What I want is smaller screens with higher resolutions. A 14" 1600x1200 display would be nice. Stick that in an extremely lightweight power saving laptop and I would have an awesome portable X terminal.
Currently my only choices are my Dell with 15" 1600x1200 LCD which has a crap oddly shaped case that hurts my legs, is very heavy, gets hot as hell, and only lasts about 1 hour on battery... or my iBook which is pretty light (not enough though) and last upwards of 5-6 hours when using it as a dumb X11 terminal, but it has a complete ass 1024x768 screen (try running Visual Studio in VMware over X11 in OSX and see how much room is left to work when running 1024x768, blech).
What I really want is a thin-client type thing. A very lightweight laptop that is basically just a medium/large high-resolution LCD with a keyboard and high-speed wireless card that will run on battery for 8+ hours and not get hot. No hard-drive or powerful CPU needed.
Peter: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob: Eight?
Peter: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
A huge problem I have always had with running an AMD CPU is that the motherboards suck. The chipsets suck, the BIOS' sucks, the boards just suck all around. Even high-end stuff like the Opteron machine I'm typing this on sucks. The CPU's are great but everything that makes it run sucks. Part of the problem is because of the manufacturers and part of the problem is that there are just no good chipsets avaiable. The few AMD chipsets that exist seem to be pretty good but AFAIK there are no AMD disk controllers, USB controllers, and other important stuff.
Intel on the other hand has much superior chipsets (although not so good CPU's at the moment). They are not without problems but better than the stuff you can get for AMD.
My perfect motherboard would be a dual Socket-940 Opteron board that ran a high-end Intel chipset. It wouldn't use the Intel memory controller since the AMD CPU's have built-in controllers but everything else (disk, USB, PCI-e, etc.) would be using the superior Intel stuff.
I would probably just run an Intel system if Intel had something better than the hot, power-sucking, slow Prescott crap.
The story about the plane losing pressure then flying on autopilot before crashing is interesting. Doesn't the plane know it has lost cabin pressure? If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness? Hell, why can't it just declare an emergency and automatically land at the nearest airport after receiving an OK signal from the airport that it's safe to land.
We have all this technology but it's implemented by idiots.
Either you're never going to get that camera/phone combination, or you have extremely low standards for what constitutes an "awesome" picture.
You're talking about two different things. Professional photography is going to require special equipment no matter what. For personal photos even nice cameras do not have fancy lenses.
What? Think about it. What if you had a small phone that was an excellent phone, took awesome pictures, was a supurb MP3 player, and played the latest and best games out? Would you want that?
Eventually the technology will get there. It's crappy now but these are just the first baby steps.
I know I sure as hell don't want to carry around umpteen different little devices that each can get lost, together take up a lot of space, and each have their own interface to learn when I could just have one small device that does it all and presents it in one consistent usable interface.
That might work for small college projects but the real world is a different place.
Often the rewrite never gets completed as there is too much crap added to it.
If you truly want to make something that works you need to plan for an evolution of your software. That is, write the first version with a modular design that can be modified or rewritten in phases. Doing one big rewrite on a non-trivial software system is damn near impossible. It's better to evolve the software over time, always keeping a working system and slowing moving parts in the desired (presumably better) direction.
I could write more on this but it's too early in the morning and I'm not even sure if what I wrote makes sense.;)
I guess I should have been more clear. The thumb is not as dexterious as the other fingers because it is made to grip and hold while the other fingers perform more detailed work. However, this is totally beside the point I was trying to make.
What I meant by my comparison is that the thumb sucks compared to using your hand/wrist/arm like with a joystick or mouse. I can quickly and extremely accurately snap my hand to specific positions whereas trying to do the same thing with just your thumb and its limited movement is damn hard. It's like the difference between using a thumb trackball and a mouse.
This is an interesting read, rather shallow and missing a lot of information, but interesting. Being born at the start of the 70's, I grew up with all this stuff.
Dispite what they say, the D-pad is retarded. Tell me how many arcade games had D-pads? Why do you think that is? Joysticks still rule.
I friggin hate thumb controls. Yeah, lets take the most clumsy, one directional (ie. weak in all other directions) finger and control everything with it! Pfffft... this is why I haven't gotten into and played console games since the mid-eighties when I switched totally to computer and arcade games. That's still mostly all I play. I do have recent consoles but they all suck (save a few games like DDR that don't use the ass controller).
