that will probably never change, but I think dvd player fabricants should enable skip option on content you paid for...
The DVD Consortium mandates that, in order to get that crucial "DVD" logo on your player product, you have to support the no-menu option for the discs that use it. If you want to put on the product box that you can play DVDs, you've gotta play them according to spec.
On the other hand, I've heard that overseas it's fairly easy to find DVD players that are pre-modded by the stores to allow navigation during the previews. They're usually region-free too.
There are options to get DVD players that have the skip option enabled all the time. There are no options to both get that and a manufacturer's warranty.
I really really hope ABC network execs are reading this thread.
Let me sum up my position in two neat little points:
1. If after I purchase a DVR and any network figures out a way to disable functions on it that I bought fairly, then I will not watch that network. ABC, I do not need your wretched programming. While I watch ABC on occasion, that is easily time I could be spending watching any one of your fine competitors. If you piss me off enough at it, I'll probably write to your advertisers, informing them of my decision and detailing the reasoning behind it. Maybe they'll care, maybe they won't. Only one way to know for sure.
2. Next time I purchase a DVR I'm going to make very certain that the only person that can control its functions is me. I will buy no consumer product that allows other people to control functions I paid for.
For the record I already own a DVR. It allows me to commercial skip. Unless ABC is working on magic technology, I doubt they can disable the commercial skip.
Now there is a situation where I would be happy ABC wanted to force me to watch their commercials on a DVR.
That would be if ABC bought me the DVR in the first place. You want to cripple a piece of consumer electronics? Fine. Just make sure its a piece of consumer electronics YOU paid for, not me.
I wonder how long until we see a class action lawsuit for fair use infringement about all this broadcast-flag, anti-skip, control-the-way-I-watch-content-I-can-legally-watc h legislation and regulation...
I've read that this is also important criteria - the ability to remotely locate or disable these mines after combat conditions have passed.
They've been working on this for some years - I remember seeing that presentation about a year ago... if you dig around you can find out a lot more.
I believe I read somewhere that Princess Di praised the effort not long before her death - I think thats how I heard of it the first time... as you know, she was a big anti-mine advocate because of the civilian issues you mention...
There's nothing wrong with space ship warlock that couldn't be cured by pressing the turbo button, turning the sound off (recommended at normal speed too) and breezing through the whole game in about 10 minutes...
Pop quiz: did you acquire the game:
1. In original retail box 2. In Best Buy "CD-ROM Games that are almost clearance" 3-pack 3. Walmart "CD-ROM Games that are past clearance" 10-pack (including such other joys as corridor 7, hypergate, and spear of destiny...)
Yes, voice actors seldom record at the same time. For specially timed interchanges, such as an argument or other passionate / heated dialog, they'll do it at the same time sometimes, but other than that... they're all in the vocal booth one at a time, just reading lines.
Voice acting and real acting are extremely similar in concept. The execution is nothing close though...
lol well you know how in hitchhickers' guide to the galaxy, that one guy gained immortality through an accident involving a time machine and a rubber band?
Kind of like that, but he was hoping for an everlasting bong hit. Then the accident happened.
Just ended up crapping out resinous shards of glass for a month, though.
The resin tasted really bad when you smoked it, too...
You probably don't, if you are familiar with the DCMA and proposed expansions of it. He's the sponsor of the revisions.
Funny part being, one of the reasons I said that is that my rep is one of the sponsors of the new PATRIOT act. I've written him a couple times urging him not to support it or the DCMA revisions you mention.
I got a nicely worded reply, obviously not a form letter, that basically said that he has to balance the fair-use rights of the citizens with the desires of the businesses in his district.
Funny part being I always thought that it was his job to protect the fair-use rights of the citizens no matter what...
It's been proven that you can't have stability using only attractive forces in a static system.
The classical proof is, take any number of magnetic, electrical, and gravitational forces that are fixed relative to each other. There is no arrangement of these forces that produces a point of both equilibrium and stability.
Good thing planets move. Trojan points are just two of the five lagrange points. When any two gravitational bodies orbit each other, there will exist points of equilibrium where all gravitational forces cancel each other out - this is called a lagrange point. That's great but you also have to consider the concept of stability and sensitive dependence on initial conditions. For instance, L1, the simplest to calculate of the lagranges, is a point on a line connecting the centers of mass of the two bodies such that the pull from each body is the same. Slip a little in either direction, and thanks to the inverse power law, you see a greater pull from the body you slipped closer to, pulling you further out of equilibrium. The L1 point is not stable - objects there don't tend to stay there.
