Nope, only the "floor" and "ceiling" were blank/unshaded -- walls and doors were all fully texture-mapped.
Aside from texturing floors and ceilings, Doom primarily excelled over Wolfenstein in its geometry -- with Doom they went from Wolfenstein's 2-dimensional maps to a "2.5D" engine which allowed them to create floors and ceilings at arbitrary elevations, allowing much more flexibility in architecture, with features like stairs and vaulted ceilings, as well as walls at angles other than 90 degrees. It still didn't allow full 3D architecture, however -- floors and ceilings could only be horizontal, and room-over-room architecture was impossible (you could map any level perfectly in two dimensions, using only a single plane).
Yes, I'm aware of this, but it still ends up generating extra work, especially as compared to other software (*cough*WinampPro*cough*) which allows me to explicitly define a directory structure for encoded music. It's why I stopped using iTunes a couple of weeks after installing it, even though I liked a handful of its features.
Because iTunes doesn't organize my MP3s the way I organize my MP3s, and offers no mechanism to modify its sorting logic. Worse, because when I point it to my already carefully organized MP3 collection, it automatically and without asking me -- in fact, without providing any feedback at all -- reaches into my directory structure and re-organizes it as it sees fit, permanently destroying my existing file hierarchy.
Why do I care? Because (on Windows particularly) I have more than one option for MP3 playback, CD burning, and other tasks, and iTunes' re-organization of my directories to suit its purposes is not universally convenient to the rest of the applications I use to do so. iTunes simply presumes sole proprietorship of the users's MP3 collection in a way that simply isn't acceptable to a lot of users.
I don't know where whoever did the Gizmodo writeup got the idea that the entire thing was powered by a single motor. You can clearly see from the photos that each joint has its own servo.
Why is this comment modded 'Funny'? The AC makes a valid point: without an included browser, the average user would be incapable procuring any browser, third party or otherwise, let alone researching alternatives. What are they supposed to use, gopher and ftp?
Granted, MS could include multiple browser installers with their Windows distributions, but it's unlikely that they would provide the full range of alternatives on-disk -- not even Linux/*BSD does that. Given that they couldn't/wouldn't, isn't it likely that the chosen browsers would be percieved to have an unfair market advantage, much as IE is now?
Actually, it's like neither dithering nor antialiasing -- the analogous operation in graphics processing would be 'interpolation'.
You may be familiar with this procedure from Photoshop's 'image size' facility: enabling 'resample image' and selecting 'bilinear' or 'bicubic' causes Photoshop to generate new pixels to smooth out the jaggies created by resizing, using a mathematical formula to interpolate between the color values of the original pixels.
Interpolation in audio processing works similarly, taking a relatively low-resolution digitized waveform and interpolating values between successive samples to create a smoother, more natural waveform.
Quite simply, no. This may well help to lower the bar for rendering 3D graphics on low-powered hardware, which could indeed serve to speed the wider adoption of real-time 3D graphics on the web -- but it won't have anything to do with file size reductions in 3D models, which are negligibly small to begin with. This particular compression technique isn't aimed at smaller file sizes, but rather reductions in the complexity of 3d meshes: fewer triangles mean simpler geometry, resulting in increased rendering efficiency.
Much as I love and respect Ray Bradbury's writing, and much as I wish your claim were true, it simply isn't: most of those references to "butterfly effects" you cite actually relate to Chaos Theory, and apparently are attributable to none other than Lorenz (of Attractor fame) in the title of a 1972 talk entitled "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?"
Re:Reading this post was taxing in itself
on
The Confusion
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· Score: 1
A perfectly-constructed six line sentence -- nothing to sneer at.
Some of us have found more meaningful ways of expressing our individuality than in our choice of operating systems, and simply want computers that work without undue hassle and run the vast majority of applications we need in pursuit of our own individual goals. No contradiction whatsoever.
Doesn't it strike you as a little "contradictory" to condemn the lack of individuality in folks who for one reason or other have failed to fall into line behind the manifest destiny of the Linux Desktop?
Sure, but there's nothing about the HTTPS protocol which dictates the use of port 443. That's just a convention which has become an ad hoc standard.
