As another person has already said, you can only have one AGP slot. PCI Express is the next-generation, high-speed replacement for PCI. Remember how the first couple of generations of 3D accelerators were PCI-based?
Besides, you don't need killer bus bandwidth with this because you're not trying to pump out 100fps using a couple of hundred megs of geometry and textures on a card with only a hundred or so megs of memory. (That means you have to send loads of data over the bus 100 times each second.)
The power here is in the parallelisation and incredible performance delivered by highly-specialised processors. Graphics cards have phenomenal memory bandwidth - nVidia's latest has something like 32GB/sec (big B!) - compare that to say a Dual 2GHz PowerMac G5, which has 6.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth. New graphics chips are heading towards the usage of memory paging (3D Labs P10 already does this I believe) So with this and high-end cards with 256 or 512MB of RAM you won't need much bus bandwidth because you'll just page in little bits of geometry and textures as each processor needs it, rather than having to upload huge textures everytime an entire one gets trashed to make room for another one.
So once again, the key thing to remember is that you're not trying to push 100fps. Most of the time spent rendering a frame will be in the GPU shader units, not uploading data to the graphics chip.
Exactly, floating-point colour channels provide a larger dynamic range, which prevents the banding and saturation you see when doing multiple passes with say 8-bits/channel colour. This has been the crucial development to enable this. Conditionals and looping for shaders wasn't generally required - as Renderman-style languages can be decomposed into a series of standard OpenGL operations. (I remember researching all of this for an essay I wrote on this sort of stuff at uni a couple of years ago - interesting to see some of my predictions being realised.)
Who cares if this system takes five or ten minutes to render a frame? That is a hell-of-a-lot more productive than taking 8 hours to render a frame via software!
An interesting bit regarding that is that I read somewhere that the compute time per frame for every Pixar film has remained about the same (8 hours). I wish I could remember the source for that. Imagine what could be achieved with 8 hours of hardware accelerated rendering time!
Imagine having a computer using PCI Express and whacking a gfx card in each slot - renderfarm-in-a-box!
Whilst I like the idea of using Macs, somehow I think that considering the intended use of them, this is an ideal situation in which to deploy x-terms. The article says that they already use Sun gear, so why not roll-out a load of Sunrays? - They'd use less power and last longer because they have no moving parts.
That being said, the Macs are a better choice when compared to PC's... they might be a bit more expensive up front, but the build quality is excellent and people find them easier to use, so the cost of maintaining and supporting them is going to be lower.
One of the interesting things in the article is that they can use the swivel mount to show people their license photos easily. Pretty nifty.
Of course, I have no idea about why they made the decision because I don't work there - I also live across the border in SA.
From my understanding, AARNET rapes universities by charging for traffic. (According to an e-mail I received from the central IT management at a uni I was working at a couple of years ago.)
The current chair (Graeme Samuel) doesn't seem to be so so proactive (or controversial), so they may adopt a wait and see approach.
Have you been reading the news lately? The ACCC has just taken action against Telstra (again) by compressing what would normally take nine months into three weeks!
Give the man a break, he hasn't even been in the job for a full year yet!
This is why nobody really develops cool games primarily for the PC now. Why bother with all that crap for a market of say 50 million, when you can write for just one configuration with a market of 50 million?
Can you guess what each market is? Yep, PC's and PS2's. What's more, console games don't get pirated anywhere near as much as PC games do. (That's based on anecdotal evidence: I've seen more people with legal games for their consoles than people with legal games for their PC's)
Working with the PS2 may be a bitch, but it's better than dealing with tracking down bugs that may or may not be caused by any number of things in the users PC. Just look at the shocking state of PC graphics drivers... no wonder PC games always need to be patched straight after they're released - it's just impossible to test on every combination of hardware and software!
Re:Open Source Energy Initiatives
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 1
Here in Adelaide, Australia (where the last linux.conf.au was held) we have/had a septic system. The town that I live in has recently been hooked up to the sewer system, after being on septic tanks for 150-odd years. We eventually forced the governments hand when an environmental survey was done and found that way over 50% of tanks were defective and leaking raw sewage into the river, but the bastards got us back - they made us pay through the nose for the system. (I guess the upside is that now blocks can be subdivided because you don't have to set aside space for a tank + soakage area)
Our house is relatively new, about 12 or 13 years I think. From around the time when we built it, the government banned traditional septic tank + soakage systems. Instead now you have to install an aerobic treatment system. (Known as a Supertreat or Envirocycle system.)
