This page has a list of H.264 patents. The last one expires in 2028, but from an extremely brief glance it doesn't look encoder-related. Last relevant one might be 2027; it has a 1215 day extension.
Sure, blind use of labels is dangerous. You see it all the time in politics, and it gets really old really fast. But labels, and words in general, often do actually mean something. Science is a word with an actual meaning. It's not 'whatever I deem it to be', it's a system of discovery through empirical observation.
'Religion' is pretty damn fuzzy, that's true, but I've yet to see one that's based solely on empiricism. If there's a scientific religion, then the edge of blurry.
In any case, Unknown Soldier is arguing that the man's rejection of empiricism and embrace of subjective experience is as valid as the opposite. Whatever the case, that type of belief system is obviously not a scientific one. There's no grey there.
You've hit the nail on the head and your post has made today's visit to slashdot personally worthwhile. It seems to me that only those with an axe to grind indulge themselves in "witty" attacks on religion or science (on slashdot it's usually the latter).
In fact both terms are complete garbage anyway since nobody can define "religion" or "physics" or even "geography", "history" or "art". The world can't be so simply partitioned and so to attack somebody in the name of one of these banners is just foolish.
Physics is the study of how the universe works at a fundamental level. Geography is the study of how geological processes work. History is a description of humanity's past, what happened in the past, why it happened, and so forth. That wasn't very hard.
Basically, the way I think of it is this: the Young Earth Creationists are ignoring any scientific evidence that doesn't fit their faith; the IDers are trying to fit the evidence into the mold of their faith
IDers ignore evidence that doesn't fit their faith: in denying evolution, they're denying a lot of evidence.
At the very core of the idea of ID, there is no arguing with the premise, that evolution was sparked and guided by a superhuman power.
ID is that some features of life either couldn't have arisen through natural selection, or are best explained as not having arisen through natural selection.
Many (most? all?) IDers outright disbelieve that evolution could possibly result in the current complexity of life. They pull out "irreducible complexity", they claim complexity can only come about through intelligence, and so forth. These are actually falsifiable claims, just as YEC is.
C++ is horribly inflexible. Programming in assembly language lets you do just about anything that you want, giving developers unprecedented flexibility.
That's not an accurate analogy. Fixed function OpenGL isn't an abstraction like C++ is. Fixed function is a limitation. There's a reason it's called "fixed".
You can still abstract on top of that: Unreal Engine does this, by letting artists create their own material shaders using a fancy GUI. That type of thing wouldn't even be possible without shaders; you're stuck with the functionality of the GPU as it was created by the GPU's manufacturer, rather than being able to go off and do whatever spiffy rendering you actually want.
Shaders turn the GPU into a programmable device. That's huge.
This would be nice. Many of the reviews you read are "it runs like crap on my device!". As far as hardware goes, afaik the market only filters by CPU type, texture formats supported by the GPU, and additional sensors (GPS, camera, etc.). There's no filters for performance, I don't even know if RAM is included. It doesn't even have to be a hard filter, just pop up a "this will run poorly on your device" warning.
Now you cannot draw a single triangle without a month's worth of effort to implement matrix math, texture uploading, and material lighting from first principles.
This is complete nonsense. You're lamenting the loss of the fixed function OpenGL? This still exists if you really really want to use it, you just need to target ES 1.0.
No one does it use it, and no one recommends that anyone use it, because it's horribly inflexible. Programming with shaders lets you do just about anything that you want, giving developers unprecedented flexibility. This push came from developers and the GPU manufacturers, not from Khronos.
Yes, it complicates OpenGL tutorials a bit, but you can get away with using copy-pasted boilerplate when you're just starting out. Matrix math was always part of OpenGL, including the fixed function stuff, it's just a little more explicit now; that's not a bad thing, it helps make would-be OpenGL developers actually learn about matrix math instead of limping along with copy/pasted tutorial code using GLU helper functions.
For any demo/trial/limited-free apps on the market, the majority of the negative reviews always seem to be of the "I really like it, but $2 for the full version? Fuck you, you must be kidding!" variety. They seem to get downright angry when an app isn't free.
Why do they claim to be "modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs" instead of using the standard APIs?