You may generate 7 watts but if you are storing that in a battery you won't get that much back out.
It's a good idea though since a suspended load is going to be absorbing energy anyway (ie. the springy-ness), might as well use that to generate power.
However, a lot more energy could be generated by absorbing the person's weight (plus anything they carry). For example, if you could store the energy absorbed by the padding of your shoes as you walked. Now that would be some power.
Illegal use of trademarks and such
on
GoldenEye:Source
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It boggles my mind why mod authors use trademarked graphics, logos, name, and similar. It's just a matter of time before they get shut down. I mean come on, you can't use the 007 logo on unofficial products morons! If they would just use similar but otherwise completely different names and logos then there is absolutely nothing anyone could do to shut them down.
It's like they know they're not going to finish the mod so why not rip-off whatever and it won't matter when they get shut down. Idiots.
I like my Opteron machine as much as anyone but although AMD makes decent CPUs, the chipsets to use those CPUs suck. Just try to find an Opteron motherboard with the performance and stability of an Intel chipset board. They just don't exist.
I think that is another major reason why Apple went with Intel. I mean Intel's USB and disk controller chipsets are the best in the industry. Intel was also the first to provide PCI Express. Intel chipset based motherboards just whip the crap out of anything you can find for AMD CPUs. nVidia's chipsets are not that bad but still not up to the stability of Intel.
I was thinking more along of the lines of someone using MS Office then outputting it to PDF in order to be compliant (maybe this comes from an out-of-state agency like the federal government). So although they would be compliant, no one could edit or otherwise revise that document in the future without MS Office.
Hmmm, the parent is not totally trolling here. I don't mind PDF but you have to keep in mind that it is generally a read-only format. Sure, you can edit it with the right tools but those tools are mostly proprietary or don't work very well in the case of the free tools.
Even the tools that can edit PDF are not usually very powerful. They're just for touchup type work. Most of your formatting and layout still needs to be done in a real editor and those output PDF OK, they don't read PDF.
Not only would you be obliterating all other wireless networks within range (this thing is active on all the channels) and getting collisions slowing it, but there is no way in hell you are going to be getting the advertised 54 Mbps on each channel.
Now I have never used the 54 Mbps stuff but from my experience with the 11 and 22 Mbps equipment I can say that you get no where near that speed even with the antennas nearly touching each other. My 22 Mbps network gets around 6 Mbps in actual use, I have never seen it go above that. And when I was on 11 Mbps it literally topped out at exactly half that speed (3 Mbps). It seems like we have all been duped.
Uh, Apple external design is better but the quality of the components is pretty much no different from anything else.
For example, my iBook feels nice on my lap. It doesn't get too hot and doesn't have any pointy bits poking me. It has long battery life and externally it looks nice. On the other hand my Dell laptop is hot, noisey and it has sharp poking bits all over the outside.
But that's not all that makes up a computer...
The Apple LCD screen sucks compared to my Dell. The screen is low resolution, there are dead pixels, and it has a washed out looking display. My Dell does 1600x1200, there is not a single dead pixel and it has a beautiful display quality. My Dell is also a lot faster than the Apple.
Based on my experience it seems like Apple spends money on artistic quality and has to cut corners on the innards to get a reasonable price. Dell spends money on the innards and cuts corners on the artistic stuff in order to get a reasonable price.
So like practically everything, they both suck in different ways.
It is just a system for taking out the lag of a game. Something that most online games already do (especially fast games like Quake/UT). This makes it even more disconnected. Something which does not really work all that well in practice. It might be OK in a MMORPG type game since the pace is usually slow and boring anyway.
This is something that games like UT and Quake try to balance all the time. The "disconnected" (feels smooth but you often can't hit anything; eg. Quake3) versus "sharp" (feels tight and accurate but if you get lag it can be jumpy; eg. Quake2).
I think this is exactly the issue a lot of people have. These may not be the same people that the article is talking about but there are a ton of us that have serious trust issues with the medical profession.
Sure, doctors are human and they make mistakes but that's exactly the problem. If I look at almost any profession, I know that with training and the proper tools most likely I can do a better job myself. Now, I did say "most likely" because there are obviously people better than me at everything, the problem is finding those relatively rare people. I absolutely hate the fact that I have to fix my own vehicles and repair my own house but the fact is that I haven't found anyone that can be trusted to do a decent job. See, there are benefits when the job is personal, you end up actually caring about the results.
