True in that Carmack could probably keep OpenGL alive all by himself if he wanted to, but what makes you think he won't ever use DirectX? I get the feeling that he is more concerned about quality than politics, and if DX should overtake OpenGL technically, which it seems to be well on its way of doing, he might switch.
That is exactly what the new episodes are msising: A Han Solo-type character. The droids provide comic relief, but Han provided human, -or maybe humane- relief, meaning he was an "Ordinary fellow" to identfy with in the middle of all the Jedi, evil empire and muppets of the first trilogy.
Apart from that obvious minus, I don't think the new movies are much worse than the old ones.
Warner Bros. and other content-production companies are behind the new DVD Forum proposal, which uses low-bit-rate encoding technology such as MPEG-4 to cram 9 Gbytes of high-definition video content onto a two-layer DVD.
Is it just me, or are the content producers shooting themselves in the foot here? What's next, changing the CD standard so it supports MP3's?;-)
not the hardware. The situation is like with DVD's. The medium (hardware) costs maybe $1, but the #&%/s can still charge $20 for a movie (software).
Suppose Dell could make a PC for $10. If Microsoft charges them $350 for windows, the end customer will have to pay $361 (at least) for a Dell w/ windows.
This won't change until Linux or another OS can challenge MS on the desktop. I'd pay for MacOS X if only they'd port it to x86...
Germany attacked Russia though. Millions of russians died, true, and they were a big part of the german defeat, but most of them died defending their own country. Close to all american casualties died defending or liberating somebody else's country. The US who would probably be pretty safe for a long time had they isolated themselves.
I have a few hundred laserdiscs and DVD's, so I'm not just a music nut with no interest in movies, yet there's no question in my mind that a good CD provides a profounder and longer-lasting enjoyment to me than any movie I've seen.
Why is there a "Soundtrack" section in the CD stores? I'd say it's because people will listen to good music from a movie long after they have forgotten or lost interest in the movie itself.
I know that some people will watch a movie (often just one or a few specific ones though) hundreds of times, but they are vastly outnumbered by the people who rarely see any movie more than once or twice, yet still regularly give their favourite albums a spin in the CD-player, decades after first buying the LP. If you compare the hours of entertainment given, music wins for most people.
As for the force of emotional impact; Check out the fans. Go to a live concert. Go to a record signing session. Star wars fans can be intense, but they've got a long way to go before they reach music fan levels.
Lastly, I must say that the number of persons involved is irrelevant. Michelangelo was just one guy.
Pity the fools with USB hard drives, printers and cameras who get all that pesky noise in their files, prinouts and pictures!
(Sorry, sarcasm leakage);-)
The signal is digital until it reaches the box, noise is no issue.
Of course, with the soon-to-be-announced "Van den Hul gold-plated fluid-dampened teflon-lined garden-hose-sized USB-cable" your sound experience will be immensely improved, for only $599!
0.24% of the desktop rifraff are are running Linux? I feel...common! What can I run to be 1337 now!? Slackware is out the door this very day that's for sure!
I'm gonna have to go Plan 9, QNX or something. Or install HURD even. A decade of almost no followers means it's not likely to suddenly gain a whopping 0.24% following overnight!
Now off to practice snotty "I run the HURD myself" remarks;-)
Why so many machines, at home?
on
Home Server Rooms?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I guess most of us reading and posting on this story have several machines at home. I have three machines on "active duty" (main workstation, DSL-gateway and webserver) and two more that are basically collecting dust except for when I want to test something unusual. A number of projects to get them into active use culminated with a beowulf, but that was a short w00t. (Whee, I have a beowulf! Now I can...I can...*crickets*).
Now I'm down to 5 machines, the all-time high was 8, and most of the recent leftovers are being donated to the family instead of ending up in the "next box" box.
Three units makes sense to me. It allows for all sorts of network testing and experimenting, so for a computer professional/hobbyist it's still rational.
What I'd like to know is what use you guys find for that 4th, 5th, 12th machine? I know from personal experience that "just for the heck of it" can be a good motivator to add another old machine the the net, but I'd enjoy it greatly if someone could elaborate on their far-out home setups, and perhaps spread some inspiration to the rest of us?
What about motherboards?
on
Athlon MP Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The Tiger is not overly expensive (for a Tyan), but it still almost eats up the price benefit for a dual Athlon system compared to a dual P3 one. When will someone other than the Mercedes of motherboard manufacturers release an MP-capable Athlon board?
Not that I can afford one before christmas anyway, but I'll be standing in line outside the shop immediately after newyears, and they'd better be stocked then! Orls! Heh...
Pi being impossible to calculate (decimals go on forever) means that no circle that exists anywhere in nature is perfect. Of every circle from the electrons to galaxy clusters, not one is perfect. They are all "askew". This blew my mind a bit back in the day when I had to care about pi (math class).
Maybe pi is not calculable because we can't percieve enough dimensions? In a cartoon a sphere is a circle...
Maybe circles are perfect after all! Our established math knowledge is horribly flawed! (As my test scores often indicated...)
Maybe we would understand if we were born with fingers on each hand!;-)
Anyway, after leaving the academic field Pi has become more "great movie!" than "what is reality?". Now where's my beer...
For example huge databases, or applications like Photoshop, 3D Studio MAX, Maya, Premiere...even math software can consume memory like nothing when you do heavy number crunching.
Slashdot Mirror
True in that Carmack could probably keep OpenGL alive all by himself if he wanted to, but what makes you think he won't ever use DirectX?
I get the feeling that he is more concerned about quality than politics, and if DX should overtake OpenGL technically, which it seems to be well on its way of doing, he might switch.
