I'd be intriguied to see if the emotion engine could be used as an add-on to perform high end rendering for things like movies etc in render farms such as exist at Pixar etc!
Having read through the whole thing (my head hurts!) I was wondeirng if anyone knows how the vector processors stack up against the altivec processor in the G4s especially as the new G4+ will be out soonish (we hope) and will have 2 altivec units (and more processor units in general - all to enalbe faster clock speeds I guess).
Also, concerning the Mips processor, how quickly do you think we'll have a version of linux running on the PSX2 and can anyone think of a valid reason for doing so? I'm wondering if a PSX runing linux would make a decent low-end computer for home use that I could (at the flick of a switch as it were) play storming games on as well. I'm assuming you'll be able to use firewire hard drives etc but what about Ram requirements? I can see ram being the stumbling block to a really useful linux implementation.......
United Kingdom citizens do not have the right to free speech, though many think we do
That's a very important point as regards UK law etc. As UK citizens we enjoy very few 'rights' as enjoyed by such places at the USA who have a specific constitution guaranteeing them such things. UK law is based almost entirely on precedent and any rights we have are there because centuries of precedent have allowed them to exist.
This means we can do anything until someone in law decides we can't (equally something that's deemed unlawful can become a 'right' if it's defeated in a court)
Strangely, our lack of rights does tend to a more open society than in the US where the strict lists of rights gives people a detailed list of what you can and can't do. Here we have to wait for something to be decided in court and it's often easier to just let things lie.........
What about Nintendo, who put out stuff on cartridge?
You can get a device that plugs into the cartridge port of an N64 and connects to the parallel port on your pc. You then use the pc to store rom images and send them to the N64 depending on the game you want to play. Easy copying as the images are small........
Troc
PS Not trying to promote piracy or anything, I just happen to know that:)
I think the really interesting point here is what precedent this will set for online auctions?
Assuming that Nintendo et al. win, it'll set a precedent such that online auctions are liable for everything they auction - not that that's a bad thing IMHO but it would require vetting of every item that's put up for auction in the future. Somewhat time consuming and a bit annoying in this digital age:)
It would als mean an end to exciting auctions such as body parts, Carol Vordeman etc......
Do we think auction sites should be liable for their content? Is this like ISPs being liable for what users download or read?
This has (IMHO) come about as a consequence of digital recording.
When cds were released, we could all record cd -> analogue tape and that was ok as the recording was lossy and therefore not a major problem. This was great as we could play music we'd bought in our cars and walkmans (walkmen?)
Then along came DAT, DCC and MiniDisc and suddenly it was possible to make digital recordings or music we'd bought (well licensed etc) so there was a panic and they came up with SCMS (serial copy management system or something like that) which limited the number of digital copies you could make. You could (can) still make analogue copie however.
Spurred on by this exciting deveopment, macrovision was added to video tapes to stop people renting anc copying tapes (this was from the time when it took many years for a film to be released on video except in rental stores) and then subsequently added to all pre-recorded movies.
Que the 21st Century and we have the precedent where copy protection has been included in some form or another on pre-recorded media for years such that the MPAA (and others) can pretty much do as they will.
I guess this is a consequence of the complexity within current computers/consoles/home AV equipment etc.
Here in the UK, a large number of DVD players are eitehr sold or are later modified to play Region 1 discs so we can buy movies from the States where they are much cheaper. A consequence of this mod is that macrovision is disabled (for better or worse etc) Most people aren't even aware of this aspect of the mod, or even care - we just want our movies:)
I would think that the harder Sony try to remove this 'feature' from the PSX 2, the more people will hack deeper into the hard/software and find alternate methods - after all the Sony DVD players are all easily modded to allow the same functions.
I would think an interesting debate would be on teh merits of copy protection and whether it's necessary at all. Specifically the macrovision and/or region coding that goes on - i.e. is macrovision ok to stop people copying dvd -> video and Region coding bad (mmmmkay) or vice versa or are we all against everything?
Personally I have no problems with macrovision as I don't plan to copy dvds but I HATE the Region coding with a vengence and that's why I had my DVD modded and will certainly have my PSX 2 modded when I buy it later this year (or whenever they are out in the UK)
Just some thoughts, I know some of the have been hashed out before but I fancied a quick typo:)
I've seen Hackers, to be considered 3l337, you have to be British, use a fairly naff American accent and wear the right gear. This means a combination of motorbiking leathers, football (soccer) shirts and rollerblades. It's vitally important you also spray your portable 'puter in a camo. stylee. If you can then run some kind of unique OS combining the worst aspects of the Mac, Windows and unix, so much the better.
Use weird slang, that also helps and if in doubt, get celebrities to hack for you.