More to the point, your client isn't blocking the SSL protocol, just all non-standard ports. Granted, that prevents you from using SSL over any of those alternate ports, but that's not really pertinent to the grandparent topic, which is what I was trying to point out in the first place.
I find it a little troubling that the first reference to this quote yielded by my admittedly cursory Googling lies in Smokescreens, an online "book" by Jack Chick (of Chick Tract fame) in which he denigrates Catholics and Catholicism -- in part by attempting to establish a sinister relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Nazis.
Now, I don't know what that says for the validity of the quote, but I personally take it as dogma that anything Jack Chick embraces is automatically suspect, if not outright wrong. Much as I may occasionally enjoy lambasting some of the baser forms of Christianity, I'm not prepared to do it with any assistance from a hystrionic hatemonger like Chick.
As I understand it, the primary advantage of pie menus over standard linear/cascading menus is that they leverage muscle memory for enhanced speed and accuracy in menu selections. In essence, pie menus are not unlike a gestural control scheme with training wheels -- a series of selections from a cascading pie menu effectively forms a complete mouse-gesture, which can later be replicated without conscious reference to menu labels. This allows novice users to make selections cognitively by following menu selections, while more advanced users can simply remember the series of mouse movements required to reach a given selection.
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Funny -- last I looked (a few days ago, doing an XP install) the Windows installer gave me precisely that option.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/
It's free (as in beer and speech*) programming; there's not much excuse for failing to avail yourself of it.
_____
* Yes, I'm oversimplifying.
Nope, only the "floor" and "ceiling" were blank/unshaded -- walls and doors were all fully texture-mapped. Aside from texturing floors and ceilings, Doom primarily excelled over Wolfenstein in its geometry -- with Doom they went from Wolfenstein's 2-dimensional maps to a "2.5D" engine which allowed them to create floors and ceilings at arbitrary elevations, allowing much more flexibility in architecture, with features like stairs and vaulted ceilings, as well as walls at angles other than 90 degrees. It still didn't allow full 3D architecture, however -- floors and ceilings could only be horizontal, and room-over-room architecture was impossible (you could map any level perfectly in two dimensions, using only a single plane).
Mod parent up Funny, idiots.
Yes, I'm aware of this, but it still ends up generating extra work, especially as compared to other software (*cough*WinampPro*cough*) which allows me to explicitly define a directory structure for encoded music. It's why I stopped using iTunes a couple of weeks after installing it, even though I liked a handful of its features.
Because iTunes doesn't organize my MP3s the way I organize my MP3s, and offers no mechanism to modify its sorting logic. Worse, because when I point it to my already carefully organized MP3 collection, it automatically and without asking me -- in fact, without providing any feedback at all -- reaches into my directory structure and re-organizes it as it sees fit, permanently destroying my existing file hierarchy.
Why do I care? Because (on Windows particularly) I have more than one option for MP3 playback, CD burning, and other tasks, and iTunes' re-organization of my directories to suit its purposes is not universally convenient to the rest of the applications I use to do so. iTunes simply presumes sole proprietorship of the users's MP3 collection in a way that simply isn't acceptable to a lot of users.
I don't know where whoever did the Gizmodo writeup got the idea that the entire thing was powered by a single motor. You can clearly see from the photos that each joint has its own servo.
Why is this comment modded 'Funny'? The AC makes a valid point: without an included browser, the average user would be incapable procuring any browser, third party or otherwise, let alone researching alternatives. What are they supposed to use, gopher and ftp?
Granted, MS could include multiple browser installers with their Windows distributions, but it's unlikely that they would provide the full range of alternatives on-disk -- not even Linux/*BSD does that. Given that they couldn't/wouldn't, isn't it likely that the chosen browsers would be percieved to have an unfair market advantage, much as IE is now?
And lastly, coding in a proportional-width font makes for ugly code that no one wants to read.
Since when does any IDE retain font information in source code files?
Code in whatever the hell font you like; it makes no difference to anyone else reading your code.
Actually, it's like neither dithering nor antialiasing -- the analogous operation in graphics processing would be 'interpolation'.
