On a related note, in SIGGRAPH 2004, there was a paper that showcased software that can interpret simple gestures and allow an avatar to act accordingly. These gestures are simple doodles on the tablet such as a straight horizontal line (which will cause the avatar to walk forward), a vertical line (where the avatar will jump), a loop (causing the avatar to do a mid-air summersaut), as well as more complex combinations.
Here's a way to generate $\pi / 4$ randomly: pick $n$ pairs of numbers, from a truely random set of real numbers, $(x, y)$ where $x$ and $y$ are between zero and unity, including zero. Then count the number of pairs that satisfy $x^2 + y^2 < 1$. The ratio of pairs, $x^2 + y^2 < 1$ divided by $n$ will approach $\pi$ with certainty, given enough points.
Therefore, there is at least an uncountably infinite number of ways to generate $\pi$, since each sequence of pairs contribute to one way of computing $\pi$. Furthermore, each method is truely randomized as was previously stated.
My point in mentioning this exercise is that it is very easy to compute a definite result from truely random sequences
Finally, I can put goatse.cx and tubgirl in the flash memory and set up a tiny httpd. I believe that I can put one of these into the professor's office and sustain the goatse.cx community indefinitely. My life is complete.
Bias and hypocrisy are valid if used to promote freedom. There is a very real reason why our founding fathers reinforced the rights of criminals to sap resources from the government. The criminal justice system was set up with one result being that the rights of criminals are respected to the extent that they can rape their victims' friends and families with their legal maneuvering. This implies that our founding fathers were biased toward crime. This also implies that they were hypocrites in that they both supported crime while placing the rule of law above all else. They supported crime by giving the criminals the incentive to commit crime because their system was similar to a bargain system where you can trade a punishment for the priveledge to do anything prohibited by law.
If you say that that bias toward the criminal is wrong, then I surely hope that you end up in a legal system where these right are not respected and you are accused of a crime.
We should be biased against the Patriot act even if our worries are not supported by fact. I claim that even one fault of the law that is set against freedom should warrant serious review of its merit. Also, merit is determined by purpose and result in the case of this law, and since it only oppresses and put the deaths of our soldiers in vain (because they defended freedom), this law is without merit.
Yes, exactly. If I hire you to do a job, and you had the ability to harm me, I sure as hell can fire you on the spot (with real fire).
Government exists only because citizens allow it to exist. Furthermore, citizens have every right to demand anything from government, as well as acting on these demands. If the government has the ability to harm citizens in any way, and we citizens do not approve of it, then the only thing that matters is the rights of the citizens, not the rights of the government.
Back to your original analogy. If I was your boss and creator and you had the ability to look funny at me, I have every right to kill you with vengence. Happy with that?
The government does not have the power to abuse citizens (or non-citizens). The law (should) prohibit any abuses whatsoever. It is perfectly possible for a system to exist where powers are limited such that it becomes impossible for abuses to occur. To think that such a system is impossible would make one a disbeliever of freedom. I am deeply disturbed by the existance of such individuals who do not believe in the concept of freedom.
You, sir, must not believe in freedom from your rhetoric you spew. It is my firm belief that those who are against a concept should be separated from the said concept. You clearly believe that systems where abuses are impossible do not exist. Therefore, you do not belong in a system where abuses are non-existant, ever.
One reason for human existance is for all people to have the freedom that they are naturally given. You do not believe that that is a goal that can be achieved, even though I will not justify this assertion here. You believe that we must always make do with whatever reality gives us. Your lack of faith also disturbs me.
As for the term "anarchist" being thrown around as if it were equivalent to "atheist", I say that those who dismiss anarchism are hypocrites. All man made law is based on natural law. Anarchism is the assertion that natural law is superior to all man made law in every circumstance. To say that anarchism is contradictory to freedom (not that I'm asserting that you said that) would make one a hypocrite, since rights and freedom come naturally.
Add to this the fact that comments are never compiled and you can say that comments can be anything related to the executed instructions besides the instructions themselves. That being said, it is very important to let developers (yourself, coworkers, and future developers) of the code have the ideas you had when you were writing the original code in the first place.
An extreme extension of your statement would be that the instructions for the machine have less gravity than the instructions for the developers of the program. I myself am of the school of thought that consider machine compiled code to be cheap, and expendable. What I consider to be most important are the ideas that lead to the construction of the machine compiled code.