That was an extract from 'troc's guide to being an hacker'
10. Kids aren't colourful enough 9. You can't get 2000 kids in a standard plastic box. 8. A model made entirely of kids will get you put away 7. You can't get the really usefully shaped kids these days 6. Kids have to go to school 5. No mindstorms - where would you put the batteries? 4. Half way through building, the model would bugger off for dinner! 3. You can't get buld orders of kids through the internet 2. Well not legally
Meccano is excellent, especially the wind-up clockwork motors from the really old sets.
lego looks cool and is great for making nice looking fairly complex models etc but if you want to build some real engineering and don't own a mini-lathe then meccano is the way to go (unless you lose the nuts like I keep doing. I think I have kleptomaniacal mice)
1. One piece of lego. 2. Some lego bricks. 3. A pile of Lego. (becauase the first thing you do is throw it on the floor to look for that one piece you REALLY need) 4. Not quite enough lego to build the really cool thing your best friend build last week.
We've just had a week long TV series here in the UK about robot sports competitions by the guys who run Robot Wars - one or two of the robots in that were made from lego, the one that stick in my mind was a rope climbing robot. It didn't do particularly well mind you:)
It's not really surprising that it's not only kids that play with lego mindstorms - how many of us were brought up on lego? I remember the excitement of my first lego technic set, I'm sure it's what made me the person I am today (insert geek or nerd instead of person if you feel the need:) I must admit though I always thought meccano was more powerful and I'd love a robotic control system for my meccano sets, maybe it's time for a lego/meccano hybrid. A sort of android if you will.
just some thoughts
Troc
Re:Rack-mounted (i)Macs
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
Obviously you bolt the mac to the rack, not the handles. My comment above was somewhat ambiguous
:)
troc
Re:(Re)Legitimizing the Mac
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
Now that's a well written troll if I've ever seen one.
Troc
Re:Rack a Commodore 64!
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 5
You think mounting an iMac is cool? I've mounted a Commodore 64!
Some people should leave their sexual pervesions to the privacy of their own homes, it's probably a good thing an iMac has no floppy drive.:)
You can Rack-Mount any of the recent translucent blue/white G3s or grr]ey/white G4s by removing the 4 handles (allen keys) and bolting them to a standard rack.........
It's offtopic because someone had spare moderator points and they unsed them poorly I guess - I wish people would stop using moderation points just for the sake of using them.
Moderation is there to promote good articles and demote spam and rubbish, not to promote your personal views on a subject and certainly not to be misused.......
You don't have to use all your moderator points up each time you get some, I assume what happens is people see they have 'moderator status' get all fired up and rush off to moderate - probably using all 5 up in the first 30 messages in one discussion. This is what causes the weird moderation that occurrs in some discussions (IMHO) I would actually be interested to see some statistics of moderation and moderators as to how people dispense their points (mainly up, mainly down, all in one discussion, selectively.... etc)
The above post was perfectly on topic as it was pertinent to the main idea in question. These date pagers have been around in Japan for years (at least 3) and have indeed been discussed before, whilst it's fine for things to be discussed again, when the story submission queue has over 300 pending ideas in it, is it not possible that there's a better story to be posted? I would assume the people with post priveledges would be sensible enough to check for repetition occassionally.
In a vacuum, various internal organs will rupture (eyes can too) but not explode as such. Blood tends to leak through the skin too like a giant love bite (erm, you yanks call 'em hickeys I believe) Not pleasant, can be survived for a (very) short period but not recommended:)
I agree and I think the important point is that neither of these is a unique service provider, one can always go elsewhere and if they provide a poor solution, people will go elsewhere.
If what they provided was unobtainable elsewhere, that would be a bad thing (tm) as any monopoly is bad for consumers, irrespective of the company involved (no matter how 'nice' a company is, it's hard to be competitive with yourself:)
So as far as I can see this is mainly news for shareholders in the respective company and people who already use their services........
I'd just like to clarify that this post was not meant as flamebait (and dosn't read as such to me) It was an honest attempt to explain to people how to stop getting articles they aren't interested in.
I was getting annoyed at his posts and then suddenly remembered the options in my users wassname..........
So I told people what they could do and then did it myself.
This reply has come about because I just had a look at tmy user information to see how things are set-up and noticed I'd been moderated as flamebait for an article that was actually written to be informative
Slashdot Mirror
I'd be intriguied to see if the emotion engine could be used as an add-on to perform high end rendering for things like movies etc in render farms such as exist at Pixar etc!
Troc
Having read through the whole thing (my head hurts!) I was wondeirng if anyone knows how the vector processors stack up against the altivec processor in the G4s especially as the new G4+ will be out soonish (we hope) and will have 2 altivec units (and more processor units in general - all to enalbe faster clock speeds I guess).