Think of it like a hill with a flat top. You can put a marble perfectly balanced at the top of the hill, but eventually something will push it a little to the side and it'll roll down.
The other points are L2 and L3, both on the same line as L1, but beyond either the smaller or the larger of the bodies, depending on if you're talking about L2 or L3. L4 and L5 are the trojans, 60 degrees ahead or behind of the smaller body in its orbit. L1 through L3 are unstable, though certain very non-circular orbits about those points are stable over periods of time. L4 and L5 are stable; a minor perturbation will pull the object slightly out of the point, and then coriolis effects pull it into orbit about the lagrange point. If you've ever read The Smoke Ring or related works you're familiar with this concept: go east to go up, go up to go west, go west to go down, go down to go east. The more scientific way of putting would be that faster orbits rise, slower orbits fall. If you move vertically in your orbit you don't change the speed of the orbit, and the average distance from your orbital center will always be the same for a specific speed for the same mass that you're orbitting. Move vertically simply makes your orbit more or less elliptical.
Now why do these coriolis forces affect only the L4 and L5 points in this manner? Because L4 and L5 are valid orbital points even if you take out the second body and convert those to basic orbits - orbital distance of an object is not dependant on that object's mass (until it gets massive enough to noticeably perturb the object around which it orbits - such as in the earth/moon system), only on it's speed. At the L1, L2, and L3 points the object is in equilibrium but it's natural orbit without the second mass would be highly elliptical, thus minor perturbations there tend to make elliptical orbits around one of the masses in the system (and that's why highly perturbed orbits about these points are quasi-stable), while at the L4 and L5 points a minor perturbation results in minor orbit changes, but the point of equilibrium stays the same.
The article title gave me this picture of a Rolls jet engine (http://www.rolls-royce.com/education/schools/how_ things_work/default.jsp) sucking JP4 and blowing 1000's of cubic feet per second of very hot air into the server room here at work.
Turbo prop jet engines that use atmospheric air to cool the turbine can have exhausts below ambient if designed for the task (the air compresses at the beginning of the engine, radiates heat into the bypass down to something approaching ambient, then both air flows expand and cool as they move towards the exhaust)
If you could turn a non-turbo prop turbine with an electric motor or some such instead of burning fuel, it's exhaust would be below ambient too - Using the same effect that freon compressors in air conditioners use - except the working fluid doesn't go through a vapor phase (VERY inefficient), and there aren't enough radiators in the compressed section to remove much heat)
but it ran horrible, like 20 frames a second plus the hiccups when garbage collection happened.
Yeah the trick there is never garbage collect. The program I wrote was an interactive music / sound-driven visualization app for club light effects - and at the price clubs were paying for it, it had to run without a glitch.
Doing high-resolution FFTs on the data, applying that to a genetic algorithm cellular automata to draw the pretty visuals, and using DirectShow and DirectSound to interact with hardware, I was hitting 20 fps consistently on a 1.2 GHz mobile processor.
It took some minor optimisation to get there, but nothing serious. Biggest things I did was change a few arrays to unsafe fixed - making them traiditional C-style arrays, basically - and the things I did need to allocate from the runtime I only allocated once. After my initialisation code is done I never allocate anything. That would be the only way to write a managed code game unless you aren't real time enough for garbage collection to matter...
The only other really difficult thing when working with managed code in game writing is typing - there are certain types (such as the signed shorts for audio data) that don't have a managed representation - I forget how I got around that one, but I know it involved using unmanaged code libraries to work with the data unless I absolutely had to. I think when I needed to access the sample data directly I ended up doubling the word size and using signed ints...
I've done benchmarks. I've run simulations. I've compared native code to managed code for the same thing. I used to hand code assembly routines for optimisation, so I know a thing or two about optimising native code too.
Most of the time the difference after loading is so similar that its not measurable. You see the big performance hit in.NET when loading or installing your libraries and they get translated to native code...
DirectX gets between 90 and 95% native performance when running through the managed libraries.
