Actually, no, it wasn't games. I worked in a mall while I was in my first year at College. For lunch, I'd often have a donair, poutine, and a orange julius. For snacks, I'd get a pack of bars from the chocolatier. I never cared enough about my appearance to work out or restrict my diet in any way. I got basically no meaningful exercise, even though I thought that I did.
My wife (I can't remember if she was my girlfriend or fiancee at the time) won a prize that included 2 bikes. I biked to class one day, not realizing just how terribly out of shape I was. It took some time, since I had to stop and take breaks. (My rule was that I could take breaks, but I couldn't walk my bike.) I kept biking, and kept biking, and went down to about 185. The extra effort from the Wii has kept me at 165 for the last year and a half (It's starting to drop again from spin classes)
Interestingly enough, if I'd spent my money on video games, I'd never have gained the weight in the first place. I'd be nowhere near as strong as I am now, though -- thanks to the biking, I have superior lower body strength; thanks to the excess weight, I have resilient tendons and good skeletal structure.
Well, I used Wii Fit to level up my rig -- I lost 20 pounds in the first two months while adding a significant amount of mass onto my arms and shoulders.
I'm now at about 165 pounds. My peak weight 10 years ago was about 250.
I note that Mario Kart uses your Mii info to determine what weight class you race in once you unlock yourself. That's probably enough prior art to invalidate this patent.
I have to take exception to this. I work for a military contractor and I take my job very seriously. I know that there are men and women who are trusting me with their lives to do my job properly. They require me to do my job error-free. On-time, on-budget are nice but are, and always will be, secondary concerns.
I get paid very well, I get a lot a nice benefits, and the atmosphere is excellent. (Hell, I even get to read/.!) The goal of any company is to make money, yes, but that's a fact of life. I expect to get paid. So does my mortgage company, my cable company, the water department, etc. I like my job and if I didn't have any expenses I'd do it for nothing. If I won the lotto, I'd still come in to work. (Which would be really weird since I don't buy tickets.)
The company likes loyal employees because we have to be trusted with (get this) military secrets, we have to go through background checks, and we have to be ready, willing, and able to do our best. It's expensive to hire someone -- it takes months and thousands of dollars before you even get to the point when they can sit at a desk. Greedy employees are the ones who wouldn't mind sending certain documents to people who would pay "Top Dorrar". You don't want those kind of people.
It's not a job that can be done by anyone. Yes, some of the stuff I'm doing can and likely will be used to kill someone. I spend a lot of time making sure that it's the bad guys and not the folks using the stuff. After all, if you've made the kind of choices where the military is shooting at you, it's probably not a big loss if we've got to kick you off the planet. If you've written the Blank Check to the government, then it's a terrible loss if I've fucked up and killed you by accident.
Even if it was encrypted, it wouldn't matter. There are multiple vectors that you can use to disrupt radio service, and actually decoding the signal is only one of those vectors.
I know my house very well, and actually better than any number of photos could tell you. I know details about the wiring, the wall construction, and the fact that the carpet on the fourth stair is loose and can make you slide if you're not careful. If there's a guy there with a camera, I know that someone is interested in my house and is taking pictures of it. I'd know not to bring in strippers while he's standing there snapping pix. That's when I bring in the groceries, mow the lawn, fix my bike, etc. Once he gets bored and leaves, it's party time!
So, let's say that I'm in Afghanistan and I'm a terrorist. If I know where the Predators are, then I know what areas the US is interested in. I don't HAVE to know what the pictures are because I know better than the drones what's in those areas. "Hmm, predator in this area, use the back tunnel instead." Once the signals stop, then bring out the weapons shipments because it's party time!
Actually reading the feed, while interesting, is not the only thing that they can get out of these drones.
First, a gaming card is going to get fast firmware. A workstation card is going to get accurate firmware. I imagine that supercomputer cards would get specialized firmware. (I only skimmed the summary.)
GPUs are excellent at solving certain types of problems and excel at solving matrices. (That's what your video card is doing while it's rendering.) The best part of that is that most, if not all, mathematical problems can be expressed as a matrix, meaning that your super-fast GPU can solve most math problems super-fast.
Next, GPUs love working together since they don't care about what the OS is doing. All they do is take raw data and respond with an answer. Usually we're putting that answer onto the display, since otherwise wtf are we doing with a GPU? In this case, the results are returned instead of using the flashy display. So what you end up with is a set of really fast, specialized, parallel engines solving broken down matrices.
They're also not subject to the marketing whims of Moore's Law, so you can often get faster cards sooner than faster CPUs. To break down a supercomputer so that you get this kind of performance for 4000 EURO is a fantastic achievement. It's almost, but not quite, hobby range. (I'd still put money on someone trying to evolve this into a gaming rig...)
