It's interesting that you've been succesful building a home cinema machine (DivX box/whatever) using onboard motherboard sound.
I was using conditional, I haven't. But I'm pretty sure I could, effortlessly. If I wanted a media center I'd rather build a system for that purpose, probably a Shuttle because it's tiny and beautiful, but with a good nForce 2 and a 2800+ I bet I could handle video and audio effortlessly without additional hardware.
My home-built system is running an Asus A7N8X Deluxe, which handles 5.1 on hardware. If I wanted to turn my computer into a home cinema or have surround sound for my games, I wouldn't even *need* one of them there fancy sound cards.
MB audio really depends on what mb you have, but these days they manage to cram so much on motherboards it's insane... Back in my days you didn't have motherboards! You just had boards of woods and you madez furniture out of them!
...When I read the article, I thought "who the hell is cheap enough to take bad screenshots of a magazine to read it" and then I remembered that Edge magazine costs 12 fricking euros and they had an E3 special feature with a different edition for each platform, plus an E3 coverage edition.
That was something I was really interested in, then I realised that with the money I was about to spend on videogame magazines I could actually buy a videogame.
I've been using Mozilla for a very long time and Netscape before that and I recently switched to IE, and get this, because it was too buggy. I think it was pretty ironic that an open source software crashing too often made me switch to Microsoft. But it did.
The guy who made Street Fighter II and Resident Evil (well not really, the father of that series is Mikami Shinji) is going to start his own team from the ground up and use it to make videogames. I expect nothing less than excellence.
Re:I assume it touches on Hacking
on
Altered Carbon
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If minds have become data files that can be backed up, transferred and used, then it means they can also be broken into, edited and altered. So I wonder if the book goes into that possibility.
I thought that launching two of their most awaited games on the same day was a cool idea. It's not about competing with each other or business plan.:P If you don't feel like playing both at the same time, then don't.
I can certainly understand why it can be extremely annoying to have pathetic people constantly hitting on your wife while you're trying to play, isn't the whole point of MMORPG's to be a social experience? And doesn't that include the obnoxious bastards who hit on your girl?
Or, you could just take it with a grain of salt, and think of it as something funny. God knows if I played a MMORPG and something like this came to be I'd marry a friend just for kicks ("What? You don't allow same sex marriages? What kind of bigots are you?!"). People might do it just for fun. I think it's a nifty little gimmick. (And I'm a married gamer in case you're wondering.)
Of course there are the people who will be taking it too seriously and going overboard, but if we were to dismiss every videogame gimmick out of hand as outrageous because some will take it too seriously and go overboard, we wouldn't even have videogames anymore.
Probably the same reason we evolved with legs and not wheels.:p Legs are much more handy. A robot on wheels wouldn't be able to go up or down stairs (which will be required when they're used domestically), will be less manoeuverable/adaptable the topology of his environment, etc.
But yeah, you have a valid point. Actually teaching a robot the complex algorithms it takes to walk on legs always was a challenge waiting to be tackled, and I'm pretty sure the challenge element was part of the decision process.
But if I had to pick a deciding factor, you have to keep in mind that the entire field of robotics is aimed towards, in the very long term, making androids, that is human-like robots (I think we've all seen that robot from MIT (?) who is capable of expressing facial expressions through the use of flexible plastic eyebrows and lips), and not the ones we already have to build cars, and that includes walking around on two legs.
I believe it was Ben Franlkin who said (not exact quote) "if you are willing to give up a bit of your liberty for peace of mind, then be ready to give up all your liberty for you will never have peace of mind"
I know it sounds like I'm minimizing your very sound argument with some general, stereotyped quote about freedom of speech, but think about it. A choice between a movie and the political stabililty of a middle eastern country sounds pretty easy, but if Egypt say "We banned that movie because if not it might disturb the peace." and we just go "Oh. Well I guess it's okay then." haven't we opened a floodgate that's going to be very hard to close?
I would go along, but I'm afraid I'm not a Japanese 13 y/o old schoolgirl.
An honest question - who cares?
on
AAC Put To The Test
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This might get modded Troll, but it's an honest question. Whenever I rip a CD, I encode it into mathematically loseless MP3s, and with the cheapness of disk space these days, I can't stop being amazed at how many people don't do the same. If the quality can be compressed into something loseless from the original digital medium (the CD), then who cares if AAC sounds better than OGG sounds better than WMA sounds better than MP3 at 64 kb/s?
