And how many make $50k+ without either of those? I was doing so within a year of college (Diploma, no degree), and even that was based very much on my experience as opposed to my education/grades/courses/etc
Actually, it doesn't sound like he was posting the picture for commercial (or at least for profit use). He just posted it on the flickr website, and then it was picked up randomly by virgin without paying for it (which according to CC they can do) and also without obtaining a model release (which may not be covered by the CC license).
Just a few things where proper raytracing could be useful:
Puzzle/quest games: Aligning mirrors to solve puzzles. Shadows to hide objects. The cliche but fun "align X and watch the direction of the shadow at midnight" etc trick
FPS: Reflection of the guy behind you, turn and shoot!
Water/Fire: Not sure, but it might make at least the former a little easier to render in realism. Realistic water isn't 100% necessary, but it could be neat to allow as camouflage or other such things
Blinding: Use of a bright light + reflection for a blinding effect. Quite useful for FPS and other games. Or how about the telltale glint of light off a sniper scope?
Yes, in many cases it might just be eye-candy, but realistic reflection and shadow that may be offered by ray-tracing could definitely add to the immersiveness, realism, complexity, and even fun of a game environment.
Must have been another autoupdate then, but the driver was my first guess. I do know that nothing was changed or installed between the two dates, and that the machine worked happily after I installed the updated driver+firmware.
My girlfriend recently called me because the wireless internet connection on her laptop stopped working. After screwing around with it for awhile, updating the drivers, etc, I noticed a small notation on the latest driver that it would only work if the actual firmware on your card was greater than version XX. After updating the firmware, the wireless worked again.
The apparent cause of the problem? Windows update happily auto-updated the wireless driver, neglecting to check that the firmware was compatible, and neglecting to also offer a firmware update. MS Security might have improved, but I don't think their reliability has. Many big corps tread carefully with update patches for this very reason.
I remember somebody I know telling me about how she was stopped and searched, etc at the airport because she had traces of nitro on her hands and in her purse. Now why would she have that? Well her husband used it as a medication for his bad heart.
You'd be surprised at the rather harmless (explosion-wise anyways) uses many of these chemicals have, and I'm sure the airport guards may be as well. I've heard many cases of funky medications giving weird results in various situations. Did you know that taking a breathalizer test shortly after pumping ventalin (for asthma) will often result in a false positive?
My friend heard this and decided to test it with a police officer (first by passing the test, then by puffing and taking it again). They were both quite surprised at how much it skewed the reading. The officer basically stated he'd never heard of such a thing, but he'd definitely keep it in mind and pass it along to others for future reference as in a situation where he had not watched her puff and taken the earlier reading my friend would have been on her way down to the station on DUI charges.
Still not too hard to stick a slightly bigger version on a car, or perhaps in shoulder-mounted or backpack fashion. Also, since these are early units, I'd imagine they may fab down in size over time.
I'm not so much worried about AT&T filtering their customers' traffic... I'm not one of them, and there are often enough other choices. The problem is that this is only true if they're not filtering all the traffic that flows through their backbone, much like the recent NSA todo. If your ISP has traffic that passes through AT&T's network (or heck, uses their infrastructure), are they therefore going to be filtered as well?
Perhaps those items increase the painfulness of the beam? Was there a reason given? In either case I don't think a tinfoil hat is going to be a good defense against this, and you should probably be wary of going commando when wearing pants with a metal fly...
Have a peek at the article. It's a small box that looks somewhat like a computer power-supply. Sure, it's too big for holster-duty yet, but compared to the initial version I saw (which I assume is for making sweeps of a crowd at a larger distance) it's definitely gone down in size.
Not for customers who already have $XX price for a plan. The price of the plan is fixed (unless you switch to a new plan), and would be grandfathered in with the contract, etc.
My captcha is parasite... how nice and fitting for a comment on a cellphone-related article
You know, I'm Canadian (though not Albertan) and I still had to double-check that such a town didn't exist. We do get some weirdly named ones up here:-)
Reminds me of an old joke.
Two Americans - a man and his wife - become lost while driving around in Canada during their holidays. After wandering aimlessly for awhile, the man finally takes the advice of his wife and stop to ask for directions. They pull into a small gas station, and the man asks the burly attendant therein if he could tell them exactly what city they're in.
The gas attendant looks up, and replies "Saskatoon, Saskatewan"
The man turns back to his wife and says, "Sorry honey, I guess we'll have to keep going until we find somebody who speaks english"
I've got a fake Rolex that came from overseas. I know it's fake, but it still looks nicer, and the kinetic-motion part actually keeps a better charge than my previous authentic watch (which I think was a cardinal). I wouldn't take this one in the pool with me, but as a watch it works and looks better than my previous watches, despite costing less.