Also, concerning the Mips processor, how quickly do you think we'll have a version of linux running on the PSX2 and can anyone think of a valid reason for doing so? I'm wondering if a PSX runing linux would make a decent low-end computer for home use that I could (at the flick of a switch as it were) play storming games on as well. I'm assuming you'll be able to use firewire hard drives etc but what about Ram requirements? I can see ram being the stumbling block to a really useful linux implementation.......
Any thoughts?
troc
That's a very important point as regards UK law etc. As UK citizens we enjoy very few 'rights' as enjoyed by such places at the USA who have a specific constitution guaranteeing them such things. UK law is based almost entirely on precedent and any rights we have are there because centuries of precedent have allowed them to exist.
This means we can do anything until someone in law decides we can't (equally something that's deemed unlawful can become a 'right' if it's defeated in a court)
Strangely, our lack of rights does tend to a more open society than in the US where the strict lists of rights gives people a detailed list of what you can and can't do. Here we have to wait for something to be decided in court and it's often easier to just let things lie.........
Hohum
Troc
You can get a device that plugs into the cartridge port of an N64 and connects to the parallel port on your pc. You then use the pc to store rom images and send them to the N64 depending on the game you want to play. Easy copying as the images are small........
Troc
PS Not trying to promote piracy or anything, I just happen to know that :)
I think the really interesting point here is what precedent this will set for online auctions?
:)
Assuming that Nintendo et al. win, it'll set a precedent such that online auctions are liable for everything they auction - not that that's a bad thing IMHO but it would require vetting of every item that's put up for auction in the future. Somewhat time consuming and a bit annoying in this digital age
It would als mean an end to exciting auctions such as body parts, Carol Vordeman etc......
Do we think auction sites should be liable for their content? Is this like ISPs being liable for what users download or read?
Troc
This has (IMHO) come about as a consequence of digital recording.
When cds were released, we could all record cd -> analogue tape and that was ok as the recording was lossy and therefore not a major problem. This was great as we could play music we'd bought in our cars and walkmans (walkmen?)
Then along came DAT, DCC and MiniDisc and suddenly it was possible to make digital recordings or music we'd bought (well licensed etc) so there was a panic and they came up with SCMS (serial copy management system or something like that) which limited the number of digital copies you could make. You could (can) still make analogue copie however.
Spurred on by this exciting deveopment, macrovision was added to video tapes to stop people renting anc copying tapes (this was from the time when it took many years for a film to be released on video except in rental stores) and then subsequently added to all pre-recorded movies.
Que the 21st Century and we have the precedent where copy protection has been included in some form or another on pre-recorded media for years such that the MPAA (and others) can pretty much do as they will.
Hohum
troc
I guess this is a consequence of the complexity within current computers/consoles/home AV equipment etc.
:)
:)
Here in the UK, a large number of DVD players are eitehr sold or are later modified to play Region 1 discs so we can buy movies from the States where they are much cheaper. A consequence of this mod is that macrovision is disabled (for better or worse etc) Most people aren't even aware of this aspect of the mod, or even care - we just want our movies
I would think that the harder Sony try to remove this 'feature' from the PSX 2, the more people will hack deeper into the hard/software and find alternate methods - after all the Sony DVD players are all easily modded to allow the same functions.
I would think an interesting debate would be on teh merits of copy protection and whether it's necessary at all. Specifically the macrovision and/or region coding that goes on - i.e. is macrovision ok to stop people copying dvd -> video and Region coding bad (mmmmkay) or vice versa or are we all against everything?
Personally I have no problems with macrovision as I don't plan to copy dvds but I HATE the Region coding with a vengence and that's why I had my DVD modded and will certainly have my PSX 2 modded when I buy it later this year (or whenever they are out in the UK)
Just some thoughts, I know some of the have been hashed out before but I fancied a quick typo
Troc
No no no no no no no no, you are wrong there....
I've seen Hackers, to be considered 3l337, you have to be British, use a fairly naff American accent and wear the right gear. This means a combination of motorbiking leathers, football (soccer) shirts and rollerblades.
It's vitally important you also spray your portable 'puter in a camo. stylee. If you can then run some kind of unique OS combining the worst aspects of the Mac, Windows and unix, so much the better.
Use weird slang, that also helps and if in doubt, get celebrities to hack for you.
That was an extract from 'troc's guide to being an hacker'
troc
I always though Lego was one of the reasons people have kids. I know my Dad would often play with my Lego when I wanted to..........
It was the same with my train set, rocketry kits, remote controlled cars and barbie dolls.
Troc
PS The barbie dolls thing is complex and I've had councelling
The top 10 reasons engineers don't use kids:
:)
10. Kids aren't colourful enough
9. You can't get 2000 kids in a standard plastic box.
8. A model made entirely of kids will get you put away
7. You can't get the really usefully shaped kids these days
6. Kids have to go to school
5. No mindstorms - where would you put the batteries?
4. Half way through building, the model would bugger off for dinner!
3. You can't get buld orders of kids through the internet
2. Well not legally
And the top reason engineers don't use kids?
