywhere.. but the joke was complete when I suddenly noticed the NT kernel bluescreen bright and shiney all across the city.. I've since lost count of how many times I've seen ntoskrnl.exe claim all it's credit..
Anyway, it's a good chance for tourists and foreigners to get to meet the hospitality of the locals, but that's a completely different story..
[..]These people are poor, but they're still rational. If they want to trade some
information about themselves for a $100 off a computer, great! Cheaper computers for them and a better educated society
I can assure you that many people that see opportunities to get more even with their idealistic upperclass neighbours will go to great lengths to do so. That doesn't have to do anything with poor or rich, but people will probably not really consider privacy a personal issue any longer when things are put into a commercial frame. This has to do with sense of honour, education and social acceptance, things which poor people often don't get as they "should".
Think about the value of your privacy. Do you think it really means that much to the outside world ? What value could it have to middleman-society at all ? Virtually none. Unless there's room for exploitation, and this is where the idea imho doesn't cover ground. You may very well control one side of the transaction, but once you've put your trust in the other party, you're put to the mercy of that other party because it can do whatever it wants with your information. Again, in most cases, your information will be worthless, but it's typically the sensitive stuff that lends itself well to malice and relational havoc. There's only one party that can possibly be benefitted from here, and that is you. 100$ is peanuts. It lasts about a second, an hour, a year. Your privacy deal lasts forever. It shouldn't really work at all.
I think it's typical for the current timeframe to see privacy or transactions thereof being described like they are products, without much regard to the intrinsic value they can hold to a person. For instance, once you turn privacy control into a free market game, there is new room for all sorts of new discrimination. There is room for downgrading customers or colleagues based on knowledge they can't even claim is there's any more.
When I read something like this, I can't but think about the decadent period that led to the fall of the the glorious Roman empire.
I don't have a PDA (or GSM for that matter) and I'm forgetting heaps of stuff daily.. In fact I just remembered I should be calling a friend of mine.
What's true is that PDA's just make you look much smarter than you really are though, and one can start wondering whether society is currently being pushed beyond human capacity with all these nice little techtoys.. Still, if buying a PDA can save you from the pain of your colleagues throwing silly looks back at you on monday morning, gimme gimme!:)
No sir I'll be training my memory for just a while longer, for one it gives me a kick being able to do things without stupid techcrap, it's like this extra challenge, and lastly those PDA thingies may be very fancy but I'm not buying them unless they start becoming less restrictive in use (keys, voice rec, wireless,..) less expensive, and most of all, SAFE FOR OUR BRAINS (as opposed to GSM's which are not, but apprently no one cares)
Exactly.. the physical object is mine, and in the 80ies people would consider a CD their personal property and they would make as many taperecordings of them as they liked. The only thing that was illegal was the sale of these copies, because the content was copyrighted and therefor can't be pirated.
But now were past the nineties and cd's still read "reproduction prohibited". The fact of the matter is that the law and it's customs have not evolved. Every time I play a cd, or I read a book, or I tape something with my videocam, I'm reproducing something. Companies apprently strike deals with lawyers to buy up rights on something they don't own, namely: configurations of letters, notes, soundwaves, radiofrequencies.. Once they have bought these rights, they are supposedly allowed to claim every right on everything that resembles what was copyrighted, binary or not. That claim is based upon constitutions and law principles that can date back over 100 years. However, today, content and channels are starting to become less proprietry and more common property.
Obviously, the internet and new technologies and applications, which are entirely free, have played a big part in rendering this model obsolete. Distribution is being taken out of companies hands. Even expensive content generation, like software or websites, is being paralleled by anonymous groups of people doing it for nothing at all. Self-regulative systems are emerging everywhere and on every level (distribution/generation/..), with things like p2p and streaming as fine examples. Instead of trying to protect the old market, the music industry had better found ways to benefit from p2p-like models. And law-makers better start being creative and look at society and it's customs again, because what people are supposed to do, and what people are really considering as ok,is running completely out of sync. Initiatives like the internet release by Stephen King are only the first initial steps in scouting the commercial succes limits of such practices.
People need to start thinking differently, but then again, I believe that slogan is allready copyrighted as well.
I`ve read the XP Explained book of Kent Beck, and I can really advise everybody to get it. That one was a fast read, in fact it reads so fast that you stop thinking about the concepts that are presented, because they seem so natural to do (in a perfect world ofcourse). Reading the tiny review on his successor, this book seems like a poor sequel to the original. I`ll try to fetch it from my local library when it comes available, because those anecdotes are what really sticks into your mind when it comes to remembering the important stuff, but I`m not sure if it can serve me. I`m all for the practical nature of things, and XP Explained`s theoretical principles was even boring at times, so revisiting the same deal in a practical context might be interesting to read, but maybe not to buy.