With MD and the MPAA/RIAA's tactics in general, I'm quite surprised they aren't recruiting employers from Harry Mudd college (for those that know old Trek). Their attitudes seem to be much the same.
Well, both part of the charm and the frustration to the details of Jordan's writing is the insane amount of detail given to the characters and environment. In terms of character development, it makes them very human, however sometimes it goes to the point that you've pretty much devoted 5-10+ pages to the fact that Rand had eggs for breakfast this morning... poached... with butter, etc.
Detail is good, too much can lead to a bit of drag, especially when you're devoting almost half a book in cases to filling in small parts of the plot (with little action). Often enough, many authors will do what has been suggested elsewhere under this article: make a spin-off series with a prequel, or with a more detailed look at a particular persona/plot-segment.
Hmm, actually from what I've seen, they're happy to let you *talk* about democracy and freedom in the USA, it's just when you start trying to practice it that things start to turn downhill.
Of course, I'm Canadian, and while I'd like to be able to say that things are much better, there's a downhill slide here as well.
For example, the Ian Bush shooting, which has now faded somewhat from the news. We have a cop who insists that - as an act of self-defence - he shot and kill a young man being held in custody. Investigation into blood spatter showed the given account of events was unlikely, and then suddenly the blood-expert finds himself facing disciplinary hearings and investigation. Of course, they wouldn't need an expert if the camera o the holding-room hadn't been turned off at the time...
So yes, if you live in Canada, the USA, Germany, or wherever, have a good laugh at everywhere else in the world, but remember that - for average citizens - justice, freedom, democracy, and many others may end up being more of a concept than a reality. Maybe one day you too, will end up as a provocative but quickly forgotten news article.
Well, with Cedega (copy-protected games) anyhow, I haven't tried much with actual wine (although for some things I've heard it's better, just not as good at dealing with the proprietary protection methods). On my laptop though, I've found that many games run faster. Partly because I can't get an updated windows video driver anymore (it's pretty specific to the laptop model due to some power-saving stuff, but the latest linux ones work fine), and partly because my filesystem under linux seems to be *much* faster than FAT32 or NTFS was. My load-times are significantly improved, and - depending on the features enabled - video is often better in some areas and perhaps a bit slower in others. Overally, I'd love to see more games that run directly on linux (a-la-doom3 etc) to take full advantage of my system's capabilities.
Not that I want to put extra value on the music industry, but I would hazard to guess that the garages are probably a little better in declaring their taxes too, which is likely where some of those numbers come from.
Maybe because recent history has shown that MS patches do at times break your computer, and sometimes do so intentionally though incorrectly (if they think you have a pirated copy).
Just to add a bit to that. If somebody is already willing to disregard rules and ethics enough to watch porn at work, that's not a great indicator. If they're going so far as to watch illegal porn at work, that's worse, it shows a very frightening (at least to me) disregard for rules, values, and consequences.
We're talking about a person whose personal cravings are already overruling that little warning in the back of one's head that says "this is wrong", "this is dangerous" or just "I shouldn't be doing this, especially not here." That being the case, how likely are they to uphold the rules/values/laws against actually abusing a child?
I think the issue is that he was looking at both children and women of asian descent. One fetish is fine, the other is definately wrong, but he happened to be interested in pictures of both varieties. The guy is not only into kids, but specifically asian kids, and he got a new position in... China. Overall, it shows a somewhat frightening access to abuse children falling under that particular fetish.
The only good thing I could think of offhand would be that if he were caught and arrested in China - without interference from the US embassy - then the consequences might be a little more severe.
Why would you need an "ethical code" to prevent something that's against the law? In most companies I know, it doesn't have to be written that if you break the law (criminal, not a speeding ticket or such) at work or on the job, you're going to get fired and quite possibly given a nice police escort out of the building.
You don't have to have a "moral code" or "ethical code" when you've got a "legal code." This should IP whether you're a plumber, an electrician, or a computer tech.
Yes, but it does inform a goodly number of geeks as to what companies we should definitely avoid doing business with, as well as recommending against. That being said, I'd rather see some evidence that this isn't just made up to bash the company in question. At the very least a copy of an email (which could be forged, but that would invite a nice slander lawsuit) would be nice.
