It is true that there have been many games written that allow for multiple back-end renderers (one of the other posters gave a good example with UT; IIRC, Half Life 1 also allowed both D3D and OpenGL back-ends).
One point I haven't seen raised yet is shaders. Real-time shaders are a "new" technology (relatively speaking), and now represent a large portion of the effort that goes into game development. Shaders are also largely incompatible across platforms; nvidia's Cg works on several platforms, but (if I'm not mistaken) is tied to nvidia hardware. GLSL is tied to OpenGL.
Before shaders, it was possible to abstract the details of the underlying rendering architecture. Do shaders upset the equation? Is it no longer practical to maintain cross-platform capabilities?
FYI - here's two examples of case-insensitive filesystems available for UNIX systems:
Last time I checked, IBM's JFS can operate in a "case preserving" mode (the closest you can get to case-insensitive operation and still preserve basic UNIX-like concepts... There's a better explanation at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-preserving). JFS is available on Linux, AIX, and OS/2. I think that the case-preserving option exists for backward-compatibility with OS/2. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Journaled_File_Sy stem_2_(JFS2)
Though the magic of motion sensing Wiimote technology, you can shake your fist at Those Punk Kids by shaking your fist at Those Punk Kids! It's so realistic!
I don't mean to be pedantic, but you mean "earth" or "ground", not neutral. See http://sound.westhost.com/psu-wiring.htm#4.0 (although I'm sure that there are more complete articles out there on the subject).
Gates' current attitude toward hobbyists is somewhat ironic, given his origins in the industry. I'm not just talking about Linux; this article concerns Windows-using hobbyists.
There are worse offenders in the compiler market than gcc. MS's Visual C++ is far more permissive than gcc when it comes to "standards". For example, vc uses the ancient c++ scoping rules (circa 1995-ish) and will gleefully compile the following:
void somefunc(void) { for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) { } i = 23; }
What's worse is that you *have* to follow their archaic scoping rules... the following *will not* compile with vc:
void somefunc(void) { for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) { } for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) { } }
VC claims that the variable 'i' is declared twice.
There are many more examples. Here's another code snippet that vc will compile, but is not standard:
enum MyEnum { FOO, BAR };
void somefunc(void) { whatever = MyEnum::FOO; }
The problem is that the c++ standard states that enums place their contents in the scope level immediately above their own, *not* in a separate scope (this is a holdover from c). You can't reference the contents of an enum like you would any other name space, ie 'MyEnum::FOO' should be simply 'FOO'.
I'm sure there are many many more examples, but who cares? No one will ever read this comment anyway.
The linux plugin doesn't happen to work. At all. I even d/led the.swf to my hd, and all I get is a blank white page. It's ironic; all of the annoying flash-based advertisements work, but when I actually want to view something worthwhile that uses flash...
I loaded up slashdot while waiting for aqsis to compile. Aqsis is a renderman-compliant open source renderer. Kinda like bmrt. I'm testing it out, and hope to use it for a shaders-related assignment for the comp. graph. course I'm taking.
My point is that you don't have to shell out $25,000 if you just want to mess around with renderman.
I just tried out a simple test. I held up my TV's remote to my Logitech optical mouse's bottom and held down some of the buttons. Sure enough, the on-screen cursor started jumping in a particular direction. Looks like IR works fine. Kewl, huh?
A company I once worked for (as an intern) was in the business of what's called "train control" software. Briefly, it's the software that dispatchers use to monitor the status of the switches, the position of all the trains being tracked by the system, etc. One of the features of the system is to provide early-warning of potential collisions. Well, the system is quite reliable (having been in service, in one form or another, since the 70's). However, there have been some accidents.
Once such accident, in Mexico, was caused by an unexpected combination of several simultaneous failures. One day, for some reason, one of the servers needed to be reset. At the same time, two freight trains were stopped at a switch, in the process of what's called a "pass," where one train turns off onto a side track to let the other train pass by on the main track. Long story short, the status bits of the switch got lost during the server reset (there is a provision for restoring track states when the backup servers take over, but it didn't work for some reason). After asking if the track was clear, the driver for train1 recieved a green light from the dispatch office. The dispatcher, not knowing that train2 hadn't cleared the switch yet, figured everything was ok. The trains collided at very low speed, and not head-on, but nonetheless the collision cost the rail line several million in equipment and downtime. No one was hurt.
The lesson: When writing bullet-proof software, check every possible condition! More extensive field testing would have caught the failover bug.
You're right... Cathy probably gets this question all the time.
I'll be more specific: I would like to know more about the creative process behind the show. What was the target audience? How were the original contestants selected? Did it turn out how it was planned? That sort of thing.
It might be of interest to note that, during the 1970's, the average pay of the worker rose faster than that of the CEOs. The gap between the two has been growing apart at an exponential rate starting in the 1980's. At least, that's what they tell me in my Senior Seminar class.
Slashdot Mirror
Must be crazy UK-math. No wonder their banks are going under. :)
It is true that there have been many games written that allow for multiple back-end renderers (one of the other posters gave a good example with UT; IIRC, Half Life 1 also allowed both D3D and OpenGL back-ends).
One point I haven't seen raised yet is shaders. Real-time shaders are a "new" technology (relatively speaking), and now represent a large portion of the effort that goes into game development. Shaders are also largely incompatible across platforms; nvidia's Cg works on several platforms, but (if I'm not mistaken) is tied to nvidia hardware. GLSL is tied to OpenGL.