Besides I think that to really succeed in working with XP, you have to reinvent it yourself in your own situation with your own needs and peculiarities. This book can sure give you some bright ideas, but it`s not something you should depend on.
.NET doesn`t exist yet. Looking at all the hype that`s going on, I cant` understand why people want to believe it`s really there, because it ain`t. It`s success is heavily tied to webservices. Services that don`t exist yet, on bandwith and connectivity that are simply too limited to distribute contents and software through cable, and support millions of homes in a clever, honest, totally transparent, and fair way, without any locking/dependability/security problems.. If you really think about it the beautifull idea turns into a horribl nightmare, and that`s not even considerring who`s doing the job behind the wheel..
VisualStudio.NET (7) is buggy like hell.. languages aren`t even backward compatible any more. Sure, you can do all sorts of nice thigns with it, but you can also throw away every bit of old and perfectly healthy code..
Here`s what a.NET (p)review panel talked about, ofcourse nothing but good on the subject here, because you can`t possible take a critical view on.NET, apport from the intended strategy it embodies, because it doesn`t exist. Here is the list of milestones but if you read the list, you realise that we have to wait for a veeEEry long time to really enjoy.NET properly, if at all.
A.NET faq can be found here.
I was actually looking for the backward compatibility issues page for VisualBasic.Net, which explains that there are a LOT of broken compatibilities with previous code. Maybe anybody else ahs seen it ?
I am sick of people assuming that the dreamcast automatically runs WinCE. Only certain games use it. Very few in fact, sega rally, and some vegas gambling game are the only two I
know of. If you look on the dreamcast it says COMPATIBLE with WinCE. Not powered by. Most of the games use sega's proprietary OS, like jet grind radio, NFL2k1, Crazy Taxi,
pretty much all of the major games out. So, to run dreamcast games, you'd have to emulate 2 different OS's. I think it would be just cheaper to put a SH-4 and a Power VR chip in it,
use them as your display and main processor and be done with it. The cost of just slapping them on the side, or having hardware fast enough for emulation would be ridiculous,
especially for a low cost set top box. Hell, with a 40gig hd, your gonna have to cut costs somewhere, so just use the same chips.
Since WinCE is a kernel remotely related to win2k and designed to be customizable for non-intel processors, and since it basicly just runs MZ code, i think any MS OS will lend itself quite quickly to be patcheable for running Dreamcast games that required WinCE, without much cost. Emulating sega`s own OS would ofcourse mean speed penalties, so that`s not an option, unless stuff like the X-Box is really going to be packed with Sega hardware so it can boot DreamCast games. But yeah I have my doubts on that one too..
Oh well, it seems MSFT seems to be in a constant state of denial, whether it`s good news or bad. But please do notice that you just referred to a ZDNet page (read: MSFT sponsored).
Seriously, for a minute one would say that DC support for X-Box is a win for both X-Box, and Sega. The only reason why announcements like this are being denied is either bad timing (for some strategic marketting reason), or the fact that it`s simply not true. So I`m pretty sceptical about those rumours. Then, ofcourse, on the other hand, phasing out hardware while keeping software going is a rather peculiar strategy as well.. too bad that one comes from the SEGA side.
At least I`m glad CmdrTaco didn`t call them. First he would have tried SEGA:
CmdrTaco: Hello
Sega: Yes ?
CmdrTaco: Ok. (click)
being so excited with the new found evidence, he`d prepare for the one thing he would never ever do in his whole life.. Taking a deep breath, he went:
CmdrTaco: Hi
Gates: No..
CmdrTaco: No ?.. Uh oh, must be a joke you made... hey everybody and their brother just submitted that not only your DNS is not working properly, but that you are planning a worldwide conspiracy with SEGA.. got some juicy nuggets on that?
Gates: ??... and... you are.. ??
CmdrTaco: CmdrTaco. You know me, we`ve allready met in court the other day.
Gates: Ah yes, you run that anti-MSFT website.
CmdrTaco: I know. Isn`t it cool..
Gates: (click)
CmdrTaco: How rude..
Exactly.. it`s kind of the same where I live (Belgium).. we have the same sort of water pumps, not that many water power plants, but quite a few windmill parks.. we`re sorting trash, though that`s only _just_ starting to really take off / be effective.
Hey, cool that you live near a Bond location!!:) I don`t think he jumped on the 'Atomium' yet.. he should try that some time haha..
In Schotland, where tourism is a big part (if not the biggest) of the national economy, people really take good care of their land. Sure you got all sorts of industry there too, but it`s quite amazing. I guess the same reasoning counts for Switzerland as well.
Well, our prime minister said at the recent conference in Italy (the one with the number-of-votes problem) that we need more Europe, not less like many people seem to agree on (like France`s president). The reason why he said that is exactly because small things don`t matter if we don`t all team together on them, and to prevent countries from trying to dump problems 'over the border' by doing things their own nifty way.