These ideas should be very well developed, verified, and validated. Only after that will I begin implementing the ideas into instructions the machine can execute. It is my belief that as the program becomes more useful, it should also be less dependent on the platforms on which it was built for.
In summary, I believe that a piece of code should always include the original ideas about its purpose, function, requirements, and possibly history somewhere. To add to this, the developer should be able to easily extract this information.
This might sound too removed from the "real world" but as you will see very soon, I will give a perspective that is more practical than what I will assume to be a procedure used in a lot of development groups.
Every function must have an expectation specification that defines what the mapping of the said function is. The expectation specification must also define the domain of the function as well as the co-domain. Whatever variables that unchanged, up to an isomorphism, by the mapping can be excluded from both the domain and co-domain.
The expectation specification defines a Platonic object that is given an element from the domain and maps it to an element in the co-domain. The two important points here are that the specification is definite and that it is Platonic.
We never ever destroy an expectation specification. This point can not be stressed enough. An expectation specification defines everything about a function. If one were to destroy an expectation specification, then the associated function must never be reused. Therefore, one must never destroy an expectation specification.
We will now discuss the practical formulation of an expectation specification of a function. Each function accepts a subset of the entire system state and maps it to a new subset of the system state. One can give any isomorphism of an element of the domain. The isomorphism and the function makes the general form of the function become g^{-1} (f(g(x)). Here, f is the function and g is an isomorphism. Note that we have never mentioned how we should represent the mapping, domain, or co-domain or elements of the latter two.
One can assume that the result of the mapping will replace the element from the domain in most practical computer installations.
We have established that a function is defined by an expectation specification that is Platonic. This Platonic object is what developers will strive to emulate in any implementation of a function. Notice now that we have invoked the concept of an implementation. An implementation must never take precedence over the specification in the minds of developers. One function can have many implementations. Furthermore, a function can exist as an expectation specification with the specification represented somehow. Note, however, that an implementation is almost meaningless without a specification.
In conclusion, the specification is the function. A function may adopt various implementations for any number of reasons. The important point is that when one develops a function, it must endure. It might be used or kept somewhere, but a function must never be destroyed or changed.
With regards to the beginning statement, one must never omit the Platonic function. A very common mistake made by a lot of developers is the destruction of specifications. While their intentions might be benign, even a slightest change in a function must always lead to a branch into a new function. One can call the new function anything in the implementation language, and in a lot of situations, it is recommended. However the specification must always endure. The strict adoption of the approach where one develops an expectation specification, forbids any destruction of a function, and develops implementations based on the expectation specification, is crucial to the development of any project.
I'll give a shameless plug here. I have a transcript of TeX in C on the Centrinia project design branch. This transcript passed the TRIP test. If anyone wants to look at it, the tarball is avaliable at my web site above. The directory is centrinia/design/base/typesetting/TeX6/. Remember, it is still in design and will not be available in the Centrinia library proper for a while. One of the goals for the transcription is to reimplement the memory system. Another goal is to allow for Unicode. The other and broader goals are to speed up the TeX file compilation process and to generalize anything that I can. I serously doubt that it would be possible to write a specification for the TeX language but if I have the time, resources, and the labor, I would get somene to rewrite the entire TeX system based on defining specifications isomorphic to the WEB file definitions (even though the definitions are not very definite). In summary, an unstable open source TeX engine written in C that passed the TRIP test is available.
Give me the lowest integral x such that $1.0*10^x will suffice to buy the Alpha, the PA-RISC, HP-UX, and Tru64 from HP. When then next bubble expands with me in the center, I would buy these four technologies from HP, Open Source the two operating systems, and give everyone the rights to implement the two architectures for free. That would be my act of kindness.
Seriously, I am very curious as to how much these four techonologies are worth to HP. I truely hope someone with the resources would buy back the Alpha at the very least.
The good news about HP's actions is that maybe if their "farm" gets reposessed, HP would be desparate enough to sell off these technologies for a lower x. Just a thought
When they make something on par with Alien, Aliens, or Event Horizon. Aliens was part of what Doom was based on. In fact, Doom originally used an Aliens license.
The next time I go to a horror or horror action film, I want to be deeply disturbed. The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre did that for me. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection both missed it entirely (even though Resurrection did have some xenoeroticism, hehe). We need more original horror films.
