This actually sound like a pretty good idea. Hey, I got one too. Perhaps they could just leave out the clothes completely on low end machines?.. come to think of it, I might be playing the next Tomb Raider on my Pentium 133. Half a frame a sec is fine if it gives me half a chance to ogle Lara's buttcrack.
TechTV's X-Play show once had a funny piece of video from a pre-release build of a Tomb Raider game for a console. There was a bug in the camera-angle determination at a certain point that accidently put the camera inside Lara's head, about where the brain should have been. The resulting display proved that Lara's head is indeed hollow.
It's easy to say what you want to do when you have unlimited processor resources. But when you don't, you'd rather your program not crash or totally freeze. Especially in a game environment, throwing the little things overboard first will leave the main gameplay elements in tact and still leave a playable game.
Yeah, it means extra programmer work on the design side because you're going to have to design a "smart version" and a "dumb version" for the effects you want to downgrade. You'll also have to select how you're going to measure system resources, and at what level of resources will the changeover for smart to dumb happen for each element. It's work, but I think it's an investment with a payoff.
The keyword is "graceful degradation". Take away the elements that contribute to the "wow factor" for the power user but the low-power user won't really miss. Background elements are the key thing you should be thinking about, especially ones that'll never have much direct impact on the outcome of game situations.
It's all about raising the spread between your "minimum" and "looks best on" system requirements. You want to get the minimum as close to the floor as possible, while having the high-end features will create great demo installations and really sell your game to the high-end fans. The more people who can enjoy your game, the more copies you'll sell, and therefore the more money you'll make. You remember money, right? It's the whole reason games are written anyway...
There is the problem, you entered into the deal without a clear meeting of the minds as to how you would be compensated. There needs to be a deal as to what work units are going to be counted, and what the value per work unit was going to be.
That kind of heroic technical effort should be admired and respected... when it's not, well, the business could just plain colapse.
Yes, but seeing that he gets along with his brother well enough to hire him, and is willing to consider the business advice of his father, I don't think his family is the kind that's shown on Jerry Springer.
If you marry her without a prenup, she will suddenly get ownership of half of the business. If that's okay with you, then you really don't have a problem. However, if that scares you at all, you need to make it clear that she's being paid as an employee and that's all she's getting out of the company.
However, on the converse, if you make it clear to her that she's getting an ownership interest in the company, she'll have more interest in the quality of the work, and she might be willing to accept lower wages today for the good of the company in the future... since company profits and her own spending money will be very closely related.
The thing about working with your girlfriend is that she's not yet your wife. If the relationship fails, you're not going to just lose her love but also her usefulness as an employee... if you're ready to commit to depending on her on a business level, there should be a ring on her finger. You can never underestimate the importance of the front line secretary, she'll be first person most of your customers deal with... everything she does will reflect on you and your company.
Your brother, by comparision, can't turn on you as easily. Afterall, if there's ever a problem your parents will end up serving as a binding arbitration process. He might walk away from you, but he's never going to seriously cause problems on the way out like an ex might.
And what about all those M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N-P mnemonics we learned. Those already had to be retrofitted to become M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N, now they need to extend to M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N-S.
The order of planets we all learned in 4th grade was out of date already because now Neptune is further away than Pluto. Now, I guess we're going to have to memorize another planent for the next quiz.
Google isn't perfect, but it's the best search engine we've got right now. Aside from paying your way in, what other search solution discovers new pages any faster?
Google recently put out a bragging release claiming they now search 6 billion items, but in order to reach that number you have to use web search, image search, and a newsgroup search and add the numbers up.
Orkut isn't really an official Google project... It's not like it's called Google Friends. Think of it as belonging to the Google Labs section of the company, something that could grow up into a Google product, but isn't one yet.
Credible-source only searches do exist. The only problem is that without putting ads next to the results, the only way to make money is to charge the users.
Lexis-Nexis is solid, it's just too expensive for the average user.
Wasn't "Yahoo it" a verb five to seven years ago before Google became the search engine of choice?
Re:search on "apple"--duhhr
on
In Google We Trust
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
More or less, that's Google adapting to the way the language is used.
The single form of the generic word "apple" is rarely used in conversation, when you're talking about just one piece of fruit it isn't a very newsworthy event. If you're discussing the fruit, you're usually talking about more than one apple.
So, "apples" is more likely to mean the fruit, while the single word "apple" more likely to be headed for the computer company...
Re:Google-centric web design
on
In Google We Trust
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The downside is that some people still don't understand what it takes to rise in the rankings: quality content and getting linked to. The more shady web designers set up link farms and share links like a heroin addict shares needles.
Link farms, and other cheating schemes, are what result when people want to buy themselves a higher PageRank. They don't have quality content or want to wait for links to form.
Google is not the only Search.
on
In Google We Trust
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The actual headline on the NY Times article is "In Searching We Trust", but Slashdot calling it "In Google We Trust" isn't that far off the mark since no other search engine is even mentioned in the piece.