Ours worked great (it's now disconnected and sits there with the controller box sitting on the top of the tank that's exposed in the corner of the lawn - too expensive to remove, we'll use it to store rainwater for the garden) - you have a normal septic tank that solids settle and decompose in (needs to be sludge-pumped every 5 years or so) and another tank that the liquid overflows into. Inside, that tank is divided into quarters, with each quarter containing a baffle structure. The water moves from one segment to the next, whilst an aerator pumps loads of air into it. Bacteria grow on the baffles and consume much of the nutrients in the water, and they thrive because they're oxygenated (aerobic decomposition - produces carbon dioxide rather than the methane/landfill/swamp gas you get from anaerobic decomposition). When the water reaches the last quarter, it's pumped out and has a bit of chlorine injected into it to kill the nasty bugs and neutralise the odour. The water is suitable for irrigation/non-primary contact.
We used to use it to water our lawns and gardens and they were always lush-green - even in the middle of summer. Since hooking up to the sewer system our lawn is almost dead this summer, and so are the gardens. We have water restrictions (thanks to lack of foresight by successive governments) and if we were to water our lawns and gardens with as much water as we got from the septic system our water bill would have us eating baked beans for dinner every night. =\
It sucks. We had to pay a ~$150 service contract yearly for the supertreat system, which got us quarterly inspections and chlorine top-ups. Now we have to pay sewer rates and our garden is essentially dead =[ (Heh, and here we are living of a friggin' plant nursery!) We had the option of not connecting to the sewer system because of the supertreat system, but we would have had to pay the sewer rates anyway just because it runs past our place! (The reasoning being that access to mains water and sewer services increase the value of your property (Oh, and the rates are based on the value of your property too!) Why the fuck don't they do that for power and gas too huh?)
Lifes a bitch, but you do have choices. Sink a bore or put in rainwater tanks and a supertreat system.
Ok, I'm new in the industry - approaching 6 months - so my opinion probably doesn't count much.
To me, this guy is a whining little bitch. What the hell is a "Gaming Development Consultant" anyway? Just look at how overly-complex those spaghetti diagrams are!
The company that I work at is apparently rather advanced in our development methodology and stuff compared to other companies. Quite simply, everything we do in our process of development just makes sense to me - I don't know how anyone couldn't do it the way we do it.
1/2 an hour to do a build? So? I only have to do a clean build maybe once a week at the most (and that's usually because VC starts playing silly buggers with dependencies and stuff), unless I'm working on a core component of the engine - like the string or array classes - but they shouldn't need to be touched once their written. Yes, you have to build and test your code on all the target platforms before comitting - but come on - you don't have to do a clean build for that! You can compile for PC and Xbox on your workstation while a build server or your tool does the PS2 one.
Modularising your code is key, develop re-usable components. This is what's preached in software engineering and it applies just as much to games. Profiling is not hard either - build profiling functionality into your code and use that in combination with external tools like the PS2 PA.
Yeah, games are hard because they're always on the cutting edge and evolving, but use some common sense when laying down your initial engine and component designs and it should all be pretty easy to manage as long as everyone knows what the score is. Communication is vital.
That there's not enough programmers and too many designers/artists is bullshit too, well, only if you're using a pre-built engine. Games are content-centric now... you need way more artists and designers than coders these days. Having a good workflow for them is essential in order for them to be productive. This entails writing plugins for apps like 3dsmax and photoshop to convert to the interal formats, and to have a quick and easy way to get the content into the game and tweak it. This is another area where the company I work at excels in.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Enough of this crap, I'm going outside for a walk.
I think the main point is that there's a lot of other countries between us and Iraq. If these people really are genuine refugee's then why don't they "seek asylum" in the myriad of other countries? Why come all the way here? The fact that they come all the way to Australia rather than a closer country demonstrates that they are economic migrants, not genuine refugees. As such, they should be locked up or immediately deported to their country of origin because they're breaking the law by trying to sneak into our country under false pretenses.
Spot on! Though I'm not ADD or whatever the hell they call it, nor do I have kids (hey, I'm only 22!), but based upon my experiences and observations I do think it's poor parenting.