When we are talking medical stuff the stakes are even higher because it's your personal health we are dealing with. The problem is that most people don't have access to the proper tools. They have information but no tools for performing testing and such. That is really the main reason to see a doctor.
Just imagine (as someone else mentioned) an expert system that could guide people through the basic stuff. Then imagine having access to all the tools that a doctor has in order to confirm your diagnoses (blood tests, urine tests, ultra-sound, x-ray, etc.). Now don't get me wrong, the general population can not be trusted with a lot of that stuff. I mean, they are the same idiots that can't diagnose you correctly in the first place. For some of us though, this would be an awesome situation.
I have long thought the same thing. Most of Java's ease of use comes from the libraries. There is no reason why C++ could not have the same easy to use functionality in its standard libraries
Boost and STL are useful but too low level. We need a set of high level standard API's for C++. With the right design C++ could be nearly as quick easy to use as something like Perl (besides the need to compile).
Someone is working on porting SWT to C++. A great idea but it looks like a massive amount of work if you look at how much code is in SWT. Probably with some more help this project might get done quickly since it should be easy to divide up the work:
I agree 100% with everything you said. I have always made the point that I would rather a game be fun than realistic. I played Counterstrike for only a few days before I tired of the sneeking/creeping slow gameplay.
Thanks for all the stuff you have done for us that like the truely fun type of games!
What is this, "I just discovered there are alternative operating systems" day?
Why not at least mention the one alternative OS that may even have a slight glimmer of hope. I speak of Haiku (aka OpenBeOS). At least it's based on something that at one point stood a chance in the OS world.
In most countries there are regulations and certifications needed for phone equipment.
This thing doesn't let you control Skype with the phone though... meh...
A better system would be to use all USB. It could be used as a USB audio device (mic and speaker), could control the software, and only require a USB cable to hookup. This would obviously be more complex than this project but would be a lot more practical.
Slashdot Mirror
20" is getting a little big for a "laptop".
What I want is smaller screens with higher resolutions. A 14" 1600x1200 display would be nice. Stick that in an extremely lightweight power saving laptop and I would have an awesome portable X terminal.
Currently my only choices are my Dell with 15" 1600x1200 LCD which has a crap oddly shaped case that hurts my legs, is very heavy, gets hot as hell, and only lasts about 1 hour on battery... or my iBook which is pretty light (not enough though) and last upwards of 5-6 hours when using it as a dumb X11 terminal, but it has a complete ass 1024x768 screen (try running Visual Studio in VMware over X11 in OSX and see how much room is left to work when running 1024x768, blech).
What I really want is a thin-client type thing. A very lightweight laptop that is basically just a medium/large high-resolution LCD with a keyboard and high-speed wireless card that will run on battery for 8+ hours and not get hot. No hard-drive or powerful CPU needed.
Sorry, just thought this fits too perfect:
Peter: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob: Eight?
Peter: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
A huge problem I have always had with running an AMD CPU is that the motherboards suck. The chipsets suck, the BIOS' sucks, the boards just suck all around. Even high-end stuff like the Opteron machine I'm typing this on sucks. The CPU's are great but everything that makes it run sucks. Part of the problem is because of the manufacturers and part of the problem is that there are just no good chipsets avaiable. The few AMD chipsets that exist seem to be pretty good but AFAIK there are no AMD disk controllers, USB controllers, and other important stuff.
Intel on the other hand has much superior chipsets (although not so good CPU's at the moment). They are not without problems but better than the stuff you can get for AMD.
My perfect motherboard would be a dual Socket-940 Opteron board that ran a high-end Intel chipset. It wouldn't use the Intel memory controller since the AMD CPU's have built-in controllers but everything else (disk, USB, PCI-e, etc.) would be using the superior Intel stuff.
I would probably just run an Intel system if Intel had something better than the hot, power-sucking, slow Prescott crap.
The story about the plane losing pressure then flying on autopilot before crashing is interesting. Doesn't the plane know it has lost cabin pressure? If it's on autopilot why can't it reduce altitude so the people can regain consciousness? Hell, why can't it just declare an emergency and automatically land at the nearest airport after receiving an OK signal from the airport that it's safe to land.
We have all this technology but it's implemented by idiots.
Either you're never going to get that camera/phone combination, or you have extremely low standards for what constitutes an "awesome" picture.
