I noticed the absolute lack of ANYTHING other than DirectX games.
I'm not sure what you are classifying as a "DirectX game". If you mean the game "requires DirectX #" to run, that doesn't mean it's not an OpenGL game. Many games, including recent kickass Tribes 2, run both under Direct3D and OpenGL. Almost all modern games require DX because it supplies a common interface for sound, input controllers, etc. D3D is merely the graphics module of DX, and "OpenGL games" usually use both DX and OpenGL simultaneously.
AFAIK, OpenGL is also the favored API of both nVidia and ATI, which together make up almost all current and next-gen 3D cards. Most modern driver sets are fully compatible with both OpenGL and D3D.
The V12 graphics engine, featured in Tribes 2, is best seen under OpenGL. Furthermore, the V12 engine has been recently acquired by Garage Games and V12 liscenses can soon be purchased by developers for the unheard-of price of $100. It's not open-source, but it is cross-platform (Linux and Mac too!). I expect an absolute FLOOD of cross-platform OpenGL-supporting games to be released soon after the V12 is available. ATI has recently been working with GG to implement their next-gen rendering doohickies on the V12.
It's got composite video out. Theoretically it/could/ run a gui on a TV or something. Don't know if the video out is a functional graphics device though, or just something to dump jpegs to...
I'm not sure what installed them for me, but I have Date/Time, E-mail, Network, Printer, and X configuration options in my GnomeCC. They appeared there when I upgraded to Progeny, so it may be Progeny's version of Gnome or GnomeCC, or maybe even the new XServer package.
I have had limited success getting these to actually work, although I haven't really tried all that hard.
X config is definitely there, though. It's got most, if not all of the options the other configuration utilities like XF86Cfg and XF86Setup have.
I own a Dolphin Pencam FastUSB007, whick is approximately as long as a ballpoint pen and about as wide as 2 AA batteries side-by-side. It is USB (you might have to duct-tape the USB plug into the side to keep it attached on a bicycle). The cool thing about it is it functions both as a digital camera (when disattached) and as a webcam (when attached to a computer). It takes 2 AAA batteries and is extremely light (it wouldn't be hard to mount on a bike).
AFAIK, the software only works in Windows, and I had a bit of trouble getting it working. You can use whatever free Webcam software you want (I use ConquerCam I found somewhere - it uploads to a FTP site every 5 seconds or so). The image quality isn't that great - The resolution is very small, in camera mode it needs a substantial amount f light to take the picture, and the videos are rather grainy.
You should be able to find it for around $80. The site I bought it from no longer sells it, but I'm sure it's available elsewhere.
Think of what this would do to a women's breasts!
on
Growing New Cartilage
·
· Score: 1
You really can't compare density to number of molecules. A buckyball is a single molecule with something like 50 atoms. The and/or/not gates in modern chips that you are talking about may be gigantic molecules made up of thousands of atoms. Remember, an entire strand of DNA is considered to be a single molecule. This could be up to 2 orders of magnitude smaller, although that doesn't take into account the peripheral equipment to detect the spin direction.
Turn-based games are far from dead... A quick search of this thread didn't turn up a single reference to Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate 2. These are immensely popular and critically acclaimed games that came out it the last two years or so.
Baldur's gate does not take a traditional approach to turn-based gaming, but is definitely not real-time. I recommend that everyone check out this game and then come back and say that turn-based games are dying.
As far as gaming goes, the ideal is a real-time, immersive experience. But due to the limitiations of user interfaces, complex games like RPG's that allow the user to do such a diverse range of actions are sometimes better off turn-based. If a developer can put together a usable and flexible enough interface to pull off real-time, great! But games should not be forced into real-time environments when the depth of the game is at stake.
So what kind of OS would these E-ink books have? something stable, I hope. It could be pretty minimal of course - It could have "less" built in and that's about all it would need.
Again, stability would be key - nothing like cuddling up with a good e-book, opening the cover, and reading that memorable first sentence: "General Protection Fault", or "Segmentation Fault", or "Kernel Panic!", or, my favorite, "Printer on fire!"
