Reading these posts really makes me wish there were a demo version available. Not even with much real gameplay, just something to test the graphics settings on a particular box. I keep reading about running Doom 3 at 640x480 or 800x600 at low-medium settings with no AA or AF.
I have a Pentium M 1.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Radeon Mobility 9000 32 MB laptop. Unreal Tournament 2004 runs at 30 fps average at highest settings (the "Holy Shit" settings) at 1280x1024. I'm sure Doom 3 would require much lower settings to be playable. What would be interesting to see is a side-by-side comparison of different games on the same hardware running at the best settings for a particular frame rate. At what point does Doom 3 start looking better than other games? I suspect it looks worse that UT2004 on my laptop, but much better on a dream machine (UT2004 will max out at a certain point - Doom3 doesn't max out on current hardware).
On a side note- just found out that id Software was at my local Best Buy last night for the release party (Plano, TX). Even if I wasn't going to buy it there, I almost wish I had gone.
When I installed Gnome 2.6 under Gentoo, it had some sort of "Browse Filesystem" shortcut in the Applications menu. This started Nautilus in browser mode at your home directory. There wasn't even a shortcut to start Nautilus in spatial mode (maybe one on the desktop, but not in the menus). Regardless, it takes all of about 10 seconds to switch it off.
Funny you should mention that. Unreal Tournament 2004 supports AMD 64 bit under Linux (64 bit binaries are on the retail cd/dvd). Windows users (even the ones who run the 64 bit beta version) do not have 64 bit binaries yet.
I imagine this is partially due to the fact that the Linux version is unsupported. In this case, unsupported means you don't have the overhead of releasing through Atari. The guy who maintains the port also maintains a mailing list and bugzilla for solving problems quickly. I suspect there are QA issues with supporting a version of the game on a prerelease OS (64 bit Windows).
At least memory cards are getting cheap these days. I saw a Fry's ad in the paper this morning for a 256MB compact flash card for $15 ($35 - $20 mail-in rebate). A couple days ago they were advertising a 1 GB card for $100. A few years ago when I bought a 128 MB card it was nearly $100.
The problem with doing this to WinXP and IE is matching the theme. You can target the old Win98 look and no one with a newer browser will be fooled. Or you can target the big blue and red theme, but users with the win2000 style won't be fooled.
This Firefox exploit matches your themes (OS and Firefox). I've never seen any spoof of IE that was as thorough as this one. Even details like the padlock icon in the bottom left. BTW if you open up the details of the security certificate, there's a line "Bud lights consumed: 9" under the category "Spoofed!". All in all, this is much more convincing than anything I've seen done under IE (made up for of course by all of IE's security flaws).
It sounds like he is talking about how the 3d surface is created inside the computer.
It's kind of like the difference between a photograph and a painting. Both can represent a 3d world projected onto a 2d surface. The painter must fake the 3d effect by hand (like a traditional GUI appearing 3d). The photographer doesn't have to do this since he is simply taking a snapshot of an already 3d world (like rendering a real 3d scene as a GUI). To get a photograph of a different angle, you just reposition the camera. A painter, on the other hand, has to basically start from scratch.
Old computer games sometimes appeared 3d even though they were represented internally as 2d objects (static character images with the shadows manually drawn in for example). Current games represent the world internally as a 3d environment that is projected onto the plane of the camera. It's computationally more expensive, but much more flexible. At first I'm sure it'll be a more complicated way of making things look basically the same as they do now. But I imagine people will find useful applications for it as time goes on.
According to CNN, the guy installed the DVD player himself, so it was able to function even when it was not in park (manufacturers are required to put certain safeguards in place, but apparently it's easy enough to get around them if you do it yourself).
It wouldn't surprise me if that is intended for logging in (if you happen to enable the ctrl-alt-del to log in option).
IIRC ctrl-alt-del is handled differently from any other keypress so normal apps don't respond to it. This makes it harder to fake the log-in screen since you're app won't recognize the ctrl-alt-delete and pop up a log-in box. This causes problems with poorly written remote desktop programs that aren't capable of sending an artificial ctrl-alt-delete to log in to a remote box (the app can't capture it, so it has to have an option to send it when necessary).