Sorry, that's my fault. I pointed out that the lameness filter (all caps, code, etc) could be bypassed by ending the comment with "...and because/. thinks this comment is obscene, I've copied the word "fuck" 100 times: fuck fuck... etc."
Yes, if Ted Klaudt was convicted in a court of law, then ipso facto he is a rapist. You aren't stating anything libelous or slanderous, as it is a simple repetition of facts.
My meatbag is left for parts donation with the leftovers to science.
If I was the corpse, it'd be fine with me. Come on, they're students. I blew up a lot of caps, broke a lot of tools, and put a hole in the ceiling once. How are they going to learn if they can't have some fun every now and then? I like my job -- why can't she enjoy hers? The expression is that if you find a job that you love, you'll never work a day in your life.
Also, it would be the most attention a woman'd pay to my body in quite some time. (I'm married and I've lost more weight than my wife.)
Engineering standards of practice require, at the very least, some rough hand calculations in order to determine if the computer is sane. If your computer is trying to tell you that the capital of France is Jupiter, you want to know that it's wrong. (First-order approximations are often sufficient. Consult a local P.Eng for details.)
Ideally, you run the simulation on two different programs on two physically separate computers using different architectures. (i.e. Intel and AMD) Normally you don't do that because it's insanely time-consuming and costly. It's also the safest way to do computer modelling. (Whenever I wonder about costs, I think about answering the question of "why didn't you spend $X thousand on the simulation?" starting with, "Well, Your Honour,...")
Nevertheless, there isn't enough processing power on the face of the earth to fully simulate the airflow over the wings of a 747. Assumptions and simplifications are made in order to get a "good enough" answer. (One of my friends crashed what was at the time the #80 supercomputer because he tried to get too fine an analysis.)
Before the plane gets FAA approval, they have to run a bunch of test flights, including several planes that get flown to destruction (and one of them goes through a "wing flex" test to see what it takes to make the wings fall off). Now, we know that Boeing wants to make these planes as cheaply as they can. It's a fact of business. cheaper plane = higher margin. They have 840 planes on order, of which the last 740 will cancel if they shave the margins closely enough to cause lift's magnitude to drop below gravity's magnitude.
Finally, if it's not a safe plane, pilots will refuse to fly it and then you'll be sitting there with a really fucking expensive tiki hut that looks like a plane.
If you've never had the chance to go, check out the Future of Flight museum in Everett. It's an awe-inspiring tour of the Boeing factory where you get top-down view of the factory floor. It's the largest building in the world, with enough room to fit all of Disneyland inside. (and then you'd have 12 acres for parking)
Cars are made on assembly lines, but planes are too large to use the same techniques. They do it anyway.
(Sorry about any munged text here;/. previews as one character wide, 200+ down.)
Thanks, that's the best laugh of the day. I've ordered $180 worth of pizza for dinner tonight (it's a dinner meeting for 35 people) and I was thinking about someone rolling these 18", 2" deep jumbos into a wrap.
Someone on/. has a sig that said:
A pizza with depth a and radius z has a volume of pi z z a.
Aw yeah, that would be cool. It wouldn't even be that hard to put together. You could get the smallest COTS generator on the market and just plug any old laptop into the 115V socket.
On that we agree -- the majority of people that I've seen have critical situational awareness deficits.
"Oh hey, it's a crosswalk so I can just walk out without looking. The paint on the road acts as a forcefield that keeps the cars from hitting me."
At least, that's what the thought process would be if there was anything up there. Given the behaviour, it would sound more like:
"grunt? grunt. grunt!"
I had one guy step right in front of my bike; I was able to avoid him, but barely. I called out, "if I was a car, you'd be waiting for an ambulance." Odds are he walked onto the next crosswalk without looking.
I use hearing to place vehicles around me when I'm biking. It's a critical portion of, as you put it, truck avoidance. It's not the only mechanism but it's vital to survival.
Eyes only point forward and mirrors only cover so much.
Slashdot Mirror
composers accidentally do this all the time.
John Williams and his enourmous pile of money would like to have a word with you.
That would be...
*sunglasses*...
cowsine
YEEAAAAAAAHH!
Actually, no, it wasn't games. I worked in a mall while I was in my first year at College. For lunch, I'd often have a donair, poutine, and a orange julius. For snacks, I'd get a pack of bars from the chocolatier. I never cared enough about my appearance to work out or restrict my diet in any way. I got basically no meaningful exercise, even though I thought that I did.
