Damn--- I'm glad I'm not the only one who's waiting for the tech from that movie...Unlike some of the other parts of it, that part seemed quite feasable and "coming soon" ish...
Put that kind of a holo-interface on a computer gauntlet, then run it off the blood-batteries from that other recent article, and you're set! Instant portable go-anywhere computer...Or optionally, modern-day illusionist...Imagine what you could do with an instantly accessable hologram generator powered by a really fast (whatever is probably 5 computer generations away now)....
At the last spot I lived, I could only *WISH* for dead spots on the radio...
We were about half a mile down the road from a radio station "Cranking out 100 thousand volts of Classic Rock!". I'm not normally for pretty much any restrictions, but this place was really starting to piss me off...
It was ONE station, and the damn thing bled into every other station on the damn car radio...The WHOLE spectrum.... Hell, we even occaisionally got the thing on the tv... It felt like I should start wearing my tinfoil hat and underwear just for the Health protection...
Yeah- We moved.
The whole point here being...I would've been HAPPY with a mere -50 meters-(?) and a single frequency being polluted...3 miles and the whole spectrum is another story altogether... We get plenty of radio pollution in this country--And personally, I think being able to be very specific about frequencies (and range would also be good---HINT) can't be anything but an improvement...
Heck- you could even skirt the radio issue with a pair of bluetooth modules, right? Of course, I guess someone has to actually make em first...
Hmmm...Although I do kinda wonder what would happen if everyone started using these...probably something like the cordless phone thingy...
Actually, I gotta agree with you on that last bit about being at the live shows...
Seems like the last doizen or so cd's I've bought have been DIRECTLY from the band at some little joint where they were playing... They're generally very eager to sell you a cd at 10 bucks, and to support the band directly like that, I'm willing to shell out the dough. Heck, it's not even JUST the little bar-bands either---Even the ones who made it to the Big Stadium concerts sell their own cds...
Of course the drawback is that the Record company probably doesn't get a single red cent out of it... Darn!
Ummm...Seems to mne that it would be easier to scour the University surplus stores, ebay, thrift shops, etc until you find an actual ps/2 compatable keyboard (laptop maybe?) that would fit the dimensions...
But hey, that's just me taking the easy way out and NOT getting that Electrical engineering degree...
Yeah, it is pretty funny...But as someone who waited a very long time for the Linux client, I gotta at least say "Better late than never". I'm actually quite happy with the game as is. Maybe next time the whole game will be built around something a bit more portable...but I'm not expecting miracles at this point.
It's a good game, and though it's probably not extremely profitable for Bioware (if at all---YET...), they're sticking to their original statements and following through. (So Thank you Bioware People!)
We have the linux client, and now we apparantly have the Mac Client. How many other game companies have been doing that? I get the feeling that lnux gaming is oddly a growing market...and I only see it getting bigger...Hopefully the big companies are finally starting to see it.
Yes- You are correct. If sheer killing were the only point to the game, why it'd be...um...quake3?
Anyway, I think that Doom3 is going to have a LOT going for it, and some of it it definitely has in common with Q3...
---Technology: The Game engine licensing tends to make ID more money than the game sales themselves, IIRC...which doesn't mean much to us, except to say that there will be a fountain of innovative games coming out of the Doom3 engine, and I'm probably going to enjoy quite a lot of them... (Can you say 'Half-Life'?)
---Story: From all the interviews I've read, this game SCARES THE BEJEZUS outta people...That's the effect that keeps people lined up at scary movies and roller coasters...I hope I do get scared!
Actually, that hardware path has already been trod down, and the market didn't really support it...
At work, we used to have these clunky old Pentium 133 computers with a dual monitor setup running SCO and some proprietary drawing programs...One videocard was a normal old S3 card, but the other one was called a PixelWorks card...as I understand it, they were specifically optimized for displaying and rendering postscript (cause that's what the program made!). And for a P133, they were damn fast... Of course, the company moved on to cheap commodity hardware...FreeBSD is a helluva lot nicer to work with than sco, let me tell ya...
I really haven't heard anything at all about Pixelworks cards living past that iteration... Maybe the next gen of vid cards should take up Postscript acceleration, too?