If I remember correcty, the ESA are the only ones actually making money from space with their Ariane program. If you ask me, the dominant agency has been ESA for a long time. And before that it was Russia.
I'd like to remind you of the fact that even though NASA is very glad to have won the race to the moon, there was no such thing. Instead of going there and back, the Russians put Mir in orbit, which is a more useful and lasting feat than putting a flag on the moon.
Seriously, if someone gave me $4,500,010 right now I would buy an aircraft carrier and a lot of candy.
A way to make it profitable would be to go around the world and offer paying tours. Or even cruises (though that would require a lot of people...) Enough to supply the fuel, pay back the loan you took out to buy it and fit it with enough computers and a network to run it all from the bridge, but most of all, have the COOLEST HOUSE ON EARTH.
...so...COOL...
Something that most people forget is a good read..
on
A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 1
...isn't necessarily a novel. I'm going to pick up a few books to read over the summer today, and one of the things I'm hoping to find is a collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick. Good short stories are a very hard skill that I believe SF writers have really mastered (after all, that's how the genre started!), and reading several short stories by an author can often be an enlightening experience.
And as far as "good SF hacker/geek" is concerned, I'm not the only one, but check out William Gibson's books that you haven't read. I hear his latest one is good, but if you haven't read it Idoru is a must read.
Also, though it's neither of those things (except "good" which it is very very), I think novels by Chuck Palahniuk would definitely appeal to the kind of people most geeks or hackers have. If you haven't read Fight Club, read it, and if you have, read the sequel, and if you have, I don't have to tell you how good he is.:-P
And as far as non-novels are concerned, there's also non-fiction which can also somehow fit in the "good SF geek/hacker" book. I'm thinking of things alogn the lines of The Space Elevator that/. covered a while ago. There are plenty of good non-fiction books that cover the likely future and are a definitely worthwhile read.
Everyone fighting for ownership of a standard, and fighting over something that, down the road, won't change much to the fight between Linux and MS... "Turns out after all these years, I own Unix!" "No, I do!" I know sometimes the implications of these lawsuits seem scary, but I can't help laughing.
Slashdot Mirror
Were their inertion dampening fields down?
It's interesting that you've been succesful building a home cinema machine (DivX box/whatever) using onboard motherboard sound.
I was using conditional, I haven't. But I'm pretty sure I could, effortlessly. If I wanted a media center I'd rather build a system for that purpose, probably a Shuttle because it's tiny and beautiful, but with a good nForce 2 and a 2800+ I bet I could handle video and audio effortlessly without additional hardware.
My home-built system is running an Asus A7N8X Deluxe, which handles 5.1 on hardware. If I wanted to turn my computer into a home cinema or have surround sound for my games, I wouldn't even *need* one of them there fancy sound cards.
MB audio really depends on what mb you have, but these days they manage to cram so much on motherboards it's insane... Back in my days you didn't have motherboards! You just had boards of woods and you madez furniture out of them!
...When I read the article, I thought "who the hell is cheap enough to take bad screenshots of a magazine to read it" and then I remembered that Edge magazine costs 12 fricking euros and they had an E3 special feature with a different edition for each platform, plus an E3 coverage edition.
That was something I was really interested in, then I realised that with the money I was about to spend on videogame magazines I could actually buy a videogame.
I've been using Mozilla for a very long time and Netscape before that and I recently switched to IE, and get this, because it was too buggy. I think it was pretty ironic that an open source software crashing too often made me switch to Microsoft. But it did.
I still use Mozilla Mail, though.
The guy who made Street Fighter II and Resident Evil (well not really, the father of that series is Mikami Shinji) is going to start his own team from the ground up and use it to make videogames . I expect nothing less than excellence.
If minds have become data files that can be backed up, transferred and used, then it means they can also be broken into, edited and altered. So I wonder if the book goes into that possibility.
But Cap'n, I canna change the laws of physics!
I keep telling people and telling them that videogames are a form of art and they look at me and scoff...
As my MP3 folder just passed the twenty gigs bar! Time to buy an iPod!
I thought that launching two of their most awaited games on the same day was a cool idea. It's not about competing with each other or business plan. :P If you don't feel like playing both at the same time, then don't.
...when you can use the indestructible metal Adamantium!
I can certainly understand why it can be extremely annoying to have pathetic people constantly hitting on your wife while you're trying to play, isn't the whole point of MMORPG's to be a social experience? And doesn't that include the obnoxious bastards who hit on your girl?
