The guy who had this idea is right about one thing: it probably will unite you, in the same that a shared traumatic experience unites the survivors, ie. shared suffering. This will probably unite the people who are wearing it, but only because the rest of the company will then separated from you. This seems to be a particularly bad idea for a career track that already has a reputation for causing some mild social isolation. You will have made yourselves into a distinct group but this will also have a price: [b]the reset of the company will not be in that group.[/b]
The Slashdot summary is the only place that this piece of incremental experimentation is referred to as a breakthrough. I'm getting tired of every little news stores that has anything to do with nano-(fill_in_the_blank) being labeled a breakthrough.
Most of these companies have the wrong idea. When I place an MMO, I'm usually using a visual angle that has me looking at a downward angle toward my character from above. Generally speaking, I miss all of the impressive scenic stuff. Occasionally yes, I do stop and admire the visuals or I may stop and look up if I'm searching for something. However I think most of these companies are wasting most of their talent on impressive visuals when in fact I would prefer these two things much more: 1)A game that looks good on something less than a top of line GPU - I would prefer graphic efficiency to graphic splendor. When you have 10-15 guys running around a raid inside of a huge environment with 50 monsters and lots of trees and other stuff my FPS grind to a halt. This then leads me to turn down the detail defeating all the effort these guys put in to their product. My system is a dual core with a ATI 4870 GPU, it still stutters unless I turn down the details. 2)Easy guild management tools for Guild Leaders - How about giving me some tools to manage my guild more effectively especially when I'm not online? Being able to assign a guild quest to somebody so they will go gather some resources fore the bank even when I'm not online would be nice. A lot of players will only do this when I'm online cajoling them in to it. How about using the quest journal like a PDA or a digital organizer?
How did they not perform any simulations or trial runs with players connecting out over the internet in order to stress test this? If they did, how could their testing not notice that routers in general don't like large numbers of listening sockets on it's clients? This is a serious amateur mistake.
How come we never see the insides of graphics cores the way that CPU manufacturers release pics of the internals of their CPUs? I looked and couldn't find any. Now that AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs will it start do so? What gives?
I'm not so sure if it's "set a precedent for hardware manufacturers paying music companies," so much as it is set a precedent for hardware manufacturers paying content providers. Let's not forget what it is that Microsoft does for a living. This could be useful precedent for them in the future.
I seem to remember a website that offered the ability to type in a price for a given item at a specific store and the website would then generate a barcode for that item. The idea was that you could then take the fraudilent barcode, stick it on top of the true label and when you take it to the checkout lane you pay a fraction of the real cost.
What's stopping people from using this program for such purposes? Is this yet another dual use program that will come under fire?
what OS it will run? If it's anything other than some form of distributed OSX then maybe calling this an Apple supercomputer isn't so accurate considering that Apple is just a re-brander of IBM's designs & chips.
SMT is only needed if your execution units are having trouble remaining filled up, which was the problem with the NetBurst architecture due to the huge hits that it takes with a branch mis-prediction penalty. When a mis-predict happens the execution unit has to sit idling away and wait for the proper info to go be re-fetched. With SMT, the unit simply switches over to one of the other threads waiting in the wings which keeps the processor doing useful work instead of wasting cycles. This is why the software has to be re-written to take advantage of it so that the processor knows which threads to give priority to.
Intel stuck SMT into the Pentium in order to balance out the some of the negative effects the go hand-in-hand with a processor that has a LONG pipeline. AMD has a much shorter pipeline (especially when compared to the new Prescott) and therefore they don't suffer much of a penalty when a mis-predict happens. Also, if I remember correctly the Athlon was already known being extremely efficient in terms of resource allocation within the processor since AMD can't afford to just dump tons of extra cache onto the chip.
Both of these things taken together means that using up extra real estate on the die of the Athlon in order to get SMT isn't really worth it in terms of the performance it would bring. Even on the Pentium the benefits aren't all that hot and it's only in specific types of code that you see any impresive speed gains.
Hector Ruiz already stated plainly in an interview that the dual-core Opterons will be socket compatible with the the current Socket 940. It should be noted that Socket 940 is for Opteron only (servers) not the Athlon64/FX and according to Hector he highly doubts that they will produce a dual-core chip for the desktop/mobil market. That's pretty understandable considering that 90% of all desktops/laptops go under-utilized nowadays anyway. Socket 939 is for Athlon64 desktops and the newly redesigned AthlonFX.
While I've already given up on the show and am unsure as to whether or not this changes my mind, I would just like to say that it's a rather sad state of affairs when he actually has to state that part of their new and improved direction will be to actually give the audience a mission type that hasn't been seen before. In any other show or movie innovation & new ideas would be simply be taken for granted as necessary for survival, but apparently not in Berman's or Paramount's view.
They should have let this franchise die with Voyager or even possibly just DS9. I mean honestly, has there ever been an idea that has been stretched and milked as much as Star Trek?
