Re:mesa sucks compared to dx 9
on
Mesa 5.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Microsoft will have the good will to support those prior interfaces - do Age of Empires or Age of Kings ring a bell? They will not stop supporting their prior games in the foreseeable future.
Good, 'cos I'm having some problems trying to run GORILLAS.BAS on WinXP.
Still, I agree, MS is not going to shoot themselves in the foot by breaking backward compatibility if they don't have to.
Yes, OpenGL is open, but do you think anyone cares? The computer games industry is like any other business, it is run by economics.
The kids want games with bleeding-edge 3d, and unless you're name is John Carmack, the industry is not going to support anything else than DirectX.
Now OpenGL 2.0 has the chance to turn the tables; If GL2 can equal DirectX, the game industry will use it, if not for other reasons than economic reasons. Why? One word: Portability.
Porting to the Mac (and maybe even linux) is no problem with OpenGL, but if your code depends on DirectX: forget about it.
Now which game developer would knowingly limit themselves to the MS platform, if they had an equal alternative?
Which game producer would not want to be able to release a Mac or Linux port, at little extra cost?
Re:Finger prints on my monitor?
on
Lotus Nanotech
·
· Score: 2
What can they do for all these dang fingerprints on my monitor?
Truth is, not much. Fingerprints are fat, and are as such hydrophobic. Not only that, they're very small (mass-wise) and are spread out, which means a lot of surface area per unit of fingerprint substance.
I'd just recommend: Keep your fingers off the monitor!
As a help, you *could* coat your monitor with some carcinogenic toxin that is absorbed through the skin. (There are quite a few good candidates)
Or how about removing the ground from the CRT? As soon as you touch the bugger: *ZAP* (Pavlov's dogs, anyone?)
The company does well, the bosses get bonuses. The company does poorly, the bosses get bonuses. The company -files for bankruptcy- the bosses get even bigger bonuses..
True, proteins do not sample every conformation, they follow the nice path of lowest energy.
Our problem is, that this potential surface depends on the position of the molecule, and the position of the molecule on the potential surface. (i.e. it's a big differential equation)
And as with many differential equations, the end result is dependent on your starting value (or structure, in this case)
So you still need experimental data. The MM (molecular mechanics) model used also needs experimental data, and my point wasn't that you can't calculate protein folding, only that experimental results are neccessary to do so.
you might want to abandon the use of the word "never" when it comes to what may be accomplished in the future. A 20-residue protein has already been folded from sequence information alone.
Well, it doesn't really invalidate my point, as I wrote, it scales exponentially, and 20 residues is very few. (barely qualifies as a protein, more a peptide:) )
I suppose I'll rephrase that to "never, with current technology", it'll take something quite different from what we have today.
When they can predict the structure of the F1F0 ATPase, then we can throw out crystallography- but it's not going to happen. (Ignoring for the moment that crystallography has it's own issues. . . at least it can show active sites and quaternary structure)
Well, for the first, we can't throw out crystallography even then. When you're doing a computer calculation, you are in the realm of theory. (even if you have arbitrary accuracy).
You will still need to do experimental verifications now and then.
At the moment, about 2/3 of known protein structures have been mapped through X-ray crystallography. At best the resolutions are about 1.8 Å, which is pretty good. So you can see quite a bit more than quaternary structure!
The other third is done with NMR spectroscopy, usually with some powerful computing help to figure it out.
And then there are a pitiful few, done with computers and experimental data. These structures also have the poorest accuracy.
Note that computers will never, ever be able to figure out a protein structre ab initio. (i.e. without any info except the sequence) Do the math, say you have 100 amino acids, and you test say, 4 conformations for each, that's 4^100 combinations to test.. and you test 10 million a second, it'll take you 5E45 years. Much older than the current universe.
(Disclaimer: I do not -yet- have my PhD in computational biochemistry.. but I'm working on it..)
All patents end with phrases like "experts well versed in this field would know that this invention is not limited to (whatever the patent mentions) but also to related fields"
Am I the only one thinking about the tale of "The Emperors new clothes" right about now?
Ok.. let's see.. he want -every- cinema to install this gadget which no doubt will cost money, and might degrade the image quality..
Now why would Charlie Cinemaowner want to install this? No reason at all. True, the studios often own the cinemas and can force him to install the gadget, but that's no guarantee that he'll actually have the thing plugged in.
Not to mention that many Asian camcorder grabs are done with the concent of the cinema owner. (The ones where the cinema isn't fulled with people speaking Javanese or whatever)
It's just stupid. Need I say it's not going to stop piracy, it's just going to cost the money for the theaters. (And that means even more expensive movie tickets!)
I'm following creationist logic, not my own reasoning. If god is to be credited with natures' successes, why not natures' failures as well?