The only native code I called directly in that project was the Intel Performance Primitives - and that was only because it had an existing FFT library, and it could do MMX / SSE / SSE2 array moves (cost of 0.3 clocks per 32-bit word)
I'm speaking as someone with experience; I would absolutely write a game (or any other high performance app) in an interpreted language - its faster development, better code with fewer errors, and the performance difference is so little that I don't let it bother me...
But hey!! Check out power consumption figures! They state 85 watts in idle and 145.6 watts under load for their "winner" card (Radeon X1300). W.T.F.?! That's like three times more than my 90nm AMD64 CPU, right? You know what - go to hell. Call me back when you have something reasonable with passive cooling.
Did you read the stats on that? That figure is measured at the wall - meaning it INCLUDES the CPU and everything else. 145.6 watts under load is not a huge amount if you look at the configuration of their test rig...
For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship.
One of my clients does rolling renewing contracts (3-yr or 5-yr generally) with their clients. It is relatively common when a client's renewal comes up that they go to the competitor (our industry has two big players and two to three very small players) for a minimum-length contract, usually a year. Then they come back to us when that contract is up and offer to re-sign with us - using their business as a bargaining chip in those negotiations!
Similar tactic here?
Ok too many words - let's put it into slashdot-esque
1. Drop advertising firm 2. ???? 3. Use advertising revenue as bargaining chip trying to form a partnership with firm 4. Profit!
Nice idea but I think I just use a pump rather then waiting for the cooling to set in only after my cpu is glowing red.
That nice even 50 degrees you get on top of the chip is very likely exceeding that temperature within the chip when measured on a small enough time and space scale - I think what they're talking about here is creating microscopic channels through the chip - when the temperature gets high enough, the channel vaporizes, and that vapor energy propels the coolant through the channel.
Have you ever priced out either Real or Windows Media streaming servers?
The software license starts at $10K
I used to run an advertising-free internet radio station. Our annual budget was just enough to buy an ounce of weed for our New Years' Eve broadcast lol.
Ok everyone involved actually chipped in on that one.
My point being that when I was in that position it most certainly would not have been economically reasonable to purchase either of those products.
So would I have been exempt? Or is the government going to go around handing out licenses?
Oh wait I know! They'll federally mandate free streaming servers - to go along with state-provided lawyers, food stamps, and welfare checks!
lol Real will go bankrupt on the third day.
Unfortunately, it'll be three days too late for pirate radio networks (my old broadcasting software)
wouldn't it be really cool if the DSP lay directly on the HyperTransport bus
You may not be aware, but AMD just released the new HyperTransport spec version - and it includes along with the usual speed and signaling imporvements, externally connected devices.
I said this same thing on Monday, swear to god...
on
Why Game Movies Stink
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· Score: 1
My point was that the kind of plot that makes for an entertaining and engaging interactive environment is exactly the kind of plot that does not translate to a non-interactive environment.
Ok so rewrite the plot for the movie? Great idea... but the plot devices THEMSELVES are also problems.
Basically any movie thats going to be at all faithful to a video game is almost doomed from inception.
Let's assume that any movie that is not faithful (to some degree) to the video game it is created from is a failure from the point of view of creating a movie based on a video game, regardless of how good that movie may or may not be...
This gives us four basic categories of video game movies, and I'm being pretty generous with my examples here:
1. Movie that (somewhat) faithfully represents the original transcribed to the new format and is well done (???) 3. Movie that does not faithfully represent the original and is well done (Resident Evil, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within) 2. Movie that faithfully represents the original transcribed to the new format and is not well done (Silent Hill, Tomb Raider, Wing Commander) 4. Movie that does not faithfully represent the original and blows (Super Mario Bros, Doom, numerous others)
Now you can argue about what movie belongs in which place (like Final Fantasy where the games aren't direct-lineage sequels of each other so you could argue it belongs in the first category) but the point is, this is a convenient way to organize it all, and each category represents specific decisions made during filming. Each category probably has more films in it than the one above it, despite the fact that the most ideal situation is clearly the inverse.
So how would you attempt to make a good movie from a video game? Try to be faithful to the basic gameplay mechanics and plot devices - but otherwise run it like you're making any other movie. Concentrate on making a good movie foremost, then try to incorporate as much of the video game as possible.