I am utterly STUNNED that this went through an entire page of comments before anybody bothered to look at the date at the top of the article: The 18th of July 2001 Good grief Charlie Brown!!
Although I hesitate due to the high liklihood of it being Slashdotted, the company's homepage has a pretty cool picture of the device in question. While the most of the comm gear is hidden within, you can see some antennae's and solar panels on the side. The rest of the site has lots of other interesting pics, but like the article is unfortunately very short of any tech detail.:-/
Wow, way to create an incredibly reactionary and inaccurate story summary. In reality, this judgement only affects lawsuits in Australia and not "the rest of the world." You know, given the fact that the ruling of an Australian court has no jurisdiction within any other country. Not only that, but this doesn't say in the least whether or not it actually was libel, he merely won the right to have his case heard in the court. The court could still decide that this particular case does not in fact amount to libel.
"Well, I'll tell you something: I'm a CG animator. There'll ALWAYS be a need for actors. We don't just make stuff up out of thin air, we need REFERENCE to know how to make a character do something."
Indeed. If anybody were to actually go and look at the "Making of The Two Towers" section on the LOTR DVD, they would see that the actual actor who supplied the voice of Golem was present during every shooting of one the CG character's scenes. His presence accomplished two things: 1)He was saying all his lines right along side of Elijah Wood in order to get their timing right and to give the other actors some sort of a real, physical presence that they could work with. 2)More interestingly, he was also wearing a black spandex suit which was fitted with sensors that were recording his movements and creating a realtime reference animation for the final CG animation to be based off of.
I think this second point is the more useful of the two. Think back to previous movies where real people and animations where mixed. How many times in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" were the real actors merely looking in the direction of the animated character and not directly at them like they would if it were a real person. The effect was a little strange to notice, almost like how a bind person doesn't really talk directly at a person, but merely points their head in the general direction when they speak.
Yes, I think real actors will, in one way or another, always be needed. If for no other reason than for scene what we saw in the Arnold Shwarzenegger film, "The Running Man". Remember where the TV production company merely digitally overlayed Arnold's face onto another actors body in order to fake his presence in a scene? We are seeing the beginnings of that right now. I wonder how much future "actors" will get paid for allowing the studio's to simply use their face while another does all of the actual "acting"?
Now we'll see what people see as the real value of mp3s. Is it still a good idea to download it if the download is going to cost you 10c/meg?
Well, let's find out. The avg. song is about 3.5 minutes long, that's about 3.6MB at 128kbps. So it should cost about $0.36 per song and at about 15 songs per CD, that's $5.40 per CD. Now remember, we're talking about only songs that you want, no filler.
I'd say a big, "YES," 10 cents/MB or $5.40 per CD is worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
The guy who had this idea is right about one thing: it probably will unite you, in the same that a shared traumatic experience unites the survivors, ie. shared suffering. This will probably unite the people who are wearing it, but only because the rest of the company will then separated from you. This seems to be a particularly bad idea for a career track that already has a reputation for causing some mild social isolation. You will have made yourselves into a distinct group but this will also have a price: [b]the reset of the company will not be in that group.[/b]
The article doesn't say what level of damage would have resulted from an impact. Anybody want to weigh in?
The Slashdot summary is the only place that this piece of incremental experimentation is referred to as a breakthrough. I'm getting tired of every little news stores that has anything to do with nano-(fill_in_the_blank) being labeled a breakthrough.
Most of these companies have the wrong idea. When I place an MMO, I'm usually using a visual angle that has me looking at a downward angle toward my character from above. Generally speaking, I miss all of the impressive scenic stuff. Occasionally yes, I do stop and admire the visuals or I may stop and look up if I'm searching for something. However I think most of these companies are wasting most of their talent on impressive visuals when in fact I would prefer these two things much more:
1)A game that looks good on something less than a top of line GPU - I would prefer graphic efficiency to graphic splendor. When you have 10-15 guys running around a raid inside of a huge environment with 50 monsters and lots of trees and other stuff my FPS grind to a halt. This then leads me to turn down the detail defeating all the effort these guys put in to their product. My system is a dual core with a ATI 4870 GPU, it still stutters unless I turn down the details.
2)Easy guild management tools for Guild Leaders - How about giving me some tools to manage my guild more effectively especially when I'm not online? Being able to assign a guild quest to somebody so they will go gather some resources fore the bank even when I'm not online would be nice. A lot of players will only do this when I'm online cajoling them in to it. How about using the quest journal like a PDA or a digital organizer?
How did they not perform any simulations or trial runs with players connecting out over the internet in order to stress test this? If they did, how could their testing not notice that routers in general don't like large numbers of listening sockets on it's clients? This is a serious amateur mistake.
How come we never see the insides of graphics cores the way that CPU manufacturers release pics of the internals of their CPUs? I looked and couldn't find any. Now that AMD makes both CPUs and GPUs will it start do so? What gives?
