I use a Wacom tablet for digital artwork, as well as occassionally using it as an input device, and don't find it to be cumbersome or uncomfortable at all. A mouse is definately faster for cursor navigation, but the pen is precise. It feels very natural, and you have a great deal more control over the cursor than you do with a mouse.
Say you have a "Z" gesture (Haven't played B&W or used the new version of Opera yet, so don't know exactly what types of gestures we're talking here) - you could try to do it with a mouse, but it could be difficult. With a tablet, it's as simple as writing a Z as you normally would on paper. Quite simple.
The tablets aren't too expensive, either. I chose Wacom as they're recognized as the industry leader among artists (Higher pressure sensitivity and more gee-whiz bells and whistles), but most any tablet could work. I got mine (6x8 intuos) for $130, refurbished. No problems with it. It's a serial interface, but that doesn't bother me too much. You can get the smaller "average" version for about $70 or $80, I think, and it'd work just as well. I certainly consider it to be worth the price.
I would make a joke here having to do with patenting comments that make jokes about patenting stupid comments about patenting patents but...awww, screw it.
-- Chris
Re:Was there actually a ZELDA game for N64?
on
Gamecube In Danger?
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· Score: 2
The games aren't centered around Zelda - they're called LEGEND OF Zelda. Link has always been the hero, while Zelda makes only occasional appearances (Heck, she probably had the biggest role in Z64 of any of the series!)
A little background:
As the kingdom of Hyrule - at this time united as a single country - entered into a bright age, the sovereign King of Hyrule led his subjects fairly and just, the Triforce in his possession to ensure peace was maintained. As all ultimately do, however, this king one day died. His youthful son, the prince, who should have become king and inherited everything his sovereignty should offer as Hyrule's monarch, could only inherit part of the Triforce. The prince searched far and wide for the missing parts, but could not find them. It was then that a magician formerly close to the King brought him some unexpected news.
Before he died, it seemed the late King had spoken something about the Triforce to only the younger sister of the prince, a young Princess Zelda I. The prince immediately questioned the defiant princess, but she would tell him nothing. After the prince, the magician threatened to put the princess into an eternal sleep if she did not talk. Even still, she stood her ground before her brother, saying nothing.
In his anger, the magician tried to cast a magic spell on the princess. The surprised prince tried to stop him, but the magician fought off the prince and continued casting the spell. Then, when the spell was finally cast, Princess Zelda fell on that spot and entered a sleep from which she might never awake. At the same time, the magician also fell down and breathed his last.
In his grief, the prince placed the princess in a room in the castle. He hoped that someday she would come back to consciousness. So that this tragedy would never be forgotten, he thus decreed that every female child born into the royal household shall be given the name "Zelda."
It is with this tale of the sleeping princess, Princess Zelda the First, that "The Legend of Zelda" is written, recounted and told for eras to come in Hyrule.
Years after the Legend of Zelda faded into the stuff of Hyrulean legend, in the blowing sand and the harsh climate of the desert, the cunning King of the Gerudo Thieves, Ganondorf Dragmire, found the way to break the mystic seal of Rauru on the Golden Land.
Meanwhile, in the middle of an ensuing war in Hyrule, an exhausted Hylian woman entrusted her infant to the Deku Tree in Kokiri Forest before dying. Named Link - Link the First - the boy was raised as one of the enigmatic elven Kokiri without any knowledge of his parents (as it is known, Kokiri have no parents). Even by age 10 he was still unlike all the other Kokiri - they all had faerie guardians. All except Link. One night, he had a nightmare that would haunt his dreams for many months - during a rainy night, in front of a magnificent castle, a young girl would be riding away on horse in the arms of a woman. She would give Link a stare of helplessness, and looked like she needed to say something. Behind them rode an evil-looking man with green skin in black armor. He would frighten Link, who would stir and awake uneasily.