That is exactly what the new episodes are msising: A Han Solo-type character. The droids provide comic relief, but Han provided human, -or maybe humane- relief, meaning he was an "Ordinary fellow" to identfy with in the middle of all the Jedi, evil empire and muppets of the first trilogy.
Apart from that obvious minus, I don't think the new movies are much worse than the old ones.
Stop overclocking those Athlons!
Warner Bros. and other content-production companies are behind the new DVD Forum proposal, which uses low-bit-rate encoding technology such as MPEG-4 to cram 9 Gbytes of high-definition video content onto a two-layer DVD.
;-)
Is it just me, or are the content producers shooting themselves in the foot here? What's next, changing the CD standard so it supports MP3's?
not the hardware.
The situation is like with DVD's. The medium (hardware) costs maybe $1, but the #&%/s can still charge $20 for a movie (software).
Suppose Dell could make a PC for $10. If Microsoft charges them $350 for windows, the end customer will have to pay $361 (at least) for a Dell w/ windows.
This won't change until Linux or another OS can challenge MS on the desktop. I'd pay for MacOS X if only they'd port it to x86...
Germany attacked Russia though. Millions of russians died, true, and they were a big part of the german defeat, but most of them died defending their own country. Close to all american casualties died defending or liberating somebody else's country. The US who would probably be pretty safe for a long time had they isolated themselves.
My personal opinion is quite the opposite.
I have a few hundred laserdiscs and DVD's, so I'm not just a music nut with no interest in movies, yet there's no question in my mind that a good CD provides a profounder and longer-lasting enjoyment to me than any movie I've seen.
Why is there a "Soundtrack" section in the CD stores? I'd say it's because people will listen to good music from a movie long after they have forgotten or lost interest in the movie itself.
I know that some people will watch a movie (often just one or a few specific ones though) hundreds of times, but they are vastly outnumbered by the people who rarely see any movie more than once or twice, yet still regularly give their favourite albums a spin in the CD-player, decades after first buying the LP. If you compare the hours of entertainment given, music wins for most people.
As for the force of emotional impact; Check out the fans. Go to a live concert. Go to a record signing session. Star wars fans can be intense, but they've got a long way to go before they reach music fan levels.
Lastly, I must say that the number of persons involved is irrelevant. Michelangelo was just one guy.
Pity the fools with USB hard drives, printers and cameras who get all that pesky noise in their files, prinouts and pictures! ;-)
;-)
(Sorry, sarcasm leakage)
The signal is digital until it reaches the box, noise is no issue.
Of course, with the soon-to-be-announced "Van den Hul gold-plated fluid-dampened teflon-lined garden-hose-sized USB-cable" your sound experience will be immensely improved, for only $599!
Oops, sorry again!
0.24% of the desktop rifraff are are running Linux? I feel...common! What can I run to be 1337 now!? Slackware is out the door this very day that's for sure!
;-)
I'm gonna have to go Plan 9, QNX or something. Or install HURD even. A decade of almost no followers means it's not likely to suddenly gain a whopping 0.24% following overnight!
Now off to practice snotty "I run the HURD myself" remarks
I guess most of us reading and posting on this story have several machines at home. I have three machines on "active duty" (main workstation, DSL-gateway and webserver) and two more that are basically collecting dust except for when I want to test something unusual. A number of projects to get them into active use culminated with a beowulf, but that was a short w00t. (Whee, I have a beowulf! Now I can...I can...*crickets*).
Now I'm down to 5 machines, the all-time high was 8, and most of the recent leftovers are being donated to the family instead of ending up in the "next box" box.
Three units makes sense to me. It allows for all sorts of network testing and experimenting, so for a computer professional/hobbyist it's still rational.
What I'd like to know is what use you guys find for that 4th, 5th, 12th machine? I know from personal experience that "just for the heck of it" can be a good motivator to add another old machine the the net, but I'd enjoy it greatly if someone could elaborate on their far-out home setups, and perhaps spread some inspiration to the rest of us?
The Tiger is not overly expensive (for a Tyan), but it still almost eats up the price benefit for a dual Athlon system compared to a dual P3 one. When will someone other than the Mercedes of motherboard manufacturers release an MP-capable Athlon board?
Not that I can afford one before christmas anyway, but I'll be standing in line outside the shop immediately after newyears, and they'd better be stocked then! Orls! Heh...
You can make IE scroll properly for a sane person by disabling "Use smooth scrolling" (Tools-options-advanced).
That was the easy part. Figuring out why it's called "Smooth scrolling" is a different matter entirely...
I found this piece from Linus' original posting on comp.os.minix pretty amusing:
;-)
"I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be
out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got
minix."
So, is there anyone out there who will admit to asking themselves "Why?" because of the Hurd?
Pi being impossible to calculate (decimals go on forever) means that no circle that exists anywhere in nature is perfect. Of every circle from the electrons to galaxy clusters, not one is perfect. They are all "askew". This blew my mind a bit back in the day when I had to care about pi (math class).
;-)
Maybe pi is not calculable because we can't percieve enough dimensions? In a cartoon a sphere is a circle...
Maybe circles are perfect after all! Our established math knowledge is horribly flawed! (As my test scores often indicated...)
Maybe we would understand if we were born with fingers on each hand!
Anyway, after leaving the academic field Pi has become more "great movie!" than "what is reality?". Now where's my beer...
For example huge databases, or applications like Photoshop, 3D Studio MAX, Maya, Premiere...even math software can consume memory like nothing when you do heavy number crunching.
;-)
Or maybe he uses Emacs!