That's a completely legitimate concern. PC game developers come across issues like this all the time, and it sounds like it's the same on mobile platforms. Some GPUs have quirks that manifest in certain shaders. Some have quirks that you develop to, only to find that others don't have those quirks. I don't know what you mean by "standard APIs", but if you're trying to do anything serious with the GPU, you're going to be writing GLSL shader code. This isn't wrapped up in pretty abstracted Java for you.
Texture formats are another thing that varies by GPU. Motorola has a page here that describes the different texture formats and which GPUs support which. Ideally, you'll build support for this into your build pipeline and won't have to worry about it once you have. There are issues that might manifest depending on the format though: e.g. ETC1, the one that every OpenGL ES 2.0 device supports, lacks Alphas; you either need to not use it on textures that need alphas, or write another shader to deal with those textures (with the alpha channel in its own texture or such).
It's all pretty entertaining. You know what one of the sweeteners with more Fructose than HFCS is? Agave syrup, frequently sold by the same people who make a big deal about how horrible and unhealthy HFCS is.
That's the game I was looking for. It was awesome. That video is terrible and doesn't do it justice. It was basically a 'modern' Scorched Earth, in space.
Just FYI. There was an online, multiplayer artillery game in space, where the players sat on planets and had to shoot each other by using the planets' gravities to manuever the shells. I even remember it having little callbacks to Scorched Earth (e.g. the death messages, "Remember the Alamo!"). It was pretty damn entertaining, I just can't remember the name.
Generally speaking, if you don't "invest" as much time as other players you are at a disadvantage no matter what. The best players are, typically, those who play the most...
If you keep losing at TF2, I posit that it's because you aren't as good as the people you're playing against and it doesn't matter what guns any of you are using.
Okay, this type of response is pretty annoying. I'm well past the age where I'd whinge over simply sucking at a game: I'm talking about uneven playing fields here. A game simply isn't as enjoyable or "fair" if I'm stuck with fewer options than the guy who plays every waking moment of his life playing. That is completely putting aside whether I'm winning or not. Losing because I suck is one thing; losing because I suck and the other person has better options is just obnoxious.
I also haven't seen the "more time = better" thing pan out all the time. I certainly held my own last time I played TF2 (yes, it's nowhere near as bad as some other F2P games), I regularly top public servers in other games with much higher-ranked players, and console games are just chock full of high-rank players who aren't any good. I've noticed it really helps with games that have more rote memorization to them though: doesn't matter how many times I play a map, I just can't remember weapon and powerup pickup locations:(
That's why I'm only "mildly" annoyed; that and how these days I only tend to play the game when a friend pulls me into it anyways. Mild like the "spicy" food the local Asian restaurants serve white people.
Again, even just being able to eventually have a weapon drop or craft it is something I'm not for. I just plain don't like being at a disadvantage just because I haven't devoted the same amount of time into a game or paid as much money as other players. Just not my cup of tea. I prefer even playing fields, especially for games I've paid retail for.
And that's even if it's "only" that I'm less versatile or have fewer options. There may be an item that suits my playstyle better. There may be an item that counters someone else on the server better. There may be an item that lets me sort of hybrid the classes, like you pointed out (mid/short-range scout). These obviously give a possible situational advantage to the person with more options.
Maybe I don't want to spend my limited gaming time playing a game where I'm at a disadvantage compared to all of the other players simply because I haven't invested as much time or money as they have? I don't play games to work at them, I play them for the enjoyment.
What happened is that you can either dump money on them to get the weapon you want NOW or you wait for the random system to drop one on you.
At least half of the freemium games out there do this, and it's only marginally better if at all.
You can grind for a weapon, and eventually, after spending time slogging away with weak weapons, you'll reach the point where you've got equipment that you want for the class you like (hopefully). Or you can spend the money now, and immediately have the equipment you want.
Some of the weapons in TF2 certainly seem better than their free companions, and even just granting extra versatility in a game is still granting a distinct advantage to one player over another.
That is exactly the definition of a "pay 2 win" game. It might not be quite as horrifyingly imbalanced as some other games, but it's still tilted towards the paying players. I am mildly annoyed that I paid money for this when it was standalone and all I got was a stupid hat.
If I'm not mistaken, vetoes only count for Security Council resolutions; "The Internet" would be controlled by some minor UN sub-organization, not the Security Council.