You're talking about two different things. Professional photography is going to require special equipment no matter what. For personal photos even nice cameras do not have fancy lenses.
What? Think about it. What if you had a small phone that was an excellent phone, took awesome pictures, was a supurb MP3 player, and played the latest and best games out? Would you want that?
Eventually the technology will get there. It's crappy now but these are just the first baby steps.
I know I sure as hell don't want to carry around umpteen different little devices that each can get lost, together take up a lot of space, and each have their own interface to learn when I could just have one small device that does it all and presents it in one consistent usable interface.
That might work for small college projects but the real world is a different place.
;)
Often the rewrite never gets completed as there is too much crap added to it.
If you truly want to make something that works you need to plan for an evolution of your software. That is, write the first version with a modular design that can be modified or rewritten in phases. Doing one big rewrite on a non-trivial software system is damn near impossible. It's better to evolve the software over time, always keeping a working system and slowing moving parts in the desired (presumably better) direction.
I could write more on this but it's too early in the morning and I'm not even sure if what I wrote makes sense.
I guess I should have been more clear. The thumb is not as dexterious as the other fingers because it is made to grip and hold while the other fingers perform more detailed work. However, this is totally beside the point I was trying to make.
What I meant by my comparison is that the thumb sucks compared to using your hand/wrist/arm like with a joystick or mouse. I can quickly and extremely accurately snap my hand to specific positions whereas trying to do the same thing with just your thumb and its limited movement is damn hard. It's like the difference between using a thumb trackball and a mouse.
This is an interesting read, rather shallow and missing a lot of information, but interesting. Being born at the start of the 70's, I grew up with all this stuff.
Dispite what they say, the D-pad is retarded. Tell me how many arcade games had D-pads? Why do you think that is? Joysticks still rule.
I friggin hate thumb controls. Yeah, lets take the most clumsy, one directional (ie. weak in all other directions) finger and control everything with it! Pfffft... this is why I haven't gotten into and played console games since the mid-eighties when I switched totally to computer and arcade games. That's still mostly all I play. I do have recent consoles but they all suck (save a few games like DDR that don't use the ass controller).
You may generate 7 watts but if you are storing that in a battery you won't get that much back out.
It's a good idea though since a suspended load is going to be absorbing energy anyway (ie. the springy-ness), might as well use that to generate power.
However, a lot more energy could be generated by absorbing the person's weight (plus anything they carry). For example, if you could store the energy absorbed by the padding of your shoes as you walked. Now that would be some power.
It boggles my mind why mod authors use trademarked graphics, logos, name, and similar. It's just a matter of time before they get shut down. I mean come on, you can't use the 007 logo on unofficial products morons! If they would just use similar but otherwise completely different names and logos then there is absolutely nothing anyone could do to shut them down.
It's like they know they're not going to finish the mod so why not rip-off whatever and it won't matter when they get shut down. Idiots.
No, that's what cocaine does to people.
I like my Opteron machine as much as anyone but although AMD makes decent CPUs, the chipsets to use those CPUs suck. Just try to find an Opteron motherboard with the performance and stability of an Intel chipset board. They just don't exist.
I think that is another major reason why Apple went with Intel. I mean Intel's USB and disk controller chipsets are the best in the industry. Intel was also the first to provide PCI Express. Intel chipset based motherboards just whip the crap out of anything you can find for AMD CPUs. nVidia's chipsets are not that bad but still not up to the stability of Intel.
I was thinking more along of the lines of someone using MS Office then outputting it to PDF in order to be compliant (maybe this comes from an out-of-state agency like the federal government). So although they would be compliant, no one could edit or otherwise revise that document in the future without MS Office.
Hmmm, the parent is not totally trolling here. I don't mind PDF but you have to keep in mind that it is generally a read-only format. Sure, you can edit it with the right tools but those tools are mostly proprietary or don't work very well in the case of the free tools.
Even the tools that can edit PDF are not usually very powerful. They're just for touchup type work. Most of your formatting and layout still needs to be done in a real editor and those output PDF OK, they don't read PDF.
Not only that but Enlightenment was doing the cool eye-candy stuff before OS X even existed. If anything OS X probably used some Enlightenment ideas!
Not only would you be obliterating all other wireless networks within range (this thing is active on all the channels) and getting collisions slowing it, but there is no way in hell you are going to be getting the advertised 54 Mbps on each channel.
