I read the court transcript because it was quite interesting.
Turned out the simulation that was generated that kinda matched what happened had the data entered at random until it matched "Heusser manipulated data by entering arbitrary 'inputs' such as separation speeds as high as 1,114.8 mph, placing the mailbox pole away from where it was actually located, and having the computer occupant models remain in a default resting position after the collision with the mailbox".
Indeed, the software was described at the end of the trial as "During closing argument to the jury, the prosecutor described PC-CRASH as a computer program that essentially takes the laws of physics and reduces them to mathematical calculations that can be done over and over again to generate an accurate picture of what happened during a collision based on the tire marks at the scene, based on the physical evidence in the case such as the damage to the car, as well as the conditions that can be observed at the scene.
13 Report of Proceedings at 13. The prosecutor then showed the PC-CRASH video to the jury, again.
Sipin was convicted as charged."
Whilst the expert opinion from someone who used his brain to see what happened described something completely different. The jury was mislead to how good the software was quite clearly, they were lead to believe that the software was infallible. It is only as good as the person entering the data, and when they choose to ignore data because it is inconvenient... well, you get the point.
So whilst the guy was stupid for buying a manual car when he had gout and couldn't drive it half the time, he does deserve a retrial.
And when the corporation exists to benefit from the people it 'governs'.
And when the corporation 'feeds' the people by giving them money, whilst restricting the rights of the people via law.
Then you have slavery.
Now for a rant with lots of flaws...
The solution is to equalise the lobbying power of corporations with that of the common person. Disallow corporate funding/gifts of government employees. The government should be run FOR the people, because the people elect the government. If government is run for the corporations because of corrupt self-interest by the government employees (I'm sure a large portion of the readership here can guess which country comes to mind first, although sadly many others join the list quickly) then what is the point of democracy? Democracy is nothing but a facade, nothing better than what we had before blacks, women, poor people had the vote. It is rich people conniving together to run society for their own benefit only.
With modern technology, it shouldn't be that hard for the individual to vote themselves on the issues they care about. They don't need their local elected offical to toe the party line (or run after the corporate carrot) when voting. With this, government would be for the people, by the people, and because the party line, or the corporate carrot, won't be available for government employees (although government would exist to organise it all still) the will of the people, not the rich or the corporation, would be foremost.
Take Europe. Software patents as they were suggested would merely protect corporations in the USA. There is no benefit to having them over here, it would destroy lots of businesses in the arena. Businesses that make a lot of money and employ a lot of people who contribute to their country's economy. I think that a few governments are thinking past the initial bluster and seeing it for what it is - a way for US companies to extend their domination throughout Europe, before Europe gets too powerful.
I was wondering how they were going to do track expiration.
This is doomed to fail. When your friend says "don't use that napster service, they took my money and then my music stopped working" you won't be inclined to use it. Negative word of mouth will spread very quickly. Nevermind that there will be instructions on what to do - I don't have to 'activate' my CD collection every month!
Also how many times I play a track that I've payed for is none of their fucking business, and hopefully spyware applications will remove Napster, heh.
A Napster user and an iTunes user are stranded on a desert island with a solar panel recharging device for their relevant music players. Which one do you want to be?
Any thoughts about 3rd party software, and if using a Java sandbox on a mobile phone is better than giving the software full access to the system, in a possibly cut down OS that might not have memory protection, etc?
But indeed, the interface should be fast, and having it in Java ain't great. Anyone seen the nasty interface on LG's 3G phones in the UK? Ugh.
I always thought that AmigaOS would be a nice fit for a low-CPU power device like a mobile phone or PDA. Well, 3-5 years ago anyway, now of course it is too late.
If you are writing mobile phone games (which seems to be a sizable market in the UK at least for some unknown reason considering how awful mobile phones are for gaming), then mobile Java is the best option. I think it is that for a couple of months of work, you can have a game that is roughly early 90s in style and charge £5 for it, an easy way to make a few tens of thousands anyway.