I suppose if you're gonna have drawbacks, then you might as well do it on the cheap side...at least for those of us who don't feel like spending a hundred bucks on new bulbs every other month...
Wish I could find the direct link to it, but this is appropriate anyway...There's a site (free) giving plans and general specs for building your own projector out of a small tv or computer monitor...It basically consists of 2 cardboard/wooden boxes overlapped to allow focusing, with a monitor at one side, and a fresnel lens at the other... Their Pics look pretty great...
SO--Use a slightly bigger monitor (17 inch maybe?) , then pump up the brightness on it, build the little wooden box and invert the whole contraption (the image turns out upside down through the fresnel lens~~see optics 101) and you have a hd projector! (Assuming you can get the signal into the computer in the first place.)
YES--you're still going to have the whole brightness issue, from what I've read, but there's not much to do about that one...Even commercial ones almost require a dimmed room for optimal viewing. And what was the ambient light level in the last movie theatre you stepped into?
Doh...Here...found a similar link...http://bigscreentv.20m.com/index.html
Same principals, but not much of the background info...still interesting...And quite cheap.
My experience with macs is a bit limited, but I do still have to maintain a handful of them at work in a production environment...So the 'powers that be' have decreed that OSX isn't ready for primetime yet, and we still need to run OS9 on everything. The fastest machine is a G4 400 mhz machine, and it's STILL god-awful slow running OS9...
My Actual question, though, is How much 'zippier' or more responsive is Linux on Mac that OS9? Is the mulit-tasking any better? (I was under the assumption that that was a software issue, but I've never tested it...) Hmmm...Maybe I'll have to go out and find a smallish Mac from the local University Surplus and give this a shot...
Cause that whole Frustration with anything OS9 and prior Seizing EVERYTHING on the computer when you want to do anything is all I ever had against Macs... Well, that and the price...
Oh yeah--I'm well aware of that part...I just got tired of having to pay IN every year at the start of the year...So I adjusted things slightly the opposite way...I get some back, but mot too much (I don't think...) Although if I could figure out a way to make everything a zero-sum transaction, I'd jump on it...
Okay---You're not gonna believe this one, but for 2 years running now, I've studiously worked out my taxes, mailed it all in, gotten my refund back and then received another check in the mail for the corrected adjustments the IRS figured themselves. Yeah- that's right--they didn't LET me overpay...how's that for odd...
Actually, though, I've been wanting to re-write Yar's Revenge from a first/third person perspective...I think I'll keep the original sound though...it was always pretty spooky and ominous in an amplified-tv-tube sorta way...
First off- "Common Sense" is definitely NOT common. "Jane with a new Dell" who just plugs it in to a cable modem and zips around the met with email, ICQ, and whatever generally isn't even AWARE of anything security related...The thought just doesn't even occurr to her (or him-) that their new Computer could easily be r00+D and used to attack other people... I'm Thinking of something along the lines of an "Awareness Campaign", and I personally endorse taking security measures to everyone I know. (It's important, dammit!)
As to the vigilante and civilised society...heh-heh-heh...Not gonna happen on the net. Not for a while at least. This is, as I've read earlier in this thread, much like the old west before the sheriffs came to town. Right now, there really isn't anyone in authority over the whole net...The only real "authority" is located n a real-world based geographical area. That makes it problematical for things like US enforcement against Chinese hackers (for instance...)
Hate to say it, but it looks like vigilante justice is about the best we can hope for...although be assured, I trust them as far as I can throw my refridgerator. But I've also taken steps to assure my computers presence on the net is all but invisible, so I don't think I really have much personally to worry about.
I'm sorry, but you're totally whigged out on that one.
Umm...I've gotta flop this one back....You're the one with the crack-pipe now, buddy- The K6's were dogs...Depending on what you use them for...
I remember when they were still on the market, those in the Gaming mode (Read: keep floating performance as high as possible so all the best games will run quick!!!), people stayed away from those K6's like the plague...They'd stutter and complain and be outrun by a p2-300, a hundred mhz below the K6... I really had no love for them...(Thank god they finally got a kick arse fpu! yaaa, AMD!)