Hell and body mutilation tend to be pretty good ways to disturb me. Event Horizon had both. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had both. Aliens a Hellish evironment plus body mutilation. Alien had the latter.
If Doom the movie has people being cut open, internal organs spread out on the operating table, hung by hooks, and surrounded by Satanic symbols, I might watch it. If Doom has wall textures that look like spinal cords, sewn skin, pipes of blood, behemoth demon brains, and decorations based on tortured human bodies, I might watch it. But if it is just another zombie film with the good guys being chased by zombies for the rest of the film, I'll just make my own film to disturb.
In conclusion, H. R. Giger (the man who designed the artwork for Alien) should design the atmosphere for Doom the movie.
A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn't manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. Though (like bit rot) this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years.
Even though some companies depend on the closed nature of the fruits of their research department, they still can not compete with a similar product with a few features less but yet is free and more reliable. This assumes that both products have the same marketing backing.
Most algorithms are still publicly availible. Anyone can implement them, given the necessary experience. There are briliant minds working on implementing features in Open Source software that are similar to those in their commercial counterparts.
The main reason why Open Source software hasn't been used as much in areas such as publishing or the home market is because Closed Source products have already entranched themselves in those niches. If there are superior Open Source products in those areas, and more people are convinced to try them, then the relevant Closed Source based companies will loose a lot of market share.
I almost read that as carpe diem. But that does tie in with the topic. Carpe Diem my friend! By the way, I'm not dyslexic, I just process input out of order.
With all seriousness, die-hard Gentoo users use catalyst to build their own ISO images and then use that as a LiveCD to install Gentoo. Catalyst allows the user to create LiveCDs with anything on it provided that the portage tree has the proper ebuild, or the user can create an overlay filesystem to insert arbitrary files into the LiveCD. Catalyst can allow anyone to install X onto an LiveCD. Even though there is no easy to use installation program in the entire portage tree, you can still provide scripts that will automatically do things such as execute
/usr/portage/scripts bootstrap.sh;<br/> emerge -e system;<br/> exec install-kernel-config;<br/> cd/usr/src/linux;<br/> make bzImage;<br/> make modules'<br/>
This script is ran after the user has created and mounted the filesystem.
The user can also just create a custom LiveCD with specific applications for a specific purpose. For example, the user can theoretically make a LiveDVD with Unreal Tournament 2004 on it and distribute it to players in a LAN party.
I'm currently working to create a LiveCD that I can use to make other LiveCDs using crossdev. I have already created a reiser4 LiveCD that I used to build my system almost from scratch.
All in all, catalyst is an extremely useful utility for those wanting to create custom Gentoo installations.
I'm curious as to rather or not there are any existing applications that allow for public key encryption of IRC traffic. It shouldn't be too difficult to have the regulars in a channel or room all use the said application. This application would probabily spam the room with unreadible junk from the viewpoint of anyone without a relevant private key but it would allow for secure communication in a chat area. If there is no such application, perhaps I should write one.
Uhhhhh, the Quadro 4000 and 4400 boards have "128-bit support". The Geforce 6800 has "64-bit support". With the exception of the Quadro 4400 boards, they are already available. Read the specifications on them.
I would gladly buy two nVidia based PNY Quadro FX 4400 cards with a dual Opteron motherboard that supports SLI. I would use these two graphics cards in non-SLI mode most of the time so that they can drive 4 1600x1200 (or 2 3840x2400) screens at the same time, and use SLI only to simulate very detailed environments. I would also buy Matrox QID Pro cards that handle 4 monitors per card, a total of eight monitors. This setup would cost at least $5700 for the video cards alone ($900 for the QID Pro and about $2400 for one Quadro).
Quadros have 128 bit IEEE compliant floating point processors. This translates to extremely precise numerical analysis that occurs in a super-parallel (or doubly super-parallel) platform. I thought I was dreaming when I heard that the GeForce 6800 GPUs had 64 bit floating point processors. Now these Quadros are godsends as I can develop algorithms that have not even dreamed of planning on because of the lack of a parallel architecture that supports the kind of precision I need.
For simulation purposes, I have not worked with much 3D objects (or projections onto 3D space) because of the lack of precision of most desktop cards. With workstation cards, I can finally analyze 3D point sets and the like.
