Why not use some of the other renderer tools out there?
Because none existed that suited their needs, obviously.
This is a generic description of what they're calling global illumination, I read a more technical description a month or so back, and dont feel like googling for it.
But it's as far past POVRay as Doom 3 is past the original Wolfenstein games.
Shrek, and probably Shrek 2 (I haven't seen it) are enjoyable enough movies that the animation quality is irrelevant to me, anyways.
No, that's how Blockbuster can charge for rentals. Libraries pay no more than the cost of the materials, I've volunteered in a library in the past. Hell, we'd pick up LPs and laserdiscs for the library at garage sales (back when that was high tech, of course).
Blockbuster pays because it's a sweetheart deal. "Pay us for this license you don't need, and we'll refuse to sell to the competition."
Remember all the mom&pop video stores that sprung up a decade or two ago? They didn't go bankrupt, it was (and is) a very profitable business to run, a friend of mine ran one. It's akin to the RIAA's campaign to eradicate used CD shops, and independant retailers.
I don't see how this sort of isolationism will be of any benefit to them in the future.
I don't get it, what are they afraid of? They'd be the dominant global force if not for constantly shackling themselves with this kinds of stuff. This is like imposing economic sanctions against your own nation.
Oh well, it's a good thing they limit their power thusly, so long as their approach to human rights remains as it is.
Why can I check out an album or movie at the library and watch/listen without paying, but not download it off the internet?
I just want an answer to that. With the state of todays copyright, why are libraries still legal?
Last time I went the local library had a movie selection rivaling Blockbuster and an audio section larger than Tower records.
Will video games, or other pieces of software ever be legal to borrow from the local library?
What gives? Are libaries legal only if run by the government? Are only non-profit libraries legal? Could I open my OWN library and let people borrow my CDs and books?
Please no IANAL responses, I want to know the distinction.
Human poop would kill pretty much anything you tried to fertilize with it, it's full of bile and toxins and stuff. Cow poop comes out almost like it went in, thats why grazing animals have to eat all the time.
You know they're all just as happy as pigs in shit to actually have an opinion to write in their blogs.
It's like when I reboot one of my linux boxes and see Segmentation Fault during init, which is happening more than it should with 2.6.5 but that's another topic, it gives me something to do. Hell, the only reason I even have linux boxes is so I can perpetually fix them.
3000 people died at once. For no reason. Getting in an automobile, I assume some risk. I have no reason to assume the risk of having some religious nutjob crash a jetliner into my office, nor do I want to.
And safer cars != lighter cars. Full sized cars are the safest thing to be in in a crash. I'd rather be in a big ole Coupe de Ville than a hybrid Civic when the two meet head on.
And the government better not piss away my tax dollars doing research for the benefit of Ford. Actually, it'd be worse, it'd be my tax dollars being used to shore up foreign automotive markets. Fuck that.
When someone develops a hybrid/alternative vehicle that works, it'll do well in the market. Offtopic, but I wish people would please not be so eager to waste tax dollars doing research for private industry.
Some are there because they honestly believe they're working for the greater good.
Some are there because of a particular world-view they want to force on everyone else, some are there simply for notoriety.
Lawyers actually think things like: "ooh think how famous I'll be when I make Christmas illegal!" or "my career will take off when I get those convicted murderer/rapists admitted to Harvard for free under affirmative action!"
There are a lot of forces at work destroying this country. The ACLU is one of them. Thanks to them the KKK can burn crosses in a public park (freedom of speech), but it's illegal to put a manger scene up in the very same park at christmas ("seperation" clause).
The case is ongoing. You aren't allowed to publish details of ongoing cases that could taint a potential jury pool, and there's no doubt in my mind that that was the entire point of the ACLU's press release.
This is why grand jury testimony is done behind closed doors.
The word "censorship" is just spin. When the cases are over, the ACLU can say whatever the hell it wants.
The CPU and GPU on the xbox share memory, and not in a cheap pc onboard video "8 megs of RAM used as VRAM" way, they can both access the same memory. It can thus do some really cool shit for a PC as "weak" as it is.
All those cool pixel shader effects and bumpmapping in Halo, for instance. The most expensive PCs from falcon northwest choke a little on that stuff, even at 640x480. Because the XBOX cpu can compute textures in RAM, and use them instantly without having to push them over an AGP bus.