As I grow older, I find TNG to formulaic and not so watchable. I more likely to watch DS9 or Voyager. They tend to rely less on magic
Voyager is all magic, I have no idea what you're talking about. I can't count the number of episodes that were solved by the damn deflector dish, or some other arbitrary solutions, nor the amount of screen time devoted to technobabbling. The problems encountered were almost all caused by magic, the situations were crazy and nonsensical, the solutions were insane, and it was all riddled with inconsistencies with itself and other treks. When it wasn't magical technology, it was magical humanity (characters who made no sense whatsoever).
I remember watching the first episode of TNG. The studio shooting was as dreadful as TOS, but when the music came up, and the Patrick Stewart voiceover came up, there was a great confort that along with the bad there was going to be a lot of good. Of course, one the quest for rating took hold and the overwhelming militaristic mission took over, it was pretty much over. TNG and the Borg. DSP and the dominion. Enterprise and the confusing and arbitrary Xindi. Peaceful explorations simply does not sell laundry detergent.
The later Borg plot in TNG that it sounds like you're talking about (Picard assimilated, etc.) was two episodes long, and there were only a handful of others. The Mission didn't become militaristic, unlike in Enterprise. TNG was kind of magical and more TOS-like for the first season or two. After that it was quite soapy and character-centric.
If I search for "rotting y theory", all I get are variations of this article. Why would anyone who knows anything about evolution and genetics actually think that? And who were these people?
one that has been used to edit material on wikipedia.org in reference to pro-NDP stances.
Not just pro-NDP stances. Also pro-Conservative ones.
It's the public-facing address of a NATted internal network. It could be any one of hundreds of different people.
Of course, the Conservatives and their apparent lapdog, the Ottawa Citizen, don't care about that.
This right here. It's a House of Commons address, there's probably several people using it. The rest of it is baseless conjecture. One of the linked-to articles is from the National Post, which is about the closest thing we have to a FOX News or Wallstreet Journal here in Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
This page has a list of H.264 patents. The last one expires in 2028, but from an extremely brief glance it doesn't look encoder-related. Last relevant one might be 2027; it has a 1215 day extension.
Sure, blind use of labels is dangerous. You see it all the time in politics, and it gets really old really fast. But labels, and words in general, often do actually mean something. Science is a word with an actual meaning. It's not 'whatever I deem it to be', it's a system of discovery through empirical observation.
'Religion' is pretty damn fuzzy, that's true, but I've yet to see one that's based solely on empiricism. If there's a scientific religion, then the edge of blurry.
In any case, Unknown Soldier is arguing that the man's rejection of empiricism and embrace of subjective experience is as valid as the opposite. Whatever the case, that type of belief system is obviously not a scientific one. There's no grey there.
Hah, I read that as "geology". Fun fun.
You've hit the nail on the head and your post has made today's visit to slashdot personally worthwhile. It seems to me that only those with an axe to grind indulge themselves in "witty" attacks on religion or science (on slashdot it's usually the latter).
In fact both terms are complete garbage anyway since nobody can define "religion" or "physics" or even "geography", "history" or "art". The world can't be so simply partitioned and so to attack somebody in the name of one of these banners is just foolish.
Physics is the study of how the universe works at a fundamental level. Geography is the study of how geological processes work. History is a description of humanity's past, what happened in the past, why it happened, and so forth. That wasn't very hard.
Basically, the way I think of it is this: the Young Earth Creationists are ignoring any scientific evidence that doesn't fit their faith; the IDers are trying to fit the evidence into the mold of their faith
IDers ignore evidence that doesn't fit their faith: in denying evolution, they're denying a lot of evidence.
At the very core of the idea of ID, there is no arguing with the premise, that evolution was sparked and guided by a superhuman power.
ID is that some features of life either couldn't have arisen through natural selection, or are best explained as not having arisen through natural selection.
Many (most? all?) IDers outright disbelieve that evolution could possibly result in the current complexity of life. They pull out "irreducible complexity", they claim complexity can only come about through intelligence, and so forth. These are actually falsifiable claims, just as YEC is.
C++ is horribly inflexible. Programming in assembly language lets you do just about anything that you want, giving developers unprecedented flexibility.
That's not an accurate analogy. Fixed function OpenGL isn't an abstraction like C++ is. Fixed function is a limitation. There's a reason it's called "fixed".