And yes, I realize you can't just transcribe the plot. Thats ok - stop trying. Just come up with a plot I could believe happens before or after the game and that's good enough for me. Extend both the media of the game as well as the scope of its story in a canonical and consistent manner and I'll be one happy little coder. DO hire good actors DO continue throwing in gratuitous video game character cosplay scenes DO include humorous or iconic images and plot devices from the original. DO try to match the visual feel of the game.
DON'T try to make the plot match the game. DON'T just take the (many times very two dimensional) characters from the game and slap them in front of a camera. DON'T rely on CG too much - if we wanted that we'd be playing the game. DON'T treat the game as a virgin, inviolate and untouchable - if a non-iconic visual element doesn't work, don't use it.
And the biggest one - DO treat the game as a holy text. That's what'll make the fans happy. Go one better, consider your movie a sermon you're giving on the game. Take the important parts of the game and try to bring them out to your target audience, proseletyzing them to your entertainment brand. You'll make the fans proud, and you'll entertain the rest. And if you're lucky you'll even do some horizontal marketing...
I agree -- many people thrive intellectually in a society of peers. I know I do - I can write more amazing code faster and better at work than I ever could before I started working at a technology consulting firm. I'm not the type that goes to others for a lot of help - in fact I normally find myself int he opposite position - but just having people around that could probably help me with my problems, and being able to discuss things with them (whether a particular problem I'm having or a general technology discussion), stimulates me intellectually and makes me a far better coder.
If I telecommute for an extended period (3+ days) I can definitely tell the difference.
I imagine that this is going to be similar - sure I can view the webcast of the lecture, and I can read the textbook online, and I can fill out the test - but all of that activity is solo, non-social learning.
Never forget that education started as a social process. If eggs are a chicken's way of making more chickens, then education is society's way of making more society. Taking the social aspects out of this process definitely result in an inferior product.
I'm happy all those kids are going to get opportunities they never would have had. I just think if someone's expecting that you can just drop a wire and raise a generation of supergeniuses (which is what the quoted snippet kind of sounds like), then they're seriously delusional. Or idiotic about distance-learning technologies.
I taught the AP Calculus course I was taking in High School 3 days a week. I took several college classes using a variety of distance learning technologies (including satellite based videoconferencing). I teach several 40 hour courses annually to this day (custom curriculum for my clients, usually). I'm not entirely unfamiliar with either education or distance education. And just having the ability to do distance learning is actually the easiest part of the whole thing...
students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves.'
Cause, you know, just look at the US - Internet access for the past 10 years has turned the current crop of high schoolers into a bunch of geniuses, all just itching to discover antigravity or write a new sociopolitical theory that eliminates inflation and market swings...
lol of course on the other hand my little brother of 14 is writing better games than I was at 18...
Here Microsoft adds features to one of their products to increase security and the effectiveness of their antispyware products, and we call them evil. THIS IS A GOOD THING. They didn't extend this feature to their direct competitors - big deal? Guess what? That's what competitive marketplaces are all about.
What would you rather they did? I mean they could've not added these features - would that be better? They're NOT going to offer to extend these protections to their competitors - that's less evil to consumers but more evil to shareholders - what could they have done that would be less evil?
I used to do wheelchair fencing back when I was walking! But I never really liked it - real fencing is like 70% footwork and distance - wheelchair fencing is a significantly different sport.
On the flip side I'm doing well in physical therapy and should be strong enough to start basic muscle training all over by the end of summer.
That's the problem with atrophy that I never realised until this experience - you lose not only muscle mass, but muscle memory as well. And really competitive fencing relies on muscle memory - basically a decentralized command and control hierarchy that can improve your speed by that crucial quarter second (most fencing matches between skilled equals are won by a quarter second timing gain on an opponent - this is why footwork and distance is so crucial)
Slashdot Mirror
that will probably never change, but I think dvd player fabricants should enable skip option on content you paid for...
The DVD Consortium mandates that, in order to get that crucial "DVD" logo on your player product, you have to support the no-menu option for the discs that use it. If you want to put on the product box that you can play DVDs, you've gotta play them according to spec.
On the other hand, I've heard that overseas it's fairly easy to find DVD players that are pre-modded by the stores to allow navigation during the previews. They're usually region-free too.
There are options to get DVD players that have the skip option enabled all the time. There are no options to both get that and a manufacturer's warranty.