The long and short of it is, you'd need an AGP/PCIX bus at least as fast as the Xboxes RAM bus to simulate this.
You could probably get close on current hardware, less taxing games may be emulated more easily.
It's not as simple as porting the "xbox OS", though I do forsee an Xbox emu before a PS2 or GCN emu.
There once were 3 main dvd-players in the Xbox, Thompson Phillips and Samsung (ordering from crappiest to best), but now there are several flavors out there.
Newer xboxes (1.6 recently hacked last week) come with a newer Phillips that reads everything.
I have a first run Xbox with a Thompson which is supposed to suck, but reads DVD-R(W), DVD+R(W), CD-RW but chokes on CD-Rs most of the time.
Of course, it's childs play to replace the DVD-ROM with a PC DVDROM and install a switch. PC DVD-ROMs performance is soooo much better than an XBoxes (16x vs 8x, etc)
This is a heavily modded xbox, as in out of the reach of your everyday home hacker.
The 733 celeron replaced with a 1.4gig, 64 megs of ram upgraded to 128.
A stock xbox does the same things fairly well, not as well as described, I've had some stuttering problems on recent builds of XBMC with some action-intensive scenes.
I wouldn't say it's perfect, but it's pretty cool. A perfect device would have a PVR.
Slashdot Mirror
The stuff on that link looks like cutscenes from a PSX game. What are you talking about?
Why not use some of the other renderer tools out there?
Because none existed that suited their needs, obviously.
This is a generic description of what they're calling global illumination, I read a more technical description a month or so back, and dont feel like googling for it.
But it's as far past POVRay as Doom 3 is past the original Wolfenstein games.
Shrek, and probably Shrek 2 (I haven't seen it) are enjoyable enough movies that the animation quality is irrelevant to me, anyways.
No, that's how Blockbuster can charge for rentals. Libraries pay no more than the cost of the materials, I've volunteered in a library in the past. Hell, we'd pick up LPs and laserdiscs for the library at garage sales (back when that was high tech, of course).
Blockbuster pays because it's a sweetheart deal. "Pay us for this license you don't need, and we'll refuse to sell to the competition."
Remember all the mom&pop video stores that sprung up a decade or two ago? They didn't go bankrupt, it was (and is) a very profitable business to run, a friend of mine ran one. It's akin to the RIAA's campaign to eradicate used CD shops, and independant retailers.
My original question stands.
I really don't get China's attitude.
I don't see how this sort of isolationism will be of any benefit to them in the future.
I don't get it, what are they afraid of? They'd be the dominant global force if not for constantly shackling themselves with this kinds of stuff. This is like imposing economic sanctions against your own nation.
Oh well, it's a good thing they limit their power thusly, so long as their approach to human rights remains as it is.
Why can I check out an album or movie at the library and watch/listen without paying, but not download it off the internet?
I just want an answer to that. With the state of todays copyright, why are libraries still legal?
Last time I went the local library had a movie selection rivaling Blockbuster and an audio section larger than Tower records.
Will video games, or other pieces of software ever be legal to borrow from the local library?
What gives? Are libaries legal only if run by the government? Are only non-profit libraries legal? Could I open my OWN library and let people borrow my CDs and books?
Please no IANAL responses, I want to know the distinction.
Who cares. There is absolutely no news or anything of interest in this article.
Oh please, will someone please think of the robots!
Wait till they unionize, we're fucked.
Why is running off of alkaline batteries supposed to be a good thing? I mean, these things do need to work all day, do they not?
You gotta deal with it one way or another. It cant smell worse than a 20 foot high "compost" pile behind the barn.
I read recently that there's enough old growth forest in the US to make a band as wide as texas from NY to Seattle.
Much of it is in undesirable areas (mountains etc) or protected parks so it's pretty much safe.
Human poop would kill pretty much anything you tried to fertilize with it, it's full of bile and toxins and stuff. Cow poop comes out almost like it went in, thats why grazing animals have to eat all the time.
Tina Turner controlled Bartertown, Master Blaster was in charge of the underground.
Btw mods, grandparent is not a troll. If you haven't seen the Mad Max films you have no business moderating on a forum for geeks.
This little midget riding a huge musclebound retarded guy challenged me to Thunderdome!
You know they're all just as happy as pigs in shit to actually have an opinion to write in their blogs.
