Here are a couple of animations Stuff by EnV
and
Mindfields by @ndy
Would have been real nice if the Blender guys had put links in the news page. Check out the forums at elysiun for the quality of work that some of the Blender artists are producing. Also check out what Landis is doing.
Cheers from a happy but untalented Blenderhead.
Zambuka
I had thought about that one but from current experience a fast hard drive, a clean partition and a fast processor is more useful than bucketloads of memory. Yes memory can help but currently I find no perceptable lag with video playback provided I am not trying to view any special effects in real time. I work with a dual 500mhz G4 with 1 G of memory. A Video of any length (currently working with a 5 hour video) rarely pushes the memory usage more than 75%. I do however regularly grind the processors to 100% of long periods of time, 5-6 hours typical. Others may have different experience so I don't speak for all those who do video editing.
Similar cases can head down to the filesystem level. Set up your entire hard disk as one large virtual memory subsystem so that any action is just an mmap(2) away. Seems to me it would make programs a lot simpler, as many file operations would be able to be handled by easier to use memory management operations instead
This actually sounds like a great idea for a file system. It would make life easier and seriously blur the line of memory.
Oh.. not being a programmer I can only guess that mmap(2) is some kind of memory handle or something similar in c or c++.
Seems a lot of people are making fun of this statement but apart from photoshop what desktop applications out there would need 4G of memory? I can thnk of maybe 3ds Max or Maya and other 3d packages benefiting. Otherwise nothing much else comes to mind.
I know databases and application servers would benefit significantly but these are far from being desktop applications.
waiting now for the barrage of "next version of MS Office" jokes
Experiments. x + alcohol = ?
on
Skittlebrau
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Looks like another major advance in the serious field of "What if I mix this with acohol?"
I'm sure everyone, at least those that enjoy a brew or two, has performed experiments of this nature.
My stomach churns just thinking of some of the concoctions tasted in the past, the most amazing would have to have been this mix that had a serious metalic grey tinge to it. Kinda like a bottle of mercury, but alcoholic. Toxicity levels are yet to be determined due to an inability to reproduce said drink.
Sticking a lump of chocolate in the bottom of a glass and testing the flavour of vaious spirits is an interesting experience as well. Even more so if youu leave the same piece of chocolate through the entire evening.
Thats the oldest part of my machine as well. Although mine dates from the eighties form an old microbee computer (z80 based computer that was big in australia for a while). The main reason this cord is still in use is the piggy back plug that allows me to hook up a second power cable to the one outlet, also is about 6 foot long.
Someone else has probably mentioned this, or you may even find it in a article or two somewhere.
I see this as an interesting dilema for software patents in general. If the patent is upheld in the appeal then it forces MS to change the way their browser works (probably making plugin capabilities totally incompatible with anything else out there) or they will just use some underhanded predatory method of aquiring the patent (like that is unexpected from MS). Either way it will eventually have a serious impact on the alternative browsers.
If MS does successfuly defeat the patent ruling then it opens the flood gates for many other software patents, obvious ones and others with clear prior art that was ignored in the original ruling, to be over-ruled and let out into the public.
Amazon's one click technology is one example that could be dragged back through the courts. It seems that this is one patent that comes through as pretty obvious once you discover how to really use and abuse cookies.
this guy made $750,000 spamming people last year,...
Makes you wonder about the quality of some parts of the gene pool, a bit of pro-active darwinism might just help here, or maybe he is already doing his part for humanity and selling dodgy drugs that render the idiots who buy these products sterile.
But seriously I have started to think that a spamming business is the perfect way to launder money in a big way. A few thousand bogus orders for a handful of expensive bogus products and voila instant profit.
Using things like money orders and faked customer addresses or temporary po boxes you could probably get quite a lot of untraceable money. If you do get audited you could just say that maybe the customer was too embarassed about purchasing your "penis xtender 2002" to use his own address. With $750,000 a quarter you could afford the lawyers to make it convincing enough to get through all but the deepest audit. the only thing you gotta remember is to have a product to actually sell, this way you get the added benifit of a little extra cash from the gullible.
oh well, good luck to anyone else trying to shut down the scum of the internet.
I don't see this problem at all. about 30 seconds power on to useable system (with all systray items loaded).
But then I have done some tweeking with the system.
The biggest killer is web browser caches, hundreds of small files loaded and deleted on a regular basis. Also the temp directory tends to get a lot of workout, particularly when you install and remove programs regularly.
This causes a lot of fragmentation which then causes the swap file to fragment which then cascades into worse fragmentation for any new files. (at least this is my personal experience).
the solution is simple, well... kinda.
1. Put your swap file on a seperate partition or make sure it is a fixed size and located at the begining of the drive. An alternative is to put the swap file on a partition on a different drive.
2. Redirect the temp directory and browser cache to a seperate partition or better yet a seperate drive. Even if this is the only thing you do you will notice a long term performance boost.
In other words pretty much the same kind of thing you do when seting up a linux system, dividing the drive into different partitions for different purposes.
occasionally cleaning out the registry with regclean can't hurt but as yet I have seen no real benifit from doing so.