That said, I also have to say that we still use a fleet of K6's at work to do basic drawing/composition tasks....They aren't the speediest things in the world, but under bsd, their speed isn't all that bad...
So "What you use them for" really does matter...
It's unfortunate that there's no seemingly objective measure like fps for an AI system,
Now that's not a bad idea...I doubt we could put a number on it...(well--maybe XX number of simultaneous decisions per second)...But I'm thinking we could start a classification heirarchy that is relative to the other systems...Find some standard-ish, but good bot that can play different games...and throw it up against lots and lots of em... Any given AI could then be rated as -Better than Zeus-bot AI- or -Worse than that walking eyeball AI-.
Pretty much, as long as we can get some kind of agreement on what AI will kill our test-bot the fastest/slowest, we can get a scale...Hmmm....Anyone have a bot that simulates human interaction in a game? (i.e.- outside of the games actual running code, but still inside the computer?)
I can't believe I'm actually going to mention this one...BUT...
Haven't you ever seen the movie "the Ice Pirates"? Kung-foo fightin robot Action!
And then there's the whole thing about spectator sports...That'll really introduce programming back into the mix...I can see the best programmed robots fighting each other autonomously (not like battlebots...). This could be big...
There are complete cases for sale with a semi-typical compressor built into the base and coolant lines running up top for the cpu..."Vapo-Cool" or "Vao-Chill" or something like that...Very similar to your refridgerator or Air conditioner, just in a small package...And uses R-22 or whatever the modern non-ozone destroying equivalent is...Its been a while since I've done refridgerant work...
Pretty neat setup, actually...Even has a special circuit that doesn't turn on the actual computer until the temp drops below some pre-specified mark. Nice idea, but a little too overkill for me...
I had a neat thought on this one a while back, but haven't been able to find the solution yet...Ram-Drives. Isn't there anyone that make a hard-drive sized box that you can plug standard sdram into? Without the ram, it seems like it would be fairly cheap to implement, and anymore, the ram isn't that expensive, either...just start adding 512 mb sticks whenever you can afford it...Add a small battery backup (how much voltage can it really take to keep sdram sticks alive, anyway?) and MAYBE a hard drive to back up everything to... Gotta admit that it would be pretty nice to work one of these hypothetical devices up to 20 gigs-or more-
Silent, fast, and fast. (Yes- I put 2 fast's in there on purpose---Cause it would be...)
Except that this paticular item isn't really aimed at overclocking...There are much more efficient (larger) products for that...This is a basic, easy-to-install, and working water-cooling mod for the purpose of SILENCING your loud-arsed cpu fans...
Actually, except for the 275 dollar price tag, this looks really good....Too bad it won't help me, though...its all those scsi hard drives making the racket in my case...
Interesting...I have the same problem...How about this for a solution...Use 98lite and install the absolute most stripped down version under bochs, then strip it down even more by replacing the shell with Photoshop (normally explorer, right?) which under windows is basically a replacement desktop anyway...
Result--> massively quick win98 install booting automatically into Photoshop...Almost like one (slightly overweight) application... at least that seems like it would be the slickest way to do it... Last time I checked, photoshop didn't run too great under wine, and the 98lite bare bones install could cut stuff down to about 40 megs...
It was in the story of Dr. Pinero, the man who built the machine that could accurately predict exactly the length of a person's lifespan, and the exact moment of death.
The Insurance companies did not care for this, as they were losing money all over the place. They tried a court battle, during which I think the JUDGE actually said those words, and threw the case out as idiotic. Very inspiring speech...
Slashdot Mirror
Damn--- I'm glad I'm not the only one who's waiting for the tech from that movie...Unlike some of the other parts of it, that part seemed quite feasable and "coming soon" ish...
Put that kind of a holo-interface on a computer gauntlet, then run it off the blood-batteries from that other recent article, and you're set! Instant portable go-anywhere computer...Or optionally, modern-day illusionist...Imagine what you could do with an instantly accessable hologram generator powered by a really fast (whatever is probably 5 computer generations away now)....
At the last spot I lived, I could only *WISH* for dead spots on the radio...