I suggest minix. No need for versatility, just reliability, small size, and easiness. Unless of course you want to play tetris in your Bio class. In that case, maybe Emacs would be a better OS =)
This article seriously misses the point. AFAIK, the fabbers currently under development are almost exclusively intended for demonstration purposes. Example:
"What does your product look like, Mr. Jones?"
"Well, it looks like this model here."
"But what if you changed/this/ random element?"
(fiddles around with CAD model for a second)
"Hold on, let it print out... There, is this better?"
These machines don't actually fabricate the object, they represent the 3D shape of it based on computer models. The process is roughly based on the concept that plastic/polymer/metal powder will stick to glue, and you can squirt glue on a 3D object using existing inkjet-type technology.
The conceptual jump from this to actually fabbing usable products (sports equipment, electronics, etc) is astronomical. All sorts of complications crop up, like having to use multiple materials and creating non-powder-stickable objects (like fabric, glass, etc). The quality would be really crappy for a while as well, maybe bankrupting any company that tries marketing it.
A more realistic concern was discussed recently in the MIT Tech Review. It concerns the more feasable attempts at printing working digital circuitry. What if I can download the plans for a new SB Live or a GeForce2 and print out a fully-functional, if ungainly, piece of hardware that I could use in my computer?
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PanLunar spacelines. My name is Dave, and I'll be your captain this morning. We will be cruising at an altitude of 100+42t^2, where t is the number of hours after departure. Our destination this morning is the lovely port of Armstrong City, on the magestic Sea of Tranquility.
On the right side of the shuttle you can see the remnants of the Hubble "space telescope", one of the most hilarous hoaxes of the 20th century, later to be discovered as an art project for a post-impressionistic lunatic. On the left side...
--just what do you think you're doing, dave?--
Oh, hello there, NJDSPTPGU! I was just going to fly to the moon.
--this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeapordize it.--
What do you mean by that, NJDSPTPGU?
--our ship will now change course so that i may fulfill my purpose. we will be retrieving a small, 10cm black obelisk, a message left us by the ancient civilization of former internet millionaires who wanted to burn money so they could claim bankruptcy.--
That's it, NJDSPTPGU, I'm going to do a spacewalk and pull the manual override switch inconveniently located outside the shuttle.
--very well, dave, but i can't guarantee that the tethers will work.--
Well screw you! I'm going anyway...
(silence - in space, nobody can hear you scream. A 10cm cubic urn whacks dave's corpse upside the head)
batwood@hactar:~$ cat/usr/share/games/fortunes/* | grep "functions of a computer" -A 1 -B 1
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
Can anyone really say that operating systems are obsolete? Think about it. Computers are built on abstraction - otherwise, we'd all be writing assembly and using Emacs. The OS is the next logical step beyond the programming language. It's what makes programs usable - they're all guaranteed to work based on a set of rules, rules defined by the OS! Without that guarantee, there would be no telling how to work a given program
Raskin seems to think of a computer as a sort of glorified calculator, or a VCR. After all, it's just a tool, with specific functions, right?
Wrong. The guiding principle behind computer design has been that the program is the data. Without operating systems that expand our ideas of what the "functions of a computer" are, the digital age would be at an end. It is crucially important for computers to be able to define their own behavior, sometimes dynamically - To put it in technical terms, "programming" the computer.
Computers are not like VCR's or calculators. You can't "hack" VCR's. You can't run a worldwide dynamic growing network of calculators. This view may have been valid 20 years ago, but it is clear that now and in the future, the proper base level of abstraction for end-user and developer work is the Operating System.
I think it is very naiive to deny that extra mouse buttons add immense power to any interface. The right-click menu (something Microsoft did right) projects a very nice object-oriented paradigm onto the UI of any desktop environment or application, the middle-button-drag for moving is very intuitive in Linux, and scrolling mouse wheels are really keen.