In conclusion, the newer Quadros are definitely worth the money to me.
The PCI Express standard allows for 32x lanes. The nVidia SLI uses two 8x lanes. Wouldn't it be nice if a motherboard supported two (or more) 32x lanes and 32x graphics cards working in parallel? Think ray tracing because at those bandwidths, and the fact that there is a ergonomic limit on how small a pixel on a display can be, one can have the average size of a triangle be smaller than a pixel. This isn't true ray tracing but the effect is there.
On a similar note, are GPUs a good platform for genuine ray tracing?
I like the prebuilt Knoppix CDs. They are very useful, especially when one needs to touch up an installation. What I like more than Knoppix is Gentoo. The main reason why Gentoo in better than Knoppix, in my opinion, is because Gentoo gives me a lot more choices than any other distribution I have encountered. One of the best examples of customization is catalyst. Catalyst is a tool that lets one build Gentoo LiveCDs. All one has to do is build three seed stages, select packages that are appropriate for the LiveCD, build the stage one of the LiveCD, select files to overlay the LiveCD, and build the stage two of the LiveCD. This process will give a Gentoo LiveCD containing anything covered by portage. What is amazing is that these LiveCDs can be just as useful as a Knoppix CD while being optimized for a particular target (I have not tried to use the Intel C/C++ compiler to build any Gentoo distribution... yet). Gentoo supports more platforms than Knoppix. Building a LiveCD takes place on a machine that is compatible with the target. Examples of applications for LiveCDs include: adding features to a Gentoo installation LiveCD that is not covered by any Gentoo Release (I have reiser4 support on my first catalyst generated LiveCD), diskless platform with arbitrary packages (download porn in the lab with specific tools already on the CD), reliability and security testing (include hacking tools in the CD), diskless encryption box (disable the hard drives and purge the physical memory on the way out), demonstration of a software product (with a little more effort, anything can be put on a LiveCD), and having a toolkit in your jewel case, just to name a few uses for custom LiveCDs. Although one can create custom LiveCDs with Linux From Scratch methods, the Gentoo Catalyst is one of the most balanced methods for creating LiveCDs.
I know that your comment is meant to be a ridiculous extreme but I want to bring up an interesting point with regard to it, as the other comment about Tivo like devices doesn't ring the bell hard enough. I say more power to our law makers who pass these kinds of laws. I hope the religious right would pass a law banning sex outside of a marriage and the liberal left ban guns and knives. Laws such as these would accomplish the goal we can not possible accomplish: engage the public in an outcry and completely eliminate the political apathy that still dominate most of the population. I would assume that most people are not aware of this bill at the moment. I would also assume that most people are not aware of most bills being passed through either houses. If such bills become law, and people actually experience the gross crassness of the consequences of these bills, maybe that would help to change the public consciousness to be more aware of corruption in the government and that the government does not serve their interests. In conclusion, more power to our senators. Hard hitting laws against the public will do more to make people aware of problems than discussions ever will. We need action! The senators will incite such action.
Slashdot Mirror
On a related note, in SIGGRAPH 2004, there was a paper that showcased software that can interpret simple gestures and allow an avatar to act accordingly. These gestures are simple doodles on the tablet such as a straight horizontal line (which will cause the avatar to walk forward), a vertical line (where the avatar will jump), a loop (causing the avatar to do a mid-air summersaut), as well as more complex combinations.
Here's a way to generate $\pi / 4$ randomly: pick $n$ pairs of numbers, from a truely random set of real numbers, $(x, y)$ where $x$ and $y$ are between zero and unity, including zero. Then count the number of pairs that satisfy $x^2 + y^2 < 1$. The ratio of pairs, $x^2 + y^2 < 1$ divided by $n$ will approach $\pi$ with certainty, given enough points.
Therefore, there is at least an uncountably infinite number of ways to generate $\pi$, since each sequence of pairs contribute to one way of computing $\pi$. Furthermore, each method is truely randomized as was previously stated.
My point in mentioning this exercise is that it is very easy to compute a definite result from truely random sequences
Finally, I can put goatse.cx and tubgirl in the flash memory and set up a tiny httpd. I believe that I can put one of these into the professor's office and sustain the goatse.cx community indefinitely. My life is complete.