You can still abstract on top of that: Unreal Engine does this, by letting artists create their own material shaders using a fancy GUI. That type of thing wouldn't even be possible without shaders; you're stuck with the functionality of the GPU as it was created by the GPU's manufacturer, rather than being able to go off and do whatever spiffy rendering you actually want.
Shaders turn the GPU into a programmable device. That's huge.
This would be nice. Many of the reviews you read are "it runs like crap on my device!". As far as hardware goes, afaik the market only filters by CPU type, texture formats supported by the GPU, and additional sensors (GPS, camera, etc.). There's no filters for performance, I don't even know if RAM is included. It doesn't even have to be a hard filter, just pop up a "this will run poorly on your device" warning.
Now you cannot draw a single triangle without a month's worth of effort to implement matrix math, texture uploading, and material lighting from first principles.
This is complete nonsense. You're lamenting the loss of the fixed function OpenGL? This still exists if you really really want to use it, you just need to target ES 1.0.
No one does it use it, and no one recommends that anyone use it, because it's horribly inflexible. Programming with shaders lets you do just about anything that you want, giving developers unprecedented flexibility. This push came from developers and the GPU manufacturers, not from Khronos.
Yes, it complicates OpenGL tutorials a bit, but you can get away with using copy-pasted boilerplate when you're just starting out. Matrix math was always part of OpenGL, including the fixed function stuff, it's just a little more explicit now; that's not a bad thing, it helps make would-be OpenGL developers actually learn about matrix math instead of limping along with copy/pasted tutorial code using GLU helper functions.
The problem is shitty port's don't sell.
For any demo/trial/limited-free apps on the market, the majority of the negative reviews always seem to be of the "I really like it, but $2 for the full version? Fuck you, you must be kidding!" variety. They seem to get downright angry when an app isn't free.
Why do they claim to be "modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs" instead of using the standard APIs?
That's a completely legitimate concern. PC game developers come across issues like this all the time, and it sounds like it's the same on mobile platforms. Some GPUs have quirks that manifest in certain shaders. Some have quirks that you develop to, only to find that others don't have those quirks. I don't know what you mean by "standard APIs", but if you're trying to do anything serious with the GPU, you're going to be writing GLSL shader code. This isn't wrapped up in pretty abstracted Java for you.
Texture formats are another thing that varies by GPU. Motorola has a page here that describes the different texture formats and which GPUs support which. Ideally, you'll build support for this into your build pipeline and won't have to worry about it once you have. There are issues that might manifest depending on the format though: e.g. ETC1, the one that every OpenGL ES 2.0 device supports, lacks Alphas; you either need to not use it on textures that need alphas, or write another shader to deal with those textures (with the alpha channel in its own texture or such).
Does anyone read those articles? That thing is usually only up for a moment before I've opened the project I actually care about.
It's all pretty entertaining. You know what one of the sweeteners with more Fructose than HFCS is? Agave syrup, frequently sold by the same people who make a big deal about how horrible and unhealthy HFCS is.
Warheads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3jzhwK60A
That's the game I was looking for. It was awesome. That video is terrible and doesn't do it justice. It was basically a 'modern' Scorched Earth, in space.
And nobody who watches Football regularly thinks it's a waste of time. That's a silly statement.
Just FYI. There was an online, multiplayer artillery game in space, where the players sat on planets and had to shoot each other by using the planets' gravities to manuever the shells. I even remember it having little callbacks to Scorched Earth (e.g. the death messages, "Remember the Alamo!"). It was pretty damn entertaining, I just can't remember the name.
Generally speaking, if you don't "invest" as much time as other players you are at a disadvantage no matter what. The best players are, typically, those who play the most...
If you keep losing at TF2, I posit that it's because you aren't as good as the people you're playing against and it doesn't matter what guns any of you are using.
Okay, this type of response is pretty annoying. I'm well past the age where I'd whinge over simply sucking at a game: I'm talking about uneven playing fields here. A game simply isn't as enjoyable or "fair" if I'm stuck with fewer options than the guy who plays every waking moment of his life playing. That is completely putting aside whether I'm winning or not. Losing because I suck is one thing; losing because I suck and the other person has better options is just obnoxious.
