oh, to be sure, there is plenty of "me-too" in the FPS genre, but Spear got cooked up after people started demolishing the many levels for Wolf3D and they demanded more content. same with Doom2. There was added content that made it very enjoyable.
I think we could have done without quake 2, except that by releasing it, graphics and the technology behind FPS games took a step up, allowing quake 3 to reach the heights that it did.
I think that there's not a big problem with games that are mostly rehashes, so long as there is progress towards something better down the line. although, personally, I think that vehicular combat should have entered the UT series at the 2003 mark, at least.
Tribes was doing it probably around the same time UT was released.
I just look forward to the evolutionary process of gaming, that way when there's something new and groundbreaking, it's REALLY amazing.
when you played a shooter once, you played them all.
well, that's not really fair. while it's true that games fall into patterns, it wasn't originally because of any foolish marketing scheme, it was because they were valid platforms to progress from.
take id, for example. they progressed from a cartoony shooter (Wolf3D) to a dark atomosphere (Doom) to an arcade team-combat game (Quake 3 Team arena). they vary pretty widely and give a good deal to the genre.
it's the same with any other genre, really. you have some games that innovate and are forever benchmarks. you have other games that are extentions of those. and you have those that are cheap imitations, hungry for the bucks.
I don't see how insightfull and brilliant should be used in the same sentence with Dvorak. In an article about spyware, the man admitted that running AdAware found (IIRC) OVER 100 PROCESSES!
Anyone that manages to get themselves that badly infested AND NOT NOTICE IT untill running a malware removal app is clearly not someone that the computer world should take seriously.
The man simply doesn't know what he's talking about.
it's been awhile since I saw it, but I thought there were 3 suns in the galaxy that Pitch Black took place in. which only complicates the math involved, I would think.
I think this is one of those situations where someone came up with a plausible theory and then it was altered to better fit the story. In other words, this mathematical proof ends up as "false".
because, despite their hubris, Lucasarts doesn't give a shit about producing things that fit in the Star Wars universe, they just want to make cash.
I suppose that because it takes place during the original trilogy, they can just pit the rebels against the imperials all over the planet, but it'll probably be just as rich in interesting terrain as tatooine. (ie. it'll be very plain and disgustingly boring, but icey.)
your body requires water to transport sugar molecules through cell walls, on a one for one, basis. so, sugar will take water away from other tasks. it won't remove it from your body, but it will inhibit hydration.
not to say you don't know what you're talking about or anything, but I'm wondering if it would really take that long if it was your job to play and you could and in fact, had to play with a guaranteed group of ~10 people for 12 hours a day or more.
I'll bet not having to search for a party and playing for at least 72 hours a week would speed up the process.
this is all assuming that the grandparent wasn't full of shit, of course.
even assuming you're 100% spot on, it only takes one code ninja genius to point out fatal flaws and get it fixed. so even if a majority of the OSS community is a bunch of bone-heads, the one that knows what he's doing is more than enough to make it worth doing.
there's less assurance than that about salaried coders, simply because the company in question cannot logistically interview tens of thousands of applicants to fill just one position.
the open source community has its source code open for review so that any flaws can be found and fixed, by the maximum number of people.
cisco has a reputation of excellence, however, their code has not yet stood up to the scrutiny of tens of thousands of people, yet. the possibility of them finding *something* exploitable is very much there.
slashdot users would probably try and hang themselves with their mice
I use a trackball, you insensitive clod!
Re:DRM doesn't happen at the codec level
on
XVID 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
amazingly enough, XVID's popularity is pretty high up there. anyone doing high-quality video with the intention of releasing it online is virtually guaranteed to do it in either XVID or DIVX. with the miserable DIVX 5 release, I've become an XVID convert.
I do music videos and various odd things and I have a good number of friends that also work with video on a frequent basis, with varying levels of seriousness; from a recreational video maker to a professional lighting tech. there's not a single one that doesn't use DIVX, XVID or WMV9, and those that use WMV9 and DIVX are rapidly dropping off in favor of XVID.
In my personal expierience, it encodes a little faster than DIVX and significantly faster than WMV9, as well as providing better quality (less blockiness than either) when set side-by-side.