We were about half a mile down the road from a radio station "Cranking out 100 thousand volts of Classic Rock!". I'm not normally for pretty much any restrictions, but this place was really starting to piss me off...
It was ONE station, and the damn thing bled into every other station on the damn car radio...The WHOLE spectrum.... Hell, we even occaisionally got the thing on the tv... It felt like I should start wearing my tinfoil hat and underwear just for the Health protection...
Yeah- We moved.
The whole point here being...I would've been HAPPY with a mere -50 meters-(?) and a single frequency being polluted...3 miles and the whole spectrum is another story altogether... We get plenty of radio pollution in this country--And personally, I think being able to be very specific about frequencies (and range would also be good---HINT) can't be anything but an improvement...
Heck- you could even skirt the radio issue with a pair of bluetooth modules, right? Of course, I guess someone has to actually make em first...
Hmmm...Although I do kinda wonder what would happen if everyone started using these...probably something like the cordless phone thingy...
(okay---done ranting now...)
Actually, I gotta agree with you on that last bit about being at the live shows...
Seems like the last doizen or so cd's I've bought have been DIRECTLY from the band at some little joint where they were playing... They're generally very eager to sell you a cd at 10 bucks, and to support the band directly like that, I'm willing to shell out the dough. Heck, it's not even JUST the little bar-bands either---Even the ones who made it to the Big Stadium concerts sell their own cds...
Of course the drawback is that the Record company probably doesn't get a single red cent out of it... Darn!
Ummm...Seems to mne that it would be easier to scour the University surplus stores, ebay, thrift shops, etc until you find an actual ps/2 compatable keyboard (laptop maybe?) that would fit the dimensions...
But hey, that's just me taking the easy way out and NOT getting that Electrical engineering degree...
Yeah, it is pretty funny...But as someone who waited a very long time for the Linux client, I gotta at least say "Better late than never". I'm actually quite happy with the game as is. Maybe next time the whole game will be built around something a bit more portable...but I'm not expecting miracles at this point.
It's a good game, and though it's probably not extremely profitable for Bioware (if at all---YET...), they're sticking to their original statements and following through. (So Thank you Bioware People!)
We have the linux client, and now we apparantly have the Mac Client. How many other game companies have been doing that? I get the feeling that lnux gaming is oddly a growing market...and I only see it getting bigger...Hopefully the big companies are finally starting to see it.
Yes- You are correct. If sheer killing were the only point to the game, why it'd be...um...quake3?
Anyway, I think that Doom3 is going to have a LOT going for it, and some of it it definitely has in common with Q3...
---Technology: The Game engine licensing tends to make ID more money than the game sales themselves, IIRC...which doesn't mean much to us, except to say that there will be a fountain of innovative games coming out of the Doom3 engine, and I'm probably going to enjoy quite a lot of them... (Can you say 'Half-Life'?)
---Story: From all the interviews I've read, this game SCARES THE BEJEZUS outta people...That's the effect that keeps people lined up at scary movies and roller coasters...I hope I do get scared!
And that's just the 2 off the top-o-my-head...
No-no-no-no-no....That was Motion Capture.
Sensors on Andy S's Body capturing movement data and feeding it into a computer...Much like the mouse you're waving around right now...
Actually, that hardware path has already been trod down, and the market didn't really support it...
At work, we used to have these clunky old Pentium 133 computers with a dual monitor setup running SCO and some proprietary drawing programs...One videocard was a normal old S3 card, but the other one was called a PixelWorks card...as I understand it, they were specifically optimized for displaying and rendering postscript (cause that's what the program made!). And for a P133, they were damn fast... Of course, the company moved on to cheap commodity hardware...FreeBSD is a helluva lot nicer to work with than sco, let me tell ya...
I really haven't heard anything at all about Pixelworks cards living past that iteration... Maybe the next gen of vid cards should take up Postscript acceleration, too?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--Arthur C. Clarke
Now just think about what you blather whilst rubbing your wrist where I spanked it with My Clarkian ruler...
I suppose if you're gonna have drawbacks, then you might as well do it on the cheap side...at least for those of us who don't feel like spending a hundred bucks on new bulbs every other month...
