Now can someone turn up the original photo that Tim Skelly used for the starfield in Star Castle... The stars are nice, but I'd like to see the actual photo he happened to have in the drawer to pick coordinates.
"Where I live (SF bay area), one of the local NBC afilliates runs 24-hour weather on channel 11-2. It's quite useful."
Am I right then that you end up passing by 11-1 on your way to check the weather? Do you have a better idea whats on NBC because of this even if you don't like the programs?
That's really a shame about the FP performance. My hobby project is ray tracing, and my code is just waiting to be run on parallel hardware. The prefered system would have multiple cores sharing cache, but seperate cache would be fine too. memory is not the bottleneck, so higher GHz and more cores/threads will be very welcome so long as they each have good performance. The code scales well with multiple CPUs as pixels can be rendered in parallel with zero effort - the code was designed for that. As it sits, I'm hoping my Shuttle (SN95G5v2) will support a AMD64x2 shortly.
We're still not up for RT Quake, but interactive (read very jerky 1-2 fps) high-poly scenes are possible today.
The obvious solution is to encrypt the file/document/OSSpackage with a private RSA key. The only way to view it then is to use the public key - which is published just like a MD5 sum.
There are 2 reasons people do this. 1) decryption takes longer than computing a checksum. and 2) this would force everyone to decrypt the file in order to use it. Only paranoid people and those who realize bits get corrupted bother to verify checksums now.
Reliable solutions are entirely available, people just need to start using them. BTW, I'm no expert but I think there are simpler ways than that suggested above.
I figure putting a static display of the 5-day forecast on a HDTV subchannel would be
1) worthwhile
2) attract viewers
3) Low bandwidth and
4) free once they set something up to pull the data periodically from the national weather service.
"They claim that the pants contain teflon, which is in a family of chemicals that can be absorbed through the skin. It is known that this same family of chemicals accumulates in the body, that most Americans have some level of this in their bodies, and that there is research to show that it damages immune systems in other animals."
If that's true, I would hope the maker of Teflon stops its use in clothing before the world over-reacts and bans its use in everything. Teflon is great stuff, but if there is a hazardous use that goes mainstream we may lose it for all uses.
HDTV has the potential to kill cable if the broadcasters would get off their butts. My house is within range of 8 transmitters. Each of those has the option of sending up to 6 subchannels at lower resolution digital. The local Fox station should be carrying Fox-Network, Fox-News, and Fox-Kids on digital but they aren't. PBS should have a kids channel and the regular news/business stuff or maybe carry NASA TV, NOVA and some other stuff and have a science/education subchannel. Someone should run a channel guide on a subchannel - a good one without commercials (people will see your stuff on subch1 just before they "use" you to get the channel listings on subch3. Someone should run 24 hour weather on a subchannel. These extras will get eyeballs and reduce the value of cable.
The potential is huge, but the broadcasters don't seem to get it. They're still sending a single subchannel at full bandwidth to people who have wide screens but can't display all the pixels. More content - even just weather and channel guides would be more valuable to most.
Actually, I was a person who never had cable TV - Not paying $50 per month is exactly the reason I can afford something like a $2000 HDTV. Not buying one yet is another reason I've still got the cash. The poorest people I know (some on welfare) all have cable TV - they let the phone go dark before the cable. Bill collectors use the phone, the TV keeps the kids busy.
You won't need a "free converter" if the manufacturers would integrate the receivers into the TVs and that's exactly what the FCC is mandating. I never did understand why companies don't provide the product people want - half the people with "wide screen" think they're getting HDTV. Oh that's why - they can sell a cheaper product and people will *think* it's what they want.
That said, didn't the courts just decide that the FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate devices? i.e. they can't mandate the broadcast flag, so why should they be able to mandate recievers?
It doesn't really matter, most of them just leave the tuner out entirely and call it a "HDTV Monitor". I'll stick to the HD2000 in my Linux box until things get reasonable. Maybe I'll build the $300 projector described on TomsHardware a while back:-)
Confidence is attractive. Don't confuse arrogance for self confidence. This is how the hot chicks end up with jerks.
"Self-confidence is simply respect and love for who you are."
I'll agree the respect part, but self-love == vanity and is nither confidence or attractive. Keeping a good appearance is part of self respect, checking ones self out in the mirror before having-at-it is the other.
