Woo.. someone else who gives a flying toss about realtime raytracing.
There are already quite a few examples of realtime raytracing up and running on current hardware, mainly from the demoscene. Some are really impressive, though obviously, expect low resolutions.
I don't have time right now to dig up URL's, but try googling for "real time raytracing" - it should turn up a few pages with tech demos, etc.
Personally, I'm just waiting for hardware to do for raytracing what 3D cards did for rendering. There is hardware out there, and it's damned impressive (high res povray-like scenes at 30fps, anyone?), but it's damned expensive, and support for them isn't exactly commonplace. Eventually, however, you do hit a point where it becomes more efficient to raytrace a scene than to use traditional rendering techniques, particularly if it involves a lot of reflection, and we may not be too far from that.
I'm in northern Scotland, and I saw it (faintly) last night (that is, around 11 PM on the 29th). A couple of people I've spoken to said they saw it much brighter around 9 PM
How about GAPE: The Goatse.cx Advanced Preview Engine A heuristic neural network which would flash large images of a gaping anus on a computer screen when an obfuscated link would lead the user to goatse.cx
Yet again my modpoints run out unused about 10 minutes before I find a post worthy of modding up. Ah well. Please accept this authentic replica diamondique incrusted goldette +1 Funny, as seen on the shopping channel.
That's actually a damn good question, let's see what The Great Oracle Of Google has to say about Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate
Well, it seems to confirm that the damn stuff turns up all over the place... after 4 pages of beauty product ingredient lists, we find this.. I've only taken a quick glance at it, as it's 3:40 AM here, and I really need to get to bed, but this phrase popped out at me: "Disodium laureth sulfosuccinate is recommended for use in conjunction with sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) for bath products. When used at 25% SLES:75% disodium sulfosuccinate, the combination shows a much-lowered irritation potential without significant loss of foam"
It appears they have to mix something else with this stuff to reduce it's potential for irritating the skin, so it could well be related to your allergy.. it also seems to be related to the foaming process of the product. Maybe you could try some non foaming or less foamy soaps/cleansers?
FYI - I only plan on having 1 child, in maybe 5 years. Unless you have 1 or fewer offspring, shut up about my SUV.
Thanks for the invitation. As it happens, I have 0 offspring, but even if I had 5, I wouldn't "shut up about your SUV"..
It's very simple, really. You're saying we'd all do a lot less damage, and have more resources per person if there were less of us.
Well, yes, but...
Let's say, just pulling figures out of the air, that this planet can just barely support 6 billion wasteful people. You're suggesting we drop the population to, say, 3 billion. Still 3 billion wasteful people, mind, but who cares, they're comfortable.
Well, what if.. and brace yourself, this is a really radical idea.. what if we were to be.. less wasteful! So instead of just barely supporting 6 billion wasteful people, the planet could very comfortably support 6 billion eco friendly people?
Very true. I remember seeing a TV program (yeah, I know - It Must Be True if it was on TV) a while back about supermarket distribution methods here in the UK.. seems that due to Just In Time distribution methods and what have you it's rather common for, say, a cabbage to be grown in Inverness (far North in the UK for those who don't know), be transported to a distribution or storage or processing centre in, say, London (far south), then come all the way back up to Inverness to be sold in a supermarket about 10 miles from where it was grown.
At least some supermarkets have started to take note of this.. I believe the Co-op tried to address the issue, at least
(on a semi-related environmentally friendly shopping note, fellow brits, check out the co-op's fairtrade chocolate, and the fairtrade (Teadirect) tea.. they're superb:)
Let's see... $3000 for a "computer" needed to display these images, and $70 for the "art pack" with the images on
or...
$10 to 20 for a second hand Dreamcast $0.20 for a blank CD $0 for your favourite freeware Dreamcast image viewer $0 for some downloaded pics from the 'net
Sooooo.... $3070 for what I can just as easily do for $20 - and I get a choice of which images I have, rather than being stuck with whatever they choose to put on their art packs..
I don't know about those particular papers, but in the UK we have the Daily Sport, which has featured such noteable headlines as "Loch Ness Monster Is Really A German U-Boat", "Double Decker Bus Found On Moon!", or "Aliens Turned My Son Into A Fish Finger"
Personally, I've always regarded it as a pinnacle of journalistic excellence. Not only is it crammed full of hard hitting stories on the issues that matter, but it also features positively gratuitous pictures of topless women. Who could ask for anything more?
>>How many from scratch, free, quality games do you see? >Bzflag, frozen-bubble, etc. There are some good games that are GPL'd.
I'm not deriding these games in any way - in fact, they're both superb.. I've wasted many a night playing BzFlag.. but it's no Half Life 2 or Doom 3, is it?