I wasn't talking about the phone's operating system, etc! Most people don't write stuff for that area, and C/C++ are better options for this area.
I wouldn't want to write Office in Perl, but yes, Perl is an excellent scripting language made extrememly useful by all the modules available for it.
Would you spend ages writing a text parser in Java to get some text formatted data into a database, or would you do it in an hour in Perl? Especially if you are working on a remote system, any unix system is pretty much guaranteed to have Perl installed.
It is all about choosing the best language for the task. If I was writing mobile phone games, I'd use Java because most modern phones have Java. If I was writing a Windows application for general release, I'd use C/C++/C#. In-house GUI application - Java because it is quick, easy and maintainable, and hopefully would run on any Unix systems too.
There is an advantage to using a popular language - if you have a problem, it is far more likely you'll find a solution online.
Also, you are restricted by the languages you know and project timescales. Java might not be ideal, but lots of people know it and it may not be perfect, but it works for lots of tasks. Likewise I know Perl, but maybe you know Ruby or Python and can do stuff in those instead. Oh, and knowing a language isn't about knowing the language structure, it is about knowing the APIs with it, which is the time consuming task.
Oh, and maybe American universities might be churning out Java programmers from their Computer Science courses, but that wasn't what I experienced in the UK. Okay, it was Cambridge, but Java was 1 course out of dozens, and we also did ML and Modula3 (although that has now been dropped and replaced by another Java course, I was on the crossover year I think). The C course was a 6 lecture course of where you could fuck up with C, they assumed you would learn C yourself.
From what I've read, each SPU is its own processor which can address the 256KB of integrated memory only, and presumably send data back into the Cell.
The difference is that this processor has a vector unit instead of a normal scalar ALU. Apparently this vector unit isn't as capable as Altivec/VMX, but presumably includes all the important operations.
What the main PowerPC processor in the Cell does is load each SPU with a program to process streaming data. Each SPU runs the code independently of the main processor. The results from one SPU can be streamed directly into another SPU, hence Cell is a streaming processor. Basically you have an 8 stage software pipeline, where each stage can be a quite complex function (e.g., fast fourier transforms, folding@home, seti, heh).
The main PowerPC core also has a VMX unit of its own, this is a more general purpose vector unit that has full access to the system. I assume that the 2MB of SPU memory on each Cell is memory mapped into the PowerPC's memory space for example. The PowerPC core has SMT (like Intel's HyperThreading), but is rumoured to be cut down from the obvious choice of being a single-core POWER5.
The PS3, as it is currently known, will be a quad-processor PowerPC machine, with 32 vector processors which will obviously be used for graphics and audio applications in the most part, possibly security tasks too, and whatever else can be vectorised.
From http://www.aceshardware.com/forums/read_post.jsp?i d=115121622&forumid=1
CELL is a Multi-Core Architecture
Contains 8 SPUs each containing a 128 entry 128-bit register file and 256KB Local Store
Contains 64-bit Power ArchitectureTM with VMX that is a dual thread SMT design - views system memory as a 10-way coherent threaded machine
2.5MB of on Chip memory (512KB L2 and 8 * 256KB)
234 million transistors
Prototype die size of 221mm2
Fabricated with 90nanometer (nm) SOI process technology
We're talking about a single-core POWER5 design (because of the SMT).
But 221mm^2... that's big, bigger than a 130nm Opteron, bigger than a dual-core 90nm Opteron. But wait for 65nm, and you've got something of a manageable size to make a cheaper console. I don't see 4 Cells in a PS3 though, not even at 65nm, unless it is going to cost a boatload. Still, Sony aren't a little company, I'm sure they could sort it out.
Still, I guess this means the next PowerMac G5 will be using processors with SMT finally.
So what we have is the movie industry having a voluntary scheme that is adhered to, hence government doesn't get involved.
So clearly any rating scheme for games that exists now is not being adhered to (or it is, and some retarded Christian mothers' group can't see the wood for the trees). Hence government has to step in because of the IRRESPONSIBILITY of game retailers and possibly the gaming companies too.