I think he made a good statement, and I hope he makes it again when Belgium will get to lead the European council this summer. But those politicians can`t really be trusted I`m afraid, not even the "good" ones..:)
I totally agree with you that nuclear is the way to go. I know some people will cry about Chernobyl, but that incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks ofc communism, not nuclear power. An intelligent reactor design (such as Candu) operated by well-trained individuals would never suffer such a catastrophe.
[..]Another thing worth noting is that electric cars are a stupid idea if the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Finally, your average coal plant puts out more radioactivity than your average nuclear plant (due to radioactive isotopes in the coal)
First up I know physicist believe in their models but saying they "can`t ever fail us" is quite a pretentious and hardly an open state of mind. I`m a computer scientist and as such would rather "plan for the best, prepare for the worst" instead of waiting for something to happen to proove me wrong.
Aside from potential meltdowns (not necessarily in the perfect US but in other countries that have not such a stable financial situation), there is the waste. Nuclear waste. What are you going to do with it. Put it inside missiles and hope for another war to break out ? Dig some hole in some poor country and pay them to shut up ? Shoot it to the moon/sun and close our eyes happily ? Ofcourse not.. They`re either immoral, unethical or too costly. Face it, there is no solution. Thirdly, nuclear power is not that efficient either.
Instead of trying to sell the nuclear power idea again (which I agree on itself is simply a necessity to have and to research, but not in massive commericial quantities!) maybe the US should shrink it`s power consumption. Now there`s an idea. Your cars are horrible when it comes to gas consumption, european (fueled) cars have much better mileage (since we also pay more for our gas, btw). Houses are badly isolated from heat / cold so they need heating and airco`s 24/7, everywhere (so we also pay more for our house, btw). You waste perfectly unused plastics and food in amazingly huge proportions. These are all facts, and I`m not pointing fingers or anything because that`s not what I`m after, I`m just giving you an idea of the difference in lifestyle and what it means to power consumption in the first place.
My final point is that yes, you won`t be able to produce all power needed to ru your country by windmill parks or solar/water/tidal powerplants, but these are valid alternatives. Try checking Greenpeace and se what idea`s they have come up with in the past, maybe it will inspire you to realise the problem is not the fuel, it`s the consumption. And from that we go to economy. And ofcourse that`s why US doesn`t want any restrictions on their toxic exhausts. I`m sure if you`re caring enough about the environment your children have to live in, the food they have to eat and the air they have to breath, that you want to have a better world, not so much a nuclear garbage belt, right ? So instead of trying to solve a problem by creating another one, try looking at the source of it for a minute.. if you`re openminded, you`ll atleast agree that there IS more work to be done
Actually, in most of our cities, people can allready vote electronically (that's Belgium, squeezed in between France, Luxemburg, Germany and The Netherlands) and I'm pretty sure other european states are having such systems set up as well. People respond pretty well to the new technology helping out. Voting generally happens much faster, there's less paper wasted, results are counted faster. There have been problems with getting older people to vote correctly on those too, but it all in all it works rather well.
Here's how it goes: People get a smartcard, get to a booth with curtain behind which they see a screen, a pen and a slot to put the card in. As soon as they insert the card, the machine switches to voting lists on which you can color holes with the pen (and undo if you made a mistake). When you're finished, the card ejects from the slot and that's it. They return the card to the head of the voting bureau, who puts it in a sealed box and off you go again.
Actually, our government is even considering e-government, but presently the rate of internet use in our country still lags behind (mainly because of the huge phonebills people are getting).. less than 15% of our population is using internet on a semi-regular basis.
Abrash is one of my heroes too.. I bought his Zen of Code Optimalisation, and a whole bunch of (old even) DDJ's after that.
I know he's right on everything he says in his little "I'm back" article here, but it's nothing I don't know allready.. But I really do hope we can get to see him kicking butt in the algorithmic alley soon again, too:) This is just awesome news in a sense, a bit scary too, but it's gonna be fun I'm sure:) I'm glad he's back
Now if you'll excuse me.. i got some of that printing to do..
Slashdot Mirror
Except that it might be interesting for faster and more reliable communication in space maybe ?
I think Matrox is a sitting duck waiting to be hit soon. 2D rawpixel performance is what 3dfx was good at, and nVidia is keeping that brandname and technology alive as well, so I suppose they have more plans for 3dfx and it`s strategy. ATI is much stronger than Matrox, because they can rely on the OEM market which is allways tough to dig into once relationships are going. They also allready have a retail history, and know how to build 3d cards for, so they have the best angle to play nVidia. I hope the can put the pressure on.
But I agree on the self-marketting stragety of nVidia, as you pointed out. The recent Xbox deal must sound like a dream to nVidia`s PR management.