You mean to say that we can understand the 'will of god' when it comes to explaining useful differences, but we cannot explain why he created all these obviously useless differences?
And that's supposed to be a scientific theory?
The truth is, at the level of molecular biology, evolution is blatantly obvious.
The reason for there being so many 'cosmetic' changes to enzymes (for example) is that all parts of the enzyme are subject to mutation, however changing the parts that are vital to the function often give negative concequences, and thus evolution weeds out these mutations.
Yeah. Creationists are always quick to point out what they percive as "intelligent design".
On the other hand, they completely ignore that nature is far more abundant with "unintelligent design" - especially at the molecular level.
Intelligent design would be to use the same enzyme in all animals. Today, you have the same enzymes, but they have differences, not in function, but in all kinds of non-important ways.
Strangely (for the creationist), these differences are larger between, say a human and a bacteria than between two different types of bacteria.
Oh, and that beetle example is bulls**t. Read some non-biased information somewhere instead of that pseudoscientific creationist crap. (someone linked to a faq at talk.origins, probably a good place to start.)
Well.. you could try writing down the model number of your DVD drive and go right over to the firmware page and see if you can find some region-free firmware for it.
> cost is seen as directly proportional to the quality of a product...
The truth of this statement depends on how you define 'quality', but in the vast majority of real-life situations, it holds true.
Not really.. Sure a BMW that costs twice as much is better than a Ford, but the BMW does not cost twice as much to manufacture.
BMW conciously set their prices higher to make their product more "exclusive". That's what people are paying for: not the better quality, but to be a member of the "BMW owners club".
Here's what the situation is like in the scandinavian countries, which are the primary producers of European paper.
Trees are usually logged for the lumber. What doesn't become lumber (tree-tops, branches, etc.) is used for paper.
Paper is usually made from coniferous trees, not broadleaf, they have too short fibers.
Now I don't know much about rainforests being used for paper, but I kind of doubt it because: a) rainforest timber is worth much more as lumber. b) rainforest timber isn't all that suitable for making paper.
From what I've heard, the big problem facing the rainforests is not logging either; it's poor farmers turning rainforest into farmland.
When I applied for my current programming job, they gave me a barrage of tests and compiled an aptitude and personality profile of me.
It was really freaky how accurately it described me...
Not really. The big fault in all these tests are that they are essentially asking you what you think about yourself, and then spitting it out in different words.
Here's another simple test: 10 PRINT "How would you rate your programming skills?" 20 INPUT ANSWER$ 30 PRINT "This is our evaluation of your programming skills: ";ANSWER$
So you shouldn't be surprized at the result matching your view of yourself; The question is if the test result matches your co-workers descriptions of you.
Well, let's see here: The speed of light -is- always constant in one sense, simply because the length of 1 meter is defined by the distance light travels in a set time.
Now, from a more physical standpoint: We need more evidence. Quite a few measurements of c have been done, and a single measurement isn't about to upend all this. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, remember? Now, nobody says that relativity is a complete and final theory. It probably isn't. But you still need lots
of evidence to replace it with another theory. Otherwise, we won't even know if the theory we're replacing it with is better!
It's an interesting theory and experiment, but even so, I'd bet on this being a freak result, for the simple reason that scientific breakthroughs don't come around that often.
It's the only way to stop these hacker-terrorists. Of course, banning this one malicious tool is not enough, we also need to ban oscilloscopes, multimeters and everything capable of measuring an electrical current.
For ordinary computer users, this means: Under linux, run "shutdown now" Windows users are asked to run a program.
Laurence Olivier(nazi):Is it stable?.. Is it stable? Dustin Hoffman(guy):You're talking to me? L.O.: Is it stable? D.H.: What stable? L.O.: Is it stable? D.H.: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's stable or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about. L.O.: Is it stable? D.H.: Tell me what "it" is first. L.O.: Is it stable? D.H.: Yes, it's stable, it's very stable, so stable you wouldn't believe it. L.O.: Is it stable? D.H.: No, it's not stable, it's very dangerous, be careful.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft will have the good will to support those prior interfaces - do Age of Empires or Age of Kings ring a bell? They will not stop supporting their prior games in the foreseeable future.
Good, 'cos I'm having some problems trying to run GORILLAS.BAS on WinXP.
Still, I agree, MS is not going to shoot themselves in the foot
by breaking backward compatibility if they don't have to.
Yes, OpenGL is open, but do you think anyone cares?
The computer games industry is like any other business, it is run by economics.
The kids want games with bleeding-edge 3d, and unless you're name is John Carmack, the industry is not going to support anything else than DirectX.
Now OpenGL 2.0 has the chance to turn the tables;
If GL2 can equal DirectX,
the game industry will use it,
if not for other reasons than economic reasons. Why? One word: Portability.