App icons on docking panel of my linux pda are 8x8 and 6x7 pixels. With sub-pixel rendering from vector definition, they are just looking much better than filtered down 32x32 raster.
So, create 8x8 and 6x7 bitmaps from the vector definition, and save memory on a 32x32 bitmap! a 32-bit 8x8 image is 256 bytes in size.
The US price of $250 translates to around £157 when you add in VAT. So it seems that there is a £23 Sony UK price-bump-for-profits. That's not too bad really I suppose, 15% or thereabouts. Probably around the same as Apple's UK price bumps.
It's okay if you play for at least 10 hours a month, $1/hour isn't that bad for personal entertainment you know. $5/m would be a nicer price, sure, maybe a "buy a year of online gaming" package.
I'm sure that many geeks here have paid hundreds of dollars for an hour of personal entertainment...
So... the money is in the online gaming, yes? So, err, how much will Ubisoft be selling the game in stores for, or will that include a month or two of free play?
Sucks for the guy though, he is going to incur lawyer fees, lost wages, the fact that he was jailed for being generous, etc. I hope he gets the arrest annulled, otherwise every job application in the future is going to be fun for him - "I was arrested for making a charitable donation online."
He is currently out on bail, that means that the investigation is still ongoing as well. Hopefully it'll be dropped, but who knows!
$15 is less than a quality external mouse with all the features that you somehow need. And don't blame Microsoft's poor design on Apple.
Rag on Apple for not even giving the option of ordering a multi-button mouse in Apple styling when you order your system, instead of the single button mouse.
Ugh, download caps. Will they be ignored like they currently are?
And worse, us LOYAL EXISTING customers have to pay £25 to get more bandwidth? Well, I was going to cancel my digital TV with NTL anyway, as it is worthless, so they'll get their £25 whilst losing £100 or whatever over the next year.
I'm kind of worried though, because NTL are only charging me £20 a month for my 750/128 service instead of £25. I bet this is an excuse to get old loyal subscribers who signed up at a lower rate onto the new higher fee decent service. Still, £5 a month is worth it for 2000/200 instead of 750/128.
Considering that the UK is currently stuck with deals like 512/128 for £20 a month, or NTLs most generous 1500/128 service for £35 a month, £40 a month for 8000/400 is a bargain.
I wonder if they'll offer a 2000/200 for £20 a month?
I expect this is why NTL are rumoured (well, I recall them sending a letter anyway) to be upping speeds from 300,750,1500 to 1000,2000,3000 in the near future, for the same price.
This really isn't memory for mainstream computers, it is more for consoles and devices which don't use DIMM slots and the like but directly attach a fixed amount of memory to the board. As such it might also be used on graphics cards, and it might get used on FBDIMMs because they also contain the memory controller.
Still, if the technology is decent for the price, then I don't see what anyone would have against it at a technological level.
It's brilliant for me, I'm crap at games and never get that far before giving up. This way, instead of paying £30 for a game that I will never see 50% of, I can pay £10 for the 50% that I will see before failing/getting bored/getting something else.
But when I tried to listen to one of the 24kbps stations, the crappy quality was very noticable (it was playing My Immortal by Evanescence however, so no great loss, but the highs in the song were very crackly). However 40kbps was perfectly fine. I didn't try one of the 32kbps stations however.
The 48kbps stations are pretty good quality. I haven't heard a pop or crackle.
Still, now you 28.8k backwater people can at least listen to net radio that isn't awful.
Shame Apple didn't use AACPlus in the iPod Shuffle, at 64kbps. It would have doubled the number of songs you could store, the 1GB could have held nearly 500 songs! If you risked 40kbps, it would store 750 songs in decent, if not CD, quality.
Now I'm waiting for the next generation of the iPod Shuffle!
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I can tell, yes, he lied. Or at least mislead the jury in a very serious manner.
I read the court transcript because it was quite interesting.
