It's certainly not a phenomenon without precedence. The CIA used to have a lot of trouble just analyzing all the data from satellite imagery, not to mention stuff from phone taps, radio intercepts, and whatever else they might have.
But I'm certain that not-necissarily modern pattern-recognition software can handle the bulk of the satellite data, and publically available speech recognition software, piped to publically available grammer analyzers can handle rudimentary analysis of radio and, to a lesser extent, telephone conversations.
That doesn't cover data conveyed with insinuation, or non-standard modem connection speeds, but maybe the government has already paid to have that done.
Has anyone considered looking at publicly available information (like the CIA's allotment of the US budget) and looking at how much R&D that could fund
What I'm trying to say is that there should always be an alternative if the quality of something isn't satisfactory. Sure, I was probably wrong about insmod puking on the nv module.
But what open-source solution can I switch to if I decide Linux doesn't work for me anymore?
One reason I like Linux is that it is a great alternative to any other OS I've ever used. But I want there always to be something else I can switch to if too many problems arise;
Example:
I've grown quite fond of Linux, but 2.4.12 and 2.4.13 scared the crap out of me: the license checking was enforced, which made it impossible for me to use the NVidia kernel driver.
My computer, which I got for Christmas '00, came with an NVidia TNT2. I don't have the money to buy an expensive replacement to something I got for free. Isn't that the case with most Linux users?
My only problem with this concept is that it doesn't take into account a bird raising or lowering it's mass. It takes energy to increase or decrease altitude, and that's not what's happening here.
Same thing with treadmills. You can tilt it as high as you want, but you're not really climbing until your body actually increases altitude.
If anyone finds out where I can get an odd-shaped LCD screen for cheap, I'd like to know...got a neat little idea of my own.
I've put together the plans I need to put an OGG player in my car, complete with 802.11b networking to my computer in my home for automatic music selection updates. I/was/ planning on taking a VFD I got from Comdex and placing it under my radio, with a cannibalized Sega Genisis controller for desert, but then I had another project idea:
I wanted to put accelerometers in the front and back of my car, put digital meters on my electrical system, digitize my gas, speed, steering wheel position and engine temp readings, and record it all to my OGG player's hard drive...Great for proving to someone that, yes, my car does have a funny rattle when I turn my wheel to the left--anyway, I had a third idea:
Why not simply replace my gauges on my dash (which half the time read zero regardless of the facts) with an LCD, and pipe all my user interface through that?
Burn it. (Con: doesn't last long. Somewhat uneven lighting)
Coat it in cesium (Con: More of a greenish glow. Only glows at night, and then only for a short while)
Make paper cloth out of steel wool, and run current through it. (Con: A bit reddish.) (Note: Works better if kept in vacuum.)
Videogames are art BECAUSE they are entertainment.
on
Are Videogames Art?
·
· Score: 1
From www.m-w.com, with my comments in italics: ( (nearly) All formatting preserved)
Main Entry: art
Pronunciation: 'ärt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin art-, ars -- more at ARM
Date: 13th century
1: skill acquired by experience, study, or observation <the art of making friends> Programming is such a skill, as is game designing, and definately the combination of skills.
2 a: a branch of learning: (1): one of the humanities (2) plural: LIBERAL ARTSbarchaic: LEARNING, SCHOLARSHIP You have to learn how to build a good game, and it's no exact science.
3: an occupation requiring knowledge or skill <the art of organ building> Being good at games is a skill, and I've already pointed out that building them is also a skill.
4 a: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also: works so produced b (1) : FINE ARTS (2): one of the fine arts (3): a graphic art This would seem to apply especially to games that involved in interactive worlds. (In this case, a monster noticing you would be considered interactive.)
5 aarchaic: a skillful plan b: the quality or state of being artful Most games follow a story line or sequence of events, which would apply here.
6: decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter This is the only one that doesn't fit.
And now the rest of it, included for interest
synonymsART, SKILL, CUNNING, ARTIFICE, CRAFT mean the faculty of executing well what one has devised. ART implies a personal, unanalyzable creative power <the art of choosing the right word>. SKILL stresses technical knowledge and proficiency <the skill of a glassblower>. CUNNING suggests ingenuity and subtlety in devising, inventing, or executing <a mystery plotted with great cunning>. ARTIFICE suggests technical skill especially in imitating things in nature <believed realism in film could be achieved only by artifice>. CRAFT may imply expertness in workmanship <the craft of a master goldsmith>.
In normal CPU design, you have to take into account the distances between various parts of the CPU. The greater the distance, the slower (and hotter) the CPU.
That's just fine, when you can control exactly where the transister goes on the die, but FPGAs throw a curveball in:
The components in an FPGA are, IIRC, arrange in one big, massive grid. While it's still possible, controlling what a transister does by location is going to be much more difficult and time-consuming, in the development process.
Don't forget that one FPGA is different from another, so you can use the same 'ROM image' for different hardware. That's going to impact portability and development time.