There are only a few good mpeg4 codecs out there and DIVX and XVID are at the top. factor in that the DIVX site is misleading and seemingly does not give the option to install without spyware, many people are turning to XVID. that it's open-source is a plus for me, but the big reason I use it is because it's simply the best out there for my needs. and judging from the amount of times I see XVID in video release groups online, other people think so, too.
Autogyros are often regarded by fixed-wing aircraft pilots as "dangerously unstable", which is certainly true if one tries to fly a autogyro using fixed-wing principles. Piloted properly, a autogyro is slightly safer than a fixed-wing aircraft because it cannot stall. A "stall" does not mean an engine-out event, it means a fixed wing aircraft is travelling too slowly for the wings to produce lift. Since the rotor of a autogyro is always spinning, it cannot stall. If forward airspeed becomes zero, the autogyro will slowly drift to the ground, rotor still spinning. A vertical landing in this manner will not critically damage most autogyros.
One weakness in the autogyro is pitch instability (pitch is the tilting up or down of the craft as viewed from the front or the back). Pitch instability is a problem because autogyros cannot handle negative-gee forces (positive-gee forces push people into their seats; negative-gee forces make people float out of them, such as driving down a steep hill at high speed in an automobile). Negative-gee forces "unload the rotor". A flying autogyro hangs from the rotor much like an object hung from a string. As long as the plane is hanging from the rotor, stability is maintained. The instant zero or negative-gees are introduced, rotor speed begins to decay and the gyroscopic forces stabilizing the plane are lost.
Negative-gees are usually caused by Pilot-Induced Oscillation, or PIO. PIO happens when a pilot adjusts his pitch too much too quickly, then makes a countering control input to bring the pitch back. The countering input often overcompensates, and the autogyro begins to buck like a bronco. This is most likely at high engine throttle settings. If the pilot continues to fight the plane, the rotor (which is flexible) usually flops down and strikes the spinning propeller, which destroys both and sends the autogyro into an uncontrolled fall. The way to avoid this during an incipient PIO is to apply gentle backpressure on the stick (to raise pitch) and cut engine power. Note that this is the exact opposite of what fixed-wing pilots are trained to do when in trouble, which has lead to some unfortunate accidents and the autogyro's undeserved reputation for being "dangerous".
Another danger is "bunting over" or a Power Push-Over (PPO). A autogyro's vertical airspeed (climb or sink rate) is directly coupled to airspeed. Increase forward airspeed, increase rate of climb. In order to maintain level flight at high engine throttle settings, the pilot must tilt the rotor forward to translate some of his lift into forward motion. Too much tilt, and the autogyro's overall pitch will aim down towards the ground. When this happens, negative-gees occur, rotor speed drops too low to provide lift, and the autogyro tumbles end-over-end in a sommersault. It is impossible to regain control after a PPO.
Two factors lead to pitch instability: no or too small horizontal stabilizers (h-stabs) and high thrustline engine placement. A large h-stab, ideally in the prop wash (where the propeller blows on it) will reduce the tendency of a autogyro to over-pitch as a result of improper control input.
If the engine thrustline in a pusher-type autogyro is high -- meaning the axis of propeller power is above the center of gravity for the aircraft -- the autogyro tends to pitch forward under sudden power application (see PPOs above, as for why this is Bad). (Unfortunately, Benson-type autogyros have a notably high thrustline.) If the thrustline is low, the autogyro tends to pitch up under sudden power application, which is harmless. It's difficult to have a low thrustline without a really tall autogyro (such as a "Dominator" style) however, so most autogyro designs simply try to get the thrustline as low as possible though still being slightly abo
of course, the average SUV driver never tows anything and never goes off road or any of the other useful features of it. at most, they'd cram the luggage rack full of groceries.
