.. I remember when I studying at UQ, that they had built a hypersonic wind tunnel. The stream of gas could punch holes in sheets of steel.
A mate of mine was researching how to make a mass spectrometer that could work inside/with the wind tunnel. To do the scramjet research, given the speed of the gasses, they needed to know if they could achieve combustion inside the engine rather than several kilometers behind it!
Simon
Modifying Bards Tale Maps
on
Ultima Revived
·
· Score: 1
I spent quite a bit of time reverse engineering the maps of Macintosh Bard's Tale while at the same time writing a disassembler just to assist in the process.
Mandatory disclaimerL "IANAPL" but I have (co-)written a number of patents and have talked to both UK and US patent attorneys.
AFAIK publishing, either in the press, in a public demonstration (where the workings can be seen or clearly deduced), or via a patent, is a requirement for it to be defined as "prior art", otherwise the invention/method is effectively (and I'm probably going to get this term wrong) a trade secret.
All that showing/proving that you have used your secret invention in the past does is to "protect" you from having to pay licenses/fee/whatever to the patent holders. It does not make the patent invalid.
For example, both the big public key/key exchange patents (RSA and DH) were invented previously in the UK by GCHQ (I think) but they were kept secret. This fact does not invalidate the patents.
AFAIU the idea of patents was to advance technology by bringing trade secrets out into the open and so others could see and improve on the ideas. In return, the patent holder is granted a limited monopoly on his/her invention.
Simon
PS: that was one of two postings I made yesterday where the replier wrote something that was less correct and they got moderated up!! I don't know why I bother sometimes.
Sega's previous arcade hardware was essentially a Dreamcast.
You've missed out Naomi2 which is considerably more powerful than a Dreamcast. In terms of T&L it should also be able to outperform (except perhaps for trivial situations) many of today's systems as well.
(1)had to put it right next to the window to be able to get a signal and
(2) a misinformed air steward told me that "transmitters" are not allowed on planes and to switch it off. It wasn't worth arguing or trying to explain how GPS works, so I turned it off. I don't bother taking it anymore.
"And the PC version of the PowerVR3 [can does] render to 1600 by 1200 then downsample for another version of anti-aliasing."
The DC's PowerVR chip (CLX2) also has this ability to do super-sampling, albeit not to that resolution, but I don't think any games made use of the facility.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as many of the features had yet to be used. For example I don't think any games used the bump mapping and very few, "Toy Commander" being a notable exception, made use of the modifier volumes (eg shadows & other special effects) . The developers had hardly scratched the surface.
One very simple reason why a lot of the DC games look better than those of the PS2 is higher resolution.
The majority of DC games render a full frame even when runing at 60Hz(NTSC) (50Hz(PAL)). This is then filtered to produce each interlaced field. The result is a better looking image since, in effect, it is a form of antialiasing.
OTOH it appears that, due to the lack of available video memory, many PS2 60Hz games only use field rendering which effectively halves the resolution.
Peru has over a hundred varieties of potato - if the British had brought back a decent assortment of potatos, instead of just the quick-buck high-yield-but-blight-sensitive variety, there would never have been an Irish potato famine.
My history is a bit vague but did the Brits go anywhere near Peru when the humble spud was brought back to Europe?
BTW: It's easy enough to buy red skinned potatoes in the UK so why not purple. Just stay clear of the ones with green skin.
What's the point? Do you really think flying 10x faster will get you there much faster?
I guess you've never flown from Australia to the UK (or vice versa). I'd tolerate quite a bit to reduce the ~22hrs spent in the air....
...although, judging from the acceleration rates, being squashed flat at take off like a cartoon character probably is a bit more than I'd put up with, not to mention the sudden braking at the destination...:)
"The prototype,... was destroyed when it punched through a series of steel plates designed to halt the flight. "
Although Unix is more reliable, Redman said, NT may become more reliable with time.
Clearly this is a perfect strategy: Those ship-based NT systems that are less reliable will drown while those that work will survive to breed with other ships thus improving the species....
Sorry for being pedantic but it's RC5 not RSA. RSA would generally be "cracked" by factoring which IIRC uses some probabality based algorithms, but the RC5 method is a pure, brute force, try every one of the 2^64 keys approach.