--from HTLOZ
And so began the adventures of Link, whose destiny would be tied to Zelda's throughout the entire course of Hyrule's history. So you see, the title makes a good bit of sense.
Untrue - maybe not jean pockets, but I carry around 4-5 CDs in my jacket pockets most of the time, along with my CD player and headphones.
CD's scratch easily as they are not protected by any casing like floppies and these new DataPlay discs.
That's why they cost $.15-20 apiece. Break one, burn a new one. Whenever I burn important data to CD, I burn 2 CDs - one to use, one for backup in case the original scratches or is broken.
Portable CD players are terribly bulky as they must house fair sized motors to spin heavy and unweildy CD's and must house the CD entierly.
See my first argument. "Heavy CDs"?! Maybe if you're Callista Flockhart...
CD's are still primarily a music meduim. Aside from the breach into the software installers, backups and games market, they are not too successful at photo storage, video storage and are silly for e-books.
"Primarily a music medium?" How many software packages have you bought in the last 3 years that came on floppy? I got a CD bundled with my scanner recently that had 220 kb of data on it! CDs account for probably >95% of software distributed in physical media. As to photo storage, I have a total of 6 CDs with photos from my digital camera stuffed chock full of photos. They're an excellent medium for photo storage.
Just my $.02
Yeah, you can tell the difference. We recently got one of those Bose Home Theater systems - dropped in a burned CD and was quite suprised to find a hiss and slight distortion that I hadn't noticed before on other systems. You need a high quality system to hear them, but they're there. It's kinda like JPEG - you get a darn close representation of the original, but due to the nature of lossy compression, you'll lose a slight bit. It doesn't bother most, but people in graphics design will definately notice. Of course, this is an argument for Napster/P2P as MP3 obviously isn't on par with CD quality, and serious music lovers will have to buy the CD to appreciate the music on their multi-thousand dollar sound systems. Here's what you do: take a burned CD to your neighborhood Best Buy and pop it to a system so you can hear how it sounds. You'll hear the difference.
Item 2: A body of great mass. The Earth will do for this one.
Hat is a non-metal, therefore has no magnetic properties. Also, electromagnetivity between atoms in hat and body of mass is effecively nil at experiement distances. Air pressure is constant on all sides at T0
Place hat 3 feet above floor.
Let go of hat.
Observe.
I hypothesize that the hat will proceed to move towards the body of largest mass in the vicinity.
What shall we call this strange attraction? "Gravity"? Yeah. That has a catchy ring to it...
Uhm...the reason evolution's not a law is that there's an important step missing in the theory in relation to the scientific theory:
Observation.
Anyone ever observed evolution? Macroevolution, that is? I didn't think so.
Neither is creation a law. It wasn't observed. But it makes a heck of a lot more sense. Akham's Razor states that the simplest explaination is the most likely one. Check the mathematical stats on evolution. Mathematically impossible, even given billions of years. It's certainly not what I'd call likely.
Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently that it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this law by claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes.
Mutations are the only known means by which new genetic material becomes available for evolution. Rarely, if ever, is a mutation beneficial to an organism in its natural environment. Almost all observable mutations are harmful; some are meaningless; many are lethal. No known mutation has ever produced a form of life having greater complexity and viability than its ancestors.
All species appear completely developed, not partially developed. They show design. There are no examples of half-developed feathers, eyes, skin, tubes (arteries, veins, intestines, etc.), or any of thousands of other vital organs. Tubes that are not 100% complete are a liability; so are partially developed organs. For example, if a leg of a reptile were to evolve into a wing of a bird, it would become a bad leg long before it became a good wing.
Nonhumans communicate, but not with language. True language requires both vocabulary and grammar. With great effort, human trainers have taught some chimpanzees to recognize a few hundred spoken words, to point to up to 200 symbols, and to make limited hand signs. These impressive feats are sometimes exaggerated by capturing and editing the animals' successes on film. (Some early demonstrations were flawed by the trainer's hidden promptings. )
Chimpanzees have not demonstrated these skills in the wild and do not pass their skills on to other chimpanzees. When a trained chimp dies, so does the trainer's investment. Also, trained chimps have essentially no grammatical ability. Only with grammar can a few words express many ideas. No evidence exists that language evolves in nonhumans.