With these steps I can now happily run my win box for as long as I like, well almost. In the last three months the only thing that has taken down my system was a confilct between my tv tuner software(a little dodgy to start with) and Simcity4 that took out the sound driver.
My Linux box only takes about 20 second but it is an old AMD K6 400 and takes about 10 seconds just to get through the bios and I don't load X, just use it for an experimental web server. Something went wrong with the hardware on this box so it won't run windows at all, not a real loss since It forced me into upgrading to a decent system and gave me something to experiment with.
For a start the voice quality is not overly important, this is not a stage production or anything like that ie no instrumental and voice around phone quality. I ONLY need one way voice, this is not for two way communication. It is a small conference style setting, however wired mikes are unsuitable as the people involved will be moving around a lot. Distance will be small, no more than 50m from base units. I have already looked into renting and this is good for a while. However this program will last for about 2-4 months with multiple sessions each week so renting will quickly become more expensive than buying. It is also something that will occur on a yearly basis and they want the equipment ready for use at any time. Mini disc would be suitable but I also have considered the problem of more stuff to break. A wireless system has just as much stuff but a hell of a lot more expensive. Something like the Creative MUVO would be great, cost wise anyway, but after finally tracking down someone who sells these and could answer any questions beyond "Is it cool?", it does not appear to have live recording capabilities.
some replies.
Get a bunch of wireless lavalier microphones (the small ones the clip on someplace). For instance, Shure is one company I know of. I believe a 100+ channel receiver is under $2000 and each mic+transmitter will be around $500.. Let's say you get a bulk discount so that's another $5k.
Are you quoting Australian or US dollars? The quotes I have for mike and transmitter start at around $800(australian) for a low end unit(mike and transmitter). About $1100 is the price (Sennheiser EW100, recommended after asking around) for a reliable unit with a broad range of selectable frequencies suitable to prevent crosstalk, digital UHF I think. As for the 100+ channel receiver this is about the price I was looking at, however while they can receive 100+ channels they can usually only process and output about 8 channels so I would need 2. Plus the recording equipment about $5000 for 16 track mixer/recording unit capable of spitting out a multi track audio cd at the end of the day, no PC needed. I haven't included possibility of bulk discount. Also the people running this particular program have little technical skills so something that does not have to be baby sat the entire time is needed, this tends to drive up the cost a bit. A recent addition is the capability to scale up even further.
Anyone living in Canberra who would like to take a shot at setting something like this up can feel free to contact me."
Translation: Anyone who wants to do lots of unpaid work for me is free to do so.
Typical and totally wrong, but still a funny and deserved response. If someone has the knowhow and ability to make a system along the lines of what I need, and preferably local, negotiations are a possibility and I can redirect you to the people who want this. The project is only really in the "What can be done?" stage so it may not even go ahead in this way. Thanks to those that actually read my post and gave an inforative response. I guess wireless IP just is not mature enough for my needs. Would make a good reseach topic for some comp. engineering student though.
Slashdot Mirror
Here are a couple of animations
Stuff by EnV
and
Mindfields by @ndy
Would have been real nice if the Blender guys had put links in the news page. Check out the forums at elysiun for the quality of work that some of the Blender artists are producing. Also check out what Landis is doing.
Cheers from a happy but untalented Blenderhead.
Zambuka
I generally refer to things like gator as Rapeware.
Yes memory can help but currently I find no perceptable lag with video playback provided I am not trying to view any special effects in real time.
I work with a dual 500mhz G4 with 1 G of memory. A Video of any length (currently working with a 5 hour video) rarely pushes the memory usage more than 75%.
I do however regularly grind the processors to 100% of long periods of time, 5-6 hours typical.
Others may have different experience so I don't speak for all those who do video editing.
This actually sounds like a great idea for a file system. It would make life easier and seriously blur the line of memory.
Oh.. not being a programmer I can only guess that mmap(2) is some kind of memory handle or something similar in c or c++.
Seems a lot of people are making fun of this statement but apart from photoshop what desktop applications out there would need 4G of memory?
I can thnk of maybe 3ds Max or Maya and other 3d packages benefiting. Otherwise nothing much else comes to mind.
I know databases and application servers would benefit significantly but these are far from being desktop applications.
waiting now for the barrage of "next version of MS Office" jokes
Looks like another major advance in the serious field of "What if I mix this with acohol?"
I'm sure everyone, at least those that enjoy a brew or two, has performed experiments of this nature.
My stomach churns just thinking of some of the concoctions tasted in the past, the most amazing would have to have been this mix that had a serious metalic grey tinge to it. Kinda like a bottle of mercury, but alcoholic. Toxicity levels are yet to be determined due to an inability to reproduce said drink.
Sticking a lump of chocolate in the bottom of a glass and testing the flavour of vaious spirits is an interesting experience as well. Even more so if youu leave the same piece of chocolate through the entire evening.
Cheers
Z
Thats the oldest part of my machine as well. Although mine dates from the eighties form an old microbee computer (z80 based computer that was big in australia for a while).