Simon (whose team is slowly slipping out of the top 1000)
I've been wondering exactly what acceleration the PowerVR chip could offer to a windowing system. It seems to me that the 'straight forward' implementation would not fit in all that well with the "3d only" acceleration provided by the PVR CLX2 chip, but it would be possible to use the 3D features in a clever ways
One possibility would be to associate a texture with each window and to draw each as a polygon with the "depth" coordinate set to the overlap order. Moving windows around would then be virtually instaneous as the hidden portions of windows would all be handled by the standard hidden surface removal algorithm.
Another idea would be to handle text as a texture, say using punch-through or, better still, true alpha textures which would give 'antialiased' fonts. Each letter would be done as a quad poly. The output could then be captured into an offscreen buffer and turned back into a texture for subsequent display.
Ahh.. but the launch site is not called "Boomerang" but "Woomera" and a woomera is a device for extending the range and speed of a spear. I'm surprised no one's managed to sneak one into the olympic Javelin competition:-)
How did this post get graded so highly? It is so full of mistakes!
Saying that this is just a "4 year old architecture" simply because PowerVR has been implementing tile based rendering for some number of years would be like saying that the Geforce3 is nothing more than an overclocked TNT!
The Kyro's (i.e. series 3 PowerVR chips) contain many new features, and so can't be considered to be "sped up" versions of their parents.
Slashdot Mirror
The article clearly described using a ternary system for building a tree of choices and this is closely related to it.
Perhaps people with moderator rights should read the articles before criticising sensible and ontopic posts.
/me goes off shaking his head.
.. I remember when I studying at UQ, that they had built a hypersonic wind tunnel. The stream of gas could punch holes in sheets of steel.
A mate of mine was researching how to make a mass spectrometer that could work inside/with the wind tunnel. To do the scramjet research, given the speed of the gasses, they needed to know if they could achieve combustion inside the engine rather than several kilometers behind it!
Simon
I spent quite a bit of time reverse engineering the maps of Macintosh Bard's Tale while at the same time writing a disassembler just to assist in the process.
I had far too much spare time in those days!
I should have written more than my one line.
Mandatory disclaimerL "IANAPL" but I have (co-)written a number of patents and have talked to both UK and US patent attorneys.
AFAIK publishing, either in the press, in a public demonstration (where the workings can be seen or clearly deduced), or via a patent, is a requirement for it to be defined as "prior art", otherwise the invention/method is effectively (and I'm probably going to get this term wrong) a trade secret.
All that showing/proving that you have used your secret invention in the past does is to "protect" you from having to pay licenses/fee/whatever to the patent holders. It does not make the patent invalid.
For example, both the big public key/key exchange patents (RSA and DH) were invented previously in the UK by GCHQ (I think) but they were kept secret. This fact does not invalidate the patents.
AFAIU the idea of patents was to advance technology by bringing trade secrets out into the open and so others could see and improve on the ideas. In return, the patent holder is granted a limited monopoly on his/her invention.
Simon
PS: that was one of two postings I made yesterday where the replier wrote something that was less correct and they got moderated up!! I don't know why I bother sometimes.
Did you publish your method? No? Then it's not prior art.
You've missed out Naomi2 which is considerably more powerful than a Dreamcast. In terms of T&L it should also be able to outperform (except perhaps for trivial situations) many of today's systems as well.
Simon
Actually they do maths in Britain.
I used to take my GPS on planes but
(1)had to put it right next to the window to be able to get a signal and
(2) a misinformed air steward told me that "transmitters" are not allowed on planes and to switch it off. It wasn't worth arguing or trying to explain how GPS works, so I turned it off. I don't bother taking it anymore.
Simon
"And the PC version of the PowerVR3 [can does] render to 1600 by 1200 then downsample for another version of anti-aliasing."
The DC's PowerVR chip (CLX2) also has this ability to do super-sampling, albeit not to that resolution, but I don't think any games made use of the facility.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as many of the features had yet to be used. For example I don't think any games used the bump mapping and very few, "Toy Commander" being a notable exception, made use of the modifier volumes (eg shadows & other special effects) . The developers had hardly scratched the surface.