The monthly subscription is just for streaming audio and downloading tracks for offline listening while you are still a member.
It's definitely a trade-off (which is why they let you purchase music without being a member). However, if you don't use a portable player (when every student has a laptop, the need for portable players drops a bit) and you listen to more than one new album a month, the subscription is worth it. You have the choice of unlimited content for a limited time ($10/month) or limited content for an unlimited time ($1/track).
I haven't seen the movie but I have read Asimov's robot stories. For the most part, they're about situations in which robot's seem to be breaking the three laws. One of two things generally happen next. Either the robots suddenly become aware of what they are doing and proceed to lock up, or the situation is investigated and whatever they are doing is actually in line with the three laws (usually something like ignoring orders to save human lives in some unexpected way).
From the trailer to I, Robot, it looks nothing like the stories I've just described. But I did read an interview with Will Smith where he said something about the three laws not being violated by any robot in the story. In other words, Will Smith's character must be proven wrong at some point. This is much more like Asimov's robot stories than the trailer would have you believe. As I haven't seen it yet, I can't say whether or not they pulled it off.
_I,_Robot_ consists of so many short, mostly unrelated stories that it would be hard to put into a single movie. What I heard was that they took interesting aspects from a number of the stories and used that as the basis for their storyline.
Of course, I still don't think it'll be any good, but there's more hope than I had originally thought.
He wasn't talking about updating drivers. Updates are easier under Linux than under Windows. Run the install program, then log out and log back in (which restarts the X server on my system). No reboot necessary. The other poster was complaining about having to reinstall the drivers when you upgrade the kernel (same as having to reinstall drivers when you upgrade Windows).
As an added bonus the NVidia drivers under Linux (61.06) are currently ahead of official drivers for Windows (56.72). You can't get GeforceFX 6800 or PCI-Express drivers from the NVidia website. You have to search elsewhere to download the beta drivers.
If ndiswrapper doesn't work, Linuxant's driverloader might. My laptop has an Atheros 802.11a/b integrated card. The madwifi driver didn't work very well with my card (never could get a reliable connection). The ndiswrapper setup let me connect, but was incompatible with encryption on my card. Driverloader worked flawlessly. The downside is that the license is $20 per card (you can also get a 30 day trial license to see if it works better for you than any alternatives).
I read the article and here was their conclusion: "In most of the disciplines, you can see that it no longer matters as much what memory timings you have as it did only a few years ago, when SDRAM or the first DDR generation were still hot."
The article basically said you only see a real difference with video encoding or data compression (ie lots of constantly changing data that won't be in cache very long).
To clarify: that warning by no means makes up for all of the other security issues with IE. I use Firefox as my main browser on both Windows and Linux. I've had no problems using Firefox for any of the sites I visit regularly (including both of my online banking sites). Sometimes I run into a site that says I need IE 5+ or Netscape 6+, but those are few and far between.
I hate to say this, but if you try downloading exe's with both IE and Firefox, IE does a better job of telling you that it may be dangerous to open it. In addition, Firefox lets you automatically save the file to disk, so in the future no dialog box will show up. It doesn't let you run it without first saving it, though, and the author saw that as a security feature. IE, on the other hand, pops up a window warning that you are downloading an application, shows you the file name, and shows you the server that is hosting the application. Then it tells you the file might be harmful to your computer if it comes from an untrusted source. You can't stop this dialog box from popping up with any option on the box.
Winamp v8: twice the features of 3 with the speed and ability of 2. Or none of the features of 3 with four times the speed and ability of 2. Or the speed and ability of 2 cubed.
It comes up in physics sometimes as well. In my astrophysics course last semester we needed it for nuclear physics (calculating the number of hydrogen atoms available for fusion in a given mass).
