Developers might also want to check out Open SceneGraph which has the ability to automatically output your game/flight sim/visualisation project in stereo at the flick of an environment variable.
I wrote this article to help instill a sense of confidence about Open Source development in those who have not experienced it. I once did a rope course as part of a six-day seminar and felt a sense of terror in watching people repel a cliff. When my time came, I felt panic as I backed down the hill. After the first leap, the fear disappeared and I found repelling fun and nothing like I imagined. Trying anything new often provides us with a sense of anxiety.
He's right of course - repelling the cliff is the first thing to learn when rappelling:)
Graphite in a nuclear reactor? Sounds like a good idea, lets see what the folks at Chernobyl think...(yes, I realize the lower density of uranium would prevent thermal runaway).
The reactor is not a traditional core moderated by graphite control rods - it's an enclosed High Temperature module which simply heats up inert helium as it passes through. The graphite walls just reflect the neutrons and insulate the module. The entire design of the reactor means that it dissipates heat faster than it is generated should there be any failure. There's no need for complex systems to prevent criticality since it can never happen. I didn't read the article either but then I don't have to since I'm in the middle of helping write a book on South African innovation. The PBMR formed a large part of the energy chapter and will be vital to the country's future since we are 71% coal driven at the moment (very cheap but very polluting).
I call bullshit. Unless you're doing something stupid, like using bog i386 binaries on a PIV or PIV optimised binaries on an Athlon, you'll get nowhere near 10% performance increase just by recompiling from source.
I've easily got 10% performance improvement from compile-it-yourself distros (LFS and gentoo are the two I run here) for a number of reasons:
The cumulative effects of optimisations to a number of packages can be significant. When X and Gnome and ImageMagick and the Gimp and glibc and the kernel are all optimised for this exact machine (and yes I know what I'm doing with flags), then its faster - starting with kernel block memory copies and working up from there.
Code and shared library sizes are smaller because I didn't include the --with-kde flag or whatever when I knew I wasn't using it.
Some obscure flags make a huge difference - like --no-g++-exceptions on Qt and KDE. I've found the speed increase to be 50% in some cases which you just don't get when installing a bog-standard binary without those flags enabled.
Agreed. I wish I could find the quote where Linus says that all contributors are basically pulling the kernel along in the directions they want to go - in tiny incremental ways - and that is a Good Thing.
No matter what the dominant OS - Windows, Linux, Mac OS, BeOS - the number one guy gets picked on the most, and exploited the most.
If only this applied to IIS. Not even nearly the dominant player and still defaced/cracked/prised open ten times more often than all the others put together. Defacement sites eventually stopped keeping mirrors of IIS hacks because there were so many.
Great stuff. I wonder what the man himself would have thought of all of this. For those (like me) who want to know more you can download Mike's entire story from here.
Let's keep the first amendment out of this, okay? DeCSS is code. It's not free expression, it's not an Art form. It's simply a useful tool that let's you watch DVDs on your linux box.
...the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, who ruled in the Bernstein cryptography case that source code is indeed protected speech. In their decision, The 9th Circuit even quoted some Scheme code from the declaration of MIT Professor Harold Abelson, explaining why source code is an effective and sometimes preferred means of human communication. Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University also filed a declaration explaining the importance for computer science of being able to publish source code. More recently, the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled in the Junger cryptography case that, independent of its functional significance, the expressive nature of source code affords it First Amendment protection.
Re:Commander Keen cutting edge?
on
Masters of Doom
·
· Score: 1
I wish I could find my copy of Xenon II Megablast. I wonder if it will run at the correct speed on my more modern hardware.
Works like a charm on my Ghz PIII running Windows 2000 with or without VMDSound - which you don't really need since it used the PC Speaker anyway.
Because there's been little need for it. The majority of mobile ARMs go into devices that use integer only maths - like network devices. And even the ARM's integer unit cannot divide - you have to do divides yourself the long way. Whether these missing features are a function of the RISC design of the chip, or for historical reasons, or some other reason entirely I'm not sure - no doubt an ARM expert will correct me.
Fortunately the freedom to leave is still available, but I think that is because it is too expensive to build a wall that long.
Not if you earn over a certain amount. I think the "Berlin Wall" tax - as it came to be known - is somewhere around 50% for wealthy US citizens who've had enough.
We have tons of monitors... but nothing very interesting installed on any of them. (Unless you find blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation rate, etc. interesting.)
Any advice on starter models and how steep the learning curve is?
The two main things you need to learn are:
how to set up, balance, tweak and generally configure a model heli before it will get off the ground
how to fly it
Both require lots of help for the beginner. The latter's learning curve is immensely shorter with the use of a simulator. Probably the best starter package is the Hoverfly. Normally beginners should stay away from small electric choppers because they traditionally are light, squirrely and very hard to learn on, but the Hoverfly's flight characteristics are deliberately very similar to larger gas models. It has lots of other benefits:
it comes with its own controller, saving you big bucks on a heli-capable radio transmitter. If you do have a transmitter it just plugs into the buddy cable interface
it runs off the mains via an umbilical cable. No money needed for super ultralight rechargeable batteries and no ten minute limit on flights either. You can't really do loops or somersaults of course but you can learn to fly.
Indoor flying is all-weather:)
It comes with a simulator already
It's cheap and again, doesn't force the purchase of a 7-channel helicopter capable Tx if you eventually decide model heli flying is not for you
I've found a lot of resistance to r/c simulators in general, especially among older pilots. "It's not the same, you need to practice like we did, blah blah blah." If you experience it, take it with a grain of salt. Simulators, while not perfect and obviously not the same, are an excellent way of developing your co-ordination and reflexes to be instinctive - easily the steepest part of the curve. I've flown a powered fixed wing plane precisely once - a friend let me fly his and it was exactly the same as a sim I'd practised on. Helis and gliders are the same.