Frankly I don`t think putting things like this on the Marsian soil is going to give us a propper mapping of the surface. The terrain they can cover is practically unsignifficant, I suspect they`re not really protected from crashing into holes or gliding from slopes, and their broadcasting resources are limitted. It`s probably better if we could put bigger and more robust wheeled vehicles on the surface since they have better navigation capacities. But I agree that the distributed peer 2 peer broadcasting approach would be a nice angle
This sounds like a very union-esque concept. and, perhaps, it is. But i can't stress enough the fact that if every employee of a company fails to sign an agreement (to do|not to do) X, then there's nothing the company can do. They can threaten all they want, they may even fire one or two people just to show how sharp their sword is. But, at the end of the day, the company will be forced to scrap the agreement
[..]
Well I think this is only possible because you`re talking about the IT & software sector. People can excercise a certain pressure on the company because IT companies have trouble in getting people, and then keeping them. Good people are hard to find and companies try to trade benefits, collegiality, respect and responsabilities for additional time withing the company, while trying to limit the interest of their employees in other areas/markets/companies. IT people are indeed scarce thes days, but I suspect this situation will end in maybe 5 to 8 years. So while it might be opportune to go job-(s)hopping now, it can`t hurt to try and build a more depending relationship with your company while you still can get the most benefits out of it. They won`t be as willing to render you some benefits once the booming is over.
Personally I don`t like that strategy one bit either, but I`m afraid that`s the way it`s supposed to go. I`m not really an IT-er (more interested in the science part of things) so this doesn`t really apply to me.
Hmm.. maybe you're right
Got a bit carried away here, as usual, but I probably care too much about important stuff to turn it into a joke, and I still don't think it's appropriate in some way.. not this anyway.. limits are bad aren't they.. ah well..
I had a better quote related to yours btw, goes something like:
"Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive anyway"
Forgot whose it was though,
Cheers!
PS: you should try some belgian beer sometime
First they laugh at you
then they mock you
then they respect you
then you win.
Haha, you`re so funny dude.. really... If you want to mock us belgians, try to find something clever instead of dissing on media advertised pedophiles who don`t mean shit. For instance you probably don`t know that Paris - Brussels is a 1 hour drive, which should tell you something about our cultural background. You probably never heard of Pragha Kahn doing the club-music in Basic Instinct. You probably don`t even know we once had the biggest uranium supply in the world, or that your french fries actually have a belgian origin, not a french one. Who first put foot on Nova Zembla, what was the hometown of medieval Emperor Charles V, maybe Rubens and Horta ring a bell, Waterloo is where exactly, and who the hell is Dirk Frimout anyway.. You probably don`t know anything about us belgians, and that`s probably for the best because frankly we like our cozy little country with its peculiarities. Some things are awfully wrong here, just as they are everywhere else.. so fuck your arrogant media consumed attitude.. I`m sure your beloved american president will be very good to america. Closed minded hogwash.. hah! Atleast we can still count, and eh.. we even use.. ehm.. yeah.. [evil word]computers[/evil word] for that..
Seriously the description _is_ a bit out of line. For instance we arrested Marc Dutroux and the whole string of people attached to it, along with a few other creeps and now this Morkhoven guy is due for court as well. I think it`s pretty weird that belgian court is all over everybody`s television. We`re a very proud (and that`s not the same as stupid or narrow minded) people and the sad story of a few kids being tortured to death in a cellar isn`t exactly something you want to be remembered by. Get it ? Compare it to VietNam or Hiroshima if you like. It`s not funny, and I hope slashdot was mature enough to refrain from box-thinking.
Made in belgium, and proud of it.
You're so right, brute force is the way to go, but there's dumb brute force and smart brute force ...
Hmm I see your point.. I looked it up and FSAA is probably the better method here. Still, as a "cheap" software replacement multi-sampling might proove usefull for modified versions with larger sample grids or things like that. As I mentioned before for simple surfaces you can e.g. work with gradient (1/z) encoded spans to search for the edges, to eliminate the 'brute' from brute force here.. just thinking aloud here now though..
You need to consider every pixel, because every pixel can be valid for an anti-aliassing operation. FSAA is a trick to increase overall picture quality. Applying the method to only parts would lead to ugly artifacts.. You
The anti-aliasing method discussed here detects edges in the model, not so much in the textures, so it presumes allready filtered or mipmapped textures. In that regard you could say that edges don't need to be detected for polygonal models that have smooth surfaces. But don't froget that any transformation can deform objects into hard-edged models which then again do need every pixel on the surface traced for possible hard edges.
So instead of having to worry about the nature of the surfaces ( which could no doubt be determined by examining normals and smoothing groups), 3D cards generally resort to brute-force algorithms in the image synthesis stages of the pipeline. It could actually be easy to generate gradients, but that only works economically for flat surfaces, and only for multi-sampling, not for any other type of sampling method.