Kids crave stimulation and sitting down in a classroom isn't stimulation. 5 year olds should be playing - whether it be in a sandpit, climbing a tree, building things with lego, finger painting or whatever... they're full of energy! Kindergarten for me was nothing but creative playtime.
It's been shown too that kids are more attentive in class if they do PE first thing in the morning. Healthy body, healthy mind. Being crammed full of artifical junk food and crappy TV (read: violent japanese cartoons) and all that probably doesn't help much either.
I grew up on a plant nursery and my parents always encouraged me to play in the garden... I was always digging holes, playing with Tonka trucks in the sandpit, climbing trees, learning how to garden and all that sort of stuff, that's when I wasn't inside playing with lego or other mind-challenging toys like Meccano. Computers (long live the C64!) were a natural progression. At night my parents would always read to me, I'd watch Bugs Bunny and Dr. Who with my Dad. My Dad always encouraged me to watch science and current affair shows.
I was also fortunate with school too... I went to a small school (I think the most students we ever had was about 160) that was very close-knit, where everyone knew everyone and we were all friends. Parents were also heavily involved and the teachers were very dedicated. They all put a lot of effort into making sure that I was pushed, as I was always at the top of the class. We also did PE almost everyday, and in my last couple of years at primary school we'd play soccer or footy at lunch with our teacher.
So now I've rambled on a fair bit, but I hope you get my point - hyperactive kids are hyperactive because they're not being stimulated enough. Let them be kids (what's the world coming to when 13 y.o.'s are getting drunk, doing drugs and getting pregnant?), spend as much time with them as you can and challenge their minds - broaden their horizons and encourage them to think and to question things, not just accept them.
All you Linux geeks, don't forget that on Friday and Saturday is the annual Schutzenfest! Head west along the River Torrens to Bonython Park (or alternatively, along North Terrace and Port Road... you'll know you're on the right track as the concentration of drunk people increases =]
For those of you who don't know, schutzenfest is german for "shooting festival". The one held in Adelaide each summer is the largest in the southern hemisphere. Though of course, being aussies, we've turned it into a mostly piss drinking festival, hence why a lot of people (like me) say they're going to get 'shitzenfaced'. Either way, it's a bloody great time... plenty of german culture and food and beer for all!
Hopefully it'll be stinking hot again - you can get smashed really quickly because you'll be sweating so much and you gotta drink that huge stein of beer before it warms up!
I was going to volunteer at the conference on Saturday, but then I remembered Schutzenfest was on. Beer and babes: 1 Linux: 0. Though of course, if I happen to see Linus I'll shout him a round, as I'd expect everyone else would.
So, if I buy these Apple products and flash memory, my life will change and this gaping chasm which plagues my existance will be gone forever?
To look at or touch Apple products is to experience the ultimate consumer orgasm - some sort of weird love-like feeling, where you can't help but feel good about forking over a wad of cash for the product that you've survived for years without, but now that you've held it you know that you can't live without it.
Or maybe it's more like crack... they give you a freebie (test drive in the store) and then you'll do anything to get your hands on one.
All I know is that I'm saving up for a dual G5 and iPod to complement my iBook =]
I believe this guy would be saying "bugger" right now. But maybe not, since that ad was banned from NZ because bugger doesn't mean bugger like it does over here in Oz, but I digress.
Isn't NZ the country that pretty much told the USA to "fuck off" when they wanted to dock nuclear-powered ships in their ports or something? If that's true, then you'd think that a country that does that wouldn't stop a hobbyist tinkering in his shed when the USA asks them to.
As I calculated a year or so ago, it's actually significantly cheaper (believe it or not!) to buy yourself a large HDD and low-end PC and to fill it with DVD images from rental discs than it is to buy all those movies outright. The value proposition of this has also significantly increased over the last year too. What's more, with some high bit-rate encoding in say DivX (say 2GB/movie) you at least double the cost-effectiveness of it, especially if you're prepared to wait a month or two until the new-release movies go to the $2-3 overnight shelves.
It's a very tempting idea, even more so if you consider chucking a DVB tuner into the box too so you can record TV streams. I'm probably going to end up building such a device in the next month or two, except I'll fill it with DVD's I own - no more scratches, changing discs or fingerprints. =]
People whinge about CD's costing too much, and say that's the reason people copy music. By comparison, a DVD costs probably marginally more to produce, yet costs significantly more than a music CD.