I also haven't seen the "more time = better" thing pan out all the time. I certainly held my own last time I played TF2 (yes, it's nowhere near as bad as some other F2P games), I regularly top public servers in other games with much higher-ranked players, and console games are just chock full of high-rank players who aren't any good. I've noticed it really helps with games that have more rote memorization to them though: doesn't matter how many times I play a map, I just can't remember weapon and powerup pickup locations :(
That's why I'm only "mildly" annoyed; that and how these days I only tend to play the game when a friend pulls me into it anyways. Mild like the "spicy" food the local Asian restaurants serve white people.
Again, even just being able to eventually have a weapon drop or craft it is something I'm not for. I just plain don't like being at a disadvantage just because I haven't devoted the same amount of time into a game or paid as much money as other players. Just not my cup of tea. I prefer even playing fields, especially for games I've paid retail for.
And that's even if it's "only" that I'm less versatile or have fewer options. There may be an item that suits my playstyle better. There may be an item that counters someone else on the server better. There may be an item that lets me sort of hybrid the classes, like you pointed out (mid/short-range scout). These obviously give a possible situational advantage to the person with more options.
Maybe I don't want to spend my limited gaming time playing a game where I'm at a disadvantage compared to all of the other players simply because I haven't invested as much time or money as they have? I don't play games to work at them, I play them for the enjoyment.
What happened is that you can either dump money on them to get the weapon you want NOW or you wait for the random system to drop one on you.
At least half of the freemium games out there do this, and it's only marginally better if at all.
You can grind for a weapon, and eventually, after spending time slogging away with weak weapons, you'll reach the point where you've got equipment that you want for the class you like (hopefully). Or you can spend the money now, and immediately have the equipment you want.
Some of the weapons in TF2 certainly seem better than their free companions, and even just granting extra versatility in a game is still granting a distinct advantage to one player over another.
That is exactly the definition of a "pay 2 win" game. It might not be quite as horrifyingly imbalanced as some other games, but it's still tilted towards the paying players. I am mildly annoyed that I paid money for this when it was standalone and all I got was a stupid hat.
If I'm not mistaken, vetoes only count for Security Council resolutions; "The Internet" would be controlled by some minor UN sub-organization, not the Security Council.
As I grow older, I find TNG to formulaic and not so watchable. I more likely to watch DS9 or Voyager. They tend to rely less on magic
Voyager is all magic, I have no idea what you're talking about. I can't count the number of episodes that were solved by the damn deflector dish, or some other arbitrary solutions, nor the amount of screen time devoted to technobabbling. The problems encountered were almost all caused by magic, the situations were crazy and nonsensical, the solutions were insane, and it was all riddled with inconsistencies with itself and other treks. When it wasn't magical technology, it was magical humanity (characters who made no sense whatsoever).
Macro viruses! The Omega Directive! Cooperative Borg! Insane Janeway! Tuvix! Uggggh.
I remember watching the first episode of TNG. The studio shooting was as dreadful as TOS, but when the music came up, and the Patrick Stewart voiceover came up, there was a great confort that along with the bad there was going to be a lot of good. Of course, one the quest for rating took hold and the overwhelming militaristic mission took over, it was pretty much over. TNG and the Borg. DSP and the dominion. Enterprise and the confusing and arbitrary Xindi. Peaceful explorations simply does not sell laundry detergent.
The later Borg plot in TNG that it sounds like you're talking about (Picard assimilated, etc.) was two episodes long, and there were only a handful of others. The Mission didn't become militaristic, unlike in Enterprise. TNG was kind of magical and more TOS-like for the first season or two. After that it was quite soapy and character-centric.
If I search for "rotting y theory", all I get are variations of this article. Why would anyone who knows anything about evolution and genetics actually think that? And who were these people?
I wasn't aware that anyone watched Sun TV. But yeah, that's the TV equivalent, our FOX News Channel
one that has been used to edit material on wikipedia.org in reference to pro-NDP stances.
Not just pro-NDP stances. Also pro-Conservative ones.
It's the public-facing address of a NATted internal network. It could be any one of hundreds of different people.
Of course, the Conservatives and their apparent lapdog, the Ottawa Citizen, don't care about that.
This right here. It's a House of Commons address, there's probably several people using it. The rest of it is baseless conjecture. One of the linked-to articles is from the National Post, which is about the closest thing we have to a FOX News or Wallstreet Journal here in Canada.