I say again: Human interference in nature is NORMAL. It is OK for me and I don`t care the slightest bit. Genetic Engeneering is not and I have given 4 decent reasons regarding the danger it implies. I don`t think I`m overreacting, just merely summing up the consequences of allowing GE. Playing god is just one. Aah, ignorance.. such bliss!
:)
If you think I`m overreacting then there is something in you that labels these consequences I described as 'absurd', in any case, as unnatural. So you`re giving away yourself here in that you don`t really mean what you are writing
B) Hmm, I get your point, but natural selection is not anymore part of human life. Consider our cattle: If it gets sick and we have a cure, we heal them. If we can't we kill them and (hopefully) burn them. Natural selection my *ss! We did the selection on basis of our concepts of "Good" and "Bad". As for human natural selection: that has gone a long time ago. Natural selection is based on the fact that many kids will be born and only the strongest survive. (read: the others die) Now, how low has child-mortality dropped in our "civilised" countries? How many kids does a woman carry in her lifetime? Two, three and all stay alive: if they have a heart-malformation or so....no problem we have surgery to "repair" them even tough they are very likely to give those malformations over to their own kids. Only third-world countries still have real "natural selection". Face it my friend: we have taken control a long time ago! If we lose control by creating something that will destroy us, then let it be that way: your cherished natural selection will be back in place faster than you can say "human extinction"
:) The fact is, I don`t dispute or argue against the fact that man interferes in his environment and it`s evolution (which has allways been like this, only more so the last couple of decades), because it`s a very natural thing. Medicine, hospital care during childbirth, and breeding better cattle have been influenced by man`s standards wherever he could. But what is bothering me, is that GE wants to control the blueprints of life itself, not just the powerconsumtion and the weatherforecasts. The beauty and mistery of nature becomes a computer game which switches genes on and off, for better or .. well.. certainly not worse if we can help it. But we don`t really know now do we. Suppose eventually children are genetically programmed like.. (I`m just wildly guessing here).. blue eyes, blond hair, excellent skin, teeth, nose, no deseases, no deformations, no malfunctioning organs.. all I need to sell this on TV will be a black mustache, a red flag with random black lines, and the word "Ubermensch", and we`re back in business.
Ah but you`re slightly changing the topic, here.
Surely humanity has learned from its mistakes.. or has it..
Klone versus Clone
Ok, Jorg, this was asking for it =)
1) We DID change our eating habbits. In fact we don`t eat that much meat anymore at all, except for chicken and lambs. People of 25 years of age have died of Creutzfeld-Jacob allready, and knowing the incubation period varies with about 10-15 years depending on the person and the contamination, we`ll be seeing a lot more of that in years to come.
2) Genetical Engeneering from a science perspective should be ok, but selling genetically engeneered plants and seeds is bad, for multiple reasons: A] The companies that can generate this more resistent seeds and sell them to farmers are big and very kapitalistic. Their only concern is to be able to gain more crops per acre, easier to 'manufacture', and to get a better price overall. The quality of the item is not the issue. But what`s even more scaring is that they are pushing natural seeds out of the market, thus making farmers dependent on companies for their seeds. They can do that by rendering plants impotent, so they don`t reproduce new plantable seeds. Call it kapitalistic slavery if you want, or 'free market' at play. It fundamentally changes farming, not so much the product, or benefit to the consumer at the end of the chain. B] From a more philosophical standpoint, the plants and seeds we know today are what they are through natural selection. And while researches are pretty confident that they can turn genes into feature on/off switches, they don`t have the slightest clue what certain combinations mean for future generations. Natural reproduction and selection has made nature adaptaptable in natural ways. In the long term, letting nature take it`s course means things that are bad die. If our genetic engeneerd start to interfere, thy may be able to push flora or fauna through, regardless of deseases, infections, bacteria that should have destroyed the host long time ago. The only thing that won`t b genetically engeneered (protected), is you, the human. And you can see what question is coming now, don`t you?
As a general trend, chipmanufacturers are claiming all sorts of strange records in order to keep the attention and the "nr1" idea focussed on their company. Remember AMD and Intel fighting for first spot, Transmeta with it's paperware, XBOX selling future nVidia designs like they are here today, nVidia topping off 3DFX with really fast (and big, and dense) processors and very ugly image quality? So you see them putting out new designs and new chips that in reality don't make much sense, are even absurd in some cases, but that are put out nevertheless to play king of the hill with concurrents. The poublic can only enjoy glimpses of that wealth about 6 or 12 months later. This chip is no difference.