Or, you could just take it with a grain of salt, and think of it as something funny. God knows if I played a MMORPG and something like this came to be I'd marry a friend just for kicks ("What? You don't allow same sex marriages? What kind of bigots are you?!"). People might do it just for fun. I think it's a nifty little gimmick. (And I'm a married gamer in case you're wondering.)
Of course there are the people who will be taking it too seriously and going overboard, but if we were to dismiss every videogame gimmick out of hand as outrageous because some will take it too seriously and go overboard, we wouldn't even have videogames anymore.
Probably the same reason we evolved with legs and not wheels. :p Legs are much more handy. A robot on wheels wouldn't be able to go up or down stairs (which will be required when they're used domestically), will be less manoeuverable/adaptable the topology of his environment, etc.
But yeah, you have a valid point. Actually teaching a robot the complex algorithms it takes to walk on legs always was a challenge waiting to be tackled, and I'm pretty sure the challenge element was part of the decision process.
But if I had to pick a deciding factor, you have to keep in mind that the entire field of robotics is aimed towards, in the very long term, making androids, that is human-like robots (I think we've all seen that robot from MIT (?) who is capable of expressing facial expressions through the use of flexible plastic eyebrows and lips), and not the ones we already have to build cars, and that includes walking around on two legs.
That's what they do in Russia.
There must be a Soviet Russia joke there, I just have to find it!
He said everything that had to be said.
I believe it was Ben Franlkin who said (not exact quote) "if you are willing to give up a bit of your liberty for peace of mind, then be ready to give up all your liberty for you will never have peace of mind" I know it sounds like I'm minimizing your very sound argument with some general, stereotyped quote about freedom of speech, but think about it. A choice between a movie and the political stabililty of a middle eastern country sounds pretty easy, but if Egypt say "We banned that movie because if not it might disturb the peace." and we just go "Oh. Well I guess it's okay then." haven't we opened a floodgate that's going to be very hard to close?
I would go along, but I'm afraid I'm not a Japanese 13 y/o old schoolgirl.
This might get modded Troll, but it's an honest question. Whenever I rip a CD, I encode it into mathematically loseless MP3s, and with the cheapness of disk space these days, I can't stop being amazed at how many people don't do the same. If the quality can be compressed into something loseless from the original digital medium (the CD), then who cares if AAC sounds better than OGG sounds better than WMA sounds better than MP3 at 64 kb/s?
Please enlighten me, I'm actually, honestly, curious.
If I remember correcty, the ESA are the only ones actually making money from space with their Ariane program. If you ask me, the dominant agency has been ESA for a long time. And before that it was Russia.
I'd like to remind you of the fact that even though NASA is very glad to have won the race to the moon, there was no such thing. Instead of going there and back, the Russians put Mir in orbit, which is a more useful and lasting feat than putting a flag on the moon.
Seriously, if someone gave me $4,500,010 right now I would buy an aircraft carrier and a lot of candy.
A way to make it profitable would be to go around the world and offer paying tours. Or even cruises (though that would require a lot of people...) Enough to supply the fuel, pay back the loan you took out to buy it and fit it with enough computers and a network to run it all from the bridge, but most of all, have the COOLEST HOUSE ON EARTH.
...so...COOL...
...isn't necessarily a novel. I'm going to pick up a few books to read over the summer today, and one of the things I'm hoping to find is a collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick. Good short stories are a very hard skill that I believe SF writers have really mastered (after all, that's how the genre started!), and reading several short stories by an author can often be an enlightening experience.
:-P
/. covered a while ago. There are plenty of good non-fiction books that cover the likely future and are a definitely worthwhile read.
And as far as "good SF hacker/geek" is concerned, I'm not the only one, but check out William Gibson's books that you haven't read. I hear his latest one is good, but if you haven't read it Idoru is a must read.
Also, though it's neither of those things (except "good" which it is very very), I think novels by Chuck Palahniuk would definitely appeal to the kind of people most geeks or hackers have. If you haven't read Fight Club, read it, and if you have, read the sequel, and if you have, I don't have to tell you how good he is.
And as far as non-novels are concerned, there's also non-fiction which can also somehow fit in the "good SF geek/hacker" book. I'm thinking of things alogn the lines of The Space Elevator that
Sony are well aware of it. Piracy is what made the original PlayStation just like pr0n made VHS and DVD.
...exceedingly funny?
Everyone fighting for ownership of a standard, and fighting over something that, down the road, won't change much to the fight between Linux and MS... "Turns out after all these years, I own Unix!" "No, I do!" I know sometimes the implications of these lawsuits seem scary, but I can't help laughing.