If women could just make better distinctions between these couple things, they could weed out the jerks and not resort to nerds to avoid the A--holes.
I was a college math tutor for a while. Someone had brought their 5th grade daughter to do homework while she (the adult) was working. I saw the daughter doing math with a calculator. She was doing stuff with fractions, and I pointed out that a calculator won't help. She showed me how the newer ones handle fractions just fine. To me, the whole point of elementary school math is to learn how to do math, not how to use a calculator. By adding fractions by hand, you have to really learn how to find a common denominator. Any question about how to do this will become exagerated when you get to algebra and have to find common denominators with variables in them. I contend that calculators have absolutely NO place in K-6 grades.
I had some use for calculators in college. One professor I had (statics class) didn't even expect numeric answers. We had a quiz once that had a pile of sand of a particular shape and density sitting on a (funny shaped?) platform with an arm going down to a pivot against a wall with a rope holding it from tipping over (I think there were more elements to it but I forgot). Problem was: How do you compute the tension in the rope? He made it clear that he wanted you to write down HOW to solve the problem, but you didn't have to provide a numeric answer. For me it was easy: 1) set up integral to find mass of sand - show what to integrate and the limits. 2) set up another thing to find the CG of the sand (again, don't solve). 3) show the expressions needed to solve a system of equations including the tension in the rope. Done. Other students started actually doing integrals and calculations. Some didn't finnish in time (it was like a 20 minute quiz), some got marked down for wrong answers (misused the calculator). I aced it with a couple minutes to spare. I thought it was perfect to illustrate that you knew what we recently covered in statics without having to "do the math". The key is to know what you're supposed to be learning, and not use tools that do it for you.
Using Maxima to solve integrals in my statics class would be OK because it wasn't even required and wouldn't help with the problem at hand. Using calculators that do fractions before you even know algebra is detrimental to your education.
My sister was teaching (grade? 6th? 7th?) and a kid asked her why it was important to learn math if he didn't want to go into a math-related field like engineering. She said something to the effect of "if you don't know math, how will you ever know that people aren't ripping you off?". Apparently that particular answer clicked with him;-)
" The entire submission was a cut-and-paste from the linked article. No credit was given to the original author."
I'm not sure if you're trying (and failing) to be funny or just not very observant. The submission was cut and pasted from a website BY THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR. Doh!
Google, MS, Sun, none of those west coast companies know anything about putting things in cars. That's not to say they can't learn. MS has been trying for years. Sun came once and said a car is just "a browser on wheels" and hasn't been seen since. Now google maps have something to offer, but there is the whole question about how you go after it. You don't just drop by detroit one day and revolutionize the automobile.
Even the SAT radio guys haven't figured out the obvious: They will not really succeed until they get the monthly radio charges included in the lease payment or other financing. People will pay for radio if they don't see it. Perhaps they know this but just don't know how to make the deals happen. Either way, getting into cars is non-trivial. Buying GM or Ford won't work either, if you think so it just shows your ignorance of the industry.
Yeah, you heard it from me first. Apple is going to Intel architecture. IBM and AMD already work together on new process stuff. AMD is fairly cheap for a company that tries to compete with Intel. If IBM wants to maintain any kind of volume production of a modern processor, AMD looks like a great buy. This combination would have the superior x86 chip design AND the capacity to compete with Intel in a significant way. This of course leads to "Dell uses IBM".
From TFA "The motor is revolutionary in that it contains no bulky permanent magnets."
They don't provide much detail, but it sounds like a switched reluctance motor. These have an iron rotor with poles that are attracted to stator coils in succession. They tend to have high torque ripple, but very high torque. A good controller can take the torque ripple out electronically (we've done this where I work) or you can add more poles with different phase to smooth things out. All they've done then is make a really big SR motor. Nothing much to see here really.
Good answers. The reason I asked about the punch button is that it sounds like one of the "everything" items they suggest patenting. Now how would you ever suspect it was done previously in a game featuring a kangaroo wearing a boxing glove? I really think those early game developers were on something. Think of Pengo, Qix, and any number of odd or abstract games. The space has been explored decades ago.