For instance, the chip Sony is proposing can only be put to work in a dedicated hardware environment, like a playstation II for instance. Even with this much memory on-chip, you still have bus issues, though they won't play as big a part. You should not forget that while this chip opens up new possibilities, games, by the time this chip arrives in full quantities (which will be in about 2 years, enough time to get revenue out of the PSII) will have evolved as well and will probably even be limitted by this kind of a design. My guess is dram on chip will help for games that exist today, but won't do for games that we'll play in 2 years time (as the 75million poly's per second rate suggests). I'm thinking firewire, and optical here. So clearly this chip is heading for dedicated and expensive platforms like the playstation III and possibly pc videocards as well, but I expect nVidia to have a serious advantage in performance by that time, because they know their designs inside out and know where the additional gains can be found in pc architectures, not to mention the experience they are getting from the XBox design, which will gain considerable market share from the PS II if it should proove to be stabel in gameplay. Let's hope all this designing and showing-off in the end does arrive where we want it, which is in our boxes!
Actually the resolution of a standard TV is far less accurate than that of any pc monitor out there. It's just that you don't notice it because you're too far away, the signal is analog instead of digital, and the pixels are auto-antialiassed. I think somebody once told me the resolution of a TV corresponds to something like 625 lines, 50 Hz, 2:1 interlace, 4:3 aspect ratio. So if you play your game on a regular TV you're wasting an awfull lot of detail (& computational power), still all these powerfull and expensive gaming consoles usually are connected to home TV's.. strange thing, no ?
You're laughing, but in the old european metropole that is close to where I live, they have these little digital information kiosks & boots where you can get touristic information about the city centre. When I tried them out once, I immediately wondered why the print button was on the screen, as ofcourse there wasn't a printer to be seen anywhere.. but the joke was complete when I suddenly noticed the NT kernel bluescreen bright and shiney all across the city.. I've since lost count of how many times I've seen ntoskrnl.exe claim all it's credit..
Anyway, it's a good chance for tourists and foreigners to get to meet the hospitality of the locals, but that's a completely different story..
[..]These people are poor, but they're still rational. If they want to trade some information about themselves for a $100 off a computer, great! Cheaper computers for them and a better educated society
I can assure you that many people that see opportunities to get more even with their idealistic upperclass neighbours will go to great lengths to do so. That doesn't have to do anything with poor or rich, but people will probably not really consider privacy a personal issue any longer when things are put into a commercial frame. This has to do with sense of honour, education and social acceptance, things which poor people often don't get as they "should".
Think about the value of your privacy. Do you think it really means that much to the outside world ? What value could it have to middleman-society at all ? Virtually none. Unless there's room for exploitation, and this is where the idea imho doesn't cover ground. You may very well control one side of the transaction, but once you've put your trust in the other party, you're put to the mercy of that other party because it can do whatever it wants with your information. Again, in most cases, your information will be worthless, but it's typically the sensitive stuff that lends itself well to malice and relational havoc. There's only one party that can possibly be benefitted from here, and that is you. 100$ is peanuts. It lasts about a second, an hour, a year. Your privacy deal lasts forever. It shouldn't really work at all.
I think it's typical for the current timeframe to see privacy or transactions thereof being described like they are products, without much regard to the intrinsic value they can hold to a person. For instance, once you turn privacy control into a free market game, there is new room for all sorts of new discrimination. There is room for downgrading customers or colleagues based on knowledge they can't even claim is there's any more.
When I read something like this, I can't but think about the decadent period that led to the fall of the the glorious Roman empire.
I don't have a PDA (or GSM for that matter) and I'm forgetting heaps of stuff daily.. In fact I just remembered I should be calling a friend of mine.
What's true is that PDA's just make you look much smarter than you really are though, and one can start wondering whether society is currently being pushed beyond human capacity with all these nice little techtoys.. Still, if buying a PDA can save you from the pain of your colleagues throwing silly looks back at you on monday morning, gimme gimme!
No sir I'll be training my memory for just a while longer, for one it gives me a kick being able to do things without stupid techcrap, it's like this extra challenge, and lastly those PDA thingies may be very fancy but I'm not buying them unless they start becoming less restrictive in use (keys, voice rec, wireless,..) less expensive, and most of all, SAFE FOR OUR BRAINS (as opposed to GSM's which are not, but apprently no one cares)
Exactly.. the physical object is mine, and in the 80ies people would consider a CD their personal property and they would make as many taperecordings of them as they liked. The only thing that was illegal was the sale of these copies, because the content was copyrighted and therefor can't be pirated.
But now were past the nineties and cd's still read "reproduction prohibited". The fact of the matter is that the law and it's customs have not evolved. Every time I play a cd, or I read a book, or I tape something with my videocam, I'm reproducing something. Companies apprently strike deals with lawyers to buy up rights on something they don't own, namely: configurations of letters, notes, soundwaves, radiofrequencies.. Once they have bought these rights, they are supposedly allowed to claim every right on everything that resembles what was copyrighted, binary or not. That claim is based upon constitutions and law principles that can date back over 100 years. However, today, content and channels are starting to become less proprietry and more common property.