My wife (I can't remember if she was my girlfriend or fiancee at the time) won a prize that included 2 bikes. I biked to class one day, not realizing just how terribly out of shape I was. It took some time, since I had to stop and take breaks. (My rule was that I could take breaks, but I couldn't walk my bike.) I kept biking, and kept biking, and went down to about 185. The extra effort from the Wii has kept me at 165 for the last year and a half (It's starting to drop again from spin classes)
Interestingly enough, if I'd spent my money on video games, I'd never have gained the weight in the first place. I'd be nowhere near as strong as I am now, though -- thanks to the biking, I have superior lower body strength; thanks to the excess weight, I have resilient tendons and good skeletal structure.
Well, I used Wii Fit to level up my rig -- I lost 20 pounds in the first two months while adding a significant amount of mass onto my arms and shoulders.
I'm now at about 165 pounds. My peak weight 10 years ago was about 250.
I note that Mario Kart uses your Mii info to determine what weight class you race in once you unlock yourself. That's probably enough prior art to invalidate this patent.
Or they change the API:
if( fireFox ) {
delay( 5 seconds );
throttleBandwidth( 50_PERCENT );
originalCall();
}
Marshmallows are made with gelatin, which is made from meat. (Technically, it's the ground cartilage of food-grade animals)
Vegetarians and vegans won't eat marshmallows because they are basically meat and sugar.
My point is that they can tell where the drones are interested in by always watching the frequencies.
If they're always looking at Cave Akbar, then you move out of that cave.
I have to take exception to this. I work for a military contractor and I take my job very seriously. I know that there are men and women who are trusting me with their lives to do my job properly. They require me to do my job error-free. On-time, on-budget are nice but are, and always will be, secondary concerns.
I get paid very well, I get a lot a nice benefits, and the atmosphere is excellent. (Hell, I even get to read /.!) The goal of any company is to make money, yes, but that's a fact of life. I expect to get paid. So does my mortgage company, my cable company, the water department, etc. I like my job and if I didn't have any expenses I'd do it for nothing. If I won the lotto, I'd still come in to work. (Which would be really weird since I don't buy tickets.)
The company likes loyal employees because we have to be trusted with (get this) military secrets, we have to go through background checks, and we have to be ready, willing, and able to do our best. It's expensive to hire someone -- it takes months and thousands of dollars before you even get to the point when they can sit at a desk. Greedy employees are the ones who wouldn't mind sending certain documents to people who would pay "Top Dorrar". You don't want those kind of people.
It's not a job that can be done by anyone. Yes, some of the stuff I'm doing can and likely will be used to kill someone. I spend a lot of time making sure that it's the bad guys and not the folks using the stuff. After all, if you've made the kind of choices where the military is shooting at you, it's probably not a big loss if we've got to kick you off the planet. If you've written the Blank Check to the government, then it's a terrible loss if I've fucked up and killed you by accident.
Even if it was encrypted, it wouldn't matter. There are multiple vectors that you can use to disrupt radio service, and actually decoding the signal is only one of those vectors.
I know my house very well, and actually better than any number of photos could tell you. I know details about the wiring, the wall construction, and the fact that the carpet on the fourth stair is loose and can make you slide if you're not careful. If there's a guy there with a camera, I know that someone is interested in my house and is taking pictures of it. I'd know not to bring in strippers while he's standing there snapping pix. That's when I bring in the groceries, mow the lawn, fix my bike, etc. Once he gets bored and leaves, it's party time!
So, let's say that I'm in Afghanistan and I'm a terrorist. If I know where the Predators are, then I know what areas the US is interested in. I don't HAVE to know what the pictures are because I know better than the drones what's in those areas. "Hmm, predator in this area, use the back tunnel instead." Once the signals stop, then bring out the weapons shipments because it's party time!
Actually reading the feed, while interesting, is not the only thing that they can get out of these drones.
First, a gaming card is going to get fast firmware. A workstation card is going to get accurate firmware. I imagine that supercomputer cards would get specialized firmware. (I only skimmed the summary.)
GPUs are excellent at solving certain types of problems and excel at solving matrices. (That's what your video card is doing while it's rendering.) The best part of that is that most, if not all, mathematical problems can be expressed as a matrix, meaning that your super-fast GPU can solve most math problems super-fast.
Next, GPUs love working together since they don't care about what the OS is doing. All they do is take raw data and respond with an answer. Usually we're putting that answer onto the display, since otherwise wtf are we doing with a GPU? In this case, the results are returned instead of using the flashy display. So what you end up with is a set of really fast, specialized, parallel engines solving broken down matrices.
They're also not subject to the marketing whims of Moore's Law, so you can often get faster cards sooner than faster CPUs. To break down a supercomputer so that you get this kind of performance for 4000 EURO is a fantastic achievement. It's almost, but not quite, hobby range. (I'd still put money on someone trying to evolve this into a gaming rig...)