I really really hope ABC network execs are reading this thread.
c h legislation and regulation...
Let me sum up my position in two neat little points:
1. If after I purchase a DVR and any network figures out a way to disable functions on it that I bought fairly, then I will not watch that network. ABC, I do not need your wretched programming. While I watch ABC on occasion, that is easily time I could be spending watching any one of your fine competitors. If you piss me off enough at it, I'll probably write to your advertisers, informing them of my decision and detailing the reasoning behind it. Maybe they'll care, maybe they won't. Only one way to know for sure.
2. Next time I purchase a DVR I'm going to make very certain that the only person that can control its functions is me. I will buy no consumer product that allows other people to control functions I paid for.
For the record I already own a DVR. It allows me to commercial skip. Unless ABC is working on magic technology, I doubt they can disable the commercial skip.
Now there is a situation where I would be happy ABC wanted to force me to watch their commercials on a DVR.
That would be if ABC bought me the DVR in the first place. You want to cripple a piece of consumer electronics? Fine. Just make sure its a piece of consumer electronics YOU paid for, not me.
I wonder how long until we see a class action lawsuit for fair use infringement about all this broadcast-flag, anti-skip, control-the-way-I-watch-content-I-can-legally-wat
I've read that this is also important criteria - the ability to remotely locate or disable these mines after combat conditions have passed.
They've been working on this for some years - I remember seeing that presentation about a year ago... if you dig around you can find out a lot more.
I believe I read somewhere that Princess Di praised the effort not long before her death - I think thats how I heard of it the first time... as you know, she was a big anti-mine advocate because of the civilian issues you mention...
There's nothing wrong with space ship warlock that couldn't be cured by pressing the turbo button, turning the sound off (recommended at normal speed too) and breezing through the whole game in about 10 minutes...
Pop quiz: did you acquire the game:
1. In original retail box
2. In Best Buy "CD-ROM Games that are almost clearance" 3-pack
3. Walmart "CD-ROM Games that are past clearance" 10-pack (including such other joys as corridor 7, hypergate, and spear of destiny...)
I got it at number 3 lol
Yes, voice actors seldom record at the same time. For specially timed interchanges, such as an argument or other passionate / heated dialog, they'll do it at the same time sometimes, but other than that... they're all in the vocal booth one at a time, just reading lines.
Voice acting and real acting are extremely similar in concept. The execution is nothing close though...
lol well you know how in hitchhickers' guide to the galaxy, that one guy gained immortality through an accident involving a time machine and a rubber band?
Kind of like that, but he was hoping for an everlasting bong hit. Then the accident happened.
Just ended up crapping out resinous shards of glass for a month, though.
The resin tasted really bad when you smoked it, too...
wish I was one of his constituents...
You probably don't, if you are familiar with the DCMA and proposed expansions of it. He's the sponsor of the revisions.
Funny part being, one of the reasons I said that is that my rep is one of the sponsors of the new PATRIOT act. I've written him a couple times urging him not to support it or the DCMA revisions you mention.
I got a nicely worded reply, obviously not a form letter, that basically said that he has to balance the fair-use rights of the citizens with the desires of the businesses in his district.
Funny part being I always thought that it was his job to protect the fair-use rights of the citizens no matter what...
It's been proven that you can't have stability using only attractive forces in a static system.
The classical proof is, take any number of magnetic, electrical, and gravitational forces that are fixed relative to each other. There is no arrangement of these forces that produces a point of both equilibrium and stability.
Good thing planets move. Trojan points are just two of the five lagrange points. When any two gravitational bodies orbit each other, there will exist points of equilibrium where all gravitational forces cancel each other out - this is called a lagrange point. That's great but you also have to consider the concept of stability and sensitive dependence on initial conditions. For instance, L1, the simplest to calculate of the lagranges, is a point on a line connecting the centers of mass of the two bodies such that the pull from each body is the same. Slip a little in either direction, and thanks to the inverse power law, you see a greater pull from the body you slipped closer to, pulling you further out of equilibrium. The L1 point is not stable - objects there don't tend to stay there.
Think of it like a hill with a flat top. You can put a marble perfectly balanced at the top of the hill, but eventually something will push it a little to the side and it'll roll down.