Obviously, the internet and new technologies and applications, which are entirely free, have played a big part in rendering this model obsolete. Distribution is being taken out of companies hands. Even expensive content generation, like software or websites, is being paralleled by anonymous groups of people doing it for nothing at all. Self-regulative systems are emerging everywhere and on every level (distribution/generation/..), with things like p2p and streaming as fine examples. Instead of trying to protect the old market, the music industry had better found ways to benefit from p2p-like models. And law-makers better start being creative and look at society and it's customs again, because what people are supposed to do, and what people are really considering as ok
People need to start thinking differently, but then again, I believe that slogan is allready copyrighted as well.
I`ve read the XP Explained book of Kent Beck, and I can really advise everybody to get it. That one was a fast read, in fact it reads so fast that you stop thinking about the concepts that are presented, because they seem so natural to do (in a perfect world ofcourse). Reading the tiny review on his successor, this book seems like a poor sequel to the original. I`ll try to fetch it from my local library when it comes available, because those anecdotes are what really sticks into your mind when it comes to remembering the important stuff, but I`m not sure if it can serve me. I`m all for the practical nature of things, and XP Explained`s theoretical principles was even boring at times, so revisiting the same deal in a practical context might be interesting to read, but maybe not to buy.
Besides I think that to really succeed in working with XP, you have to reinvent it yourself in your own situation with your own needs and peculiarities. This book can sure give you some bright ideas, but it`s not something you should depend on.
It looks like MS Marketting had you fooled.
VisualStudio.NET (7) is buggy like hell.. languages aren`t even backward compatible any more. Sure, you can do all sorts of nice thigns with it, but you can also throw away every bit of old and perfectly healthy code..
Here`s what a
Here is the list of milestones but if you read the list, you realise that we have to wait for a veeEEry long time to really enjoy
A
I was actually looking for the backward compatibility issues page for VisualBasic.Net, which explains that there are a LOT of broken compatibilities with previous code. Maybe anybody else ahs seen it ?
I am sick of people assuming that the dreamcast automatically runs WinCE. Only certain games use it. Very few in fact, sega rally, and some vegas gambling game are the only two I know of. If you look on the dreamcast it says COMPATIBLE with WinCE. Not powered by. Most of the games use sega's proprietary OS, like jet grind radio, NFL2k1, Crazy Taxi, pretty much all of the major games out. So, to run dreamcast games, you'd have to emulate 2 different OS's. I think it would be just cheaper to put a SH-4 and a Power VR chip in it, use them as your display and main processor and be done with it. The cost of just slapping them on the side, or having hardware fast enough for emulation would be ridiculous, especially for a low cost set top box. Hell, with a 40gig hd, your gonna have to cut costs somewhere, so just use the same chips.
Since WinCE is a kernel remotely related to win2k and designed to be customizable for non-intel processors, and since it basicly just runs MZ code, i think any MS OS will lend itself quite quickly to be patcheable for running Dreamcast games that required WinCE, without much cost. Emulating sega`s own OS would ofcourse mean speed penalties, so that`s not an option, unless stuff like the X-Box is really going to be packed with Sega hardware so it can boot DreamCast games. But yeah I have my doubts on that one too..
Oh well, it seems MSFT seems to be in a constant state of denial, whether it`s good news or bad. But please do notice that you just referred to a ZDNet page (read: MSFT sponsored).
Seriously, for a minute one would say that DC support for X-Box is a win for both X-Box, and Sega. The only reason why announcements like this are being denied is either bad timing (for some strategic marketting reason), or the fact that it`s simply not true. So I`m pretty sceptical about those rumours. Then, ofcourse, on the other hand, phasing out hardware while keeping software going is a rather peculiar strategy as well.. too bad that one comes from the SEGA side.
At least I`m glad CmdrTaco didn`t call them. First he would have tried SEGA:
CmdrTaco: Hello
Sega: Yes ?
CmdrTaco: Ok. (click)
being so excited with the new found evidence, he`d prepare for the one thing he would never ever do in his whole life.. Taking a deep breath, he went:
CmdrTaco: Hi
Gates: No..
CmdrTaco: No ?.. Uh oh, must be a joke you made... hey everybody and their brother just submitted that not only your DNS is not working properly, but that you are planning a worldwide conspiracy with SEGA.. got some juicy nuggets on that?
Gates: ??... and
CmdrTaco: CmdrTaco. You know me, we`ve allready met in court the other day.
Gates: Ah yes, you run that anti-MSFT website.
CmdrTaco: I know. Isn`t it cool..
Gates: (click)
CmdrTaco: How rude..