A friend of mine was drunk one night and got frustrated with his laptop (a $2500 IBM thinkpad). He threw it at the wall, bashed the keyboard, busted the screen, and generally destroyed every single piece of it. Then he took it to the campus repair center and had it replaced under warranty. No cost at all to him. Somehow RPI convinced IBM to give students the most amazing warranty that covers just about anything you could imagine for three years. If anyone asks, you just play dumb ("I went to bed and it was just fine, when I woke up the next morning something had happened to it!")
If you read the article, you'll notice that the chart is based on paid downloads (ie iTunes). They are not using P2P network stats. This is just as vulnerable to astroturfing as retail sales charts are.
Given that Microsoft doesn't include a JRE in Windows XP, it doesn't really surprise me that Dell would make a deal with Sun to ship one. In fact, if you go to Microsoft's Java page they basically tell you to go to Sun's site and download their JRE.
The fancy software is X and the NVidia linux drivers. I don't know how cheap dual output graphics cards are, so you might be right about being able to buy four single-output cards for less than two dual-output cards.
I haven't done this with a normal Linux PC, but this is a common recovery method with the VR3 linux pda. It's possible to mess up the configuration to the point where X won't start. If X doesn't start you can't start a network connection (to ssh in to fix things) or use the onscreen keyboard and a console window. If you don't want to erase all of your data and reset it, you can tell the bootloader to use/bin/bash as init (for the VR3, you access this from a serial port with a PC). The root file system is mounted, but that's about it. I assume it's similar with a desktop machine. You'd have to mount any other necessary file systems by hand.
My experience was that the NVidia kernel module would crash just after loading, taking the entire system down with it (no network, no error messages in logs, no hints at what went wrong). I first saw it when I switched from a GeForce 3 to a GeForce FX 5600. I guess the driver only needed 8k stacks for certain cards. Anyway, switching to a kernel with 8k stacks worked. It was a really nasty bug since it worked with one card and failed with another (I thought my new graphics card was broken).
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Reading these posts really makes me wish there were a demo version available. Not even with much real gameplay, just something to test the graphics settings on a particular box. I keep reading about running Doom 3 at 640x480 or 800x600 at low-medium settings with no AA or AF.
I have a Pentium M 1.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Radeon Mobility 9000 32 MB laptop. Unreal Tournament 2004 runs at 30 fps average at highest settings (the "Holy Shit" settings) at 1280x1024. I'm sure Doom 3 would require much lower settings to be playable. What would be interesting to see is a side-by-side comparison of different games on the same hardware running at the best settings for a particular frame rate. At what point does Doom 3 start looking better than other games? I suspect it looks worse that UT2004 on my laptop, but much better on a dream machine (UT2004 will max out at a certain point - Doom3 doesn't max out on current hardware).
On a side note- just found out that id Software was at my local Best Buy last night for the release party (Plano, TX). Even if I wasn't going to buy it there, I almost wish I had gone.
When I installed Gnome 2.6 under Gentoo, it had some sort of "Browse Filesystem" shortcut in the Applications menu. This started Nautilus in browser mode at your home directory. There wasn't even a shortcut to start Nautilus in spatial mode (maybe one on the desktop, but not in the menus). Regardless, it takes all of about 10 seconds to switch it off.
Funny you should mention that. Unreal Tournament 2004 supports AMD 64 bit under Linux (64 bit binaries are on the retail cd/dvd). Windows users (even the ones who run the 64 bit beta version) do not have 64 bit binaries yet.
I imagine this is partially due to the fact that the Linux version is unsupported. In this case, unsupported means you don't have the overhead of releasing through Atari. The guy who maintains the port also maintains a mailing list and bugzilla for solving problems quickly. I suspect there are QA issues with supporting a version of the game on a prerelease OS (64 bit Windows).
At least memory cards are getting cheap these days. I saw a Fry's ad in the paper this morning for a 256MB compact flash card for $15 ($35 - $20 mail-in rebate). A couple days ago they were advertising a 1 GB card for $100. A few years ago when I bought a 128 MB card it was nearly $100.