Did language evolve in humans? Charles Darwin claimed it did. If so, the earliest languages should be the simplest. On the contrary, language studies reveal that the more ancient the language (for example: Latin, 200 B.C.; Greek, 800 B.C.; and Vedic Sanskrit, 1500 B.C.), the more complex it is with respect to syntax, case, gender, mood, voice, tense, and verb form. The best evidence indicates that languages devolve; that is, they become simpler rather than more complex. Most linguists reject the idea that simple languages evolve into complex languages.
Speech is uniquely human. Furthermore, studies of 36 documented cases of children raised without human contact (feral children) show that speech appears to be learned only from other humans. Apparently, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans must have been endowed with a speaking ability. There is no evidence that speech has evolved.
Many single-celled forms of life exist, but there are no known forms of animal life with 2, 3, 4, or 5 cells. Even the forms of life with 6-20 cells are parasites. They must have a complex animal as a host to provide such functions as digestion and respiration. If macroevolution happened, one should find many forms of life with 2-20 cells as transitional forms between one-celled and many-celled organisms.
Fossils all over the world show evidences of rapid burial. Many fossils, such as fossilized jellyfish, show by the details of their soft, fleshy portions that they were buried rapidly, before they could decay. Many other animals, buried in mass graves and in twisted and contorted positions, suggest violent and rapid burials over large areas. These observations, together with the occurrence of compressed fossils and fossils that cut across two or more layers of sedimentary rock, are strong evidence that the sediments encasing these fossils were deposited rapidly--not over hundreds of millions of years. Furthermore, almost all sediments were sorted by water. The worldwide fossil record is, therefore, evidence of the rapid death and burial of animal and plant life by a worldwide, catastrophic flood. The fossil record is not evidence of slow change.
Did the early earth have oxygen in its atmosphere? If it did, the compounds (called amino acids) needed for life to evolve would have been destroyed by oxidation. But if there had been no oxygen, there would have been no ozone in the upper atmosphere, since ozone is simply a form of oxygen. Without ozone to shield the earth, the sun's ultraviolet radiation would destroy life. The only known way for both ozone and life to be here is for both to come into existence simultaneously--in other words, by creation.
Living matter is composed largely of proteins--long chains of amino acids. Since 1930, it has been known that amino acids cannot join together if oxygen is present. In other words, proteins could not have evolved from chance chemical reactions if the atmosphere contained oxygen. However, the chemistry of the earth's rocks, both on land and below ancient seas, shows that the earth had oxygen before the earliest fossils formed. Even earlier, oxygen would have been produced by solar radiation breaking water vapor apart into oxygen and hydrogen. Then some hydrogen, the lightest of all chemical elements, would have escaped into outer space, leaving behind oxygen.
To form proteins, amino acids must also be highly concentrated. However, the early oceans or atmosphere would have diluted amino acids to the point where the required collisions between them would rarely occur. Besides, amino acids do not naturally link up to form proteins. Instead, proteins tend to break down into amino acids. Furthermore, the proposed energy sources for forming proteins (the earth's heat, electrical discharges, or the sun's radiation) destroy the protein products thousands of times faster than they could have formed. The many attempts to show how life might have arrived on earth have only demonstrated the futility of the effort, the immense complexity of even the simplest life, and the need for a vast intelligence to precede life.
The simplest conceivable form of single-celled life should have at least 600 different protein molecules. The mathematical probability that only one molecule could form by the chance arrangement of the proper sequence of amino acids is far less than 1 in 10^450 . (The magnitude of the number 10^450 can begin to be appreciated by realizing that the visible universe is about 10^28 inches in diameter.)