Exactly.. it`s kind of the same where I live (Belgium).. we have the same sort of water pumps, not that many water power plants, but quite a few windmill parks.. we`re sorting trash, though that`s only _just_ starting to really take off / be effective.
Hey, cool that you live near a Bond location!!
In Schotland, where tourism is a big part (if not the biggest) of the national economy, people really take good care of their land. Sure you got all sorts of industry there too, but it`s quite amazing. I guess the same reasoning counts for Switzerland as well.
Well, our prime minister said at the recent conference in Italy (the one with the number-of-votes problem) that we need more Europe, not less like many people seem to agree on (like France`s president). The reason why he said that is exactly because small things don`t matter if we don`t all team together on them, and to prevent countries from trying to dump problems 'over the border' by doing things their own nifty way.
I think he made a good statement, and I hope he makes it again when Belgium will get to lead the European council this summer. But those politicians can`t really be trusted I`m afraid, not even the "good" ones..
I totally agree with you that nuclear is the way to go. I know some people will cry about Chernobyl, but that incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks ofc communism, not nuclear power. An intelligent reactor design (such as Candu) operated by well-trained individuals would never suffer such a catastrophe.
[..]Another thing worth noting is that electric cars are a stupid idea if the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Finally, your average coal plant puts out more radioactivity than your average nuclear plant (due to radioactive isotopes in the coal)
First up I know physicist believe in their models but saying they "can`t ever fail us" is quite a pretentious and hardly an open state of mind. I`m a computer scientist and as such would rather "plan for the best, prepare for the worst" instead of waiting for something to happen to proove me wrong.
Aside from potential meltdowns (not necessarily in the perfect US but in other countries that have not such a stable financial situation), there is the waste. Nuclear waste. What are you going to do with it. Put it inside missiles and hope for another war to break out ? Dig some hole in some poor country and pay them to shut up ? Shoot it to the moon/sun and close our eyes happily ? Ofcourse not.. They`re either immoral, unethical or too costly. Face it, there is no solution. Thirdly, nuclear power is not that efficient either.
Instead of trying to sell the nuclear power idea again (which I agree on itself is simply a necessity to have and to research, but not in massive commericial quantities!) maybe the US should shrink it`s power consumption. Now there`s an idea. Your cars are horrible when it comes to gas consumption, european (fueled) cars have much better mileage (since we also pay more for our gas, btw). Houses are badly isolated from heat / cold so they need heating and airco`s 24/7, everywhere (so we also pay more for our house, btw). You waste perfectly unused plastics and food in amazingly huge proportions. These are all facts, and I`m not pointing fingers or anything because that`s not what I`m after, I`m just giving you an idea of the difference in lifestyle and what it means to power consumption in the first place.
My final point is that yes, you won`t be able to produce all power needed to ru your country by windmill parks or solar/water/tidal powerplants, but these are valid alternatives. Try checking Greenpeace and se what idea`s they have come up with in the past, maybe it will inspire you to realise the problem is not the fuel, it`s the consumption. And from that we go to economy. And ofcourse that`s why US doesn`t want any restrictions on their toxic exhausts. I`m sure if you`re caring enough about the environment your children have to live in, the food they have to eat and the air they have to breath, that you want to have a better world, not so much a nuclear garbage belt, right ? So instead of trying to solve a problem by creating another one, try looking at the source of it for a minute.. if you`re openminded, you`ll atleast agree that there IS more work to be done
No, I`m not a greenpeace activist. Yet.
Actually, in most of our cities, people can allready vote electronically (that's Belgium, squeezed in between France, Luxemburg, Germany and The Netherlands) and I'm pretty sure other european states are having such systems set up as well. People respond pretty well to the new technology helping out. Voting generally happens much faster, there's less paper wasted, results are counted faster. There have been problems with getting older people to vote correctly on those too, but it all in all it works rather well.
Here's how it goes: People get a smartcard, get to a booth with curtain behind which they see a screen, a pen and a slot to put the card in. As soon as they insert the card, the machine switches to voting lists on which you can color holes with the pen (and undo if you made a mistake). When you're finished, the card ejects from the slot and that's it. They return the card to the head of the voting bureau, who puts it in a sealed box and off you go again.
Actually, our government is even considering e-government, but presently the rate of internet use in our country still lags behind (mainly because of the huge phonebills people are getting).. less than 15% of our population is using internet on a semi-regular basis.
Abrash is one of my heroes too.. I bought his Zen of Code Optimalisation, and a whole bunch of (old even) DDJ's after that.
:) This is just awesome news in a sense, a bit scary too, but it's gonna be fun I'm sure :) I'm glad he's back
I know he's right on everything he says in his little "I'm back" article here, but it's nothing I don't know allready.. But I really do hope we can get to see him kicking butt in the algorithmic alley soon again, too
Now if you'll excuse me.. i got some of that printing to do..