Finally, don't forget that no matter how encrypted or secure the ROM image is before it gets flashed, it still has to be put into the hardware raw. Just build a virtual machine to intersept the flash data, and viola! You now have your (or your competitor's) CPU layout in a semireadable format. Now to run it through an FPGA emulator...
When (not if) this all comes about, you'll probably have hackers trying to tweak the trace lengths in their CPUs.
What Linux is to operating system kernels, a future hacker group will be to CPUs.
Basically what they needed to do was an extension of ray-tracing. This device would have gone a long way in making it faster.
Picture all the algorithms required to ray-trace one pixel. Now picture all those algorithms made into one small portion of an FPGA. Now picture many many such portions occupying a single FPGA.
Suddenly you have a device that encompasses your entire process, and can execute that process much faster than a normal CPU can. To give you an idea of the scale involved, picture a thousand CPU instructions compressed into one clock cycle.
Processing power is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time.
Yeah, and we've reached the point where you can break a motherboard in a tower case by the weight of your heatsink and fan.
If you ask me, this would be the perfect solution for gaming consoles. A console includes one of these, and the game comes with a configuration in mind.
Imagine decent AIs in games becoming more common, or on-the-side graphics rendering. How about easy emulation of other console architectures?
Remember the Final Fantasy movie? The skin on the people didn't look quite right, because the movie developers hadn't figured out how to quickly calculate the light diffusion and reflection in human skin. This neat little device would have solved their problem.
Slashdot Mirror
It's certainly not a phenomenon without precedence. The CIA used to have a lot of trouble just analyzing all the data from satellite imagery, not to mention stuff from phone taps, radio intercepts, and whatever else they might have.
But I'm certain that not-necissarily modern pattern-recognition software can handle the bulk of the satellite data, and publically available speech recognition software, piped to publically available grammer analyzers can handle rudimentary analysis of radio and, to a lesser extent, telephone conversations.
That doesn't cover data conveyed with insinuation, or non-standard modem connection speeds, but maybe the government has already paid to have that done.
Has anyone considered looking at publicly available information (like the CIA's allotment of the US budget) and looking at how much R&D that could fund
At .5MB per chunk, that amounts to about 1.61 TB
Yow!
It makes me curious...how can an organization patent for itself a process produced with government funds?
The basic idea of CML2 is to let someone of any skill compile the kernel easily.
Maybe this will clear up my point a bit.
What I'm trying to say is that there should always be an alternative if the quality of something isn't satisfactory. Sure, I was probably wrong about insmod puking on the nv module.
But what open-source solution can I switch to if I decide Linux doesn't work for me anymore?
insmod failed to load the nVidia module, saying that it would "taint the kernel"...
And that same code compiled and worked fine with 2.4.14.
One reason I like Linux is that it is a great alternative to any other OS I've ever used. But I want there always to be something else I can switch to if too many problems arise;
Example:
I've grown quite fond of Linux, but 2.4.12 and 2.4.13 scared the crap out of me: the license checking was enforced, which made it impossible for me to use the NVidia kernel driver.
My computer, which I got for Christmas '00, came with an NVidia TNT2. I don't have the money to buy an expensive replacement to something I got for free. Isn't that the case with most Linux users?
My only problem with this concept is that it doesn't take into account a bird raising or lowering it's mass. It takes energy to increase or decrease altitude, and that's not what's happening here.
Same thing with treadmills. You can tilt it as high as you want, but you're not really climbing until your body actually increases altitude.
If anyone finds out where I can get an odd-shaped LCD screen for cheap, I'd like to know...got a neat little idea of my own.
/was/ planning on taking a VFD I got from Comdex and placing it under my radio, with a cannibalized Sega Genisis controller for desert, but then I had another project idea:
:)
I've put together the plans I need to put an OGG player in my car, complete with 802.11b networking to my computer in my home for automatic music selection updates. I
I wanted to put accelerometers in the front and back of my car, put digital meters on my electrical system, digitize my gas, speed, steering wheel position and engine temp readings, and record it all to my OGG player's hard drive...Great for proving to someone that, yes, my car does have a funny rattle when I turn my wheel to the left--anyway, I had a third idea:
Why not simply replace my gauges on my dash (which half the time read zero regardless of the facts) with an LCD, and pipe all my user interface through that?
Wish I had time.
Ben Bova did some thought about this in his book series, Moonbase. He called them Windowalls.
Not to mention that I use my CRT as a general light source at night...
You can make it emit light...Here are a few ways:
Burn it. (Con: doesn't last long. Somewhat uneven lighting)
Coat it in cesium (Con: More of a greenish glow. Only glows at night, and then only for a short while)
Make paper cloth out of steel wool, and run current through it. (Con: A bit reddish.) (Note: Works better if kept in vacuum.)