Porting to the Mac (and maybe even linux) is no problem with OpenGL, but if your code depends on DirectX: forget about it.
Now which game developer would knowingly limit themselves to the MS platform, if they had an equal alternative?
Which game producer would not want to be able to release a Mac or Linux port, at little extra cost?
What can they do for all these dang fingerprints on my monitor?
Truth is, not much. Fingerprints are fat, and are
as such hydrophobic. Not only that, they're very small (mass-wise) and are spread out,
which means a lot of surface area per unit of fingerprint substance.
I'd just recommend: Keep your fingers off the monitor!
As a help, you *could* coat your monitor with some carcinogenic toxin that is absorbed through the skin. (There are quite a few good candidates)
Or how about removing the ground from the CRT? As soon as you touch the bugger: *ZAP*
(Pavlov's dogs, anyone?)
Doesn't mean he's a spy.
I kind of doubt that even the Soviets would want that lunatic as a spy.
An intelligent man (in the logic-and-strategy-at-board-games sense)
but a lunatic and asshole nonetheless.
(And one of my personal favorites when I want
to point out that having intelligence and acting intelligently are two
very, very, different things.)
We can prove that we landed on the moon. We can't prove evolution.
Wrong. His point is that you can't prove either.
RTFC.
The number is EUR 149 million.
Read the press release from the European Commission.
"You got us into this mess, you get us out!"
The company does well, the bosses get bonuses.
The company does poorly, the bosses get bonuses.
The company -files for bankruptcy- the bosses get
even bigger bonuses..
Why do they even call it a bonus?
I'm sure that's right - but why's it called Blue Gene?
Why after Gene Amdahl of course, the genius
designer of the IBM/360 mainframe line!
Or maybe because they want to play on words
"bluejeans" ~ "BlueGene"?
True, proteins do not sample every conformation, they follow the nice path of lowest energy.
Our problem is, that this potential surface depends on the position of the molecule, and the position of the molecule on the potential surface.
(i.e. it's a big differential equation)
And as with many differential equations, the end result is dependent on your starting value (or structure, in this case)
So you still need experimental data. The MM (molecular mechanics) model used also needs experimental data, and my point wasn't that you can't calculate protein folding, only that experimental results are neccessary to do so.
you might want to abandon the use of the word "never" when it comes to what may be accomplished in the future. A 20-residue protein has already been folded from sequence information alone.
:) )
Well, it doesn't really invalidate my point, as I wrote, it scales exponentially, and 20 residues is very few.
(barely qualifies as a protein, more a peptide
I suppose I'll rephrase that to "never, with current technology", it'll take something quite different from what we have today.
When they can predict the structure of the F1F0 ATPase, then we can throw out crystallography- but it's not going to happen.
(Ignoring for the moment that crystallography has it's own issues. . . at least it can show active sites and quaternary structure)
Well, for the first, we can't throw out crystallography even then. When you're doing a computer calculation, you are in the realm of theory. (even if you have arbitrary accuracy).
You will still need to do experimental verifications now and then.
At the moment, about 2/3 of known protein structures have been mapped through X-ray crystallography. At best the resolutions are about 1.8 Å, which is pretty good. So you can see quite a bit more than quaternary structure!
The other third is done with NMR spectroscopy,
usually with some powerful computing help to figure it out.
And then there are a pitiful few,
done with computers and experimental data.
These structures also have the poorest accuracy.
Note that computers will never, ever be able to figure out a protein structre ab initio. (i.e. without any info except the sequence)
Do the math, say you have 100 amino acids, and you
test say, 4 conformations for each, that's 4^100
combinations to test.. and you test 10 million a second, it'll take you 5E45 years.
Much older than the current universe.
(Disclaimer: I do not -yet- have my PhD in computational biochemistry.. but I'm working on it..)
All patents end with phrases like "experts well versed in this field
would know that this invention is not limited to (whatever the patent mentions)
but also to related fields"
Am I the only one thinking about the tale of "The Emperors new clothes" right about now?
Ok.. let's see.. he want -every- cinema to install this gadget which no doubt will cost money, and might degrade the image quality..
Now why would Charlie Cinemaowner want to install this? No reason at all.
True, the studios often own the cinemas and can force him to install the gadget, but that's no guarantee that he'll actually have the thing plugged in.
Not to mention that many Asian camcorder grabs are done with the concent of the cinema owner.
(The ones where the cinema isn't fulled with
people speaking Javanese or whatever)
It's just stupid. Need I say it's not going to stop piracy,
it's just going to cost the money for the theaters.
(And that means even more expensive movie tickets!)
Lighten up. The concept "hard science" is usually used for the natural sciences as opposed to "softer" social sciences.
So, it's not 'hard' as in difficult, but hard as in tangible, matter-related sciences, as opposed to the human-related social sciences.