... well, you get the point.
Turned out the simulation that was generated that kinda matched what happened had the data entered at random until it matched "Heusser manipulated data by entering arbitrary 'inputs' such as separation speeds as high as 1,114.8 mph, placing the mailbox pole away from where it was actually located, and having the computer occupant models remain in a default resting position after the collision with the mailbox".
Indeed, the software was described at the end of the trial as "During closing argument to the jury, the prosecutor described PC-CRASH as a
computer program that essentially takes the laws of physics and reduces them to mathematical calculations that can be done over and over again to generate an accurate picture of what happened during a collision based on the tire marks at the scene, based on the physical evidence in the case such as the damage to the car, as well as the conditions that can be observed at the scene.
13 Report of Proceedings at 13. The prosecutor then showed the PC-CRASH
video to the jury, again.
Sipin was convicted as charged."
Whilst the expert opinion from someone who used his brain to see what happened described something completely different. The jury was mislead to how good the software was quite clearly, they were lead to believe that the software was infallible. It is only as good as the person entering the data, and when they choose to ignore data because it is inconvenient
So whilst the guy was stupid for buying a manual car when he had gout and couldn't drive it half the time, he does deserve a retrial.
When the corporation becomes government.
And when the corporation exists to benefit from the people it 'governs'.
And when the corporation 'feeds' the people by giving them money, whilst restricting the rights of the people via law.
Then you have slavery.
Now for a rant with lots of flaws...
The solution is to equalise the lobbying power of corporations with that of the common person. Disallow corporate funding/gifts of government employees. The government should be run FOR the people, because the people elect the government. If government is run for the corporations because of corrupt self-interest by the government employees (I'm sure a large portion of the readership here can guess which country comes to mind first, although sadly many others join the list quickly) then what is the point of democracy? Democracy is nothing but a facade, nothing better than what we had before blacks, women, poor people had the vote. It is rich people conniving together to run society for their own benefit only.
With modern technology, it shouldn't be that hard for the individual to vote themselves on the issues they care about. They don't need their local elected offical to toe the party line (or run after the corporate carrot) when voting. With this, government would be for the people, by the people, and because the party line, or the corporate carrot, won't be available for government employees (although government would exist to organise it all still) the will of the people, not the rich or the corporation, would be foremost.
Take Europe. Software patents as they were suggested would merely protect corporations in the USA. There is no benefit to having them over here, it would destroy lots of businesses in the arena. Businesses that make a lot of money and employ a lot of people who contribute to their country's economy. I think that a few governments are thinking past the initial bluster and seeing it for what it is - a way for US companies to extend their domination throughout Europe, before Europe gets too powerful.
I was wondering how they were going to do track expiration.
This is doomed to fail. When your friend says "don't use that napster service, they took my money and then my music stopped working" you won't be inclined to use it. Negative word of mouth will spread very quickly. Nevermind that there will be instructions on what to do - I don't have to 'activate' my CD collection every month!
Also how many times I play a track that I've payed for is none of their fucking business, and hopefully spyware applications will remove Napster, heh.
A Napster user and an iTunes user are stranded on a desert island with a solar panel recharging device for their relevant music players. Which one do you want to be?
Maybe somebody should actually retort to things like this with the data presented in a different way, instead of just whining about it on a website ...
..."
If RedHat / SUSE / etc came out and said "10 patches in the server installation of our Linux, fixed within days, compared to
Any thoughts about 3rd party software, and if using a Java sandbox on a mobile phone is better than giving the software full access to the system, in a possibly cut down OS that might not have memory protection, etc?
But indeed, the interface should be fast, and having it in Java ain't great. Anyone seen the nasty interface on LG's 3G phones in the UK? Ugh.
I always thought that AmigaOS would be a nice fit for a low-CPU power device like a mobile phone or PDA. Well, 3-5 years ago anyway, now of course it is too late.