If sexual reproduction in plants, animals, and humans is a result of evolutionary sequences, an absolutely unbelievable series of chance events must have occurred at each stage.
The amazingly complex, radically different, yet complementary reproductive systems of the male and female must have completely and independently evolved at each stage at about the same time and place. Just a slight incompleteness in only one of the two would make both reproductive systems useless, and the organism would become extinct.
The physical, chemical, and emotional systems of the male and female would also need to be compatible.
The millions of complex products of a male reproductive system (pollen or sperm) must have an affinity for and a mechanical, chemical, and electrical compatibility with the eggs of the female reproductive system.
The many intricate processes occurring at the molecular level inside the fertilized egg would have to work with fantastic precision--processes that scientists can only describe in a general sense.
The environment of this fertilized egg, from conception through adulthood and until it also reproduced with another sexually capable adult (who also "accidentally" evolved), would have to be tightly controlled.
Millions of species must have had a similar string of remarkable "accidents."
The point is, it's not that they're using shades of black. It's that they have the power to do something besides black, and yet don't.
Pencils and 4-bit systems don't render 24 million colors. The GeForce3 on the other hand...
There's a lot going on. Check out http://genesis3d.com - It's a rather advanced 3D engine that allows for a ton of flexibility. If you check out the message board, you should be able to find a few projects that are looking for good people.
Patent stupidity. All those that engage in acts of stupidity will receive cease-and-desist letters, and if aforementioned stupid act is not terminated, the perpetrator of said stupidity can be sued and forced to pay royalties/damages/fees etc.
You never know, it just might work.
Oh...wait...we'd have to sue the justice system, too... ---------------------
Pffft....I have a monitor that displays only 90x90. It's called my TI-82.
Giving the legal hounds more to whine about
on
3D Printers
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· Score: 1
From reading the article, I got the impression the the money in this technology would be in the voxel files. Now, since we are dealing with hard goods in electronic form, they will near-instantly be pirated. Just search your favorite file-sharing program for the blueprints to that new motherboard and processor you've been wanting, and viola! Before lunch, you have a start on a brand new computer! Print a few 128MB memory chips and a new graphics card (3 models to choose from!) and all you have to do is move your old drive into it. Instant gaming machine! Then, you just download your favorite pirated games to play on your brand new pirated machine! Save on your cable modem installation: reserve a night to download the modem, so you don't have to buy it from the cable company! Print a new DVD player, to play your DeCSS-cracked DVDs on. The possibilities are endless. First to make the technology available will get sued off their butts. Not because they're distributing pirated goods, but because they are an instrument in pirating. Never mind the ISP or the file exchange program. They'll want those evil printers banned from use. I feel pity for the first company to unleash them. Of course, this isn't to say I don't want one. I need one!
Slashdot Mirror
Mouseadjuster
PS/2Rate
Those should solve your problems - I've used one, and it really smooths things out.
-- Chris
Say you have a "Z" gesture (Haven't played B&W or used the new version of Opera yet, so don't know exactly what types of gestures we're talking here) - you could try to do it with a mouse, but it could be difficult. With a tablet, it's as simple as writing a Z as you normally would on paper. Quite simple.
The tablets aren't too expensive, either. I chose Wacom as they're recognized as the industry leader among artists (Higher pressure sensitivity and more gee-whiz bells and whistles), but most any tablet could work. I got mine (6x8 intuos) for $130, refurbished. No problems with it. It's a serial interface, but that doesn't bother me too much. You can get the smaller "average" version for about $70 or $80, I think, and it'd work just as well. I certainly consider it to be worth the price.
-- Chris
-- Chris
A little background:
--from HTLOZ
And so began the adventures of Link, whose destiny would be tied to Zelda's throughout the entire course of Hyrule's history. So you see, the title makes a good bit of sense.
[/rant mode] Sorry...hardcore Zelda fan here ;)
-- Chris
CD's don't fit into pockets.