There are many superb freeware/shareware/open source games out there, but when did you last see an amature game with the same quality as a commercial title? (I mean, not just gameplay wise, but graphics, sound, engine, etc)
This is a bit OT, but it sounds like you might be interested in this: Traffic waves
Basically it's a study of traffic as a kind of "fluid dynamics" system, and has some interesting stuff about the ability of one vehicle to affect the behaviour of others, including unblocking traffic jams
This reminds me of an old story - I've no idea if it's true, perhaps someone can shed some light.. anyways, back in the late 60's or early 70's some company, a bank, I think, or similar, decided to get themselves set up with a computer system. They decided to put the computer room near the front of the building, and make one of the walls glass, so that everyone who came in (especially investors, company bosses, etc) would see how high tech an operation they were running.
However, when the system was installed, it turned out to be rather dull looking. Just a bunch of switch banks, and probably a few tape reels.. They realised this wasn't going to impress anyone, so they contacted a movie set design company, and got them to give it a makeover with lots of blinkenlights and little oscilliscope type displays, etc. And apparently, when the company bosses came to see, they left extremely impressed.
Yay! the ol' LED fading trick. First time I remember seeing that was on a drawing proggy called Crack Art on the Atari ST.. the title screen faded the drive lights on and off (at least I think it was the drive lights.. mebbe capslock or something - can't even remember if the ST had lights for that)
Just happened to catch a trailer for a show on MSNBC tonight.. some "documentary" along the lines of "When using internet file trading software YOUR child could be innocent PREY to EVIL internet PORNOGRAPHERS who hide PORN in music files! YOUR CHILD could be at risk without even knowing! Shock! Horror! Film at 11!" etc
I think it's on at 8, but to be honest, I wasn't paying much attention
No modpoints just now, but let me be the first to say thankyou for that little flash of sanity.
The time this hit home hardest to me was watching a friend play one of the Metal Gear Solid games on the playstation.. this is a game where you're encouraged to shoot people in the head for a quick stealthy kill.. but at one point when the main character is naked (facing away from the screen, mind), they blur out his low detail polygonal arse for fear that it should offend or corrupt the minds of children.
Every time I travel to the US I marvel at the wide range of gun porn mags avaliable to a 5 year old should they want to purchase one.. (You know the ones, "Guns & Ammo", "Big Shiney People-Killers", Going Postal Monthly", etc), and yet you're considered some kind of twisted evil freak if you want to pick up a copy of playboy or similar (which are, incidentally, locked away safely in the "Under 18? Don't even THINK about going here" area)
Oh. Great. You're going to HELP their case. In case you missed it, they took their numbers from the number of results returned. Think about it.
(note, before anyone complains about my statistics, I'm just pulling these numbers out of thin air as an example)
They search for "incest" or somesuch on Kazaa. They get say, 100 results. None of those are, in fact, incest pictures. What do you think they're going to say:
A: "p2p is evil and riddled with filth. With a few keystrokes that any 5 year old could do we found hundreds of pictures and movies depicting graphic scenes of incest, rape, and child abuse!"
or..
B: "Well, we searched on p2p for incest, and initially it seemed we'd found some results, but on closer inspection they were mostly harmless text files, so in fact it's okay, there's nothing to our case for p2p being harmful to kids at all"
They'll probably be tools like visual basic for games. Drag and drop games, minimal coding
Oh dear god, NO!, please NOT Click 'n Play again (I would link to info about it, except that it seems to be forgotten in the mists of time now, and I want it to stay that way)
If you were to dilligently hunt down THE 100 worst pieces of digital excrement avaliable for the PC, I can almost guarantee at least 90 of them would've been made in Click 'n Play.
Don't get me wrong, I've absolutely nothing against the likes of Blitz Basic, indeed I consider it to be a superb way for non techies to get into games programming - I myself started on the rather similar STOS for the Atari ST. Sure, BB is responsible for it's fair share of crap, but some surprisingly good stuff has been made with it too.
Slashdot Mirror
Woo.. someone else who gives a flying toss about realtime raytracing.
There are already quite a few examples of realtime raytracing up and running on current hardware, mainly from the demoscene. Some are really impressive, though obviously, expect low resolutions.
I don't have time right now to dig up URL's, but try googling for "real time raytracing" - it should turn up a few pages with tech demos, etc.
Personally, I'm just waiting for hardware to do for raytracing what 3D cards did for rendering. There is hardware out there, and it's damned impressive (high res povray-like scenes at 30fps, anyone?), but it's damned expensive, and support for them isn't exactly commonplace. Eventually, however, you do hit a point where it becomes more efficient to raytrace a scene than to use traditional rendering techniques, particularly if it involves a lot of reflection, and we may not be too far from that.
