It is a project to produce a PCI graphics card with fully specified programming interfaces. This card will be optimised to be fast for current and next generation GUI environments. This means it is mostly designed for 3D operations, specifically those that are used to render GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces). It will accelerate games to varying degrees, but that is not its primary purpose. It is intended to be a well-documented card that can be easily _and reliably_ supported by open source operating systems.
New graphics hardware is beginning to phase out 2d-specific features. Eventually, it'll be 3d drivers, or none at all. It's possible that things could even go as far as not getting a real framebuffer to play with directly, only surfaces/textures.
500 miles? Assuming a 45-degree inclination, that means the base would need to be 1000 miles across, or ~1414 miles corner-to-corner. Any idea where you'd put it?
Actually, I think it's more ironic that our representatives are complaining about companies doing business in China while they repeatedly vote for China to have "most favored nation" trade status. I mean, given they're actively encouraging companies to do business in/with China, what do they expect?
Believable weight in motion is even harder to do in CGI, in my experience. When you see it done right, you can't attribute it to the technology, but to the animators.
That is, in American parlance: they don't appear in the first _season_ of the new series. You'll have to wait for the second season with David Tennant.
Currently the console room set doesn't include a door to the rest of the ship; they just have people enter and leave the console room off-camera. Although, the way they shoot that, I've got a feeling it's supposed to be a hatch/ladder in the floor rather than a door.
K9 (as well as Sarah Jane) are going to be in one of the second series ("season") episodes which haven't aired yet; they don't appear in the first series.
Well, the principles developed in producing the harmonizations, anyway. Of course specific harmonizations with obsolete theories of the natural world are no longer relevent.
c.f. Providentissimus Deus:
There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physicist [scientist], as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, "not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known." [...] the Holy Ghost "Who spoke by them [the sacred writers], did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe [...]), things in no way profitable unto [relevent to] salvation." Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time [...]
Though, the Church basically came to terms with "modern science" in the early Patristic Age, if not earlier. [ To Slashdotters: Yes, we all know about Galileo. That cluster-fsck was not representative. ]
The harmonizations of the Church's doctrine with contemporary understandings of the material world put forth by Basil and Augustine, up through Aquinas, up through Pope Leo XIII, and even Pius XII and Pope John Paul II remain applicable today, with a chain of citations going all the way back.
Even Augustine, in fact, had no difficulty about propositions which I imagine most Evangelicals would find exceptionally threatening -- for example, the prevailing belief of his time that abiogenesis through natural processes (i.e. spontaneous generation) was an everyday occurrence.
No offense, but have you ever read the ID literature? I don't mean the tracts and things, but what the actual trio of scientists in the middle of it have been writing.
For example the arguments advanced by Dembski, Meyer, and Behe in "Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe" are essentially:
* sufficiently complex systems (those exhibiting "specified complexity") must be attributed to intelligent action
* life has not been successfully explained in terms of either chance or necessity [ i.e. it is "contingent" in philosophical terms ]
* life exhibits "specified complexity"
* its complexity is also "irreducible", meaning that there are no possible intermediate forms for the development of certain biological features
* therefore, evolution is not an admissable explanation for those features
* given all this, life in its present form can only be explained in terms of explicit intervention by an unnamed intelligent agent
* they argue that this should not be perceived as a threat to science because e.g. "God did it" is obviously a fatuous answer to a question about mechanisms, so they do not intend to position it as such
* however, they do argue that it is a valid answer for historical questions
* lastly, it's pointless to say that this position is not science, because modern developments in the philosophy of science have shown it is impossible to arrive at objective criteria for what constitutes "science"
I'm not going to attempt to critique their arguments in detail here. But the overall position certainly is counter to "evolution" as most understand it, and many would also consider it as a rejection of the notion of science as they understand it.
Now, to be fair, they really do work hard to open the hole just wide enough to admit the "intelligent designer" as science, but no wider, and I think they would certainly argue that e.g. astrology could not be admitted on similar grounds. I just don't find their argument very convincing.
Mercurial might be farther along if Larry McVoy hadn't (about ten weeks ago, curiously enough) gotten rid of one of their core developers by threatening their employer.
They pulled a really clever trick for the fur/hair/grass in SotC -- they stack polygons with transparent textures that are cross-sections of a large area of fur/hair/grass. The cross-section of each individual hair is an opaque dot in the texture.