Sorry, that's my fault. I pointed out that the lameness filter (all caps, code, etc) could be bypassed by ending the comment with "...and because /. thinks this comment is obscene, I've copied the word "fuck" 100 times: fuck fuck... etc."
Wow. Even I found that tasteless.
Yeah, even for the Internet, that was bad.
Yes, if Ted Klaudt was convicted in a court of law, then ipso facto he is a rapist. You aren't stating anything libelous or slanderous, as it is a simple repetition of facts.
MLPWDW
(My Law Prof was Dick Wolf)
The problem with your plan is that it requires lots more morticians.
My meatbag is left for parts donation with the leftovers to science.
If I was the corpse, it'd be fine with me. Come on, they're students. I blew up a lot of caps, broke a lot of tools, and put a hole in the ceiling once. How are they going to learn if they can't have some fun every now and then? I like my job -- why can't she enjoy hers? The expression is that if you find a job that you love, you'll never work a day in your life.
Also, it would be the most attention a woman'd pay to my body in quite some time. (I'm married and I've lost more weight than my wife.)
I'm pretty sure she made at least one movie.
Engineering standards of practice require, at the very least, some rough hand calculations in order to determine if the computer is sane. If your computer is trying to tell you that the capital of France is Jupiter, you want to know that it's wrong. (First-order approximations are often sufficient. Consult a local P.Eng for details.)
Ideally, you run the simulation on two different programs on two physically separate computers using different architectures. (i.e. Intel and AMD) Normally you don't do that because it's insanely time-consuming and costly. It's also the safest way to do computer modelling. (Whenever I wonder about costs, I think about answering the question of "why didn't you spend $X thousand on the simulation?" starting with, "Well, Your Honour, ...")
Nevertheless, there isn't enough processing power on the face of the earth to fully simulate the airflow over the wings of a 747. Assumptions and simplifications are made in order to get a "good enough" answer. (One of my friends crashed what was at the time the #80 supercomputer because he tried to get too fine an analysis.)
Before the plane gets FAA approval, they have to run a bunch of test flights, including several planes that get flown to destruction (and one of them goes through a "wing flex" test to see what it takes to make the wings fall off). Now, we know that Boeing wants to make these planes as cheaply as they can. It's a fact of business. cheaper plane = higher margin. They have 840 planes on order, of which the last 740 will cancel if they shave the margins closely enough to cause lift's magnitude to drop below gravity's magnitude.
Finally, if it's not a safe plane, pilots will refuse to fly it and then you'll be sitting there with a really fucking expensive tiki hut that looks like a plane.
If you've never had the chance to go, check out the Future of Flight museum in Everett. It's an awe-inspiring tour of the Boeing factory where you get top-down view of the factory floor. It's the largest building in the world, with enough room to fit all of Disneyland inside. (and then you'd have 12 acres for parking)
Cars are made on assembly lines, but planes are too large to use the same techniques. They do it anyway.
(Sorry about any munged text here; /. previews as one character wide, 200+ down.)
Thanks, that's the best laugh of the day. I've ordered $180 worth of pizza for dinner tonight (it's a dinner meeting for 35 people) and I was thinking about someone rolling these 18", 2" deep jumbos into a wrap.
Someone on /. has a sig that said:
A pizza with depth a and radius z has a volume of pi z z a.
Two things:
a) It's Power Word: Kill. (For a 9th-level spell, it's really over-rated.)
b) Any time you have a group for D&D, it's a party. Pride of lions, murder of crows, party of geeks.
Aw yeah, that would be cool. It wouldn't even be that hard to put together. You could get the smallest COTS generator on the market and just plug any old laptop into the 115V socket.
On that we agree -- the majority of people that I've seen have critical situational awareness deficits.
"Oh hey, it's a crosswalk so I can just walk out without looking. The paint on the road acts as a forcefield that keeps the cars from hitting me."
At least, that's what the thought process would be if there was anything up there. Given the behaviour, it would sound more like:
"grunt? grunt. grunt!"
I had one guy step right in front of my bike; I was able to avoid him, but barely. I called out, "if I was a car, you'd be waiting for an ambulance." Odds are he walked onto the next crosswalk without looking.
Some juridictions will charge you as an "accessory" if you leave your car running, it gets stolen, and it's used in a crime.
[citation needed]
I use hearing to place vehicles around me when I'm biking. It's a critical portion of, as you put it, truck avoidance. It's not the only mechanism but it's vital to survival.
Eyes only point forward and mirrors only cover so much.
I also had the same kits, and I'm also an EE.
OMGWTF correlation. (Yes, I know that p is two)