Before shaders, it was possible to abstract the details of the underlying rendering architecture. Do shaders upset the equation? Is it no longer practical to maintain cross-platform capabilities?
It seems unlikely that Valve would go in this direction. Valve's founders are ex-Microsoft employees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation
FYI - here's two examples of case-insensitive filesystems available for UNIX systems:
y stem_2_(JFS2)
Last time I checked, IBM's JFS can operate in a "case preserving" mode (the closest you can get to case-insensitive operation and still preserve basic UNIX-like concepts... There's a better explanation at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-preserving). JFS is available on Linux, AIX, and OS/2. I think that the case-preserving option exists for backward-compatibility with OS/2. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Journaled_File_S
Also, Apple's HFS-Plus is "case preserving", and is available on OSX and (I think) Linux. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HFS_Plus
Though the magic of motion sensing Wiimote technology, you can shake your fist at Those Punk Kids by shaking your fist at Those Punk Kids! It's so realistic!
I don't mean to be pedantic, but you mean "earth" or "ground", not neutral. See http://sound.westhost.com/psu-wiring.htm#4.0 (although I'm sure that there are more complete articles out there on the subject).
Gates' current attitude toward hobbyists is somewhat ironic, given his origins in the industry. I'm not just talking about Linux; this article concerns Windows-using hobbyists.
...switch to a system that doesn't have such horrible security.
A PowerPC CPU and an ATI GPU? Yawn... it's been done before. Wake me up when the PS3 is out.
It's a human head, with the top opened up, exposing its tasty innards. Coincidence?
Page A7 of the April 4 2004 edition of the St. Louis Dispatch.
Oh, and here's the link:
"This is a must": Bel-Ridge threatens officers who don't write enough tickets
How's that foot taste?
There are worse offenders in the compiler market than gcc. MS's Visual C++ is far more permissive than gcc when it comes to "standards". For example, vc uses the ancient c++ scoping rules (circa 1995-ish) and will gleefully compile the following:
void somefunc(void) {
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
i = 23;
}
What's worse is that you *have* to follow their archaic scoping rules... the following *will not* compile with vc:
void somefunc(void) {
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
}
VC claims that the variable 'i' is declared twice.
There are many more examples. Here's another code snippet that vc will compile, but is not standard:
enum MyEnum {
FOO,
BAR
};
void somefunc(void) {
whatever = MyEnum::FOO;
}
The problem is that the c++ standard states that enums place their contents in the scope level immediately above their own, *not* in a separate scope (this is a holdover from c). You can't reference the contents of an enum like you would any other name space, ie 'MyEnum::FOO' should be simply 'FOO'.
I'm sure there are many many more examples, but who cares? No one will ever read this comment anyway.
You must be kidding. I recently switched from a Matrox card to an nvidia. The nvidia is one of the slowest 2d video cards I have ever seen.
The linux plugin doesn't happen to work. At all. I even d/led the .swf to my hd, and all I get is a blank white page. It's ironic; all of the annoying flash-based advertisements work, but when I actually want to view something worthwhile that uses flash...
Odd coincidence:
I loaded up slashdot while waiting for aqsis to compile. Aqsis is a renderman-compliant open source renderer. Kinda like bmrt. I'm testing it out, and hope to use it for a shaders-related assignment for the comp. graph. course I'm taking.
My point is that you don't have to shell out $25,000 if you just want to mess around with renderman.
I just tried out a simple test. I held up my TV's remote to my Logitech optical mouse's bottom and held down some of the buttons. Sure enough, the on-screen cursor started jumping in a particular direction. Looks like IR works fine. Kewl, huh?
A company I once worked for (as an intern) was in the business of what's called "train control" software. Briefly, it's the software that dispatchers use to monitor the status of the switches, the position of all the trains being tracked by the system, etc. One of the features of the system is to provide early-warning of potential collisions. Well, the system is quite reliable (having been in service, in one form or another, since the 70's). However, there have been some accidents.
Once such accident, in Mexico, was caused by an unexpected combination of several simultaneous failures. One day, for some reason, one of the servers needed to be reset. At the same time, two freight trains were stopped at a switch, in the process of what's called a "pass," where one train turns off onto a side track to let the other train pass by on the main track. Long story short, the status bits of the switch got lost during the server reset (there is a provision for restoring track states when the backup servers take over, but it didn't work for some reason). After asking if the track was clear, the driver for train1 recieved a green light from the dispatch office. The dispatcher, not knowing that train2 hadn't cleared the switch yet, figured everything was ok. The trains collided at very low speed, and not head-on, but nonetheless the collision cost the rail line several million in equipment and downtime. No one was hurt.
The lesson: When writing bullet-proof software, check every possible condition! More extensive field testing would have caught the failover bug.
You're right... Cathy probably gets this question all the time.
I'll be more specific: I would like to know more about the creative process behind the show. What was the target audience? How were the original contestants selected? Did it turn out how it was planned? That sort of thing.
JYW is truly a bizarre idea... How did you come up with it?
What was your reason for leaving JYW? Was there a specific reason, or was it just time to move on?
It might be of interest to note that, during the 1970's, the average pay of the worker rose faster than that of the CEOs. The gap between the two has been growing apart at an exponential rate starting in the 1980's. At least, that's what they tell me in my Senior Seminar class.