The problem with doing this to WinXP and IE is matching the theme. You can target the old Win98 look and no one with a newer browser will be fooled. Or you can target the big blue and red theme, but users with the win2000 style won't be fooled.
This Firefox exploit matches your themes (OS and Firefox). I've never seen any spoof of IE that was as thorough as this one. Even details like the padlock icon in the bottom left. BTW if you open up the details of the security certificate, there's a line "Bud lights consumed: 9" under the category "Spoofed!". All in all, this is much more convincing than anything I've seen done under IE (made up for of course by all of IE's security flaws).
It sounds like he is talking about how the 3d surface is created inside the computer.
It's kind of like the difference between a photograph and a painting. Both can represent a 3d world projected onto a 2d surface. The painter must fake the 3d effect by hand (like a traditional GUI appearing 3d). The photographer doesn't have to do this since he is simply taking a snapshot of an already 3d world (like rendering a real 3d scene as a GUI). To get a photograph of a different angle, you just reposition the camera. A painter, on the other hand, has to basically start from scratch.
Old computer games sometimes appeared 3d even though they were represented internally as 2d objects (static character images with the shadows manually drawn in for example). Current games represent the world internally as a 3d environment that is projected onto the plane of the camera. It's computationally more expensive, but much more flexible. At first I'm sure it'll be a more complicated way of making things look basically the same as they do now. But I imagine people will find useful applications for it as time goes on.
Similarly, it doesn't work with Internet Explorer if you're using XP SP2. Right click on the popup blocked icon and you can temporarily allow popups.
According to CNN, the guy installed the DVD player himself, so it was able to function even when it was not in park (manufacturers are required to put certain safeguards in place, but apparently it's easy enough to get around them if you do it yourself).
It wouldn't surprise me if that is intended for logging in (if you happen to enable the ctrl-alt-del to log in option).
IIRC ctrl-alt-del is handled differently from any other keypress so normal apps don't respond to it. This makes it harder to fake the log-in screen since you're app won't recognize the ctrl-alt-delete and pop up a log-in box. This causes problems with poorly written remote desktop programs that aren't capable of sending an artificial ctrl-alt-delete to log in to a remote box (the app can't capture it, so it has to have an option to send it when necessary).
The monthly subscription is just for streaming audio and downloading tracks for offline listening while you are still a member.
It's definitely a trade-off (which is why they let you purchase music without being a member). However, if you don't use a portable player (when every student has a laptop, the need for portable players drops a bit) and you listen to more than one new album a month, the subscription is worth it. You have the choice of unlimited content for a limited time ($10/month) or limited content for an unlimited time ($1/track).
**Possible Spoiler**
I haven't seen the movie but I have read Asimov's robot stories. For the most part, they're about situations in which robot's seem to be breaking the three laws. One of two things generally happen next. Either the robots suddenly become aware of what they are doing and proceed to lock up, or the situation is investigated and whatever they are doing is actually in line with the three laws (usually something like ignoring orders to save human lives in some unexpected way).
From the trailer to I, Robot, it looks nothing like the stories I've just described. But I did read an interview with Will Smith where he said something about the three laws not being violated by any robot in the story. In other words, Will Smith's character must be proven wrong at some point. This is much more like Asimov's robot stories than the trailer would have you believe. As I haven't seen it yet, I can't say whether or not they pulled it off.
_I,_Robot_ consists of so many short, mostly unrelated stories that it would be hard to put into a single movie. What I heard was that they took interesting aspects from a number of the stories and used that as the basis for their storyline.
Of course, I still don't think it'll be any good, but there's more hope than I had originally thought.
He wasn't talking about updating drivers. Updates are easier under Linux than under Windows. Run the install program, then log out and log back in (which restarts the X server on my system). No reboot necessary. The other poster was complaining about having to reinstall the drivers when you upgrade the kernel (same as having to reinstall drivers when you upgrade Windows).
As an added bonus the NVidia drivers under Linux (61.06) are currently ahead of official drivers for Windows (56.72). You can't get GeforceFX 6800 or PCI-Express drivers from the NVidia website. You have to search elsewhere to download the beta drivers.