Simon
One very simple reason why a lot of the DC games look better than those of the PS2 is higher resolution.
The majority of DC games render a full frame even when runing at 60Hz(NTSC) (50Hz(PAL)). This is then filtered to produce each interlaced field. The result is a better looking image since, in effect, it is a form of antialiasing.
OTOH it appears that, due to the lack of available video memory, many PS2 60Hz games only use field rendering which effectively halves the resolution.
Simon
Peru has over a hundred varieties of potato - if the British had brought back a decent assortment of potatos, instead of just the quick-buck high-yield-but-blight-sensitive variety, there would never have been an Irish potato famine.
My history is a bit vague but did the Brits go anywhere near Peru when the humble spud was brought back to Europe?
BTW: It's easy enough to buy red skinned potatoes in the UK so why not purple. Just stay clear of the ones with green skin.
Simon
The problem with pulse jets is that they are damned noisy. You can get them for small RC aircraft but your neighbours would become your worst enemy.
What's the point? Do you really think flying 10x faster will get you there much faster?
... :)
... was destroyed when it punched through a series of steel plates designed to halt the flight. "
I guess you've never flown from Australia to the UK (or vice versa). I'd tolerate quite a bit to reduce the ~22hrs spent in the air....
...although, judging from the acceleration rates, being squashed flat at take off like a cartoon character probably is a bit more than I'd put up with, not to mention the sudden braking at the destination
"The prototype,
Ouch!
Simon
As someone who wore a uniform to school in Australia, this brings to mind a couple of quotes:
"Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform and don't kid yourself"
Frank Zappa
and "We are all individuals and this is our uniform"
(Don't know who said it)
Simon
A good thing too or else they might also have been sued by George Lucas for ripping off the name Obiwan....
Simon
Clearly this is a perfect strategy: Those ship-based NT systems that are less reliable will drown while those that work will survive to breed with other ships thus improving the species....
Simon
Sorry for being pedantic but it's RC5 not RSA. RSA would generally be "cracked" by factoring which IIRC uses some probabality based algorithms, but the RC5 method is a pure, brute force, try every one of the 2^64 keys approach.
Simon (whose team is slowly slipping out of the top 1000)
Reading that website reminded me of the "Otherland" by Tad Williams where he describes an 'old' military base hooked into the net.
Simon
But the banks are using it. According to the article, some of the electronic transaction processing computers are going to be housed there.
I was just thinking that the described security would put the Mission Impossible movies to shame... perhaps there's an opening for a new script.
Simon
I've been wondering exactly what acceleration the PowerVR chip could offer to a windowing system. It seems to me that the 'straight forward' implementation would not fit in all that well with the "3d only" acceleration provided by the PVR CLX2 chip, but it would be possible to use the 3D features in a clever ways
One possibility would be to associate a texture with each window and to draw each as a polygon with the "depth" coordinate set to the overlap order. Moving windows around would then be virtually instaneous as the hidden portions of windows would all be handled by the standard hidden surface removal algorithm.
Another idea would be to handle text as a texture, say using punch-through or, better still, true alpha textures which would give 'antialiased' fonts. Each letter would be done as a quad poly. The output could then be captured into an offscreen buffer and turned back into a texture for subsequent display.
Simon
(speaking only for myself etc etc)
"That trick never works. Try pulling a 'hare' out of your arse instead"
Sorry for being OT.
Surely the purpose of a memorial is to be a visual reminder of an event, in which case it would have to be somewhere people would actually see it.
The question is, "Who on earth would want a pile of plutonium in their back yard?"
Simon
Ahh.. but the launch site is not called "Boomerang" but "Woomera" and a woomera is a device for extending the range and speed of a spear. :-)
I'm surprised no one's managed to sneak one into the olympic Javelin competition
Simon
There are plenty of radio stations broadcasting on the web that aren't affected by "AFTRA"
How did this post get graded so highly? It is so full of mistakes!
Saying that this is just a "4 year old architecture" simply because PowerVR has been implementing tile based rendering for some number of years would be like saying that the Geforce3 is nothing more than an overclocked TNT!
The Kyro's (i.e. series 3 PowerVR chips) contain many new features, and so can't be considered to be "sped up" versions of their parents.
Simon
insert standard employee disclainer