If you are writing mobile phone games (which seems to be a sizable market in the UK at least for some unknown reason considering how awful mobile phones are for gaming), then mobile Java is the best option. I think it is that for a couple of months of work, you can have a game that is roughly early 90s in style and charge £5 for it, an easy way to make a few tens of thousands anyway.
I wasn't talking about the phone's operating system, etc! Most people don't write stuff for that area, and C/C++ are better options for this area.
I wouldn't want to write Office in Perl, but yes, Perl is an excellent scripting language made extrememly useful by all the modules available for it.
Would you spend ages writing a text parser in Java to get some text formatted data into a database, or would you do it in an hour in Perl? Especially if you are working on a remote system, any unix system is pretty much guaranteed to have Perl installed.
It is all about choosing the best language for the task. If I was writing mobile phone games, I'd use Java because most modern phones have Java. If I was writing a Windows application for general release, I'd use C/C++/C#. In-house GUI application - Java because it is quick, easy and maintainable, and hopefully would run on any Unix systems too.
There is an advantage to using a popular language - if you have a problem, it is far more likely you'll find a solution online.
Also, you are restricted by the languages you know and project timescales. Java might not be ideal, but lots of people know it and it may not be perfect, but it works for lots of tasks. Likewise I know Perl, but maybe you know Ruby or Python and can do stuff in those instead. Oh, and knowing a language isn't about knowing the language structure, it is about knowing the APIs with it, which is the time consuming task.
Oh, and maybe American universities might be churning out Java programmers from their Computer Science courses, but that wasn't what I experienced in the UK. Okay, it was Cambridge, but Java was 1 course out of dozens, and we also did ML and Modula3 (although that has now been dropped and replaced by another Java course, I was on the crossover year I think). The C course was a 6 lecture course of where you could fuck up with C, they assumed you would learn C yourself.
From what I've read, each SPU is its own processor which can address the 256KB of integrated memory only, and presumably send data back into the Cell.
The difference is that this processor has a vector unit instead of a normal scalar ALU. Apparently this vector unit isn't as capable as Altivec/VMX, but presumably includes all the important operations.
What the main PowerPC processor in the Cell does is load each SPU with a program to process streaming data. Each SPU runs the code independently of the main processor. The results from one SPU can be streamed directly into another SPU, hence Cell is a streaming processor. Basically you have an 8 stage software pipeline, where each stage can be a quite complex function (e.g., fast fourier transforms, folding@home, seti, heh).
The main PowerPC core also has a VMX unit of its own, this is a more general purpose vector unit that has full access to the system. I assume that the 2MB of SPU memory on each Cell is memory mapped into the PowerPC's memory space for example. The PowerPC core has SMT (like Intel's HyperThreading), but is rumoured to be cut down from the obvious choice of being a single-core POWER5.
The PS3, as it is currently known, will be a quad-processor PowerPC machine, with 32 vector processors which will obviously be used for graphics and audio applications in the most part, possibly security tasks too, and whatever else can be vectorised.
We're talking about a single-core POWER5 design (because of the SMT).
But 221mm^2
Still, I guess this means the next PowerMac G5 will be using processors with SMT finally.
Ah, that's fair enough then, if they're animated and you'd also have to create large versions of the bitmaps too.
So what we have is the movie industry having a voluntary scheme that is adhered to, hence government doesn't get involved.
So clearly any rating scheme for games that exists now is not being adhered to (or it is, and some retarded Christian mothers' group can't see the wood for the trees). Hence government has to step in because of the IRRESPONSIBILITY of game retailers and possibly the gaming companies too.
App icons on docking panel of my linux pda are 8x8 and 6x7 pixels. With sub-pixel rendering from vector definition, they are just looking much better than filtered down 32x32 raster.
So, create 8x8 and 6x7 bitmaps from the vector definition, and save memory on a 32x32 bitmap! a 32-bit 8x8 image is 256 bytes in size.
This thing is powerful and the graphics looks great, but that's because it's a 480 x 272 screen. Even on a standard TV that would look pretty bad.