IANAL, but it's my understanding that the Communications and Privacy acts make it illegal for telco's and ISP's to snoop on customer activity (wiretapping). As such, they are not responsible for what their users do. They are also not entitled to reveal the details of users who are up to illegal activity unless compelled to by a court or the police.
A while ago there was a thread in the Internode forum on Whirlpool about this, where one of Internode's representatives explained it all (well, what their lawyers told them)
You yanks are crazy when it comes to voting! Why do you need to have a machine count the votes? Why can't you standardise the way you vote across the country?
Here in Australia we all vote the same way - *everyone* has to go to a polling place and line up. You have your name marked off the roll then you take your ballot papers into a booth and write your preferences for candidates in boxes that are clearly alongside each candidate's name, with candidates listed vertically so you don't get confused as to what box belongs to which candidate.
You then fold the ballot paper in half so that no-one can see your vote and place it in the appropriate sealed ballot box on your way out of the place. There are independent observers for every step apart from when you're actually inside the booth voting.
No-one but you gets to see your vote. There are no issues with invalid votes and hanging chads. If you don't want to vote then you donkey it. (Don't fill in the ballot paper or scribble your manifesto on it or tell the PM to bugger-off or something.)
At the close of polling the ballot boxes are taken to the counting place, where multiple people count the votes whilst under observation. If everything matches and nobody is upset about anything then the votes are added to the tally.
So except for in the case of a close election (where they have to wait for postal votes to come in) we know who the winners are by the end of the night.
There's no machines to break-down or be tampered with. It's that simple. The only reason for doing it without paper is that it's faster and possibly cheaper. Democracies aren't the most efficient or cheapest ways to run a country, but bloody hell - I wouldn't have it any other way!
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Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians!
As another person has already said, you can only have one AGP slot. PCI Express is the next-generation, high-speed replacement for PCI. Remember how the first couple of generations of 3D accelerators were PCI-based?
Besides, you don't need killer bus bandwidth with this because you're not trying to pump out 100fps using a couple of hundred megs of geometry and textures on a card with only a hundred or so megs of memory. (That means you have to send loads of data over the bus 100 times each second.)
The power here is in the parallelisation and incredible performance delivered by highly-specialised processors. Graphics cards have phenomenal memory bandwidth - nVidia's latest has something like 32GB/sec (big B!) - compare that to say a Dual 2GHz PowerMac G5, which has 6.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth. New graphics chips are heading towards the usage of memory paging (3D Labs P10 already does this I believe) So with this and high-end cards with 256 or 512MB of RAM you won't need much bus bandwidth because you'll just page in little bits of geometry and textures as each processor needs it, rather than having to upload huge textures everytime an entire one gets trashed to make room for another one.
So once again, the key thing to remember is that you're not trying to push 100fps. Most of the time spent rendering a frame will be in the GPU shader units, not uploading data to the graphics chip.
Exactly, floating-point colour channels provide a larger dynamic range, which prevents the banding and saturation you see when doing multiple passes with say 8-bits/channel colour. This has been the crucial development to enable this. Conditionals and looping for shaders wasn't generally required - as Renderman-style languages can be decomposed into a series of standard OpenGL operations. (I remember researching all of this for an essay I wrote on this sort of stuff at uni a couple of years ago - interesting to see some of my predictions being realised.)
Who cares if this system takes five or ten minutes to render a frame? That is a hell-of-a-lot more productive than taking 8 hours to render a frame via software!
An interesting bit regarding that is that I read somewhere that the compute time per frame for every Pixar film has remained about the same (8 hours). I wish I could remember the source for that. Imagine what could be achieved with 8 hours of hardware accelerated rendering time!
Imagine having a computer using PCI Express and whacking a gfx card in each slot - renderfarm-in-a-box!
The future is indeed exciting.
Whilst I like the idea of using Macs, somehow I think that considering the intended use of them, this is an ideal situation in which to deploy x-terms. The article says that they already use Sun gear, so why not roll-out a load of Sunrays? - They'd use less power and last longer because they have no moving parts.
That being said, the Macs are a better choice when compared to PC's... they might be a bit more expensive up front, but the build quality is excellent and people find them easier to use, so the cost of maintaining and supporting them is going to be lower.
One of the interesting things in the article is that they can use the swivel mount to show people their license photos easily. Pretty nifty.