That way you can get hundreds/thousands of hairs with only a few polygons.
The OP proposed that Captain Jack was a poorly written insertion of a bisexual character, and that this reflected a political agenda on the part of the writer.
In response to that, Onan admitted not having seen the show, but questioned whether the OP was mistaking their discomfort with the inclusion of a bisexual character for poor writing.
I responded to Onan, giving my opinion (as someone who had seen the show) that the writing around Captain Jack was poor regardless of the specifics of his sexuality. Wasn't that an appropriately on-topic response?
Someone responding to that post of mine, also admitting to never having seen the show in question, yet questioning the honesty of my assessment at length, is not being particularly courteous even if they briefly excuse themselves at the end.
I would recommend that you watch the show and judge for yourself. In my opinion, there are writers who depict GBLT characters with dignity and respect, but Russell T. Davies is no James Baldwin.
You have to admit, if a character were opening doors, writing on paper, and making quips about their handedness in every scene, it would get pretty tiresome.
Could you forget that Tuvok was black? If yes, then you have no problem. If no, then the problem is with you, not Tuvok.
Since you make the comparison, if the writers had chosen to put Tuvok in baggy clothes, had him speaking Vulcan ebonics and eating fried chicken and watermelon, then yes, I would have had a problem with the writing. I'd hope you would have too.
I don't think the treatment of Captain Jack's sexuality was any less distracting or undignified.
Having not seen the show, I can't comment on whether the character works or not, but that's not the issue,
It's not? Shouldn't it be?
the issue is about a political agenda just because a character is gay (not gay, bi-sexual).
If you say so.
And if you, MenTaLGuy, don't really have a problem with it, then this isn't directed at you personally
If you were unsure, it might have been better to quote from and reply to the GP, rather than to me.
Leela was something of an exception; they definitely played heavy with the innuendo there -- remember the scene where Tom Baker's Doctor fell atop her in Curse of the Fendahl? I'd say Peri would be the other main one, what with the outfits shrinking each story arc. Definitely a "for the dads" factor there, as the BBC likes to put it. But that really was atypical for the series.
I'm just going to have to disagree on Captain Jack, though. I think he could have been an interesting character, but most of the time they could have spent exploring things like his past and his motivations was spent on cheap innuendo instead.
Slashdot Mirror
From their FAQ:
s/simpler/possible/
New graphics hardware is beginning to phase out 2d-specific features. Eventually, it'll be 3d drivers, or none at all. It's possible that things could even go as far as not getting a real framebuffer to play with directly, only surfaces/textures.
IIRC the Adobe SVG viewer supports it; I don't know what others do yet.
That's handled via SMIL, which SVG incorporates. Viewer support for it is a mixed bag still, though.
500 miles? Assuming a 45-degree inclination, that means the base would need to be 1000 miles across, or ~1414 miles corner-to-corner. Any idea where you'd put it?
I think he was referring to Niclas Kopernik, aka Copernicus.
If your gold isotope's half-life is really that short, you probably needn't worry about your customers surviving long enough to kill you.
Actually, I think it's more ironic that our representatives are complaining about companies doing business in China while they repeatedly vote for China to have "most favored nation" trade status. I mean, given they're actively encouraging companies to do business in/with China, what do they expect?
Believable weight in motion is even harder to do in CGI, in my experience. When you see it done right, you can't attribute it to the technology, but to the animators.
That is, in American parlance: they don't appear in the first _season_ of the new series. You'll have to wait for the second season with David Tennant.
Currently the console room set doesn't include a door to the rest of the ship; they just have people enter and leave the console room off-camera. Although, the way they shoot that, I've got a feeling it's supposed to be a hatch/ladder in the floor rather than a door.
K9 (as well as Sarah Jane) are going to be in one of the second series ("season") episodes which haven't aired yet; they don't appear in the first series.
It's like intellectual mercantilism.
Well, the principles developed in producing the harmonizations, anyway. Of course specific harmonizations with obsolete theories of the natural world are no longer relevent.
c.f. Providentissimus Deus:
Agreed.
Though, the Church basically came to terms with "modern science" in the early Patristic Age, if not earlier. [ To Slashdotters: Yes, we all know about Galileo. That cluster-fsck was not representative. ]
The harmonizations of the Church's doctrine with contemporary understandings of the material world put forth by Basil and Augustine, up through Aquinas, up through Pope Leo XIII, and even Pius XII and Pope John Paul II remain applicable today, with a chain of citations going all the way back.