Not true - it has the full weight of copyright law behind it. Don't want to abide by the GPL when redistributing this software? Bummer - it's copyrighted and you're now illegally redistributing someone else's copyrighted work.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah - he needs to read this article which explains the difference very clearly.
I remember on my Commodore 64, half the time, it wasn't even 300 Baud, it was like 150
Looxury...
Developers might also want to check out Open SceneGraph which has the ability to automatically output your game/flight sim/visualisation project in stereo at the flick of an environment variable.
I wrote this article to help instill a sense of confidence about Open Source development in those who have not experienced it. I once did a rope course as part of a six-day seminar and felt a sense of terror in watching people repel a cliff. When my time came, I felt panic as I backed down the hill. After the first leap, the fear disappeared and I found repelling fun and nothing like I imagined. Trying anything new often provides us with a sense of anxiety.
:)
He's right of course - repelling the cliff is the first thing to learn when rappelling
Graphite in a nuclear reactor? Sounds like a good idea, lets see what the folks at Chernobyl think...(yes, I realize the lower density of uranium would prevent thermal runaway).
The reactor is not a traditional core moderated by graphite control rods - it's an enclosed High Temperature module which simply heats up inert helium as it passes through. The graphite walls just reflect the neutrons and insulate the module. The entire design of the reactor means that it dissipates heat faster than it is generated should there be any failure. There's no need for complex systems to prevent criticality since it can never happen.
I didn't read the article either but then I don't have to since I'm in the middle of helping write a book on South African innovation. The PBMR formed a large part of the energy chapter and will be vital to the country's future since we are 71% coal driven at the moment (very cheap but very polluting).
I am a professional in New York City making very decent cache
So is it level 1 or level 2?
Yeah but Manufacturing and Q&A aren't allowed to talk to each other anyway :)
I've easily got 10% performance improvement from compile-it-yourself distros (LFS and gentoo are the two I run here) for a number of reasons:
Agreed. I wish I could find the quote where Linus says that all contributors are basically pulling the kernel along in the directions they want to go - in tiny incremental ways - and that is a Good Thing.
No no - in Soviet Russia, confessions sign Y - ah, n/m...
No matter what the dominant OS - Windows, Linux, Mac OS, BeOS - the number one guy gets picked on the most, and exploited the most.
If only this applied to IIS. Not even nearly the dominant player and still defaced/cracked/prised open ten times more often than all the others put together. Defacement sites eventually stopped keeping mirrors of IIS hacks because there were so many.
Great stuff. I wonder what the man himself would have thought of all of this. For those (like me) who want to know more you can download Mike's entire story from here.
Meant to donate +1 funny, clicked on -1 overrated instead, my bad, kill me now...
I prefer the older, more direct edition.
As a long-time fan of Eric Scott Raymond, let me tell you:
As a long time fan, you should at least know that his name is Eric Steven Raymond.
Source code is protected speech under US law I believe. From Dave Touretzky's gallery of DeCSS scramblers:
I wish I could find my copy of Xenon II Megablast. I wonder if it will run at the correct speed on my more modern hardware.
Works like a charm on my Ghz PIII running Windows 2000 with or without VMDSound - which you don't really need since it used the PC Speaker anyway.
Because there's been little need for it. The majority of mobile ARMs go into devices that use integer only maths - like network devices. And even the ARM's integer unit cannot divide - you have to do divides yourself the long way. Whether these missing features are a function of the RISC design of the chip, or for historical reasons, or some other reason entirely I'm not sure - no doubt an ARM expert will correct me.
or does the bank come to you.
In SOVIET RUSSIA, the bank - ah n/m.
I assume that is a reference to one of the first successful long range rockets - the Nazi V-1 "buzz" bombs.
There were affectionately known as "doodlebugs" prompting the classic WWII music hall quip:
"Either that bomb's got your name on it or it hasn't. I felt sorry for Mr and Mrs Doodlebug next door..."
Either I'm back on IRC without realising it or you've forgotten that you're not there anymore...
Fortunately the freedom to leave is still available, but I think that is because it is too expensive to build a wall that long.
Not if you earn over a certain amount. I think the "Berlin Wall" tax - as it came to be known - is somewhere around 50% for wealthy US citizens who've had enough.
We have tons of monitors... but nothing very interesting installed on any of them. (Unless you find blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation rate, etc. interesting.)
What about the Machine That Goes Ping?
The two main things you need to learn are:
Both require lots of help for the beginner. The latter's learning curve is immensely shorter with the use of a simulator. Probably the best starter package is the Hoverfly. Normally beginners should stay away from small electric choppers because they traditionally are light, squirrely and very hard to learn on, but the Hoverfly's flight characteristics are deliberately very similar to larger gas models. It has lots of other benefits:
I've found a lot of resistance to r/c simulators in general, especially among older pilots. "It's not the same, you need to practice like we did, blah blah blah." If you experience it, take it with a grain of salt. Simulators, while not perfect and obviously not the same, are an excellent way of developing your co-ordination and reflexes to be instinctive - easily the steepest part of the curve. I've flown a powered fixed wing plane precisely once - a friend let me fly his and it was exactly the same as a sim I'd practised on. Helis and gliders are the same.
That's a pretty flaky clause.
Not true - it has the full weight of copyright law behind it. Don't want to abide by the GPL when redistributing this software? Bummer - it's copyrighted and you're now illegally redistributing someone else's copyrighted work.