I have your factors of your modulus: F = { f | f in Z and n/f in Z}. :-P
If you say that that bias toward the criminal is wrong, then I surely hope that you end up in a legal system where these right are not respected and you are accused of a crime.
We should be biased against the Patriot act even if our worries are not supported by fact. I claim that even one fault of the law that is set against freedom should warrant serious review of its merit. Also, merit is determined by purpose and result in the case of this law, and since it only oppresses and put the deaths of our soldiers in vain (because they defended freedom), this law is without merit.
Government exists only because citizens allow it to exist. Furthermore, citizens have every right to demand anything from government, as well as acting on these demands. If the government has the ability to harm citizens in any way, and we citizens do not approve of it, then the only thing that matters is the rights of the citizens, not the rights of the government.
Back to your original analogy. If I was your boss and creator and you had the ability to look funny at me, I have every right to kill you with vengence. Happy with that?
You, sir, must not believe in freedom from your rhetoric you spew. It is my firm belief that those who are against a concept should be separated from the said concept. You clearly believe that systems where abuses are impossible do not exist. Therefore, you do not belong in a system where abuses are non-existant, ever.
One reason for human existance is for all people to have the freedom that they are naturally given. You do not believe that that is a goal that can be achieved, even though I will not justify this assertion here. You believe that we must always make do with whatever reality gives us. Your lack of faith also disturbs me.
As for the term "anarchist" being thrown around as if it were equivalent to "atheist", I say that those who dismiss anarchism are hypocrites. All man made law is based on natural law. Anarchism is the assertion that natural law is superior to all man made law in every circumstance. To say that anarchism is contradictory to freedom (not that I'm asserting that you said that) would make one a hypocrite, since rights and freedom come naturally.
An extreme extension of your statement would be that the instructions for the machine have less gravity than the instructions for the developers of the program. I myself am of the school of thought that consider machine compiled code to be cheap, and expendable. What I consider to be most important are the ideas that lead to the construction of the machine compiled code.
These ideas should be very well developed, verified, and validated. Only after that will I begin implementing the ideas into instructions the machine can execute. It is my belief that as the program becomes more useful, it should also be less dependent on the platforms on which it was built for.
In summary, I believe that a piece of code should always include the original ideas about its purpose, function, requirements, and possibly history somewhere. To add to this, the developer should be able to easily extract this information.
This might sound too removed from the "real world" but as you will see very soon, I will give a perspective that is more practical than what I will assume to be a procedure used in a lot of development groups.
Every function must have an expectation specification that defines what the mapping of the said function is. The expectation specification must also define the domain of the function as well as the co-domain. Whatever variables that unchanged, up to an isomorphism, by the mapping can be excluded from both the domain and co-domain.
The expectation specification defines a Platonic object that is given an element from the domain and maps it to an element in the co-domain. The two important points here are that the specification is definite and that it is Platonic.
We never ever destroy an expectation specification. This point can not be stressed enough. An expectation specification defines everything about a function. If one were to destroy an expectation specification, then the associated function must never be reused. Therefore, one must never destroy an expectation specification.
We will now discuss the practical formulation of an expectation specification of a function. Each function accepts a subset of the entire system state and maps it to a new subset of the system state. One can give any isomorphism of an element of the domain. The isomorphism and the function makes the general form of the function become g^{-1} (f(g(x)). Here, f is the function and g is an isomorphism. Note that we have never mentioned how we should represent the mapping, domain, or co-domain or elements of the latter two.
One can assume that the result of the mapping will replace the element from the domain in most practical computer installations.
We have established that a function is defined by an expectation specification that is Platonic. This Platonic object is what developers will strive to emulate in any implementation of a function. Notice now that we have invoked the concept of an implementation. An implementation must never take precedence over the specification in the minds of developers. One function can have many implementations. Furthermore, a function can exist as an expectation specification with the specification represented somehow. Note, however, that an implementation is almost meaningless without a specification.
In conclusion, the specification is the function. A function may adopt various implementations for any number of reasons. The important point is that when one develops a function, it must endure. It might be used or kept somewhere, but a function must never be destroyed or changed.
With regards to the beginning statement, one must never omit the Platonic function. A very common mistake made by a lot of developers is the destruction of specifications. While their intentions might be benign, even a slightest change in a function must always lead to a branch into a new function. One can call the new function anything in the implementation language, and in a lot of situations, it is recommended. However the specification must always endure. The strict adoption of the approach where one develops an expectation specification, forbids any destruction of a function, and develops implementations based on the expectation specification, is crucial to the development of any project.