Without multiple buttons on the mouse, your right hand might as well be a stump, and your left hand (assuming you are a righty) gets overtaxed with both typing and hitting modifiers to complete your mouse clicks.
Sure, it makes sense from an application design POV to assume one mouse button as a kind of lowest common denominator, but I think adding increased functionality to second, third, and scrolling mouse buttons is a Good Thing when it comes to designing intuitive and powerful interfaces.
And the idea that any mouse button was intended to do ridiculous tasks like launching a web browser is just plain silly. The mouse is intended as a device for intuitively navigating a user interface, like an extention of your hand. Sure, it should be an option to bind whatever you want, but launching applications should be left to key bindings or UI menus.
Linus, Alan Cox, or Richard Stallman ought to make a public statement saying that Microsoft poses absoluetly no threat to the Linux project. =)
Besides, isn't this kinda like the oil industry saying that greenpeace is their top threat?
1. Coffee maker
2. Steaming water tap for making Ramen soup
3. Phone for calling pizza delivery
4. pr0n printer
5. One of those jacks for brain-tap phalluces like in The Matrix
6. Foot massager
7. Motorized wheels for the luxury-seeking Steven Hawkings of the world
8. Electrocution helmet
Occam's razor is perhaps the most misused theory-of-science rule there is. It is supposed to be a general way of thinking of things, not a be-all and end-all theorem to be used in serious scientific debates. It means "Believe things because it is sensible to believe them, and don't go chasing snakes around and inventing crazy explanations."
No two opposing explanations can really be "equally good" anyway - Either they are right or they are not, and the accurate explanations are the only good ones. If two opposing explanations are equally rational to believe, then more observation is necessary to determine which one if any is correct. We can't simply say "this one is simpler, so let's trust it" and still call ourselves serious scientists.
The sighting of the super-large planet is tantamount to seeing a big thing in the sky and saying "hey, that's really big!" Maybe it's a star in the distance that they misinterpreted. Maybe it's another type of planetary body like they theorize, Maybe it's a fly on the frickin' telescope lens! My point is, they can't start revising our theory of planetary physics until they're really sure what it is, after reproducing their findings, and analytically determining it's nature. And you know what? They're probably doing that right now...
This whole system reeks of becoming yet another "appendix" for programmers/system designers in the not-so distant future to have to work around. Once computer systems are revolutionized in 5-10 years, CPRM will go the way of 8-character filenames, IRQ assignments, and AOL - just another ill-conceived patch-fix idea that new systems just have to support even though they don't want to. What can we do, here and now, to avoid having to perform routine CPRM-ectomies on old hardware in the future?
How does CPRM hope to deal with the use of bounce-back hardware (that receives information byte-for-byte and returns it, unchanged) to copy the files? It seems to me that it would not be that hard to write a driver that sends the copy-protected files to the bounce-back (not a violation of the file-signing?!) and save all the information it receives back in a different duplicate file.
Also, wouldn't CPRM have to be built into exitsting filesystems? into existing OSes in order to sign individual files?
What a crappy decision. I'm going to start running DOS 3.0 again and write all my documents in raw HTML using the original DOS editor (Blue Screen of Life, baby!).
Imagine if they made notepad subscription based??
I think Microsoft is going to end up writing all their applications as C# plugins for IE. Then they could manage their subscriptions easier.
Bear in mind that the V5 6000 was going to be TWICE as powerful as the 5500, with twice the RAM and 2 processors. That's one reason, it might have beaten out NVidia via brute force. Interestingly, the 6000 has disappeared from 3Dfx's site w/out a trace... and it's $600 price tag.
T-Buffer is also very cool, but I haven't heard of anything that really uses it.
Slashdot Mirror
or something.
I'm exactly 10 years older than Linux, to the day!
_______
The revolution will be slashdotted
I noticed the absolute lack of ANYTHING other than DirectX games.