I'm in northern Scotland, and I saw it (faintly) last night (that is, around 11 PM on the 29th). A couple of people I've spoken to said they saw it much brighter around 9 PM
How about GAPE: The Goatse.cx Advanced Preview Engine
A heuristic neural network which would flash large images of a gaping anus on a computer screen when an obfuscated link would lead the user to goatse.cx
Yet again my modpoints run out unused about 10 minutes before I find a post worthy of modding up. Ah well. Please accept this authentic replica diamondique incrusted goldette +1 Funny, as seen on the shopping channel.
That's actually a damn good question, let's see what The Great Oracle Of Google has to say about Disodium Laureth Sulfosuccinate
Well, it seems to confirm that the damn stuff turns up all over the place... after 4 pages of beauty product ingredient lists, we find this.. I've only taken a quick glance at it, as it's 3:40 AM here, and I really need to get to bed, but this phrase popped out at me: "Disodium laureth sulfosuccinate is recommended for use in conjunction with sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) for bath products. When used at 25% SLES:75% disodium sulfosuccinate, the combination shows a much-lowered irritation potential without significant loss of foam"
It appears they have to mix something else with this stuff to reduce it's potential for irritating the skin, so it could well be related to your allergy.. it also seems to be related to the foaming process of the product. Maybe you could try some non foaming or less foamy soaps/cleansers?
Remove the tinfoil hat.
You'd like that, wouldn't you.. nice try, but the hat STAYS.
FYI - I only plan on having 1 child, in maybe 5 years. Unless you have 1 or fewer offspring, shut up about my SUV.
Thanks for the invitation. As it happens, I have 0 offspring, but even if I had 5, I wouldn't "shut up about your SUV"..
It's very simple, really. You're saying we'd all do a lot less damage, and have more resources per person if there were less of us.
Well, yes, but...
Let's say, just pulling figures out of the air, that this planet can just barely support 6 billion wasteful people. You're suggesting we drop the population to, say, 3 billion. Still 3 billion wasteful people, mind, but who cares, they're comfortable.
Well, what if.. and brace yourself, this is a really radical idea.. what if we were to be.. less wasteful! So instead of just barely supporting 6 billion wasteful people, the planet could very comfortably support 6 billion eco friendly people?
Just a crazy thought, mind...
Very true.
:)
I remember seeing a TV program (yeah, I know - It Must Be True if it was on TV) a while back about supermarket distribution methods here in the UK.. seems that due to Just In Time distribution methods and what have you it's rather common for, say, a cabbage to be grown in Inverness (far North in the UK for those who don't know), be transported to a distribution or storage or processing centre in, say, London (far south), then come all the way back up to Inverness to be sold in a supermarket about 10 miles from where it was grown.
At least some supermarkets have started to take note of this.. I believe the Co-op tried to address the issue, at least
(on a semi-related environmentally friendly shopping note, fellow brits, check out the co-op's fairtrade chocolate, and the fairtrade (Teadirect) tea.. they're superb
Let's see...
$3000 for a "computer" needed to display these images, and $70 for the "art pack" with the images on
or...
$10 to 20 for a second hand Dreamcast
$0.20 for a blank CD
$0 for your favourite freeware Dreamcast image viewer
$0 for some downloaded pics from the 'net
Sooooo.... $3070 for what I can just as easily do for $20 - and I get a choice of which images I have, rather than being stuck with whatever they choose to put on their art packs..
When can I buy one?
Thankyou, you asked the magic question! I was starting to think I was stupid for being the only one
No, no, not that stuff about RAM, I'm talking about your sig.. ytf WOULD anyone ever engrave "Elbereth" without being prompted to do so?!
Better still, this means the PC will finally be fully compatible with the Commodore 64!!
I don't know about those particular papers, but in the UK we have the Daily Sport, which has featured such noteable headlines as "Loch Ness Monster Is Really A German U-Boat", "Double Decker Bus Found On Moon!", or "Aliens Turned My Son Into A Fish Finger"
Personally, I've always regarded it as a pinnacle of journalistic excellence. Not only is it crammed full of hard hitting stories on the issues that matter, but it also features positively gratuitous pictures of topless women. Who could ask for anything more?
Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned bluntly that the next war in the area [Middle East] will be over water.
Funny, I could've sworn that was on Channel 9
Did he say anything about Chris Waddle?
(First to get these references wins some cheesy peas)
"I feel good," Yang radioed back from space, followed by "Doodle-oodle-oodle-oo, I knew that I would!"