I'll give a shameless plug here. I have a transcript of TeX in C on the Centrinia project design branch. This transcript passed the TRIP test. If anyone wants to look at it, the tarball is avaliable at my web site above. The directory is centrinia/design/base/typesetting/TeX6/. Remember, it is still in design and will not be available in the Centrinia library proper for a while.
One of the goals for the transcription is to reimplement the memory system. Another goal is to allow for Unicode. The other and broader goals are to speed up the TeX file compilation process and to generalize anything that I can. I serously doubt that it would be possible to write a specification for the TeX language but if I have the time, resources, and the labor, I would get somene to rewrite the entire TeX system based on defining specifications isomorphic to the WEB file definitions (even though the definitions are not very definite).
In summary, an unstable open source TeX engine written in C that passed the TRIP test is available.
All the lead paint can block out the radiation.
Give me the lowest integral x such that $1.0*10^x will suffice to buy the Alpha, the PA-RISC, HP-UX, and Tru64 from HP. When then next bubble expands with me in the center, I would buy these four technologies from HP, Open Source the two operating systems, and give everyone the rights to implement the two architectures for free. That would be my act of kindness.
Seriously, I am very curious as to how much these four techonologies are worth to HP. I truely hope someone with the resources would buy back the Alpha at the very least.
The good news about HP's actions is that maybe if their "farm" gets reposessed, HP would be desparate enough to sell off these technologies for a lower x. Just a thought
When they make something on par with Alien, Aliens, or Event Horizon. Aliens was part of what Doom was based on. In fact, Doom originally used an Aliens license.
The next time I go to a horror or horror action film, I want to be deeply disturbed. The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre did that for me. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection both missed it entirely (even though Resurrection did have some xenoeroticism, hehe). We need more original horror films.
Hell and body mutilation tend to be pretty good ways to disturb me. Event Horizon had both. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had both. Aliens a Hellish evironment plus body mutilation. Alien had the latter.
If Doom the movie has people being cut open, internal organs spread out on the operating table, hung by hooks, and surrounded by Satanic symbols, I might watch it. If Doom has wall textures that look like spinal cords, sewn skin, pipes of blood, behemoth demon brains, and decorations based on tortured human bodies, I might watch it. But if it is just another zombie film with the good guys being chased by zombies for the rest of the film, I'll just make my own film to disturb.
In conclusion, H. R. Giger (the man who designed the artwork for Alien) should design the atmosphere for Doom the movie.
The on-line hacker Jargon File, version 4.1.0
If it takes ten minutes to start up, it also takes five minutes to start up. Sorry to be pedantic.
Even though some companies depend on the closed nature of the fruits of their research department, they still can not compete with a similar product with a few features less but yet is free and more reliable. This assumes that both products have the same marketing backing.
Most algorithms are still publicly availible. Anyone can implement them, given the necessary experience. There are briliant minds working on implementing features in Open Source software that are similar to those in their commercial counterparts.
The main reason why Open Source software hasn't been used as much in areas such as publishing or the home market is because Closed Source products have already entranched themselves in those niches. If there are superior Open Source products in those areas, and more people are convinced to try them, then the relevant Closed Source based companies will loose a lot of market share.
I almost read that as carpe diem. But that does tie in with the topic. Carpe Diem my friend! By the way, I'm not dyslexic, I just process input out of order.
The user can also just create a custom LiveCD with specific applications for a specific purpose. For example, the user can theoretically make a LiveDVD with Unreal Tournament 2004 on it and distribute it to players in a LAN party.
I'm currently working to create a LiveCD that I can use to make other LiveCDs using crossdev. I have already created a reiser4 LiveCD that I used to build my system almost from scratch.
All in all, catalyst is an extremely useful utility for those wanting to create custom Gentoo installations.
I'm curious as to rather or not there are any existing applications that allow for public key encryption of IRC traffic. It shouldn't be too difficult to have the regulars in a channel or room all use the said application. This application would probabily spam the room with unreadible junk from the viewpoint of anyone without a relevant private key but it would allow for secure communication in a chat area. If there is no such application, perhaps I should write one.