We might be arrogant, but we're not THAT arrogant.
I'm following creationist logic, not my own reasoning.
If god is to be credited with natures' successes,
why not natures' failures as well?
You mean to say that we can understand the 'will of god' when it comes to explaining useful differences, but we cannot explain why he created all these obviously useless differences?
And that's supposed to be a scientific theory?
The truth is, at the level of molecular biology,
evolution is blatantly obvious.
The reason for there being so many 'cosmetic' changes to enzymes (for example) is that all parts of the enzyme are subject to mutation,
however changing the parts that are vital to the function often give negative concequences,
and thus evolution weeds out these mutations.
Yeah. Creationists are always quick to point out
what they percive as "intelligent design".
On the other hand, they completely ignore that nature is far more abundant with "unintelligent design" - especially at the molecular level.
Intelligent design would be to use the same enzyme in all animals. Today, you have the same enzymes, but they have differences, not in function, but in all kinds of non-important ways.
Strangely (for the creationist), these differences are larger between, say a human and a bacteria than between two different types of bacteria.
Oh, and that beetle example is bulls**t. Read some non-biased information somewhere
instead of that pseudoscientific creationist crap.
(someone linked to a faq at talk.origins, probably a good place to start.)
Well.. you could try writing down the model number of your DVD drive and go right over to the firmware page and see if you can find some region-free firmware for it.
It's worked for me on 2 different occasions.
Hardware hackers.. god love 'em..
> cost is seen as directly proportional to the quality of a product...
The truth of this statement depends on how you define 'quality', but in the vast majority of real-life situations, it holds true.
Not really.. Sure a BMW that costs twice as much
is better than a Ford, but the BMW does not cost
twice as much to manufacture.
BMW conciously set their prices higher to make their product more "exclusive".
That's what people are paying for: not the better quality, but to be a member of the "BMW owners club".
l before y
Except after c, right?
Here's what the situation is like in the scandinavian countries, which are the primary producers of European paper.
Trees are usually logged for the lumber.
What doesn't become lumber (tree-tops, branches, etc.) is used for paper.
Paper is usually made from coniferous trees, not broadleaf, they have too short fibers.
Now I don't know much about rainforests being used for paper, but I kind of doubt it because:
a) rainforest timber is worth much more as lumber.
b) rainforest timber isn't all that suitable for making paper.
From what I've heard, the big problem facing the rainforests is not logging either; it's poor farmers turning rainforest into farmland.
When I applied for my current programming job, they gave me a barrage of tests and compiled an aptitude and personality profile of me.
It was really freaky how accurately it described me...
Not really. The big fault in all these tests are that they are essentially asking you what you think about yourself,
and then spitting it out in different words.
Here's another simple test:
10 PRINT "How would you rate your programming skills?"
20 INPUT ANSWER$
30 PRINT "This is our evaluation of your programming skills: ";ANSWER$
So you shouldn't be surprized at the result matching your view of yourself;
The question is if the test result matches your co-workers descriptions of you.
Well, let's see here:
The speed of light -is- always constant in one sense,
simply because the length of 1 meter is defined by the distance light travels in a set time.
Now, from a more physical standpoint: We need more evidence.
Quite a few measurements of c have been done, and a single measurement isn't about to upend all this.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, remember?
Now, nobody says that relativity is a complete and final theory. It probably isn't. But you still need lots
of evidence to replace it with another theory.
Otherwise, we won't even know if the theory we're replacing it with is better!
It's an interesting theory and experiment, but even so, I'd bet on this being a
freak result, for the simple reason that scientific breakthroughs don't come around that often.
My personal favorite is in the god-awful "Moonraker":
(Q shows Bond an organic molecule)
Bond: It's the formula for a plant.
Uh. Ok. Plants are chemical compounds. Sure.
It's the only way to stop these hacker-terrorists.
Of course, banning this one malicious tool is not enough,
we also need to ban oscilloscopes, multimeters and everything capable of measuring an electrical current.
For ordinary computer users, this means:
Under linux, run "shutdown now"
Windows users are asked to run a program.
Laurence Olivier(nazi):Is it stable? .. Is it stable?
Dustin Hoffman(guy):You're talking to me?
L.O.: Is it stable?
D.H.: What stable?
L.O.: Is it stable?
D.H.: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's stable or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.
L.O.: Is it stable?
D.H.: Tell me what "it" is first.
L.O.: Is it stable?
D.H.: Yes, it's stable, it's very stable, so stable you wouldn't believe it.
L.O.: Is it stable?
D.H.: No, it's not stable, it's very dangerous, be careful.
Ok, it's kind of offtopic, but as the Swedish Gnuheter reported the other day this swedish site appears to have ripped-off the Debian logo.