GTA 1 was for the PS1, man. it wasn't a killer app, although it was a fun game. I think you're confusing it with GTA3, which was a giant step for gaming.
intellectuals are not immune to herd mentality, unfortunately. I don't really have enough hands on knowledge of China to really make much of a comment other than to say that world politics are almost never black and white.
your commentary on china only futher buttresses that idea in my head.
it's not quite useless. the reason why people being straight isn't typically mentioned is because that's our society's norm. you don't have to say that someone was straight, because it's implied by not stating otherwise.
however, Turing was gay. it wouldn't be telling the full story if the fact wasn't at least mentioned (which is was) in the article.
same sort of thing goes for anything that someone would want to write about George Washington Carver. as a black, he's a minority, and it needs to be implicitly stated that his was(which it also, typically is)
it's an important detail which can't be left out, but you're right that it's not really the most important part when talking about scientific contributions.
Slashdot Mirror
he posted a screenshot with a comment about its goofiness. he's most certainly on topic.
I think we could have done without quake 2, except that by releasing it, graphics and the technology behind FPS games took a step up, allowing quake 3 to reach the heights that it did.
I think that there's not a big problem with games that are mostly rehashes, so long as there is progress towards something better down the line. although, personally, I think that vehicular combat should have entered the UT series at the 2003 mark, at least.
Tribes was doing it probably around the same time UT was released.
I just look forward to the evolutionary process of gaming, that way when there's something new and groundbreaking, it's REALLY amazing.
well, that's not really fair. while it's true that games fall into patterns, it wasn't originally because of any foolish marketing scheme, it was because they were valid platforms to progress from.
take id, for example. they progressed from a cartoony shooter (Wolf3D) to a dark atomosphere (Doom) to an arcade team-combat game (Quake 3 Team arena). they vary pretty widely and give a good deal to the genre.
it's the same with any other genre, really. you have some games that innovate and are forever benchmarks. you have other games that are extentions of those. and you have those that are cheap imitations, hungry for the bucks.
Anyone that manages to get themselves that badly infested AND NOT NOTICE IT untill running a malware removal app is clearly not someone that the computer world should take seriously.
The man simply doesn't know what he's talking about.
I think this is one of those situations where someone came up with a plausible theory and then it was altered to better fit the story. In other words, this mathematical proof ends up as "false".
Good movie, though.
I suppose that because it takes place during the original trilogy, they can just pit the rebels against the imperials all over the planet, but it'll probably be just as rich in interesting terrain as tatooine. (ie. it'll be very plain and disgustingly boring, but icey.)
chain smoking? that's when you fry a Beowulf cluster, right?
nothing's cooler to a kid than doing the wrong thing.
your body requires water to transport sugar molecules through cell walls, on a one for one, basis. so, sugar will take water away from other tasks. it won't remove it from your body, but it will inhibit hydration.
they probably don't post on slashdot, either.
that sounds like a project that would suck. well, maybe it would blow. I guess it would depend on who was controlling it.
you just killed my inner child!
what are you talking about? microsoft fucks people on a daily basis.
I'll bet not having to search for a party and playing for at least 72 hours a week would speed up the process.
this is all assuming that the grandparent wasn't full of shit, of course.
there's less assurance than that about salaried coders, simply because the company in question cannot logistically interview tens of thousands of applicants to fill just one position.
cisco has a reputation of excellence, however, their code has not yet stood up to the scrutiny of tens of thousands of people, yet. the possibility of them finding *something* exploitable is very much there.
I use a trackball, you insensitive clod!
I do music videos and various odd things and I have a good number of friends that also work with video on a frequent basis, with varying levels of seriousness; from a recreational video maker to a professional lighting tech. there's not a single one that doesn't use DIVX, XVID or WMV9, and those that use WMV9 and DIVX are rapidly dropping off in favor of XVID.
In my personal expierience, it encodes a little faster than DIVX and significantly faster than WMV9, as well as providing better quality (less blockiness than either) when set side-by-side.