Untrue - maybe not jean pockets, but I carry around 4-5 CDs in my jacket pockets most of the time, along with my CD player and headphones.
CD's scratch easily as they are not protected by any casing like floppies and these new DataPlay discs.
That's why they cost $.15-20 apiece. Break one, burn a new one. Whenever I burn important data to CD, I burn 2 CDs - one to use, one for backup in case the original scratches or is broken.
Portable CD players are terribly bulky as they must house fair sized motors to spin heavy and unweildy CD's and must house the CD entierly.
See my first argument.
"Heavy CDs"?! Maybe if you're Callista Flockhart...
CD's are still primarily a music meduim. Aside from the breach into the software installers, backups and games market, they are not too successful at photo storage, video storage and are silly for e-books.
"Primarily a music medium?" How many software packages have you bought in the last 3 years that came on floppy? I got a CD bundled with my scanner recently that had 220 kb of data on it! CDs account for probably >95% of software distributed in physical media. As to photo storage, I have a total of 6 CDs with photos from my digital camera stuffed chock full of photos. They're an excellent medium for photo storage. Just my $.02
Yeah, you can tell the difference. We recently got one of those Bose Home Theater systems - dropped in a burned CD and was quite suprised to find a hiss and slight distortion that I hadn't noticed before on other systems. You need a high quality system to hear them, but they're there. It's kinda like JPEG - you get a darn close representation of the original, but due to the nature of lossy compression, you'll lose a slight bit. It doesn't bother most, but people in graphics design will definately notice. Of course, this is an argument for Napster/P2P as MP3 obviously isn't on par with CD quality, and serious music lovers will have to buy the CD to appreciate the music on their multi-thousand dollar sound systems. Here's what you do: take a burned CD to your neighborhood Best Buy and pop it to a system so you can hear how it sounds. You'll hear the difference.
Item 2: A body of great mass. The Earth will do for this one.
Hat is a non-metal, therefore has no magnetic properties. Also, electromagnetivity between atoms in hat and body of mass is effecively nil at experiement distances. Air pressure is constant on all sides at T0
Place hat 3 feet above floor.
Let go of hat.
Observe.
I hypothesize that the hat will proceed to move towards the body of largest mass in the vicinity.
What shall we call this strange attraction? "Gravity"? Yeah. That has a catchy ring to it...
Observation.
Anyone ever observed evolution? Macroevolution, that is? I didn't think so.
Neither is creation a law. It wasn't observed. But it makes a heck of a lot more sense. Akham's Razor states that the simplest explaination is the most likely one. Check the mathematical stats on evolution. Mathematically impossible, even given billions of years. It's certainly not what I'd call likely.
*shrug*
The point is, it's not that they're using shades of black. It's that they have the power to do something besides black, and yet don't. Pencils and 4-bit systems don't render 24 million colors. The GeForce3 on the other hand...
You never know, it just might work.
Oh...wait...we'd have to sue the justice system, too...
---------------------
Pffft....I have a monitor that displays only 90x90. It's called my TI-82.
From reading the article, I got the impression the the money in this technology would be in the voxel files. Now, since we are dealing with hard goods in electronic form, they will near-instantly be pirated. Just search your favorite file-sharing program for the blueprints to that new motherboard and processor you've been wanting, and viola! Before lunch, you have a start on a brand new computer! Print a few 128MB memory chips and a new graphics card (3 models to choose from!) and all you have to do is move your old drive into it. Instant gaming machine! Then, you just download your favorite pirated games to play on your brand new pirated machine! Save on your cable modem installation: reserve a night to download the modem, so you don't have to buy it from the cable company! Print a new DVD player, to play your DeCSS-cracked DVDs on. The possibilities are endless. First to make the technology available will get sued off their butts. Not because they're distributing pirated goods, but because they are an instrument in pirating. Never mind the ISP or the file exchange program. They'll want those evil printers banned from use. I feel pity for the first company to unleash them. Of course, this isn't to say I don't want one. I need one!