The main reason this cord is still in use is the piggy back plug that allows me to hook up a second power cable to the one outlet, also is about 6 foot long.
Still have the 'bee and it still works.
Someone else has probably mentioned this, or you may even find it in a article or two somewhere.
I see this as an interesting dilema for software patents in general.
If the patent is upheld in the appeal then it forces MS to change the way their browser works (probably making plugin capabilities totally incompatible with anything else out there) or they will just use some underhanded predatory method of aquiring the patent (like that is unexpected from MS). Either way it will eventually have a serious impact on the alternative browsers.
If MS does successfuly defeat the patent ruling then it opens the flood gates for many other software patents, obvious ones and others with clear prior art that was ignored in the original ruling, to be over-ruled and let out into the public.
Amazon's one click technology is one example that could be dragged back through the courts. It seems that this is one patent that comes through as pretty obvious once you discover how to really use and abuse cookies.
Makes you wonder about the quality of some parts of the gene pool, a bit of pro-active darwinism might just help here, or maybe he is already doing his part for humanity and selling dodgy drugs that render the idiots who buy these products sterile.
But seriously I have started to think that a spamming business is the perfect way to launder money in a big way. A few thousand bogus orders for a handful of expensive bogus products and voila instant profit.
Using things like money orders and faked customer addresses or temporary po boxes you could probably get quite a lot of untraceable money. If you do get audited you could just say that maybe the customer was too embarassed about purchasing your "penis xtender 2002" to use his own address. With $750,000 a quarter you could afford the lawyers to make it convincing enough to get through all but the deepest audit. the only thing you gotta remember is to have a product to actually sell, this way you get the added benifit of a little extra cash from the gullible.
oh well, good luck to anyone else trying to shut down the scum of the internet.
I don't see this problem at all. about 30 seconds power on to useable system (with all systray items loaded).
But then I have done some tweeking with the system.
The biggest killer is web browser caches, hundreds of small files loaded and deleted on a regular basis. Also the temp directory tends to get a lot of workout, particularly when you install and remove programs regularly.
This causes a lot of fragmentation which then causes the swap file to fragment which then cascades into worse fragmentation for any new files. (at least this is my personal experience).
the solution is simple, well... kinda.
1. Put your swap file on a seperate partition or make sure it is a fixed size and located at the begining of the drive. An alternative is to put the swap file on a partition on a different drive.
2. Redirect the temp directory and browser cache to a seperate partition or better yet a seperate drive. Even if this is the only thing you do you will notice a long term performance boost.
In other words pretty much the same kind of thing you do when seting up a linux system, dividing the drive into different partitions for different purposes.
occasionally cleaning out the registry with regclean can't hurt but as yet I have seen no real benifit from doing so.
With these steps I can now happily run my win box for as long as I like, well almost. In the last three months the only thing that has taken down my system was a confilct between my tv tuner software(a little dodgy to start with) and Simcity4 that took out the sound driver.
My Linux box only takes about 20 second but it is an old AMD K6 400 and takes about 10 seconds just to get through the bios and I don't load X, just use it for an experimental web server. Something went wrong with the hardware on this box so it won't run windows at all, not a real loss since It forced me into upgrading to a decent system and gave me something to experiment with.
Cheers
Zambuka
It is a small conference style setting, however wired mikes are unsuitable as the people involved will be moving around a lot. Distance will be small, no more than 50m from base units.
I have already looked into renting and this is good for a while. However this program will last for about 2-4 months with multiple sessions each week so renting will quickly become more expensive than buying. It is also something that will occur on a yearly basis and they want the equipment ready for use at any time.
Mini disc would be suitable but I also have considered the problem of more stuff to break. A wireless system has just as much stuff but a hell of a lot more expensive. Something like the Creative MUVO would be great, cost wise anyway, but after finally tracking down someone who sells these and could answer any questions beyond "Is it cool?", it does not appear to have live recording capabilities.
some replies.
Are you quoting Australian or US dollars? The quotes I have for mike and transmitter start at around $800(australian) for a low end unit(mike and transmitter). About $1100 is the price (Sennheiser EW100, recommended after asking around) for a reliable unit with a broad range of selectable frequencies suitable to prevent crosstalk, digital UHF I think. As for the 100+ channel receiver this is about the price I was looking at, however while they can receive 100+ channels they can usually only process and output about 8 channels so I would need 2. Plus the recording equipment about $5000 for 16 track mixer/recording unit capable of spitting out a multi track audio cd at the end of the day, no PC needed. I haven't included possibility of bulk discount. Also the people running this particular program have little technical skills so something that does not have to be baby sat the entire time is needed, this tends to drive up the cost a bit.
A recent addition is the capability to scale up even further.
Typical and totally wrong, but still a funny and deserved response. If someone has the knowhow and ability to make a system along the lines of what I need, and preferably local, negotiations are a possibility and I can redirect you to the people who want this. The project is only really in the "What can be done?" stage so it may not even go ahead in this way.
Thanks to those that actually read my post and gave an inforative response. I guess wireless IP just is not mature enough for my needs. Would make a good reseach topic for some comp. engineering student though.