Now I have never used the 54 Mbps stuff but from my experience with the 11 and 22 Mbps equipment I can say that you get no where near that speed even with the antennas nearly touching each other. My 22 Mbps network gets around 6 Mbps in actual use, I have never seen it go above that. And when I was on 11 Mbps it literally topped out at exactly half that speed (3 Mbps). It seems like we have all been duped.
Uh, Apple external design is better but the quality of the components is pretty much no different from anything else.
For example, my iBook feels nice on my lap. It doesn't get too hot and doesn't have any pointy bits poking me. It has long battery life and externally it looks nice. On the other hand my Dell laptop is hot, noisey and it has sharp poking bits all over the outside.
But that's not all that makes up a computer...
The Apple LCD screen sucks compared to my Dell. The screen is low resolution, there are dead pixels, and it has a washed out looking display. My Dell does 1600x1200, there is not a single dead pixel and it has a beautiful display quality. My Dell is also a lot faster than the Apple.
Based on my experience it seems like Apple spends money on artistic quality and has to cut corners on the innards to get a reasonable price. Dell spends money on the innards and cuts corners on the artistic stuff in order to get a reasonable price.
So like practically everything, they both suck in different ways.
After reading the paper all I can say is "meh"...
It is just a system for taking out the lag of a game. Something that most online games already do (especially fast games like Quake/UT). This makes it even more disconnected. Something which does not really work all that well in practice. It might be OK in a MMORPG type game since the pace is usually slow and boring anyway.
This is something that games like UT and Quake try to balance all the time. The "disconnected" (feels smooth but you often can't hit anything; eg. Quake3) versus "sharp" (feels tight and accurate but if you get lag it can be jumpy; eg. Quake2).
I think this is exactly the issue a lot of people have. These may not be the same people that the article is talking about but there are a ton of us that have serious trust issues with the medical profession.
Sure, doctors are human and they make mistakes but that's exactly the problem. If I look at almost any profession, I know that with training and the proper tools most likely I can do a better job myself. Now, I did say "most likely" because there are obviously people better than me at everything, the problem is finding those relatively rare people. I absolutely hate the fact that I have to fix my own vehicles and repair my own house but the fact is that I haven't found anyone that can be trusted to do a decent job. See, there are benefits when the job is personal, you end up actually caring about the results.
When we are talking medical stuff the stakes are even higher because it's your personal health we are dealing with. The problem is that most people don't have access to the proper tools. They have information but no tools for performing testing and such. That is really the main reason to see a doctor.
Just imagine (as someone else mentioned) an expert system that could guide people through the basic stuff. Then imagine having access to all the tools that a doctor has in order to confirm your diagnoses (blood tests, urine tests, ultra-sound, x-ray, etc.). Now don't get me wrong, the general population can not be trusted with a lot of that stuff. I mean, they are the same idiots that can't diagnose you correctly in the first place. For some of us though, this would be an awesome situation.
I have long thought the same thing. Most of Java's ease of use comes from the libraries. There is no reason why C++ could not have the same easy to use functionality in its standard libraries
Boost and STL are useful but too low level. We need a set of high level standard API's for C++. With the right design C++ could be nearly as quick easy to use as something like Perl (besides the need to compile).
Someone is working on porting SWT to C++. A great idea but it looks like a massive amount of work if you look at how much code is in SWT. Probably with some more help this project might get done quickly since it should be easy to divide up the work:
Style SWT in C++.
I agree 100% with everything you said. I have always made the point that I would rather a game be fun than realistic. I played Counterstrike for only a few days before I tired of the sneeking/creeping slow gameplay.
Thanks for all the stuff you have done for us that like the truely fun type of games!
What is this, "I just discovered there are alternative operating systems" day?
Why not at least mention the one alternative OS that may even have a slight glimmer of hope. I speak of Haiku (aka OpenBeOS). At least it's based on something that at one point stood a chance in the OS world.
In most countries there are regulations and certifications needed for phone equipment.
This thing doesn't let you control Skype with the phone though... meh...
A better system would be to use all USB. It could be used as a USB audio device (mic and speaker), could control the software, and only require a USB cable to hookup. This would obviously be more complex than this project but would be a lot more practical.
In other words he doesn't trust the hardware and/or software being hooked up to his brain.
Gee, I wonder why...