Google isn't the only search engine out there, just the dominant one at the moment. Somebody who is using only Google, and is not aware that their are other tools with which to get a second opinion is missing out on a pretty big portion of the web that Google either hasn't discovered or just doesn't think highly of in PageRank.
Doesn't FUD imply it's untrue?
No. FUD is fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's what results when a fact is unknown, yet decisions have to be made based on that fact. If we knew that the FUD-source was false, it wouldn't produce any FUD. Unfortunately, we can't be so sure.
The thing is, the companies have not agreed on a definition for a "megalobanger" or any other nonsensical unit. Therefore, the what Intel slaps "3286" on doesn't might be better or worse than what AMD calls "3300+". There's no units on those numbers. Esentially, they'll be nothing more than part number codes on a scientific level.
So, the MHz is dead. Long live, uh, um... long live the ??????
I'm starting to suspect that DARPA may have implemented a simple barbed wire fence on the course just before the start time, just as an enemy might do in battle. A whole lot of pre-planning can go out the window if a new stumbling block you didn't see coming but should have known about gets thrown in.
Bots would need to not just knock such a structure down, but make sure not to entagle themselves in it.
I have a feeling that'd be considered cheating in this competition if the vehicle were to go beyond a certain height above terrain... part of the advantage of having a ground-based vehicle is that it's harder to shoot at than one in the air from a standoff distance.
The exact course was not revealed until today. The competitors did not have enough time to design solutions for any barrier they had not of thought of. If somebody didn't antisipate that they'd have to deal with a certain kind of block, that block would have a high chance of doing them in.
Knowing that the cause of failure was engine stopping or brakes failing tells us very little. Some external to the car force caused the engine to break... it'd be more interesting to know what induced the engine to fail.
Seeing this was the first-of-its kind event, is the last bot out now a world recordholder for the distance it traveled? Maybe the 150ish miles goal was a bit too much to ask of the new technology, a bot that can travel 7 miles reliably has some use, just not as much as DARPA was hoping for.
Also, was there a particular barrier at the 7 mile point that did in the last two robots, or was it just coinsidence that they both stumbled within a mile of each other?
That defense is no longer available, because there are women in combat roles, and there's nothing in the way of sending women to the less-than-front-line positions after being drafted.
The "Tech draft" plan already addresses that, saying that women would be required to register for that one.
Slashdot Mirror
This actually sound like a pretty good idea. Hey, I got one too. Perhaps they could just leave out the clothes completely on low end machines? .. come to think of it, I might be playing the next Tomb Raider on my Pentium 133. Half a frame a sec is fine if it gives me half a chance to ogle Lara's buttcrack.
TechTV's X-Play show once had a funny piece of video from a pre-release build of a Tomb Raider game for a console. There was a bug in the camera-angle determination at a certain point that accidently put the camera inside Lara's head, about where the brain should have been. The resulting display proved that Lara's head is indeed hollow.
It's easy to say what you want to do when you have unlimited processor resources. But when you don't, you'd rather your program not crash or totally freeze. Especially in a game environment, throwing the little things overboard first will leave the main gameplay elements in tact and still leave a playable game.
Yeah, it means extra programmer work on the design side because you're going to have to design a "smart version" and a "dumb version" for the effects you want to downgrade. You'll also have to select how you're going to measure system resources, and at what level of resources will the changeover for smart to dumb happen for each element. It's work, but I think it's an investment with a payoff.
The keyword is "graceful degradation". Take away the elements that contribute to the "wow factor" for the power user but the low-power user won't really miss. Background elements are the key thing you should be thinking about, especially ones that'll never have much direct impact on the outcome of game situations.
It's all about raising the spread between your "minimum" and "looks best on" system requirements. You want to get the minimum as close to the floor as possible, while having the high-end features will create great demo installations and really sell your game to the high-end fans. The more people who can enjoy your game, the more copies you'll sell, and therefore the more money you'll make. You remember money, right? It's the whole reason games are written anyway...
There is the problem, you entered into the deal without a clear meeting of the minds as to how you would be compensated. There needs to be a deal as to what work units are going to be counted, and what the value per work unit was going to be.
That kind of heroic technical effort should be admired and respected... when it's not, well, the business could just plain colapse.
Yes, but seeing that he gets along with his brother well enough to hire him, and is willing to consider the business advice of his father, I don't think his family is the kind that's shown on Jerry Springer.
If you marry her without a prenup, she will suddenly get ownership of half of the business. If that's okay with you, then you really don't have a problem. However, if that scares you at all, you need to make it clear that she's being paid as an employee and that's all she's getting out of the company.
However, on the converse, if you make it clear to her that she's getting an ownership interest in the company, she'll have more interest in the quality of the work, and she might be willing to accept lower wages today for the good of the company in the future... since company profits and her own spending money will be very closely related.