I'm not so sure if it's "set a precedent for hardware manufacturers paying music companies," so much as it is set a precedent for hardware manufacturers paying content providers. Let's not forget what it is that Microsoft does for a living. This could be useful precedent for them in the future.
Like the old curse says, it's definitely weird when your e-penis is determined by how little electricity your rig soaks up...
Am I the only one who read that as SG1 at first glance? :P
I seem to remember a website that offered the ability to type in a price for a given item at a specific store and the website would then generate a barcode for that item. The idea was that you could then take the fraudilent barcode, stick it on top of the true label and when you take it to the checkout lane you pay a fraction of the real cost.
What's stopping people from using this program for such purposes? Is this yet another dual use program that will come under fire?
what OS it will run? If it's anything other than some form of distributed OSX then maybe calling this an Apple supercomputer isn't so accurate considering that Apple is just a re-brander of IBM's designs & chips.
SMT is only needed if your execution units are having trouble remaining filled up, which was the problem with the NetBurst architecture due to the huge hits that it takes with a branch mis-prediction penalty. When a mis-predict happens the execution unit has to sit idling away and wait for the proper info to go be re-fetched. With SMT, the unit simply switches over to one of the other threads waiting in the wings which keeps the processor doing useful work instead of wasting cycles. This is why the software has to be re-written to take advantage of it so that the processor knows which threads to give priority to.
Intel stuck SMT into the Pentium in order to balance out the some of the negative effects the go hand-in-hand with a processor that has a LONG pipeline. AMD has a much shorter pipeline (especially when compared to the new Prescott) and therefore they don't suffer much of a penalty when a mis-predict happens. Also, if I remember correctly the Athlon was already known being extremely efficient in terms of resource allocation within the processor since AMD can't afford to just dump tons of extra cache onto the chip.
Both of these things taken together means that using up extra real estate on the die of the Athlon in order to get SMT isn't really worth it in terms of the performance it would bring. Even on the Pentium the benefits aren't all that hot and it's only in specific types of code that you see any impresive speed gains.
Hector Ruiz already stated plainly in an interview that the dual-core Opterons will be socket compatible with the the current Socket 940. It should be noted that Socket 940 is for Opteron only (servers) not the Athlon64/FX and according to Hector he highly doubts that they will produce a dual-core chip for the desktop/mobil market. That's pretty understandable considering that 90% of all desktops/laptops go under-utilized nowadays anyway. Socket 939 is for Athlon64 desktops and the newly redesigned AthlonFX.
You know, you could probably ask to see the info through a Freedom of Information Act request...
While I've already given up on the show and am unsure as to whether or not this changes my mind, I would just like to say that it's a rather sad state of affairs when he actually has to state that part of their new and improved direction will be to actually give the audience a mission type that hasn't been seen before. In any other show or movie innovation & new ideas would be simply be taken for granted as necessary for survival, but apparently not in Berman's or Paramount's view.
They should have let this franchise die with Voyager or even possibly just DS9. I mean honestly, has there ever been an idea that has been stretched and milked as much as Star Trek?
Wait wait, OD-3P-R?? What is that, the long lost love child of R2-D2 and 3P-0??
Solid work by the Slashdot Editors, as always. ;-)
Although I hesitate due to the high liklihood of it being Slashdotted, the company's homepage has a pretty cool picture of the device in question. While the most of the comm gear is hidden within, you can see some antennae's and solar panels on the side. The rest of the site has lots of other interesting pics, but like the article is unfortunately very short of any tech detail. :-/
Wow, way to create an incredibly reactionary and inaccurate story summary. In reality, this judgement only affects lawsuits in Australia and not "the rest of the world." You know, given the fact that the ruling of an Australian court has no jurisdiction within any other country. Not only that, but this doesn't say in the least whether or not it actually was libel, he merely won the right to have his case heard in the court. The court could still decide that this particular case does not in fact amount to libel.
This is very true, just ask Lance Bass. ;)
I think this second point is the more useful of the two. Think back to previous movies where real people and animations where mixed. How many times in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" were the real actors merely looking in the direction of the animated character and not directly at them like they would if it were a real person. The effect was a little strange to notice, almost like how a bind person doesn't really talk directly at a person, but merely points their head in the general direction when they speak.
Yes, I think real actors will, in one way or another, always be needed. If for no other reason than for scene what we saw in the Arnold Shwarzenegger film, "The Running Man". Remember where the TV production company merely digitally overlayed Arnold's face onto another actors body in order to fake his presence in a scene? We are seeing the beginnings of that right now. I wonder how much future "actors" will get paid for allowing the studio's to simply use their face while another does all of the actual "acting"?
Because of course the world certainly needs newer, bigger, and better ways to cut down even more trees.
Well, let's find out. The avg. song is about 3.5 minutes long, that's about 3.6MB at 128kbps. So it should cost about $0.36 per song and at about 15 songs per CD, that's $5.40 per CD. Now remember, we're talking about only songs that you want, no filler.
I'd say a big, "YES," 10 cents/MB or $5.40 per CD is worth it.