Sold my Kangaroo cab to someone who MAMEed it very nicely. Still got the I,Robot. Never got a Hard Drivin' but it was a favorite at one time;-)
"C# open source running on DirectX, yes, but open source.:-)"
I was trying to be informative. Mentioning World Wind just opens a whole can of worms. I should have said "free software" not "open source". I don't recall the license on World Wind, but it doesn't really matter because it won't run on my Linux box, and they haven't been able to port it yet because of their language/tool choice.
It's a valuable lesson, if you want EVERYONE to be able to use your software (and those guys are kinda bummed out now) you can not use certain things to develop it.
With some 2000 unique titles not counting clones and cheap knockoffs, it's hard to imagine there still exist gameplay elements, scoring methods, objectives, etc that haven't been tried. Don't forget that up to 1984 they tried absolutely everything in arcade games. Not to mention all those Atari, Intellevision, NES, etc games. That said, I'm sure there's something out there that hasn't been done before, but we all know the industry has a very hard time finding those nuggets. Not really an area I'd expect someone to "patent everything".
Trivia question: what was the first arcade game to feature a "punch" button?
How about the first solid-object polygon game? How many years before the 2nd one?
I suspect AMD will lower their prices when they get increased capacity. All AMD64 stuff is produced at 90um on 200mm wafers at a single fab in germany. Dual cores are bigger chips than singles, so they can't just switch over without losing market share. Their deal to outsource some production apparently kicks in early 2006. Later in '06 AMD will ramp the new 65um line using 300mm wafers - in addition to the old 90um fab. So I'd guess 6 to 12 months before dual cores get a significantly reduced price. Intel OTOH has capacity up the 4SS to make whatever they feel like.
I just hope my SN95G5 BIOS gets an update for these.
For those wishing there was an open source equivalent, the flightgear simulator has worldwide scenery produced by the terragear project. Currently the terrain is based on the SRTM stuff from NASA, but I think there are some areas with higher resolution DEMs. Not sure, check it out. I'm also not sure how much geopolitical stuff or roads have been incorporated - their main purpose has been to feed the flight sim. Anyway, people interested a Free Software implementation have something to build on.
Oh, and the guy over at vterrain.org has some ambitious goals related to this type of thing too with lots of links to sources etc...
You know if you could have your own IP address in the global space: you could have your own mail server, people could contact you by VOIP without needing a commercial service to make the connection, the only thing your ISP would be doing is providing a connection to everyone else. IPv6 enables many things that people don't realize because they don't have them yet. The increased address space is a very good thing. You should have been modded "clueless consumer" instead of "funny".
" What is 'personal use' of an item that HAS no other use?"
Personal use primarily means something along the lines of not-for-profit. You can't sell it, and you can't play music or movies in your business establishment. Showing movies on the wall in a bar is not personal use. If you think it's OK as long as you don't charge for it, you'd be mistaken - the bar still benefits by attracting customers because of the movie. Increased beer sales would be an indirect profit. A TV station broadcasting a movie to get eyeballs watching paid commercial advertisements is not personal either. See, there are other uses that are not "personal use". Hopefully you just posted without thinking;-) You've got a brain, please try to use it.
"If we don't protect the few people at the very top of society so that they can continue to rip off the common folk to make billions upon billions of dollars in profits, then by God, the America I know no longer exists."
If you don't protect the people at the top, someone else will come along and replace them - that's a fact. Perhaps you should be happy that the people at the top in America make their money by laying financial traps (i.e. lending money for everything) and entertaining the public. At least their methods are voluntary. You are not obligated to give them your money or pay any attention. Most other forms of screwing the people are far worse and not voluntary. Granted, power corrupts and will eventually tighten the screws. You do need a reality check though. Someone always puts himself in charge - even if he says it's just to protect people from the other guy who wants the position. I rather like living in America, and I usually ignore Hollywood and all the little shits who think they can stick it to the man.
Excuse the self reply. My guess is that it's because they are using Linux in a product. They probably don't want people to interpret their distribution of code implementing their patents under GPL as giving permission to use those patents for other GPLed projects. IANAL, but I suspect there would be at least some merit to such an argument (for other use). By explicitly granting permission to use the patents just for the versions of Linux they want to use, it makes their intent regarding the patents clear.
These aren't the patent rights you're looking for. Nothing to see here, move along.