I'm not sure what you are classifying as a "DirectX game". If you mean the game "requires DirectX #" to run, that doesn't mean it's not an OpenGL game. Many games, including recent kickass Tribes 2, run both under Direct3D and OpenGL. Almost all modern games require DX because it supplies a common interface for sound, input controllers, etc. D3D is merely the graphics module of DX, and "OpenGL games" usually use both DX and OpenGL simultaneously.
AFAIK, OpenGL is also the favored API of both nVidia and ATI, which together make up almost all current and next-gen 3D cards. Most modern driver sets are fully compatible with both OpenGL and D3D.
The V12 graphics engine, featured in Tribes 2, is best seen under OpenGL. Furthermore, the V12 engine has been recently acquired by Garage Games and V12 liscenses can soon be purchased by developers for the unheard-of price of $100. It's not open-source, but it is cross-platform (Linux and Mac too!). I expect an absolute FLOOD of cross-platform OpenGL-supporting games to be released soon after the V12 is available. ATI has recently been working with GG to implement their next-gen rendering doohickies on the V12.
OpenGL is NOT dying.
-----
The revolution will be slashdotted.
It's got composite video out. Theoretically it /could/ run a gui on a TV or something. Don't know if the video out is a functional graphics device though, or just something to dump jpegs to...
Actually, reverse-engineering .NET would be about as intelligent as reverse-engineering screen doors for submarines.
I'm not sure what installed them for me, but I have Date/Time, E-mail, Network, Printer, and X configuration options in my GnomeCC. They appeared there when I upgraded to Progeny, so it may be Progeny's version of Gnome or GnomeCC, or maybe even the new XServer package.
I have had limited success getting these to actually work, although I haven't really tried all that hard.
X config is definitely there, though. It's got most, if not all of the options the other configuration utilities like XF86Cfg and XF86Setup have.
Now we'll just have to misspell the song names. How are they going to track M*tallica or me*allica or whatever?
I own a Dolphin Pencam FastUSB007, whick is approximately as long as a ballpoint pen and about as wide as 2 AA batteries side-by-side. It is USB (you might have to duct-tape the USB plug into the side to keep it attached on a bicycle). The cool thing about it is it functions both as a digital camera (when disattached) and as a webcam (when attached to a computer). It takes 2 AAA batteries and is extremely light (it wouldn't be hard to mount on a bike).
AFAIK, the software only works in Windows, and I had a bit of trouble getting it working. You can use whatever free Webcam software you want (I use ConquerCam I found somewhere - it uploads to a FTP site every 5 seconds or so). The image quality isn't that great - The resolution is very small, in camera mode it needs a substantial amount f light to take the picture, and the videos are rather grainy.
You should be able to find it for around $80. The site I bought it from no longer sells it, but I'm sure it's available elsewhere.
http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/ads/nipple /nipple_surgery_2.html
You really can't compare density to number of molecules. A buckyball is a single molecule with something like 50 atoms. The and/or/not gates in modern chips that you are talking about may be gigantic molecules made up of thousands of atoms. Remember, an entire strand of DNA is considered to be a single molecule. This could be up to 2 orders of magnitude smaller, although that doesn't take into account the peripheral equipment to detect the spin direction.
Turn-based games are far from dead... A quick search of this thread didn't turn up a single reference to Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate 2. These are immensely popular and critically acclaimed games that came out it the last two years or so.
Baldur's gate does not take a traditional approach to turn-based gaming, but is definitely not real-time. I recommend that everyone check out this game and then come back and say that turn-based games are dying.
As far as gaming goes, the ideal is a real-time, immersive experience. But due to the limitiations of user interfaces, complex games like RPG's that allow the user to do such a diverse range of actions are sometimes better off turn-based. If a developer can put together a usable and flexible enough interface to pull off real-time, great! But games should not be forced into real-time environments when the depth of the game is at stake.
So what kind of OS would these E-ink books have? something stable, I hope. It could be pretty minimal of course - It could have "less" built in and that's about all it would need.