You may be familiar with this procedure from Photoshop's 'image size' facility: enabling 'resample image' and selecting 'bilinear' or 'bicubic' causes Photoshop to generate new pixels to smooth out the jaggies created by resizing, using a mathematical formula to interpolate between the color values of the original pixels.
Interpolation in audio processing works similarly, taking a relatively low-resolution digitized waveform and interpolating values between successive samples to create a smoother, more natural waveform.
You mean Dan Quayle and the Potatoe?
Quite simply, no. This may well help to lower the bar for rendering 3D graphics on low-powered hardware, which could indeed serve to speed the wider adoption of real-time 3D graphics on the web -- but it won't have anything to do with file size reductions in 3D models, which are negligibly small to begin with. This particular compression technique isn't aimed at smaller file sizes, but rather reductions in the complexity of 3d meshes: fewer triangles mean simpler geometry, resulting in increased rendering efficiency.
Redundancy is repeating yourself by restating a point. An oxymoron is two contradicting points used together.
Dull is missing the point entirely, as your misplaced pedantry does.
Much as I love and respect Ray Bradbury's writing, and much as I wish your claim were true, it simply isn't: most of those references to "butterfly effects" you cite actually relate to Chaos Theory, and apparently are attributable to none other than Lorenz (of Attractor fame) in the title of a 1972 talk entitled "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?"
A perfectly-constructed six line sentence -- nothing to sneer at.
Some of us have found more meaningful ways of expressing our individuality than in our choice of operating systems, and simply want computers that work without undue hassle and run the vast majority of applications we need in pursuit of our own individual goals. No contradiction whatsoever.
Doesn't it strike you as a little "contradictory" to condemn the lack of individuality in folks who for one reason or other have failed to fall into line behind the manifest destiny of the Linux Desktop?
Sure, but there's nothing about the HTTPS protocol which dictates the use of port 443. That's just a convention which has become an ad hoc standard. More to the point, your client isn't blocking the SSL protocol, just all non-standard ports. Granted, that prevents you from using SSL over any of those alternate ports, but that's not really pertinent to the grandparent topic, which is what I was trying to point out in the first place.
HTTPS is SSL.
I find it a little troubling that the first reference to this quote yielded by my admittedly cursory Googling lies in Smokescreens , an online "book" by Jack Chick (of Chick Tract fame) in which he denigrates Catholics and Catholicism -- in part by attempting to establish a sinister relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Nazis.
Now, I don't know what that says for the validity of the quote, but I personally take it as dogma that anything Jack Chick embraces is automatically suspect, if not outright wrong. Much as I may occasionally enjoy lambasting some of the baser forms of Christianity, I'm not prepared to do it with any assistance from a hystrionic hatemonger like Chick.
Er. Wildly OT, but shouldn't a Pedantic Spelling Troll be capable of spelling 'ridiculous'...?
...Unless I got it all wrong, and you're actually trolling for pedantic spellers. In which case -- Damn. Guilty as charged.
Erm. No 3100+, sorry. Fingers faster than brain.
You mean aside from AMD's announcement of the "Barton" rev (Athlon 3000+, 3100+, 3200+)?
I suppose the announcement of Opteron's April release doesn't count as "Athlon news", in this context.
From the sig of the article's apparent author:
**
MAY THE SOFTWARE BE WITH YOU!
I CYBERYOGI Christian Oliver(=CO=) Windler I
I (teachmaster of LOGOLOGIE - the first cyberage-religion!) I
I ! I
**
To which I can only say: "...Uh?"
...and who can imagine what is to come from the People Republic of China?
Can we say, "Next nuclear superpower?"
As I understand it, the primary advantage of pie menus over standard linear/cascading menus is that they leverage muscle memory for enhanced speed and accuracy in menu selections. In essence, pie menus are not unlike a gestural control scheme with training wheels -- a series of selections from a cascading pie menu effectively forms a complete mouse-gesture, which can later be replicated without conscious reference to menu labels. This allows novice users to make selections cognitively by following menu selections, while more advanced users can simply remember the series of mouse movements required to reach a given selection.
More info here.