Of course, I have no idea about why they made the decision because I don't work there - I also live across the border in SA.
I would like the record to show that I stand corrected!
Wasn't AARNET sold to Telstra?
From my understanding, AARNET rapes universities by charging for traffic. (According to an e-mail I received from the central IT management at a uni I was working at a couple of years ago.)
The current chair (Graeme Samuel) doesn't seem to be so so proactive (or controversial), so they may adopt a wait and see approach.
Have you been reading the news lately? The ACCC has just taken action against Telstra (again) by compressing what would normally take nine months into three weeks!
Give the man a break, he hasn't even been in the job for a full year yet!
This is why nobody really develops cool games primarily for the PC now. Why bother with all that crap for a market of say 50 million, when you can write for just one configuration with a market of 50 million?
Can you guess what each market is? Yep, PC's and PS2's. What's more, console games don't get pirated anywhere near as much as PC games do. (That's based on anecdotal evidence: I've seen more people with legal games for their consoles than people with legal games for their PC's)
Working with the PS2 may be a bitch, but it's better than dealing with tracking down bugs that may or may not be caused by any number of things in the users PC. Just look at the shocking state of PC graphics drivers... no wonder PC games always need to be patched straight after they're released - it's just impossible to test on every combination of hardware and software!
Here in Adelaide, Australia (where the last linux.conf.au was held) we have/had a septic system. The town that I live in has recently been hooked up to the sewer system, after being on septic tanks for 150-odd years. We eventually forced the governments hand when an environmental survey was done and found that way over 50% of tanks were defective and leaking raw sewage into the river, but the bastards got us back - they made us pay through the nose for the system. (I guess the upside is that now blocks can be subdivided because you don't have to set aside space for a tank + soakage area)
Our house is relatively new, about 12 or 13 years I think. From around the time when we built it, the government banned traditional septic tank + soakage systems. Instead now you have to install an aerobic treatment system. (Known as a Supertreat or Envirocycle system.)
Ours worked great (it's now disconnected and sits there with the controller box sitting on the top of the tank that's exposed in the corner of the lawn - too expensive to remove, we'll use it to store rainwater for the garden) - you have a normal septic tank that solids settle and decompose in (needs to be sludge-pumped every 5 years or so) and another tank that the liquid overflows into. Inside, that tank is divided into quarters, with each quarter containing a baffle structure. The water moves from one segment to the next, whilst an aerator pumps loads of air into it. Bacteria grow on the baffles and consume much of the nutrients in the water, and they thrive because they're oxygenated (aerobic decomposition - produces carbon dioxide rather than the methane/landfill/swamp gas you get from anaerobic decomposition). When the water reaches the last quarter, it's pumped out and has a bit of chlorine injected into it to kill the nasty bugs and neutralise the odour. The water is suitable for irrigation/non-primary contact.
We used to use it to water our lawns and gardens and they were always lush-green - even in the middle of summer. Since hooking up to the sewer system our lawn is almost dead this summer, and so are the gardens. We have water restrictions (thanks to lack of foresight by successive governments) and if we were to water our lawns and gardens with as much water as we got from the septic system our water bill would have us eating baked beans for dinner every night. =\
It sucks. We had to pay a ~$150 service contract yearly for the supertreat system, which got us quarterly inspections and chlorine top-ups. Now we have to pay sewer rates and our garden is essentially dead =[ (Heh, and here we are living of a friggin' plant nursery!) We had the option of not connecting to the sewer system because of the supertreat system, but we would have had to pay the sewer rates anyway just because it runs past our place! (The reasoning being that access to mains water and sewer services increase the value of your property (Oh, and the rates are based on the value of your property too!) Why the fuck don't they do that for power and gas too huh?)
Lifes a bitch, but you do have choices. Sink a bore or put in rainwater tanks and a supertreat system.
Ok, I'm new in the industry - approaching 6 months - so my opinion probably doesn't count much.
To me, this guy is a whining little bitch. What the hell is a "Gaming Development Consultant" anyway? Just look at how overly-complex those spaghetti diagrams are!
The company that I work at is apparently rather advanced in our development methodology and stuff compared to other companies. Quite simply, everything we do in our process of development just makes sense to me - I don't know how anyone couldn't do it the way we do it.