Uhhhhh, the Quadro 4000 and 4400 boards have "128-bit support". The Geforce 6800 has "64-bit support". With the exception of the Quadro 4400 boards, they are already available. Read the specifications on them.
I would gladly buy two nVidia based PNY Quadro FX 4400 cards with a dual Opteron motherboard that supports SLI. I would use these two graphics cards in non-SLI mode most of the time so that they can drive 4 1600x1200 (or 2 3840x2400) screens at the same time, and use SLI only to simulate very detailed environments. I would also buy Matrox QID Pro cards that handle 4 monitors per card, a total of eight monitors. This setup would cost at least $5700 for the video cards alone ($900 for the QID Pro and about $2400 for one Quadro).
Quadros have 128 bit IEEE compliant floating point processors. This translates to extremely precise numerical analysis that occurs in a super-parallel (or doubly super-parallel) platform. I thought I was dreaming when I heard that the GeForce 6800 GPUs had 64 bit floating point processors. Now these Quadros are godsends as I can develop algorithms that have not even dreamed of planning on because of the lack of a parallel architecture that supports the kind of precision I need.
For simulation purposes, I have not worked with much 3D objects (or projections onto 3D space) because of the lack of precision of most desktop cards. With workstation cards, I can finally analyze 3D point sets and the like.
In conclusion, the newer Quadros are definitely worth the money to me.
The PCI Express standard allows for 32x lanes. The nVidia SLI uses two 8x lanes. Wouldn't it be nice if a motherboard supported two (or more) 32x lanes and 32x graphics cards working in parallel? Think ray tracing because at those bandwidths, and the fact that there is a ergonomic limit on how small a pixel on a display can be, one can have the average size of a triangle be smaller than a pixel. This isn't true ray tracing but the effect is there.
On a similar note, are GPUs a good platform for genuine ray tracing?
It costs $99 if you are part of any educational institution.
I like the prebuilt Knoppix CDs. They are very useful, especially when one needs to touch up an installation. What I like more than Knoppix is Gentoo. The main reason why Gentoo in better than Knoppix, in my opinion, is because Gentoo gives me a lot more choices than any other distribution I have encountered. One of the best examples of customization is catalyst. Catalyst is a tool that lets one build Gentoo LiveCDs. All one has to do is build three seed stages, select packages that are appropriate for the LiveCD, build the stage one of the LiveCD, select files to overlay the LiveCD, and build the stage two of the LiveCD. This process will give a Gentoo LiveCD containing anything covered by portage. What is amazing is that these LiveCDs can be just as useful as a Knoppix CD while being optimized for a particular target (I have not tried to use the Intel C/C++ compiler to build any Gentoo distribution ... yet). Gentoo supports more platforms than Knoppix. Building a LiveCD takes place on a machine that is compatible with the target. Examples of applications for LiveCDs include: adding features to a Gentoo installation LiveCD that is not covered by any Gentoo Release (I have reiser4 support on my first catalyst generated LiveCD), diskless platform with arbitrary packages (download porn in the lab with specific tools already on the CD), reliability and security testing (include hacking tools in the CD), diskless encryption box (disable the hard drives and purge the physical memory on the way out), demonstration of a software product (with a little more effort, anything can be put on a LiveCD), and having a toolkit in your jewel case, just to name a few uses for custom LiveCDs. Although one can create custom LiveCDs with Linux From Scratch methods, the Gentoo Catalyst is one of the most balanced methods for creating LiveCDs.
I know that your comment is meant to be a ridiculous extreme but I want to bring up an interesting point with regard to it, as the other comment about Tivo like devices doesn't ring the bell hard enough. I say more power to our law makers who pass these kinds of laws. I hope the religious right would pass a law banning sex outside of a marriage and the liberal left ban guns and knives. Laws such as these would accomplish the goal we can not possible accomplish: engage the public in an outcry and completely eliminate the political apathy that still dominate most of the population. I would assume that most people are not aware of this bill at the moment. I would also assume that most people are not aware of most bills being passed through either houses. If such bills become law, and people actually experience the gross crassness of the consequences of these bills, maybe that would help to change the public consciousness to be more aware of corruption in the government and that the government does not serve their interests. In conclusion, more power to our senators. Hard hitting laws against the public will do more to make people aware of problems than discussions ever will. We need action! The senators will incite such action.