>>How many from scratch, free, quality games do you see?
>Bzflag, frozen-bubble, etc. There are some good games that are GPL'd.
I'm not deriding these games in any way - in fact, they're both superb.. I've wasted many a night playing BzFlag.. but it's no Half Life 2 or Doom 3, is it?
There are many superb freeware/shareware/open source games out there, but when did you last see an amature game with the same quality as a commercial title? (I mean, not just gameplay wise, but graphics, sound, engine, etc)
This is a bit OT, but it sounds like you might be interested in this: Traffic waves
Basically it's a study of traffic as a kind of "fluid dynamics" system, and has some interesting stuff about the ability of one vehicle to affect the behaviour of others, including unblocking traffic jams
This reminds me of an old story - I've no idea if it's true, perhaps someone can shed some light.. anyways, back in the late 60's or early 70's some company, a bank, I think, or similar, decided to get themselves set up with a computer system. They decided to put the computer room near the front of the building, and make one of the walls glass, so that everyone who came in (especially investors, company bosses, etc) would see how high tech an operation they were running.
However, when the system was installed, it turned out to be rather dull looking. Just a bunch of switch banks, and probably a few tape reels.. They realised this wasn't going to impress anyone, so they contacted a movie set design company, and got them to give it a makeover with lots of blinkenlights and little oscilliscope type displays, etc. And apparently, when the company bosses came to see, they left extremely impressed.
Yay! the ol' LED fading trick. First time I remember seeing that was on a drawing proggy called Crack Art on the Atari ST.. the title screen faded the drive lights on and off (at least I think it was the drive lights.. mebbe capslock or something - can't even remember if the ST had lights for that)
... and you just KNOW that there's going to be at least one person on it with chronic flatulence.
UT2003 has both a DX and an OGL render. And a software mode too, for that matter.. to switch between them you just edit one of it's config files.
Just happened to catch a trailer for a show on MSNBC tonight.. some "documentary" along the lines of "When using internet file trading software YOUR child could be innocent PREY to EVIL internet PORNOGRAPHERS who hide PORN in music files! YOUR CHILD could be at risk without even knowing! Shock! Horror! Film at 11!" etc
I think it's on at 8, but to be honest, I wasn't paying much attention
No modpoints just now, but let me be the first to say thankyou for that little flash of sanity.
The time this hit home hardest to me was watching a friend play one of the Metal Gear Solid games on the playstation.. this is a game where you're encouraged to shoot people in the head for a quick stealthy kill.. but at one point when the main character is naked (facing away from the screen, mind), they blur out his low detail polygonal arse for fear that it should offend or corrupt the minds of children.
Every time I travel to the US I marvel at the wide range of gun porn mags avaliable to a 5 year old should they want to purchase one.. (You know the ones, "Guns & Ammo", "Big Shiney People-Killers", Going Postal Monthly", etc), and yet you're considered some kind of twisted evil freak if you want to pick up a copy of playboy or similar (which are, incidentally, locked away safely in the "Under 18? Don't even THINK about going here" area)
Oh. Great. You're going to HELP their case.
In case you missed it, they took their numbers from the number of results returned. Think about it.
(note, before anyone complains about my statistics, I'm just pulling these numbers out of thin air as an example)
They search for "incest" or somesuch on Kazaa. They get say, 100 results.
None of those are, in fact, incest pictures. What do you think they're going to say:
A: "p2p is evil and riddled with filth. With a few keystrokes that any 5 year old could do we found hundreds of pictures and movies depicting graphic scenes of incest, rape, and child abuse!"
or..
B: "Well, we searched on p2p for incest, and initially it seemed we'd found some results, but on closer inspection they were mostly harmless text files, so in fact it's okay, there's nothing to our case for p2p being harmful to kids at all"
They'll probably be tools like visual basic for games. Drag and drop games, minimal coding
Oh dear god, NO!, please NOT Click 'n Play again (I would link to info about it, except that it seems to be forgotten in the mists of time now, and I want it to stay that way)
If you were to dilligently hunt down THE 100 worst pieces of digital excrement avaliable for the PC, I can almost guarantee at least 90 of them would've been made in Click 'n Play.
Don't get me wrong, I've absolutely nothing against the likes of Blitz Basic, indeed I consider it to be a superb way for non techies to get into games programming - I myself started on the rather similar STOS for the Atari ST. Sure, BB is responsible for it's fair share of crap, but some surprisingly good stuff has been made with it too.
Just in case it's any use to you, Rez is avaliable on the Dreamcast too. I've not played it, but I hear it's every bit as good as the PS2 version.
We now return you to your irregularly programmed schedule