1/2 an hour to do a build? So? I only have to do a clean build maybe once a week at the most (and that's usually because VC starts playing silly buggers with dependencies and stuff), unless I'm working on a core component of the engine - like the string or array classes - but they shouldn't need to be touched once their written. Yes, you have to build and test your code on all the target platforms before comitting - but come on - you don't have to do a clean build for that! You can compile for PC and Xbox on your workstation while a build server or your tool does the PS2 one.
Modularising your code is key, develop re-usable components. This is what's preached in software engineering and it applies just as much to games. Profiling is not hard either - build profiling functionality into your code and use that in combination with external tools like the PS2 PA.
Yeah, games are hard because they're always on the cutting edge and evolving, but use some common sense when laying down your initial engine and component designs and it should all be pretty easy to manage as long as everyone knows what the score is. Communication is vital.
That there's not enough programmers and too many designers/artists is bullshit too, well, only if you're using a pre-built engine. Games are content-centric now... you need way more artists and designers than coders these days. Having a good workflow for them is essential in order for them to be productive. This entails writing plugins for apps like 3dsmax and photoshop to convert to the interal formats, and to have a quick and easy way to get the content into the game and tweak it. This is another area where the company I work at excels in.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Enough of this crap, I'm going outside for a walk.
read-only, don't want to be writing anything to that drive, unless you can handle the increased load on your wallet in 9 months.
I think the main point is that there's a lot of other countries between us and Iraq. If these people really are genuine refugee's then why don't they "seek asylum" in the myriad of other countries? Why come all the way here? The fact that they come all the way to Australia rather than a closer country demonstrates that they are economic migrants, not genuine refugees. As such, they should be locked up or immediately deported to their country of origin because they're breaking the law by trying to sneak into our country under false pretenses.
no, i didn't know that
The fact that C:\> appears in your signature indicates why you didn't know that.
Spot on! Though I'm not ADD or whatever the hell they call it, nor do I have kids (hey, I'm only 22!), but based upon my experiences and observations I do think it's poor parenting.
Kids crave stimulation and sitting down in a classroom isn't stimulation. 5 year olds should be playing - whether it be in a sandpit, climbing a tree, building things with lego, finger painting or whatever... they're full of energy! Kindergarten for me was nothing but creative playtime.
It's been shown too that kids are more attentive in class if they do PE first thing in the morning. Healthy body, healthy mind. Being crammed full of artifical junk food and crappy TV (read: violent japanese cartoons) and all that probably doesn't help much either.
I grew up on a plant nursery and my parents always encouraged me to play in the garden... I was always digging holes, playing with Tonka trucks in the sandpit, climbing trees, learning how to garden and all that sort of stuff, that's when I wasn't inside playing with lego or other mind-challenging toys like Meccano. Computers (long live the C64!) were a natural progression. At night my parents would always read to me, I'd watch Bugs Bunny and Dr. Who with my Dad. My Dad always encouraged me to watch science and current affair shows.
I was also fortunate with school too... I went to a small school (I think the most students we ever had was about 160) that was very close-knit, where everyone knew everyone and we were all friends. Parents were also heavily involved and the teachers were very dedicated. They all put a lot of effort into making sure that I was pushed, as I was always at the top of the class. We also did PE almost everyday, and in my last couple of years at primary school we'd play soccer or footy at lunch with our teacher.
So now I've rambled on a fair bit, but I hope you get my point - hyperactive kids are hyperactive because they're not being stimulated enough. Let them be kids (what's the world coming to when 13 y.o.'s are getting drunk, doing drugs and getting pregnant?), spend as much time with them as you can and challenge their minds - broaden their horizons and encourage them to think and to question things, not just accept them.
Well, it seems to be the prevailing translation/understanding here, but I for one stand corrected!
All you Linux geeks, don't forget that on Friday and Saturday is the annual Schutzenfest! Head west along the River Torrens to Bonython Park (or alternatively, along North Terrace and Port Road... you'll know you're on the right track as the concentration of drunk people increases =]
For those of you who don't know, schutzenfest is german for "shooting festival". The one held in Adelaide each summer is the largest in the southern hemisphere. Though of course, being aussies, we've turned it into a mostly piss drinking festival, hence why a lot of people (like me) say they're going to get 'shitzenfaced'. Either way, it's a bloody great time... plenty of german culture and food and beer for all!