From www.m-w.com, with my comments in italics: ( (nearly) All formatting preserved)
: skill acquired by experience, study, or observation <the art of making friends>
: a branch of learning: (1) : one of the humanities (2) plural : LIBERAL ARTS b archaic : LEARNING, SCHOLARSHIP
: an occupation requiring knowledge or skill <the art of organ building>
: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : FINE ARTS (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art
: a skillful plan b : the quality or state of being artful
: decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter
Main Entry: art
Pronunciation: 'ärt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin art-, ars -- more at ARM
Date: 13th century
1
Programming is such a skill, as is game designing, and definately the combination of skills.
2 a
You have to learn how to build a good game, and it's no exact science.
3
Being good at games is a skill, and I've already pointed out that building them is also a skill.
4 a
This would seem to apply especially to games that involved in interactive worlds. (In this case, a monster noticing you would be considered interactive.)
5 a archaic
Most games follow a story line or sequence of events, which would apply here.
6
This is the only one that doesn't fit.
And now the rest of it, included for interest
synonyms ART, SKILL, CUNNING, ARTIFICE, CRAFT mean the faculty of executing well what one has devised. ART implies a personal, unanalyzable creative power <the art of choosing the right word>. SKILL stresses technical knowledge and proficiency <the skill of a glassblower>. CUNNING suggests ingenuity and subtlety in devising, inventing, or executing <a mystery plotted with great cunning>. ARTIFICE suggests technical skill especially in imitating things in nature <believed realism in film could be achieved only by artifice>. CRAFT may imply expertness in workmanship <the craft of a master goldsmith>.
This reminds me of a glove device for the NES...
Whoops...didn't catch it in 'preview' ... When I said 'technician', I meant 'salesman'
Is this RLX related to my old Tandy RLX 1000 I got from Radio Shack ten years ago?
The RS sales guy made my parents bring it back to prove I had installed Win3.1 on it. They kept saying it was impossible.
Well, it did take up 16MB out of a 20MB hard drive...
That was also the same technician that told my mom that I'd "never, ever need more than a meg of RAM."
In normal CPU design, you have to take into account the distances between various parts of the CPU. The greater the distance, the slower (and hotter) the CPU.
That's just fine, when you can control exactly where the transister goes on the die, but FPGAs throw a curveball in:
The components in an FPGA are, IIRC, arrange in one big, massive grid. While it's still possible, controlling what a transister does by location is going to be much more difficult and time-consuming, in the development process.
Don't forget that one FPGA is different from another, so you can use the same 'ROM image' for different hardware. That's going to impact portability and development time.
Finally, don't forget that no matter how encrypted or secure the ROM image is before it gets flashed, it still has to be put into the hardware raw. Just build a virtual machine to intersept the flash data, and viola! You now have your (or your competitor's) CPU layout in a semireadable format. Now to run it through an FPGA emulator...
When (not if) this all comes about, you'll probably have hackers trying to tweak the trace lengths in their CPUs.
What Linux is to operating system kernels, a future hacker group will be to CPUs.
I was referring to the Lynch movie. And that's why my dad wanted to wait for the 4-hour version.
Basically what they needed to do was an extension of ray-tracing. This device would have gone a long way in making it faster.
Picture all the algorithms required to ray-trace one pixel. Now picture all those algorithms made into one small portion of an FPGA. Now picture many many such portions occupying a single FPGA.
Suddenly you have a device that encompasses your entire process, and can execute that process much faster than a normal CPU can. To give you an idea of the scale involved, picture a thousand CPU instructions compressed into one clock cycle.
Kinda cool, huh?
The only thing slowing Linux drivers is availability.
I can see these devices being included under the SMP concept. And guess what? Now you can have two processors of different architectures!
Albeit the custom processor would have to be somewhat simple depending on the size of the FPGA.
Processing power is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time.
Yeah, and we've reached the point where you can break a motherboard in a tower case by the weight of your heatsink and fan.
If you ask me, this would be the perfect solution for gaming consoles. A console includes one of these, and the game comes with a configuration in mind.
Imagine decent AIs in games becoming more common, or on-the-side graphics rendering. How about easy emulation of other console architectures?
Remember the Final Fantasy movie? The skin on the people didn't look quite right, because the movie developers hadn't figured out how to quickly calculate the light diffusion and reflection in human skin. This neat little device would have solved their problem.
Thinking of "H.A.R.L.I.E.", does anyone remember the book "Charly"? Don't know who wrote it.
My step-dad told me that we'll get the Dune movie when it comes out on DVD, but only if it's the whole thing.
The movie is something like 8 hours long, but they had to cut it (a lot!) to fit modern attention spans.
Don't forget his partner, Jerry Pournell.
Liked Ringworld, Loved Lucifer's Hammer.
Don't forget Ben Bova's Moon(base|war), which, IMO, are the closest thing to technically accurate of all moon-related books I've read.
The lack of concern probably arises from our trust in OpenSource.
"Someone else will figure it out and fix it."