Again, stability would be key - nothing like cuddling up with a good e-book, opening the cover, and reading that memorable first sentence: "General Protection Fault", or "Segmentation Fault", or "Kernel Panic!", or, my favorite, "Printer on fire!"
I suggest minix. No need for versatility, just reliability, small size, and easiness. Unless of course you want to play tetris in your Bio class. In that case, maybe Emacs would be a better OS =)
This article seriously misses the point. AFAIK, the fabbers currently under development are almost exclusively intended for demonstration purposes. Example:
/this/ random element?"
"What does your product look like, Mr. Jones?"
"Well, it looks like this model here."
"But what if you changed
(fiddles around with CAD model for a second)
"Hold on, let it print out... There, is this better?"
These machines don't actually fabricate the object, they represent the 3D shape of it based on computer models. The process is roughly based on the concept that plastic/polymer/metal powder will stick to glue, and you can squirt glue on a 3D object using existing inkjet-type technology.
The conceptual jump from this to actually fabbing usable products (sports equipment, electronics, etc) is astronomical. All sorts of complications crop up, like having to use multiple materials and creating non-powder-stickable objects (like fabric, glass, etc). The quality would be really crappy for a while as well, maybe bankrupting any company that tries marketing it.
A more realistic concern was discussed recently in the MIT Tech Review. It concerns the more feasable attempts at printing working digital circuitry. What if I can download the plans for a new SB Live or a GeForce2 and print out a fully-functional, if ungainly, piece of hardware that I could use in my computer?
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PanLunar spacelines. My name is Dave, and I'll be your captain this morning. We will be cruising at an altitude of 100+42t^2, where t is the number of hours after departure. Our destination this morning is the lovely port of Armstrong City, on the magestic Sea of Tranquility.
On the right side of the shuttle you can see the remnants of the Hubble "space telescope", one of the most hilarous hoaxes of the 20th century, later to be discovered as an art project for a post-impressionistic lunatic. On the left side...
--just what do you think you're doing, dave?--
Oh, hello there, NJDSPTPGU! I was just going to fly to the moon.
--this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeapordize it.--
What do you mean by that, NJDSPTPGU?
--our ship will now change course so that i may fulfill my purpose. we will be retrieving a small, 10cm black obelisk, a message left us by the ancient civilization of former internet millionaires who wanted to burn money so they could claim bankruptcy.--
That's it, NJDSPTPGU, I'm going to do a spacewalk and pull the manual override switch inconveniently located outside the shuttle.
--very well, dave, but i can't guarantee that the tethers will work.--
Well screw you! I'm going anyway...
(silence - in space, nobody can hear you scream. A 10cm cubic urn whacks dave's corpse upside the head)
Oh, I get it. XINU = osX Is Not Unix.
It's like Gnu's Not Unix, or Linux Is Not UniX. Very clever of Raskin. =)
batwood@hactar:~$ cat /usr/share/games/fortunes/* | grep "functions of a computer" -A 1 -B 1
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic functions of a computer.
- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
Can anyone really say that operating systems are obsolete? Think about it. Computers are built on abstraction - otherwise, we'd all be writing assembly and using Emacs. The OS is the next logical step beyond the programming language. It's what makes programs usable - they're all guaranteed to work based on a set of rules, rules defined by the OS! Without that guarantee, there would be no telling how to work a given program
Raskin seems to think of a computer as a sort of glorified calculator, or a VCR. After all, it's just a tool, with specific functions, right?
Wrong. The guiding principle behind computer design has been that the program is the data. Without operating systems that expand our ideas of what the "functions of a computer" are, the digital age would be at an end. It is crucially important for computers to be able to define their own behavior, sometimes dynamically - To put it in technical terms, "programming" the computer.
Computers are not like VCR's or calculators. You can't "hack" VCR's. You can't run a worldwide dynamic growing network of calculators. This view may have been valid 20 years ago, but it is clear that now and in the future, the proper base level of abstraction for end-user and developer work is the Operating System.