Even Augustine, in fact, had no difficulty about propositions which I imagine most Evangelicals would find exceptionally threatening -- for example, the prevailing belief of his time that abiogenesis through natural processes (i.e. spontaneous generation) was an everyday occurrence.
No offense, but have you ever read the ID literature? I don't mean the tracts and things, but what the actual trio of scientists in the middle of it have been writing.
For example the arguments advanced by Dembski, Meyer, and Behe in "Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe" are essentially:
* sufficiently complex systems (those exhibiting "specified complexity") must be attributed to intelligent action
* life has not been successfully explained in terms of either chance or necessity [ i.e. it is "contingent" in philosophical terms ]
* life exhibits "specified complexity"
* its complexity is also "irreducible", meaning that there are no possible intermediate forms for the development of certain biological features
* therefore, evolution is not an admissable explanation for those features
* given all this, life in its present form can only be explained in terms of explicit intervention by an unnamed intelligent agent
* they argue that this should not be perceived as a threat to science because e.g. "God did it" is obviously a fatuous answer to a question about mechanisms, so they do not intend to position it as such
* however, they do argue that it is a valid answer for historical questions
* lastly, it's pointless to say that this position is not science, because modern developments in the philosophy of science have shown it is impossible to arrive at objective criteria for what constitutes "science"
I'm not going to attempt to critique their arguments in detail here. But the overall position certainly is counter to "evolution" as most understand it, and many would also consider it as a rejection of the notion of science as they understand it.
Now, to be fair, they really do work hard to open the hole just wide enough to admit the "intelligent designer" as science, but no wider, and I think they would certainly argue that e.g. astrology could not be admitted on similar grounds. I just don't find their argument very convincing.
Mercurial might be farther along if Larry McVoy hadn't (about ten weeks ago, curiously enough) gotten rid of one of their core developers by threatening their employer.
BitKeeper is pure dag-nasty evil.
They pulled a really clever trick for the fur/hair/grass in SotC -- they stack polygons with transparent textures that are cross-sections of a large area of fur/hair/grass. The cross-section of each individual hair is an opaque dot in the texture.
That way you can get hundreds/thousands of hairs with only a few polygons.
Isn't Hydrogen embrittlement a problem that has yet to be addressed?
I hate to break it to you, but five seconds for an application that small on hardware like that is a long time...
Firefly takes place within a single, large solar system. Most of the "planets" are terraformed moons of gas giants.
The OP proposed that Captain Jack was a poorly written insertion of a bisexual character, and that this reflected a political agenda on the part of the writer.
In response to that, Onan admitted not having seen the show, but questioned whether the OP was mistaking their discomfort with the inclusion of a bisexual character for poor writing.
I responded to Onan, giving my opinion (as someone who had seen the show) that the writing around Captain Jack was poor regardless of the specifics of his sexuality. Wasn't that an appropriately on-topic response?
Someone responding to that post of mine, also admitting to never having seen the show in question, yet questioning the honesty of my assessment at length, is not being particularly courteous even if they briefly excuse themselves at the end.
I would recommend that you watch the show and judge for yourself. In my opinion, there are writers who depict GBLT characters with dignity and respect, but Russell T. Davies is no James Baldwin.
You have to admit, if a character were opening doors, writing on paper, and making quips about their handedness in every scene, it would get pretty tiresome.
Even if they were left-handed.
Since you make the comparison, if the writers had chosen to put Tuvok in baggy clothes, had him speaking Vulcan ebonics and eating fried chicken and watermelon, then yes, I would have had a problem with the writing. I'd hope you would have too.
I don't think the treatment of Captain Jack's sexuality was any less distracting or undignified.
It's not? Shouldn't it be?
If you say so.
If you were unsure, it might have been better to quote from and reply to the GP, rather than to me.
Leela was something of an exception; they definitely played heavy with the innuendo there -- remember the scene where Tom Baker's Doctor fell atop her in Curse of the Fendahl? I'd say Peri would be the other main one, what with the outfits shrinking each story arc. Definitely a "for the dads" factor there, as the BBC likes to put it. But that really was atypical for the series.
I'm just going to have to disagree on Captain Jack, though. I think he could have been an interesting character, but most of the time they could have spent exploring things like his past and his motivations was spent on cheap innuendo instead.