Wish I could find the direct link to it, but this is appropriate anyway...There's a site (free) giving plans and general specs for building your own projector out of a small tv or computer monitor...It basically consists of 2 cardboard/wooden boxes overlapped to allow focusing, with a monitor at one side, and a fresnel lens at the other... Their Pics look pretty great...
SO--Use a slightly bigger monitor (17 inch maybe?) , then pump up the brightness on it, build the little wooden box and invert the whole contraption (the image turns out upside down through the fresnel lens~~see optics 101) and you have a hd projector! (Assuming you can get the signal into the computer in the first place.)
YES--you're still going to have the whole brightness issue, from what I've read, but there's not much to do about that one...Even commercial ones almost require a dimmed room for optimal viewing. And what was the ambient light level in the last movie theatre you stepped into?
Doh...Here...found a similar link...http://bigscreentv.20m.com/index.html
Same principals, but not much of the background info...still interesting...And quite cheap.
Just the "Experience" I was looking for...
My experience with macs is a bit limited, but I do still have to maintain a handful of them at work in a production environment...So the 'powers that be' have decreed that OSX isn't ready for primetime yet, and we still need to run OS9 on everything. The fastest machine is a G4 400 mhz machine, and it's STILL god-awful slow running OS9...
My Actual question, though, is How much 'zippier' or more responsive is Linux on Mac that OS9? Is the mulit-tasking any better? (I was under the assumption that that was a software issue, but I've never tested it...) Hmmm...Maybe I'll have to go out and find a smallish Mac from the local University Surplus and give this a shot...
Cause that whole Frustration with anything OS9 and prior Seizing EVERYTHING on the computer when you want to do anything is all I ever had against Macs... Well, that and the price...
Oh yeah--I'm well aware of that part...I just got tired of having to pay IN every year at the start of the year...So I adjusted things slightly the opposite way...I get some back, but mot too much (I don't think...) Although if I could figure out a way to make everything a zero-sum transaction, I'd jump on it...
Okay---You're not gonna believe this one, but for 2 years running now, I've studiously worked out my taxes, mailed it all in, gotten my refund back and then received another check in the mail for the corrected adjustments the IRS figured themselves. Yeah- that's right--they didn't LET me overpay...how's that for odd...
PERFECT!!!
Actually, though, I've been wanting to re-write Yar's Revenge from a first/third person perspective...I think I'll keep the original sound though...it was always pretty spooky and ominous in an amplified-tv-tube sorta way...
First off- "Common Sense" is definitely NOT common. "Jane with a new Dell" who just plugs it in to a cable modem and zips around the met with email, ICQ, and whatever generally isn't even AWARE of anything security related...The thought just doesn't even occurr to her (or him-) that their new Computer could easily be r00+D and used to attack other people... I'm Thinking of something along the lines of an "Awareness Campaign", and I personally endorse taking security measures to everyone I know. (It's important, dammit!)
As to the vigilante and civilised society...heh-heh-heh...Not gonna happen on the net. Not for a while at least. This is, as I've read earlier in this thread, much like the old west before the sheriffs came to town. Right now, there really isn't anyone in authority over the whole net...The only real "authority" is located n a real-world based geographical area. That makes it problematical for things like US enforcement against Chinese hackers (for instance...)
Hate to say it, but it looks like vigilante justice is about the best we can hope for...although be assured, I trust them as far as I can throw my refridgerator. But I've also taken steps to assure my computers presence on the net is all but invisible, so I don't think I really have much personally to worry about.
I'm sorry, but you're totally whigged out on that one.
Umm...I've gotta flop this one back....You're the one with the crack-pipe now, buddy- The K6's were dogs...Depending on what you use them for...
I remember when they were still on the market, those in the Gaming mode (Read: keep floating performance as high as possible so all the best games will run quick!!!), people stayed away from those K6's like the plague...They'd stutter and complain and be outrun by a p2-300, a hundred mhz below the K6... I really had no love for them...(Thank god they finally got a kick arse fpu! yaaa, AMD!)
That said, I also have to say that we still use a fleet of K6's at work to do basic drawing/composition tasks....They aren't the speediest things in the world, but under bsd, their speed isn't all that bad...