If ndiswrapper doesn't work, Linuxant's driverloader might. My laptop has an Atheros 802.11a/b integrated card. The madwifi driver didn't work very well with my card (never could get a reliable connection). The ndiswrapper setup let me connect, but was incompatible with encryption on my card. Driverloader worked flawlessly. The downside is that the license is $20 per card (you can also get a 30 day trial license to see if it works better for you than any alternatives).
I read the article and here was their conclusion: "In most of the disciplines, you can see that it no longer matters as much what memory timings you have as it did only a few years ago, when SDRAM or the first DDR generation were still hot."
The article basically said you only see a real difference with video encoding or data compression (ie lots of constantly changing data that won't be in cache very long).
Consider JFFS2 as a possible alternative to JFFS. JFFS2 supports transparent compression,so you get more use out of your space.
To clarify: that warning by no means makes up for all of the other security issues with IE. I use Firefox as my main browser on both Windows and Linux. I've had no problems using Firefox for any of the sites I visit regularly (including both of my online banking sites). Sometimes I run into a site that says I need IE 5+ or Netscape 6+, but those are few and far between.
I hate to say this, but if you try downloading exe's with both IE and Firefox, IE does a better job of telling you that it may be dangerous to open it. In addition, Firefox lets you automatically save the file to disk, so in the future no dialog box will show up. It doesn't let you run it without first saving it, though, and the author saw that as a security feature. IE, on the other hand, pops up a window warning that you are downloading an application, shows you the file name, and shows you the server that is hosting the application. Then it tells you the file might be harmful to your computer if it comes from an untrusted source. You can't stop this dialog box from popping up with any option on the box.
Winamp v8: twice the features of 3 with the speed and ability of 2. Or none of the features of 3 with four times the speed and ability of 2. Or the speed and ability of 2 cubed.
It comes up in physics sometimes as well. In my astrophysics course last semester we needed it for nuclear physics (calculating the number of hydrogen atoms available for fusion in a given mass).
A friend of mine was drunk one night and got frustrated with his laptop (a $2500 IBM thinkpad). He threw it at the wall, bashed the keyboard, busted the screen, and generally destroyed every single piece of it. Then he took it to the campus repair center and had it replaced under warranty. No cost at all to him. Somehow RPI convinced IBM to give students the most amazing warranty that covers just about anything you could imagine for three years. If anyone asks, you just play dumb ("I went to bed and it was just fine, when I woke up the next morning something had happened to it!")
If you read the article, you'll notice that the chart is based on paid downloads (ie iTunes). They are not using P2P network stats. This is just as vulnerable to astroturfing as retail sales charts are.
Given that Microsoft doesn't include a JRE in Windows XP, it doesn't really surprise me that Dell would make a deal with Sun to ship one. In fact, if you go to Microsoft's Java page they basically tell you to go to Sun's site and download their JRE.
The fancy software is X and the NVidia linux drivers. I don't know how cheap dual output graphics cards are, so you might be right about being able to buy four single-output cards for less than two dual-output cards.
I haven't done this with a normal Linux PC, but this is a common recovery method with the VR3 linux pda. It's possible to mess up the configuration to the point where X won't start. If X doesn't start you can't start a network connection (to ssh in to fix things) or use the onscreen keyboard and a console window. If you don't want to erase all of your data and reset it, you can tell the bootloader to use /bin/bash as init (for the VR3, you access this from a serial port with a PC). The root file system is mounted, but that's about it. I assume it's similar with a desktop machine. You'd have to mount any other necessary file systems by hand.
My experience was that the NVidia kernel module would crash just after loading, taking the entire system down with it (no network, no error messages in logs, no hints at what went wrong). I first saw it when I switched from a GeForce 3 to a GeForce FX 5600. I guess the driver only needed 8k stacks for certain cards. Anyway, switching to a kernel with 8k stacks worked. It was a really nasty bug since it worked with one card and failed with another (I thought my new graphics card was broken).