There are only a few good mpeg4 codecs out there and DIVX and XVID are at the top. factor in that the DIVX site is misleading and seemingly does not give the option to install without spyware, many people are turning to XVID. that it's open-source is a plus for me, but the big reason I use it is because it's simply the best out there for my needs. and judging from the amount of times I see XVID in video release groups online, other people think so, too.
here, text from the wikipedia
Flight characteristics
Autogyros are often regarded by fixed-wing aircraft pilots as "dangerously unstable", which is certainly true if one tries to fly a autogyro using fixed-wing principles. Piloted properly, a autogyro is slightly safer than a fixed-wing aircraft because it cannot stall. A "stall" does not mean an engine-out event, it means a fixed wing aircraft is travelling too slowly for the wings to produce lift. Since the rotor of a autogyro is always spinning, it cannot stall. If forward airspeed becomes zero, the autogyro will slowly drift to the ground, rotor still spinning. A vertical landing in this manner will not critically damage most autogyros.
One weakness in the autogyro is pitch instability (pitch is the tilting up or down of the craft as viewed from the front or the back). Pitch instability is a problem because autogyros cannot handle negative-gee forces (positive-gee forces push people into their seats; negative-gee forces make people float out of them, such as driving down a steep hill at high speed in an automobile). Negative-gee forces "unload the rotor". A flying autogyro hangs from the rotor much like an object hung from a string. As long as the plane is hanging from the rotor, stability is maintained. The instant zero or negative-gees are introduced, rotor speed begins to decay and the gyroscopic forces stabilizing the plane are lost.
Negative-gees are usually caused by Pilot-Induced Oscillation, or PIO. PIO happens when a pilot adjusts his pitch too much too quickly, then makes a countering control input to bring the pitch back. The countering input often overcompensates, and the autogyro begins to buck like a bronco. This is most likely at high engine throttle settings. If the pilot continues to fight the plane, the rotor (which is flexible) usually flops down and strikes the spinning propeller, which destroys both and sends the autogyro into an uncontrolled fall. The way to avoid this during an incipient PIO is to apply gentle backpressure on the stick (to raise pitch) and cut engine power. Note that this is the exact opposite of what fixed-wing pilots are trained to do when in trouble, which has lead to some unfortunate accidents and the autogyro's undeserved reputation for being "dangerous".
Another danger is "bunting over" or a Power Push-Over (PPO). A autogyro's vertical airspeed (climb or sink rate) is directly coupled to airspeed. Increase forward airspeed, increase rate of climb. In order to maintain level flight at high engine throttle settings, the pilot must tilt the rotor forward to translate some of his lift into forward motion. Too much tilt, and the autogyro's overall pitch will aim down towards the ground. When this happens, negative-gees occur, rotor speed drops too low to provide lift, and the autogyro tumbles end-over-end in a sommersault. It is impossible to regain control after a PPO.
Two factors lead to pitch instability: no or too small horizontal stabilizers (h-stabs) and high thrustline engine placement. A large h-stab, ideally in the prop wash (where the propeller blows on it) will reduce the tendency of a autogyro to over-pitch as a result of improper control input.
If the engine thrustline in a pusher-type autogyro is high -- meaning the axis of propeller power is above the center of gravity for the aircraft -- the autogyro tends to pitch forward under sudden power application (see PPOs above, as for why this is Bad). (Unfortunately, Benson-type autogyros have a notably high thrustline.) If the thrustline is low, the autogyro tends to pitch up under sudden power application, which is harmless. It's difficult to have a low thrustline without a really tall autogyro (such as a "Dominator" style) however, so most autogyro designs simply try to get the thrustline as low as possible though still being slightly abo
of course, the average SUV driver never tows anything and never goes off road or any of the other useful features of it. at most, they'd cram the luggage rack full of groceries.
which makes it self-regulating against putting idiots in the air. :D
GTA 1 was for the PS1, man. it wasn't a killer app, although it was a fun game. I think you're confusing it with GTA3, which was a giant step for gaming.
dammit. and me without my mod points. if you don't get a +5 funny, something's wrong.
your commentary on china only futher buttresses that idea in my head.
however, Turing was gay. it wouldn't be telling the full story if the fact wasn't at least mentioned (which is was) in the article.
same sort of thing goes for anything that someone would want to write about George Washington Carver. as a black, he's a minority, and it needs to be implicitly stated that his was(which it also, typically is)
it's an important detail which can't be left out, but you're right that it's not really the most important part when talking about scientific contributions.