Hopefully it'll be stinking hot again - you can get smashed really quickly because you'll be sweating so much and you gotta drink that huge stein of beer before it warms up!
I was going to volunteer at the conference on Saturday, but then I remembered Schutzenfest was on. Beer and babes: 1 Linux: 0. Though of course, if I happen to see Linus I'll shout him a round, as I'd expect everyone else would.
=D
Me so speedy.
Me process you too much.
So, if I buy these Apple products and flash memory, my life will change and this gaping chasm which plagues my existance will be gone forever?
To look at or touch Apple products is to experience the ultimate consumer orgasm - some sort of weird love-like feeling, where you can't help but feel good about forking over a wad of cash for the product that you've survived for years without, but now that you've held it you know that you can't live without it.
Or maybe it's more like crack... they give you a freebie (test drive in the store) and then you'll do anything to get your hands on one.
All I know is that I'm saving up for a dual G5 and iPod to complement my iBook =]
Now for a developer it takes shorter to create a mountain in game than for a player to climb it.
Yeah, that's why it takes thousands of man-hours to create a game that you can play through in 40 or so hours.
Hrmm... I knew it was made in NZ, but I was under the impression that it got banned after being on TV there for a couple of weeks.
I believe this guy would be saying "bugger" right now. But maybe not, since that ad was banned from NZ because bugger doesn't mean bugger like it does over here in Oz, but I digress.
Isn't NZ the country that pretty much told the USA to "fuck off" when they wanted to dock nuclear-powered ships in their ports or something? If that's true, then you'd think that a country that does that wouldn't stop a hobbyist tinkering in his shed when the USA asks them to.
What is the deal with this thing? It's one of those 'wow cool' inventions with no practical use at all.
m plicated_than_it_needs_to_be
Once again, I refer you to maddox: http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=segway_more_co
As I calculated a year or so ago, it's actually significantly cheaper (believe it or not!) to buy yourself a large HDD and low-end PC and to fill it with DVD images from rental discs than it is to buy all those movies outright. The value proposition of this has also significantly increased over the last year too. What's more, with some high bit-rate encoding in say DivX (say 2GB/movie) you at least double the cost-effectiveness of it, especially if you're prepared to wait a month or two until the new-release movies go to the $2-3 overnight shelves.
It's a very tempting idea, even more so if you consider chucking a DVB tuner into the box too so you can record TV streams. I'm probably going to end up building such a device in the next month or two, except I'll fill it with DVD's I own - no more scratches, changing discs or fingerprints. =]
People whinge about CD's costing too much, and say that's the reason people copy music. By comparison, a DVD costs probably marginally more to produce, yet costs significantly more than a music CD.
This is crap. Poor journalism too.
IANAL, but it's my understanding that the Communications and Privacy acts make it illegal for telco's and ISP's to snoop on customer activity (wiretapping). As such, they are not responsible for what their users do. They are also not entitled to reveal the details of users who are up to illegal activity unless compelled to by a court or the police.
A while ago there was a thread in the Internode forum on Whirlpool about this, where one of Internode's representatives explained it all (well, what their lawyers told them)
You yanks are crazy when it comes to voting! Why do you need to have a machine count the votes? Why can't you standardise the way you vote across the country?
Here in Australia we all vote the same way - *everyone* has to go to a polling place and line up. You have your name marked off the roll then you take your ballot papers into a booth and write your preferences for candidates in boxes that are clearly alongside each candidate's name, with candidates listed vertically so you don't get confused as to what box belongs to which candidate.
You then fold the ballot paper in half so that no-one can see your vote and place it in the appropriate sealed ballot box on your way out of the place. There are independent observers for every step apart from when you're actually inside the booth voting.
No-one but you gets to see your vote. There are no issues with invalid votes and hanging chads. If you don't want to vote then you donkey it. (Don't fill in the ballot paper or scribble your manifesto on it or tell the PM to bugger-off or something.)
At the close of polling the ballot boxes are taken to the counting place, where multiple people count the votes whilst under observation. If everything matches and nobody is upset about anything then the votes are added to the tally.
So except for in the case of a close election (where they have to wait for postal votes to come in) we know who the winners are by the end of the night.
There's no machines to break-down or be tampered with. It's that simple. The only reason for doing it without paper is that it's faster and possibly cheaper. Democracies aren't the most efficient or cheapest ways to run a country, but bloody hell - I wouldn't have it any other way!