The other points are L2 and L3, both on the same line as L1, but beyond either the smaller or the larger of the bodies, depending on if you're talking about L2 or L3. L4 and L5 are the trojans, 60 degrees ahead or behind of the smaller body in its orbit. L1 through L3 are unstable, though certain very non-circular orbits about those points are stable over periods of time. L4 and L5 are stable; a minor perturbation will pull the object slightly out of the point, and then coriolis effects pull it into orbit about the lagrange point. If you've ever read The Smoke Ring or related works you're familiar with this concept: go east to go up, go up to go west, go west to go down, go down to go east. The more scientific way of putting would be that faster orbits rise, slower orbits fall. If you move vertically in your orbit you don't change the speed of the orbit, and the average distance from your orbital center will always be the same for a specific speed for the same mass that you're orbitting. Move vertically simply makes your orbit more or less elliptical.
Now why do these coriolis forces affect only the L4 and L5 points in this manner? Because L4 and L5 are valid orbital points even if you take out the second body and convert those to basic orbits - orbital distance of an object is not dependant on that object's mass (until it gets massive enough to noticeably perturb the object around which it orbits - such as in the earth/moon system), only on it's speed. At the L1, L2, and L3 points the object is in equilibrium but it's natural orbit without the second mass would be highly elliptical, thus minor perturbations there tend to make elliptical orbits around one of the masses in the system (and that's why highly perturbed orbits about these points are quasi-stable), while at the L4 and L5 points a minor perturbation results in minor orbit changes, but the point of equilibrium stays the same.
The article title gave me this picture of a Rolls jet engine (http://www.rolls-royce.com/education/schools/how_ things_work/default.jsp) sucking JP4 and blowing 1000's of cubic feet per second of very hot air into the server room here at work.
Turbo prop jet engines that use atmospheric air to cool the turbine can have exhausts below ambient if designed for the task (the air compresses at the beginning of the engine, radiates heat into the bypass down to something approaching ambient, then both air flows expand and cool as they move towards the exhaust)
If you could turn a non-turbo prop turbine with an electric motor or some such instead of burning fuel, it's exhaust would be below ambient too - Using the same effect that freon compressors in air conditioners use - except the working fluid doesn't go through a vapor phase (VERY inefficient), and there aren't enough radiators in the compressed section to remove much heat)
'Could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the one-click?'
He showed both familiarity with Amazon's sordid patent past and managed to use the word troll during a session of congress!
I'm impressed. Wish I was his constituent...
but it ran horrible, like 20 frames a second plus the hiccups when garbage collection happened.
Yeah the trick there is never garbage collect. The program I wrote was an interactive music / sound-driven visualization app for club light effects - and at the price clubs were paying for it, it had to run without a glitch.
Doing high-resolution FFTs on the data, applying that to a genetic algorithm cellular automata to draw the pretty visuals, and using DirectShow and DirectSound to interact with hardware, I was hitting 20 fps consistently on a 1.2 GHz mobile processor.
It took some minor optimisation to get there, but nothing serious. Biggest things I did was change a few arrays to unsafe fixed - making them traiditional C-style arrays, basically - and the things I did need to allocate from the runtime I only allocated once. After my initialisation code is done I never allocate anything. That would be the only way to write a managed code game unless you aren't real time enough for garbage collection to matter...
The only other really difficult thing when working with managed code in game writing is typing - there are certain types (such as the signed shorts for audio data) that don't have a managed representation - I forget how I got around that one, but I know it involved using unmanaged code libraries to work with the data unless I absolutely had to. I think when I needed to access the sample data directly I ended up doubling the word size and using signed ints...
I've done benchmarks. I've run simulations. I've compared native code to managed code for the same thing. I used to hand code assembly routines for optimisation, so I know a thing or two about optimising native code too.
.NET when loading or installing your libraries and they get translated to native code...
Most of the time the difference after loading is so similar that its not measurable. You see the big performance hit in
DirectX gets between 90 and 95% native performance when running through the managed libraries.
The only native code I called directly in that project was the Intel Performance Primitives - and that was only because it had an existing FFT library, and it could do MMX / SSE / SSE2 array moves (cost of 0.3 clocks per 32-bit word)
I'm speaking as someone with experience; I would absolutely write a game (or any other high performance app) in an interpreted language - its faster development, better code with fewer errors, and the performance difference is so little that I don't let it bother me...