Slashdot Mirror
And how many make $50k+ without either of those? I was doing so within a year of college (Diploma, no degree), and even that was based very much on my experience as opposed to my education/grades/courses/etc
Actually, it doesn't sound like he was posting the picture for commercial (or at least for profit use). He just posted it on the flickr website, and then it was picked up randomly by virgin without paying for it (which according to CC they can do) and also without obtaining a model release (which may not be covered by the CC license).
Just a few things where proper raytracing could be useful:
Puzzle/quest games: Aligning mirrors to solve puzzles. Shadows to hide objects. The cliche but fun "align X and watch the direction of the shadow at midnight" etc trick
FPS: Reflection of the guy behind you, turn and shoot!
Water/Fire: Not sure, but it might make at least the former a little easier to render in realism. Realistic water isn't 100% necessary, but it could be neat to allow as camouflage or other such things
Blinding: Use of a bright light + reflection for a blinding effect. Quite useful for FPS and other games. Or how about the telltale glint of light off a sniper scope?
Yes, in many cases it might just be eye-candy, but realistic reflection and shadow that may be offered by ray-tracing could definitely add to the immersiveness, realism, complexity, and even fun of a game environment.
Must have been another autoupdate then, but the driver was my first guess. I do know that nothing was changed or installed between the two dates, and that the machine worked happily after I installed the updated driver+firmware.
My girlfriend recently called me because the wireless internet connection on her laptop stopped working. After screwing around with it for awhile, updating the drivers, etc, I noticed a small notation on the latest driver that it would only work if the actual firmware on your card was greater than version XX. After updating the firmware, the wireless worked again.
The apparent cause of the problem? Windows update happily auto-updated the wireless driver, neglecting to check that the firmware was compatible, and neglecting to also offer a firmware update. MS Security might have improved, but I don't think their reliability has. Many big corps tread carefully with update patches for this very reason.
I remember somebody I know telling me about how she was stopped and searched, etc at the airport because she had traces of nitro on her hands and in her purse. Now why would she have that? Well her husband used it as a medication for his bad heart.
You'd be surprised at the rather harmless (explosion-wise anyways) uses many of these chemicals have, and I'm sure the airport guards may be as well. I've heard many cases of funky medications giving weird results in various situations. Did you know that taking a breathalizer test shortly after pumping ventalin (for asthma) will often result in a false positive?
My friend heard this and decided to test it with a police officer (first by passing the test, then by puffing and taking it again). They were both quite surprised at how much it skewed the reading. The officer basically stated he'd never heard of such a thing, but he'd definitely keep it in mind and pass it along to others for future reference as in a situation where he had not watched her puff and taken the earlier reading my friend would have been on her way down to the station on DUI charges.
Still not too hard to stick a slightly bigger version on a car, or perhaps in shoulder-mounted or backpack fashion. Also, since these are early units, I'd imagine they may fab down in size over time.
I'm not so much worried about AT&T filtering their customers' traffic... I'm not one of them, and there are often enough other choices. The problem is that this is only true if they're not filtering all the traffic that flows through their backbone, much like the recent NSA todo. If your ISP has traffic that passes through AT&T's network (or heck, uses their infrastructure), are they therefore going to be filtered as well?
Perhaps those items increase the painfulness of the beam? Was there a reason given? In either case I don't think a tinfoil hat is going to be a good defense against this, and you should probably be wary of going commando when wearing pants with a metal fly...
Have a peek at the article. It's a small box that looks somewhat like a computer power-supply. Sure, it's too big for holster-duty yet, but compared to the initial version I saw (which I assume is for making sweeps of a crowd at a larger distance) it's definitely gone down in size.
I believe the correct term for that is RIAA, or perhaps MPAA syndrome.
Not for customers who already have $XX price for a plan. The price of the plan is fixed (unless you switch to a new plan), and would be grandfathered in with the contract, etc.
My captcha is parasite... how nice and fitting for a comment on a cellphone-related article
You know, I'm Canadian (though not Albertan) and I still had to double-check that such a town didn't exist. We do get some weirdly named ones up here :-)
Reminds me of an old joke.
Two Americans - a man and his wife - become lost while driving around in Canada during their holidays. After wandering aimlessly for awhile, the man finally takes the advice of his wife and stop to ask for directions. They pull into a small gas station, and the man asks the burly attendant therein if he could tell them exactly what city they're in.