What if Linux were to fork? Would the "non-Linux" version be able to use the patents? It just doesn't make sense to grant permission to one project when it's under a GPL license. The whole point of the license is that you can do as you like with the code so long as you offer the same freedom with you redistribution of said code. What if some driver uses their patent and someone rips it out and puts that driver into the Hurd? The GPL is supposed to allow that type of thing, granting permission to use a patent for a particular project isn't really playing nice.
Slashdot Mirror
Now can someone turn up the original photo that Tim Skelly used for the starfield in Star Castle... The stars are nice, but I'd like to see the actual photo he happened to have in the drawer to pick coordinates.
Am I right then that you end up passing by 11-1 on your way to check the weather? Do you have a better idea whats on NBC because of this even if you don't like the programs?
That's really a shame about the FP performance. My hobby project is ray tracing, and my code is just waiting to be run on parallel hardware. The prefered system would have multiple cores sharing cache, but seperate cache would be fine too. memory is not the bottleneck, so higher GHz and more cores/threads will be very welcome so long as they each have good performance. The code scales well with multiple CPUs as pixels can be rendered in parallel with zero effort - the code was designed for that. As it sits, I'm hoping my Shuttle (SN95G5v2) will support a AMD64x2 shortly. We're still not up for RT Quake, but interactive (read very jerky 1-2 fps) high-poly scenes are possible today.
There are 2 reasons people do this. 1) decryption takes longer than computing a checksum. and 2) this would force everyone to decrypt the file in order to use it. Only paranoid people and those who realize bits get corrupted bother to verify checksums now.
Reliable solutions are entirely available, people just need to start using them. BTW, I'm no expert but I think there are simpler ways than that suggested above.
1) worthwhile
2) attract viewers
3) Low bandwidth and
4) free once they set something up to pull the data periodically from the national weather service.
And yeah, it would beat TWC for usefullness.
If that's true, I would hope the maker of Teflon stops its use in clothing before the world over-reacts and bans its use in everything. Teflon is great stuff, but if there is a hazardous use that goes mainstream we may lose it for all uses.
The potential is huge, but the broadcasters don't seem to get it. They're still sending a single subchannel at full bandwidth to people who have wide screens but can't display all the pixels. More content - even just weather and channel guides would be more valuable to most.
You won't need a "free converter" if the manufacturers would integrate the receivers into the TVs and that's exactly what the FCC is mandating. I never did understand why companies don't provide the product people want - half the people with "wide screen" think they're getting HDTV. Oh that's why - they can sell a cheaper product and people will *think* it's what they want.
That said, didn't the courts just decide that the FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate devices? i.e. they can't mandate the broadcast flag, so why should they be able to mandate recievers?
It doesn't really matter, most of them just leave the tuner out entirely and call it a "HDTV Monitor". I'll stick to the HD2000 in my Linux box until things get reasonable. Maybe I'll build the $300 projector described on TomsHardware a while back :-)
Confidence is attractive. Don't confuse arrogance for self confidence. This is how the hot chicks end up with jerks.
"Self-confidence is simply respect and love for who you are."
I'll agree the respect part, but self-love == vanity and is nither confidence or attractive. Keeping a good appearance is part of self respect, checking ones self out in the mirror before having-at-it is the other.
If women could just make better distinctions between these couple things, they could weed out the jerks and not resort to nerds to avoid the A--holes.
I had some use for calculators in college. One professor I had (statics class) didn't even expect numeric answers. We had a quiz once that had a pile of sand of a particular shape and density sitting on a (funny shaped?) platform with an arm going down to a pivot against a wall with a rope holding it from tipping over (I think there were more elements to it but I forgot). Problem was: How do you compute the tension in the rope? He made it clear that he wanted you to write down HOW to solve the problem, but you didn't have to provide a numeric answer. For me it was easy: 1) set up integral to find mass of sand - show what to integrate and the limits. 2) set up another thing to find the CG of the sand (again, don't solve). 3) show the expressions needed to solve a system of equations including the tension in the rope. Done. Other students started actually doing integrals and calculations. Some didn't finnish in time (it was like a 20 minute quiz), some got marked down for wrong answers (misused the calculator). I aced it with a couple minutes to spare. I thought it was perfect to illustrate that you knew what we recently covered in statics without having to "do the math". The key is to know what you're supposed to be learning, and not use tools that do it for you.