SNES: 256x224
Megadrive: 320x224
Playstation: 256x224 up to 640x480
PS2: 256 x 224 up to 1280 x 1024
PSP: 480x272
I think that compares pretty well with even fairly recent consoles. At 60Hz you can only fit around 240 lines onto an NTSC display anyway.
The US price of $250 translates to around £157 when you add in VAT. So it seems that there is a £23 Sony UK price-bump-for-profits. That's not too bad really I suppose, 15% or thereabouts. Probably around the same as Apple's UK price bumps.
It's okay if you play for at least 10 hours a month, $1/hour isn't that bad for personal entertainment you know. $5/m would be a nicer price, sure, maybe a "buy a year of online gaming" package.
...
... the money is in the online gaming, yes? So, err, how much will Ubisoft be selling the game in stores for, or will that include a month or two of free play?
I'm sure that many geeks here have paid hundreds of dollars for an hour of personal entertainment
So
Sucks for the guy though, he is going to incur lawyer fees, lost wages, the fact that he was jailed for being generous, etc. I hope he gets the arrest annulled, otherwise every job application in the future is going to be fun for him - "I was arrested for making a charitable donation online."
He is currently out on bail, that means that the investigation is still ongoing as well. Hopefully it'll be dropped, but who knows!
so people like myself and my girlfriend are stuck with Apple's terrible design decision
Except SideTrack has already been mentioned.
$15 is less than a quality external mouse with all the features that you somehow need. And don't blame Microsoft's poor design on Apple.
Rag on Apple for not even giving the option of ordering a multi-button mouse in Apple styling when you order your system, instead of the single button mouse.
Ugh, download caps. Will they be ignored like they currently are?
And worse, us LOYAL EXISTING customers have to pay £25 to get more bandwidth? Well, I was going to cancel my digital TV with NTL anyway, as it is worthless, so they'll get their £25 whilst losing £100 or whatever over the next year.
I'm kind of worried though, because NTL are only charging me £20 a month for my 750/128 service instead of £25. I bet this is an excuse to get old loyal subscribers who signed up at a lower rate onto the new higher fee decent service. Still, £5 a month is worth it for 2000/200 instead of 750/128.
Considering that the UK is currently stuck with deals like 512/128 for £20 a month, or NTLs most generous 1500/128 service for £35 a month, £40 a month for 8000/400 is a bargain.
I wonder if they'll offer a 2000/200 for £20 a month?
I expect this is why NTL are rumoured (well, I recall them sending a letter anyway) to be upping speeds from 300,750,1500 to 1000,2000,3000 in the near future, for the same price.
500GB is more than enough for most people, even hardcore downloaders that get through a couple of DVDRs a day of crap they'll never use/view.
This really isn't memory for mainstream computers, it is more for consoles and devices which don't use DIMM slots and the like but directly attach a fixed amount of memory to the board. As such it might also be used on graphics cards, and it might get used on FBDIMMs because they also contain the memory controller.
Still, if the technology is decent for the price, then I don't see what anyone would have against it at a technological level.
It's brilliant for me, I'm crap at games and never get that far before giving up. This way, instead of paying £30 for a game that I will never see 50% of, I can pay £10 for the 50% that I will see before failing/getting bored/getting something else.
Paper Details:
But when I tried to listen to one of the 24kbps stations, the crappy quality was very noticable (it was playing My Immortal by Evanescence however, so no great loss, but the highs in the song were very crackly). However 40kbps was perfectly fine. I didn't try one of the 32kbps stations however.
The 48kbps stations are pretty good quality. I haven't heard a pop or crackle.
Still, now you 28.8k backwater people can at least listen to net radio that isn't awful.
Shame Apple didn't use AACPlus in the iPod Shuffle, at 64kbps. It would have doubled the number of songs you could store, the 1GB could have held nearly 500 songs! If you risked 40kbps, it would store 750 songs in decent, if not CD, quality.
Now I'm waiting for the next generation of the iPod Shuffle!