The gas attendant looks up, and replies "Saskatoon, Saskatewan"
The man turns back to his wife and says, "Sorry honey, I guess we'll have to keep going until we find somebody who speaks english"
I've got a fake Rolex that came from overseas. I know it's fake, but it still looks nicer, and the kinetic-motion part actually keeps a better charge than my previous authentic watch (which I think was a cardinal). I wouldn't take this one in the pool with me, but as a watch it works and looks better than my previous watches, despite costing less.
With MD and the MPAA/RIAA's tactics in general, I'm quite surprised they aren't recruiting employers from Harry Mudd college (for those that know old Trek). Their attitudes seem to be much the same.
Well, both part of the charm and the frustration to the details of Jordan's writing is the insane amount of detail given to the characters and environment. In terms of character development, it makes them very human, however sometimes it goes to the point that you've pretty much devoted 5-10+ pages to the fact that Rand had eggs for breakfast this morning... poached... with butter, etc.
Detail is good, too much can lead to a bit of drag, especially when you're devoting almost half a book in cases to filling in small parts of the plot (with little action). Often enough, many authors will do what has been suggested elsewhere under this article: make a spin-off series with a prequel, or with a more detailed look at a particular persona/plot-segment.
Hmm, actually from what I've seen, they're happy to let you *talk* about democracy and freedom in the USA, it's just when you start trying to practice it that things start to turn downhill.
Of course, I'm Canadian, and while I'd like to be able to say that things are much better, there's a downhill slide here as well.
For example, the Ian Bush shooting, which has now faded somewhat from the news. We have a cop who insists that - as an act of self-defence - he shot and kill a young man being held in custody. Investigation into blood spatter showed the given account of events was unlikely, and then suddenly the blood-expert finds himself facing disciplinary hearings and investigation. Of course, they wouldn't need an expert if the camera o the holding-room hadn't been turned off at the time...
So yes, if you live in Canada, the USA, Germany, or wherever, have a good laugh at everywhere else in the world, but remember that - for average citizens - justice, freedom, democracy, and many others may end up being more of a concept than a reality. Maybe one day you too, will end up as a provocative but quickly forgotten news article.
Just out of curiosity, what software are you using for this?
Well, with Cedega (copy-protected games) anyhow, I haven't tried much with actual wine (although for some things I've heard it's better, just not as good at dealing with the proprietary protection methods). On my laptop though, I've found that many games run faster. Partly because I can't get an updated windows video driver anymore (it's pretty specific to the laptop model due to some power-saving stuff, but the latest linux ones work fine), and partly because my filesystem under linux seems to be *much* faster than FAT32 or NTFS was. My load-times are significantly improved, and - depending on the features enabled - video is often better in some areas and perhaps a bit slower in others. Overally, I'd love to see more games that run directly on linux (a-la-doom3 etc) to take full advantage of my system's capabilities.
Not that I want to put extra value on the music industry, but I would hazard to guess that the garages are probably a little better in declaring their taxes too, which is likely where some of those numbers come from.
Maybe because recent history has shown that MS patches do at times break your computer, and sometimes do so intentionally though incorrectly (if they think you have a pirated copy).
Just to add a bit to that. If somebody is already willing to disregard rules and ethics enough to watch porn at work, that's not a great indicator. If they're going so far as to watch illegal porn at work, that's worse, it shows a very frightening (at least to me) disregard for rules, values, and consequences.
We're talking about a person whose personal cravings are already overruling that little warning in the back of one's head that says "this is wrong", "this is dangerous" or just "I shouldn't be doing this, especially not here." That being the case, how likely are they to uphold the rules/values/laws against actually abusing a child?
I think the issue is that he was looking at both children and women of asian descent. One fetish is fine, the other is definately wrong, but he happened to be interested in pictures of both varieties. The guy is not only into kids, but specifically asian kids, and he got a new position in... China. Overall, it shows a somewhat frightening access to abuse children falling under that particular fetish.
The only good thing I could think of offhand would be that if he were caught and arrested in China - without interference from the US embassy - then the consequences might be a little more severe.
Why would you need an "ethical code" to prevent something that's against the law? In most companies I know, it doesn't have to be written that if you break the law (criminal, not a speeding ticket or such) at work or on the job, you're going to get fired and quite possibly given a nice police escort out of the building.
You don't have to have a "moral code" or "ethical code" when you've got a "legal code." This should IP whether you're a plumber, an electrician, or a computer tech.
Yes, but it does inform a goodly number of geeks as to what companies we should definitely avoid doing business with, as well as recommending against. That being said, I'd rather see some evidence that this isn't just made up to bash the company in question. At the very least a copy of an email (which could be forged, but that would invite a nice slander lawsuit) would be nice.