1. Engineers aren't allowed access to kids
Troc
But you probably want http://www.earleshouse.com/LEGO/
troc
Meccano is excellent, especially the wind-up clockwork motors from the really old sets.
lego looks cool and is great for making nice looking fairly complex models etc but if you want to build some real engineering and don't own a mini-lathe then meccano is the way to go (unless you lose the nuts like I keep doing. I think I have kleptomaniacal mice)
troc
Yeah I always thought that too.
It goes like this
1. One piece of lego.
2. Some lego bricks.
3. A pile of Lego. (becauase the first thing you do is throw it on the floor to look for that one piece you REALLY need)
4. Not quite enough lego to build the really cool thing your best friend build last week.
Troc
We've just had a week long TV series here in the UK about robot sports competitions by the guys who run Robot Wars - one or two of the robots in that were made from lego, the one that stick in my mind was a rope climbing robot. It didn't do particularly well mind you :)
:) I must admit though I always thought meccano was more powerful and I'd love a robotic control system for my meccano sets, maybe it's time for a lego/meccano hybrid. A sort of android if you will.
It's not really surprising that it's not only kids that play with lego mindstorms - how many of us were brought up on lego? I remember the excitement of my first lego technic set, I'm sure it's what made me the person I am today (insert geek or nerd instead of person if you feel the need
just some thoughts
Troc
Obviously you bolt the mac to the rack, not the handles.
My comment above was somewhat ambiguous
:)
troc
Now that's a well written troll if I've ever seen one.
Troc
Some people should leave their sexual pervesions to the privacy of their own homes, it's probably a good thing an iMac has no floppy drive. :)
Troc
You can Rack-Mount any of the recent translucent blue/white G3s or grr]ey/white G4s by removing the 4 handles (allen keys) and bolting them to a standard rack.........
Troc
The only Existentialist Bomb to ever appear in a movie :)
:)
Bloody excellent film - one of my all time favourites - especially the elevator scene
Troc
It's offtopic because someone had spare moderator points and they unsed them poorly I guess - I wish people would stop using moderation points just for the sake of using them.
Moderation is there to promote good articles and demote spam and rubbish, not to promote your personal views on a subject and certainly not to be misused.......
You don't have to use all your moderator points up each time you get some, I assume what happens is people see they have 'moderator status' get all fired up and rush off to moderate - probably using all 5 up in the first 30 messages in one discussion. This is what causes the weird moderation that occurrs in some discussions (IMHO) I would actually be interested to see some statistics of moderation and moderators as to how people dispense their points (mainly up, mainly down, all in one discussion, selectively.... etc)
The above post was perfectly on topic as it was pertinent to the main idea in question. These date pagers have been around in Japan for years (at least 3) and have indeed been discussed before, whilst it's fine for things to be discussed again, when the story submission queue has over 300 pending ideas in it, is it not possible that there's a better story to be posted? I would assume the people with post priveledges would be sensible enough to check for repetition occassionally.
Hohum
Troc
In a vacuum, various internal organs will rupture (eyes can too) but not explode as such. Blood tends to leak through the skin too like a giant love bite (erm, you yanks call 'em hickeys I believe) :)
Not pleasant, can be survived for a (very) short period but not recommended
Troc
I agree and I think the important point is that neither of these is a unique service provider, one can always go elsewhere and if they provide a poor solution, people will go elsewhere.
:)
If what they provided was unobtainable elsewhere, that would be a bad thing (tm) as any monopoly is bad for consumers, irrespective of the company involved (no matter how 'nice' a company is, it's hard to be competitive with yourself
So as far as I can see this is mainly news for shareholders in the respective company and people who already use their services........
Hohum
troc
I'd just like to clarify that this post was not meant as flamebait (and dosn't read as such to me) It was an honest attempt to explain to people how to stop getting articles they aren't interested in.
;)
I'm not sure why I bother sometimes
Troc
Very simple.....
I was getting annoyed at his posts and then suddenly remembered the options in my users wassname..........
So I told people what they could do and then did it myself.
This reply has come about because I just had a look at tmy user information to see how things are set-up and noticed I'd been moderated as flamebait for an article that was actually written to be informative
Hohum
Troc
Why do people sit and whinge about Katz?
I can't stand his articles either and I have the way he uses Slashdot as a personal soapbox when ordinary users can't. It's not democratic.
But you can solve this....... create an accound, log in and set your preferences to ignore any articles posted by Katz.
No more will you be 'forced' to read his stuff and people who like his works (are there any?) won't be hassled by your whining
</public service broadcast>
Troc