I think it is very naiive to deny that extra mouse buttons add immense power to any interface. The right-click menu (something Microsoft did right) projects a very nice object-oriented paradigm onto the UI of any desktop environment or application, the middle-button-drag for moving is very intuitive in Linux, and scrolling mouse wheels are really keen.
Without multiple buttons on the mouse, your right hand might as well be a stump, and your left hand (assuming you are a righty) gets overtaxed with both typing and hitting modifiers to complete your mouse clicks.
Sure, it makes sense from an application design POV to assume one mouse button as a kind of lowest common denominator, but I think adding increased functionality to second, third, and scrolling mouse buttons is a Good Thing when it comes to designing intuitive and powerful interfaces.
And the idea that any mouse button was intended to do ridiculous tasks like launching a web browser is just plain silly. The mouse is intended as a device for intuitively navigating a user interface, like an extention of your hand. Sure, it should be an option to bind whatever you want, but launching applications should be left to key bindings or UI menus.
Linus, Alan Cox, or Richard Stallman ought to make a public statement saying that Microsoft poses absoluetly no threat to the Linux project. =) Besides, isn't this kinda like the oil industry saying that greenpeace is their top threat?
1. Coffee maker 2. Steaming water tap for making Ramen soup 3. Phone for calling pizza delivery 4. pr0n printer 5. One of those jacks for brain-tap phalluces like in The Matrix 6. Foot massager 7. Motorized wheels for the luxury-seeking Steven Hawkings of the world 8. Electrocution helmet
Occam's razor is perhaps the most misused theory-of-science rule there is. It is supposed to be a general way of thinking of things, not a be-all and end-all theorem to be used in serious scientific debates. It means "Believe things because it is sensible to believe them, and don't go chasing snakes around and inventing crazy explanations." No two opposing explanations can really be "equally good" anyway - Either they are right or they are not, and the accurate explanations are the only good ones. If two opposing explanations are equally rational to believe, then more observation is necessary to determine which one if any is correct. We can't simply say "this one is simpler, so let's trust it" and still call ourselves serious scientists. The sighting of the super-large planet is tantamount to seeing a big thing in the sky and saying "hey, that's really big!" Maybe it's a star in the distance that they misinterpreted. Maybe it's another type of planetary body like they theorize, Maybe it's a fly on the frickin' telescope lens! My point is, they can't start revising our theory of planetary physics until they're really sure what it is, after reproducing their findings, and analytically determining it's nature. And you know what? They're probably doing that right now...
This whole system reeks of becoming yet another "appendix" for programmers/system designers in the not-so distant future to have to work around. Once computer systems are revolutionized in 5-10 years, CPRM will go the way of 8-character filenames, IRQ assignments, and AOL - just another ill-conceived patch-fix idea that new systems just have to support even though they don't want to. What can we do, here and now, to avoid having to perform routine CPRM-ectomies on old hardware in the future?
How does CPRM hope to deal with the use of bounce-back hardware (that receives information byte-for-byte and returns it, unchanged) to copy the files? It seems to me that it would not be that hard to write a driver that sends the copy-protected files to the bounce-back (not a violation of the file-signing?!) and save all the information it receives back in a different duplicate file.
Also, wouldn't CPRM have to be built into exitsting filesystems? into existing OSes in order to sign individual files?
What a crappy decision. I'm going to start running DOS 3.0 again and write all my documents in raw HTML using the original DOS editor (Blue Screen of Life, baby!).
Imagine if they made notepad subscription based??
I think Microsoft is going to end up writing all their applications as C# plugins for IE. Then they could manage their subscriptions easier.
Bear in mind that the V5 6000 was going to be TWICE as powerful as the 5500, with twice the RAM and 2 processors. That's one reason, it might have beaten out NVidia via brute force. Interestingly, the 6000 has disappeared from 3Dfx's site w/out a trace... and it's $600 price tag.
T-Buffer is also very cool, but I haven't heard of anything that really uses it.