So "What you use them for" really does matter...
But for Me (and many others), the K6's were dogs-
It's unfortunate that there's no seemingly objective measure like fps for an AI system,
Now that's not a bad idea...I doubt we could put a number on it...(well--maybe XX number of simultaneous decisions per second)...But I'm thinking we could start a classification heirarchy that is relative to the other systems...Find some standard-ish, but good bot that can play different games...and throw it up against lots and lots of em...
Any given AI could then be rated as -Better than Zeus-bot AI- or -Worse than that walking eyeball AI-.
Pretty much, as long as we can get some kind of agreement on what AI will kill our test-bot the fastest/slowest, we can get a scale...Hmmm....Anyone have a bot that simulates human interaction in a game? (i.e.- outside of the games actual running code, but still inside the computer?)
I can't believe I'm actually going to mention this one...BUT...
Haven't you ever seen the movie "the Ice Pirates"?
Kung-foo fightin robot Action!
And then there's the whole thing about spectator sports...That'll really introduce programming back into the mix...I can see the best programmed robots fighting each other autonomously (not like battlebots...). This could be big...
Actually yes there are...
There are complete cases for sale with a semi-typical compressor built into the base and coolant lines running up top for the cpu..."Vapo-Cool" or "Vao-Chill" or something like that...Very similar to your refridgerator or Air conditioner, just in a small package...And uses R-22 or whatever the modern non-ozone destroying equivalent is...Its been a while since I've done refridgerant work...
Pretty neat setup, actually...Even has a special circuit that doesn't turn on the actual computer until the temp drops below some pre-specified mark. Nice idea, but a little too overkill for me...
Solid-State drives seem too expensive to justify.
I had a neat thought on this one a while back, but haven't been able to find the solution yet...Ram-Drives. Isn't there anyone that make a hard-drive sized box that you can plug standard sdram into? Without the ram, it seems like it would be fairly cheap to implement, and anymore, the ram isn't that expensive, either...just start adding 512 mb sticks whenever you can afford it...Add a small battery backup (how much voltage can it really take to keep sdram sticks alive, anyway?) and MAYBE a hard drive to back up everything to... Gotta admit that it would be pretty nice to work one of these hypothetical devices up to 20 gigs-or more-
Silent, fast, and fast. (Yes- I put 2 fast's in there on purpose---Cause it would be...)
Except that this paticular item isn't really aimed at overclocking...There are much more efficient (larger) products for that...This is a basic, easy-to-install, and working water-cooling mod for the purpose of SILENCING your loud-arsed cpu fans...
Actually, except for the 275 dollar price tag, this looks really good....Too bad it won't help me, though...its all those scsi hard drives making the racket in my case...
Actually, I'm thinking back to that DARPA project to build a Human assistance Mechanized suit...
Just imagine the Soldier of next year trundling off into battle dressed in a 40 foot Dinosaur suit!
"Run!!! The AmeriSaurs are attacking!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!"
Nah, I'm not really a "warmonger"...I just like the shock value of certain technologies...
Interesting...I have the same problem...How about this for a solution...Use 98lite and install the absolute most stripped down version under bochs, then strip it down even more by replacing the shell with Photoshop (normally explorer, right?) which under windows is basically a replacement desktop anyway...
Result--> massively quick win98 install booting automatically into Photoshop...Almost like one (slightly overweight) application... at least that seems like it would be the slickest way to do it... Last time I checked, photoshop didn't run too great under wine, and the 98lite bare bones install could cut stuff down to about 40 megs...
Hellooooo??
Spidey-Tracers! Small, inconspicuous, and probably a bit cheaper....
Okay...too bad they're not real either...
One Robert Heinlein wrote that, as I recall.
It was in the story of Dr. Pinero, the man who built the machine that could accurately predict exactly the length of a person's lifespan, and the exact moment of death.
The Insurance companies did not care for this, as they were losing money all over the place. They tried a court battle, during which I think the JUDGE actually said those words, and threw the case out as idiotic. Very inspiring speech...
The insurance companies ended up whacking Pinero.