But hey!! Check out power consumption figures! They state 85 watts in idle and 145.6 watts under load for their "winner" card (Radeon X1300). W.T.F.?! That's like three times more than my 90nm AMD64 CPU, right? You know what - go to hell. Call me back when you have something reasonable with passive cooling.
Did you read the stats on that? That figure is measured at the wall - meaning it INCLUDES the CPU and everything else. 145.6 watts under load is not a huge amount if you look at the configuration of their test rig...
For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship.
One of my clients does rolling renewing contracts (3-yr or 5-yr generally) with their clients. It is relatively common when a client's renewal comes up that they go to the competitor (our industry has two big players and two to three very small players) for a minimum-length contract, usually a year. Then they come back to us when that contract is up and offer to re-sign with us - using their business as a bargaining chip in those negotiations!
Similar tactic here?
Ok too many words - let's put it into slashdot-esque
1. Drop advertising firm
2. ????
3. Use advertising revenue as bargaining chip trying to form a partnership with firm
4. Profit!
Nice idea but I think I just use a pump rather then waiting for the cooling to set in only after my cpu is glowing red.
That nice even 50 degrees you get on top of the chip is very likely exceeding that temperature within the chip when measured on a small enough time and space scale - I think what they're talking about here is creating microscopic channels through the chip - when the temperature gets high enough, the channel vaporizes, and that vapor energy propels the coolant through the channel.
Have you ever priced out either Real or Windows Media streaming servers?
The software license starts at $10K
I used to run an advertising-free internet radio station. Our annual budget was just enough to buy an ounce of weed for our New Years' Eve broadcast lol.
Ok everyone involved actually chipped in on that one.
My point being that when I was in that position it most certainly would not have been economically reasonable to purchase either of those products.
So would I have been exempt? Or is the government going to go around handing out licenses?
Oh wait I know! They'll federally mandate free streaming servers - to go along with state-provided lawyers, food stamps, and welfare checks!
lol Real will go bankrupt on the third day.
Unfortunately, it'll be three days too late for pirate radio networks (my old broadcasting software)
wouldn't it be really cool if the DSP lay directly on the HyperTransport bus
You may not be aware, but AMD just released the new HyperTransport spec version - and it includes along with the usual speed and signaling imporvements, externally connected devices.
My point was that the kind of plot that makes for an entertaining and engaging interactive environment is exactly the kind of plot that does not translate to a non-interactive environment.
Ok so rewrite the plot for the movie? Great idea... but the plot devices THEMSELVES are also problems.
Basically any movie thats going to be at all faithful to a video game is almost doomed from inception.
Let's assume that any movie that is not faithful (to some degree) to the video game it is created from is a failure from the point of view of creating a movie based on a video game, regardless of how good that movie may or may not be...
This gives us four basic categories of video game movies, and I'm being pretty generous with my examples here:
1. Movie that (somewhat) faithfully represents the original transcribed to the new format and is well done (???)
3. Movie that does not faithfully represent the original and is well done (Resident Evil, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within)
2. Movie that faithfully represents the original transcribed to the new format and is not well done (Silent Hill, Tomb Raider, Wing Commander)
4. Movie that does not faithfully represent the original and blows (Super Mario Bros, Doom, numerous others)
Now you can argue about what movie belongs in which place (like Final Fantasy where the games aren't direct-lineage sequels of each other so you could argue it belongs in the first category) but the point is, this is a convenient way to organize it all, and each category represents specific decisions made during filming. Each category probably has more films in it than the one above it, despite the fact that the most ideal situation is clearly the inverse.
So how would you attempt to make a good movie from a video game? Try to be faithful to the basic gameplay mechanics and plot devices - but otherwise run it like you're making any other movie. Concentrate on making a good movie foremost, then try to incorporate as much of the video game as possible.
And yes, I realize you can't just transcribe the plot. Thats ok - stop trying. Just come up with a plot I could believe happens before or after the game and that's good enough for me. Extend both the media of the game as well as the scope of its story in a canonical and consistent manner and I'll be one happy little coder. DO hire good actors DO continue throwing in gratuitous video game character cosplay scenes DO include humorous or iconic images and plot devices from the original. DO try to match the visual feel of the game.