It's like when I reboot one of my linux boxes and see Segmentation Fault during init, which is happening more than it should with 2.6.5 but that's another topic, it gives me something to do. Hell, the only reason I even have linux boxes is so I can perpetually fix them.
Most slashdot readers use Windows and Internet Explorer to post their rants about Free software.
So what? People are full of shit.
3000 people died at once. For no reason. Getting in an automobile, I assume some risk. I have no reason to assume the risk of having some religious nutjob crash a jetliner into my office, nor do I want to.
And safer cars != lighter cars. Full sized cars are the safest thing to be in in a crash. I'd rather be in a big ole Coupe de Ville than a hybrid Civic when the two meet head on.
And the government better not piss away my tax dollars doing research for the benefit of Ford. Actually, it'd be worse, it'd be my tax dollars being used to shore up foreign automotive markets. Fuck that.
When someone develops a hybrid/alternative vehicle that works, it'll do well in the market. Offtopic, but I wish people would please not be so eager to waste tax dollars doing research for private industry.
And it's back. The feds filed a motion, the ACLU filed a motion. Now they're no doubt drafting more motions.
It's just the way the courts always have and always will work. That this case is about PATRIOT is pretty much irrelevant to the story.
The ACLU is a group of activist lawyers.
Some are there because they honestly believe they're working for the greater good.
Some are there because of a particular world-view they want to force on everyone else, some are there simply for notoriety.
Lawyers actually think things like: "ooh think how famous I'll be when I make Christmas illegal!" or "my career will take off when I get those convicted murderer/rapists admitted to Harvard for free under affirmative action!"
There are a lot of forces at work destroying this country. The ACLU is one of them. Thanks to them the KKK can burn crosses in a public park (freedom of speech), but it's illegal to put a manger scene up in the very same park at christmas ("seperation" clause).
The paragraphs violated court secrecy rules.
The case is ongoing. You aren't allowed to publish details of ongoing cases that could taint a potential jury pool, and there's no doubt in my mind that that was the entire point of the ACLU's press release.
This is why grand jury testimony is done behind closed doors.
The word "censorship" is just spin. When the cases are over, the ACLU can say whatever the hell it wants.
Don't feel like subscribing.
But being ordered to remove information pertaining to the specifics of an ongoing legal case is not censorship.
no, I'm old here.
Once upon a time this article would have been about stealth technology on the high seas, going into tangents about the Philidelphia project and stuff.
Now it's "who cares about the tech, MS is teh gheyer than aidz olllolol!"
The CPU and GPU on the xbox share memory, and not in a cheap pc onboard video "8 megs of RAM used as VRAM" way, they can both access the same memory. It can thus do some really cool shit for a PC as "weak" as it is.
All those cool pixel shader effects and bumpmapping in Halo, for instance. The most expensive PCs from falcon northwest choke a little on that stuff, even at 640x480. Because the XBOX cpu can compute textures in RAM, and use them instantly without having to push them over an AGP bus.
The long and short of it is, you'd need an AGP/PCIX bus at least as fast as the Xboxes RAM bus to simulate this.
You could probably get close on current hardware, less taxing games may be emulated more easily.
It's not as simple as porting the "xbox OS", though I do forsee an Xbox emu before a PS2 or GCN emu.
Mine can read DVD+R.
There once were 3 main dvd-players in the Xbox, Thompson Phillips and Samsung (ordering from crappiest to best), but now there are several flavors out there.
Newer xboxes (1.6 recently hacked last week) come with a newer Phillips that reads everything.
I have a first run Xbox with a Thompson which is supposed to suck, but reads DVD-R(W), DVD+R(W), CD-RW but chokes on CD-Rs most of the time.
Of course, it's childs play to replace the DVD-ROM with a PC DVDROM and install a switch. PC DVD-ROMs performance is soooo much better than an XBoxes (16x vs 8x, etc)
This is a heavily modded xbox, as in out of the reach of your everyday home hacker.
The 733 celeron replaced with a 1.4gig, 64 megs of ram upgraded to 128.
A stock xbox does the same things fairly well, not as well as described, I've had some stuttering problems on recent builds of XBMC with some action-intensive scenes.
I wouldn't say it's perfect, but it's pretty cool. A perfect device would have a PVR.
The GPL isn't gospel to everyone, though. So one cannot support the RIAA, and at the same time not expect anyone to give a rats ass about the GPL.