The thing about working with your girlfriend is that she's not yet your wife. If the relationship fails, you're not going to just lose her love but also her usefulness as an employee... if you're ready to commit to depending on her on a business level, there should be a ring on her finger. You can never underestimate the importance of the front line secretary, she'll be first person most of your customers deal with... everything she does will reflect on you and your company.
Your brother, by comparision, can't turn on you as easily. Afterall, if there's ever a problem your parents will end up serving as a binding arbitration process. He might walk away from you, but he's never going to seriously cause problems on the way out like an ex might.
And what about all those M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N-P mnemonics we learned. Those already had to be retrofitted to become M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N, now they need to extend to M-V-E-M-J-S-U-P-N-S.
The order of planets we all learned in 4th grade was out of date already because now Neptune is further away than Pluto. Now, I guess we're going to have to memorize another planent for the next quiz.
Google isn't perfect, but it's the best search engine we've got right now. Aside from paying your way in, what other search solution discovers new pages any faster?
I thought it was 4,285,199,774 pages
Google recently put out a bragging release claiming they now search 6 billion items, but in order to reach that number you have to use web search, image search, and a newsgroup search and add the numbers up.
Orkut isn't really an official Google project... It's not like it's called Google Friends. Think of it as belonging to the Google Labs section of the company, something that could grow up into a Google product, but isn't one yet.
Credible-source only searches do exist. The only problem is that without putting ads next to the results, the only way to make money is to charge the users.
Lexis-Nexis is solid, it's just too expensive for the average user.
Wasn't "Yahoo it" a verb five to seven years ago before Google became the search engine of choice?
More or less, that's Google adapting to the way the language is used.
The single form of the generic word "apple" is rarely used in conversation, when you're talking about just one piece of fruit it isn't a very newsworthy event. If you're discussing the fruit, you're usually talking about more than one apple.
So, "apples" is more likely to mean the fruit, while the single word "apple" more likely to be headed for the computer company...
The downside is that some people still don't understand what it takes to rise in the rankings: quality content and getting linked to. The more shady web designers set up link farms and share links like a heroin addict shares needles.
Link farms, and other cheating schemes, are what result when people want to buy themselves a higher PageRank. They don't have quality content or want to wait for links to form.
The actual headline on the NY Times article is "In Searching We Trust", but Slashdot calling it "In Google We Trust" isn't that far off the mark since no other search engine is even mentioned in the piece.
Google isn't the only search engine out there, just the dominant one at the moment. Somebody who is using only Google, and is not aware that their are other tools with which to get a second opinion is missing out on a pretty big portion of the web that Google either hasn't discovered or just doesn't think highly of in PageRank.
Doesn't FUD imply it's untrue? No. FUD is fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's what results when a fact is unknown, yet decisions have to be made based on that fact. If we knew that the FUD-source was false, it wouldn't produce any FUD. Unfortunately, we can't be so sure.
Do nonsense numbers have to double every 18 months for the sake of being a Moore's Law compliant statistic?
1. Retire MHz as speed benchmark.
2. Use ??????? in place of MHz.
3. Profit!
Unfortuately, nobody told Intel they're supposed to fill in the ??????? part of the plan.
The thing is, the companies have not agreed on a definition for a "megalobanger" or any other nonsensical unit. Therefore, the what Intel slaps "3286" on doesn't might be better or worse than what AMD calls "3300+". There's no units on those numbers. Esentially, they'll be nothing more than part number codes on a scientific level.
So, the MHz is dead. Long live, uh, um... long live the ??????
I'm starting to suspect that DARPA may have implemented a simple barbed wire fence on the course just before the start time, just as an enemy might do in battle. A whole lot of pre-planning can go out the window if a new stumbling block you didn't see coming but should have known about gets thrown in.
Bots would need to not just knock such a structure down, but make sure not to entagle themselves in it.
I have a feeling that'd be considered cheating in this competition if the vehicle were to go beyond a certain height above terrain... part of the advantage of having a ground-based vehicle is that it's harder to shoot at than one in the air from a standoff distance.
The exact course was not revealed until today. The competitors did not have enough time to design solutions for any barrier they had not of thought of. If somebody didn't antisipate that they'd have to deal with a certain kind of block, that block would have a high chance of doing them in.
Knowing that the cause of failure was engine stopping or brakes failing tells us very little. Some external to the car force caused the engine to break... it'd be more interesting to know what induced the engine to fail.
Seeing this was the first-of-its kind event, is the last bot out now a world recordholder for the distance it traveled? Maybe the 150ish miles goal was a bit too much to ask of the new technology, a bot that can travel 7 miles reliably has some use, just not as much as DARPA was hoping for.
Also, was there a particular barrier at the 7 mile point that did in the last two robots, or was it just coinsidence that they both stumbled within a mile of each other?
That defense is no longer available, because there are women in combat roles, and there's nothing in the way of sending women to the less-than-front-line positions after being drafted.
The "Tech draft" plan already addresses that, saying that women would be required to register for that one.