DON'T try to make the plot match the game. DON'T just take the (many times very two dimensional) characters from the game and slap them in front of a camera. DON'T rely on CG too much - if we wanted that we'd be playing the game. DON'T treat the game as a virgin, inviolate and untouchable - if a non-iconic visual element doesn't work, don't use it.
And the biggest one - DO treat the game as a holy text. That's what'll make the fans happy. Go one better, consider your movie a sermon you're giving on the game. Take the important parts of the game and try to bring them out to your target audience, proseletyzing them to your entertainment brand. You'll make the fans proud, and you'll entertain the rest. And if you're lucky you'll even do some horizontal marketing...
I agree -- many people thrive intellectually in a society of peers. I know I do - I can write more amazing code faster and better at work than I ever could before I started working at a technology consulting firm. I'm not the type that goes to others for a lot of help - in fact I normally find myself int he opposite position - but just having people around that could probably help me with my problems, and being able to discuss things with them (whether a particular problem I'm having or a general technology discussion), stimulates me intellectually and makes me a far better coder.
If I telecommute for an extended period (3+ days) I can definitely tell the difference.
I imagine that this is going to be similar - sure I can view the webcast of the lecture, and I can read the textbook online, and I can fill out the test - but all of that activity is solo, non-social learning.
Never forget that education started as a social process. If eggs are a chicken's way of making more chickens, then education is society's way of making more society. Taking the social aspects out of this process definitely result in an inferior product.
I'm happy all those kids are going to get opportunities they never would have had. I just think if someone's expecting that you can just drop a wire and raise a generation of supergeniuses (which is what the quoted snippet kind of sounds like), then they're seriously delusional. Or idiotic about distance-learning technologies.
I taught the AP Calculus course I was taking in High School 3 days a week. I took several college classes using a variety of distance learning technologies (including satellite based videoconferencing). I teach several 40 hour courses annually to this day (custom curriculum for my clients, usually). I'm not entirely unfamiliar with either education or distance education. And just having the ability to do distance learning is actually the easiest part of the whole thing...
Sure - and with the right incentives and educational programs they could certainly be better educated with internet access and without.
But it takes more than just running a wire to someone's home...
students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves.'
Cause, you know, just look at the US - Internet access for the past 10 years has turned the current crop of high schoolers into a bunch of geniuses, all just itching to discover antigravity or write a new sociopolitical theory that eliminates inflation and market swings...
lol of course on the other hand my little brother of 14 is writing better games than I was at 18...
"Porn Industry Pulls Out Burnable DVDs"
I guess you could say they're sticking to what they know!
no?
Those executives really don't want to get caught with (ahem) egg on their face?
So will the drive eject the disk when it's finished?
*insert joke about repetitive stress injuries related to inserting and removing DVDs here*
All your porn are belong to us?
In soviet internet, porn burns you?
Ok I'm really coming up with nothing here lol It seems like there's a joke or two to be made here lol
Here Microsoft adds features to one of their products to increase security and the effectiveness of their antispyware products, and we call them evil. THIS IS A GOOD THING. They didn't extend this feature to their direct competitors - big deal? Guess what? That's what competitive marketplaces are all about.
What would you rather they did? I mean they could've not added these features - would that be better? They're NOT going to offer to extend these protections to their competitors - that's less evil to consumers but more evil to shareholders - what could they have done that would be less evil?
And let me tell you
There's nothing more sexy than clicking on girl's clit and seeing it say:
Girl's Clit is stroked softly by Merlin
Girl's Clit: Girl is lightly aroused
Girl's Clit is nibbled by Merlin
Girl's Clit: Girl is panting
lol who needs streaming video porn when I've got that?
I used to do wheelchair fencing back when I was walking! But I never really liked it - real fencing is like 70% footwork and distance - wheelchair fencing is a significantly different sport.
On the flip side I'm doing well in physical therapy and should be strong enough to start basic muscle training all over by the end of summer.
That's the problem with atrophy that I never realised until this experience - you lose not only muscle mass, but muscle memory as well. And really competitive fencing relies on muscle memory - basically a decentralized command and control hierarchy that can improve your speed by that crucial quarter second (most fencing matches between skilled equals are won by a quarter second timing gain on an opponent - this is why footwork and distance is so crucial)