Using Maxima to solve integrals in my statics class would be OK because it wasn't even required and wouldn't help with the problem at hand. Using calculators that do fractions before you even know algebra is detrimental to your education.
My sister was teaching (grade? 6th? 7th?) and a kid asked her why it was important to learn math if he didn't want to go into a math-related field like engineering. She said something to the effect of "if you don't know math, how will you ever know that people aren't ripping you off?". Apparently that particular answer clicked with him ;-)
I'm not sure if you're trying (and failing) to be funny or just not very observant. The submission was cut and pasted from a website BY THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR. Doh!
Even the SAT radio guys haven't figured out the obvious: They will not really succeed until they get the monthly radio charges included in the lease payment or other financing. People will pay for radio if they don't see it. Perhaps they know this but just don't know how to make the deals happen. Either way, getting into cars is non-trivial. Buying GM or Ford won't work either, if you think so it just shows your ignorance of the industry.
In short, you hate when people verbize stuff.
Yeah, the worlds changing fast lately.
They don't provide much detail, but it sounds like a switched reluctance motor. These have an iron rotor with poles that are attracted to stator coils in succession. They tend to have high torque ripple, but very high torque. A good controller can take the torque ripple out electronically (we've done this where I work) or you can add more poles with different phase to smooth things out. All they've done then is make a really big SR motor. Nothing much to see here really.
Sold my Kangaroo cab to someone who MAMEed it very nicely. Still got the I,Robot. Never got a Hard Drivin' but it was a favorite at one time ;-)
I was trying to be informative. Mentioning World Wind just opens a whole can of worms. I should have said "free software" not "open source". I don't recall the license on World Wind, but it doesn't really matter because it won't run on my Linux box, and they haven't been able to port it yet because of their language/tool choice.
It's a valuable lesson, if you want EVERYONE to be able to use your software (and those guys are kinda bummed out now) you can not use certain things to develop it.
Trivia question: what was the first arcade game to feature a "punch" button?
How about the first solid-object polygon game? How many years before the 2nd one?
I just hope my SN95G5 BIOS gets an update for these.
Oh, and the guy over at vterrain.org has some ambitious goals related to this type of thing too with lots of links to sources etc...
You know if you could have your own IP address in the global space: you could have your own mail server, people could contact you by VOIP without needing a commercial service to make the connection, the only thing your ISP would be doing is providing a connection to everyone else. IPv6 enables many things that people don't realize because they don't have them yet. The increased address space is a very good thing. You should have been modded "clueless consumer" instead of "funny".
Personal use primarily means something along the lines of not-for-profit. You can't sell it, and you can't play music or movies in your business establishment. Showing movies on the wall in a bar is not personal use. If you think it's OK as long as you don't charge for it, you'd be mistaken - the bar still benefits by attracting customers because of the movie. Increased beer sales would be an indirect profit. A TV station broadcasting a movie to get eyeballs watching paid commercial advertisements is not personal either. See, there are other uses that are not "personal use". Hopefully you just posted without thinking ;-) You've got a brain, please try to use it.
If you don't protect the people at the top, someone else will come along and replace them - that's a fact. Perhaps you should be happy that the people at the top in America make their money by laying financial traps (i.e. lending money for everything) and entertaining the public. At least their methods are voluntary. You are not obligated to give them your money or pay any attention. Most other forms of screwing the people are far worse and not voluntary. Granted, power corrupts and will eventually tighten the screws. You do need a reality check though. Someone always puts himself in charge - even if he says it's just to protect people from the other guy who wants the position. I rather like living in America, and I usually ignore Hollywood and all the little shits who think they can stick it to the man.
These aren't the patent rights you're looking for. Nothing to see here, move along.
What if Linux were to fork? Would the "non-Linux" version be able to use the patents? It just doesn't make sense to grant permission to one project when it's under a GPL license. The whole point of the license is that you can do as you like with the code so long as you offer the same freedom with you redistribution of said code. What if some driver uses their patent and someone rips it out and puts that driver into the Hurd? The GPL is supposed to allow that type of thing, granting permission to use a patent for a particular project isn't really playing nice.