At my company, we have a group of people that are elected to a Technical Ladder. This ladder theoretically means that these people are competent in their field and have shown that they are leaders. Now a side-effect of this ladder is that the members are expected to give "Brown Bag" sessions during their lunch hours. At my company the brown bags are held in an auditorium we have here on campus, and this auditorium doesn't allow food or drink. So the "Brown Bag" is essentially a mini-training class that you have to skip lunch to go to...Preparation for the "Brown Bags" are not placed in the schedule, so the engineer that is giving the class has to prepare for it outside of work.
As you can imagine, there aren't alot of these sessions...
Now the good news on this end is that management is beginning to see the need for REAL training and is also understanding that Brown Bags should be given a bit more leeway in the schedule...but this has been a painful process and we are still taking baby steps...
Actually last I heard Tim Sweeney was drinking brandy and smoking cigars with Bill Gates. He uses Unreal as the poster-child of Direct3D. He has some definite misconceptions of the capability of OpenGL compared to Direct3D, and his proposal for an OpenGL extension that would provide for more efficient resident texture memory handling was pretty much laughed at by the industry (largely because he missed the obvious fact that the schemes he suggested within the extension were already supported with the glTexSubImage* functions and the glAreTexturesResident line of functions.) He has long suggested that the Direct3D version of Unreal was much faster and more efficient on his technology page, and yet I must agree with the above poster...OpenGL appears as good if not better. Sweeney may be able to program some mean template classes, but he is no way as knowledgeable about 3D technology as many others in the industry. (Carmack, for example)
Oh, and Quake3Arena was more fun that Unreal Tournament.;)
Hmm, interesting turn of phrase. I have an answer, that many would disagree with. Maybe He doesn't need our worship. Maybe He just thinks that if you MUST worship something, it should be Him above anything else. Not too bad an opinion if your the Creator.
I believe the commandment was "Thou shalt have no other God before Me!" Not, though shalt worship me! See the difference?
C is not taught because the AP exams are not given in C. Last I heard they were Pascal. They would most likely move to Java before they moved to C. C, however, might be taught in an advanced class which would follow successfully passing the AP exam.
How so? When I took AP Computer Science, the latter half of the second year was a game programming project (and this was 10 years ago). The first half was AP exam related, but once that was finished, we had nothing more to learn. Programming a game utilizes a broad spectrum of programming disciplines and concepts. Its perfect for school and not only that its fun. Learning shouldn't be boring.
Were you running tin with any switches? I think I ran it as tin -r or something like that...Don't remember, as its been years since I did it. I seem to remember that running it WITH certain switches made it a very nice interface, while without the switches, it was virtually useless.
I disagree, in this case. He isn't talking about some nebulous form of Free Speech. He's talking about using the Internet as a conduit of Free Speech and he's is rightly comparing it with the efforts of certain legislators in removing the rights to bear arms. The Bill of Rights plainly states that we have a right to bear arms, as well as a right to free speech. If some congressman tries to lessen this right by saying we only have a right to bear small arms or shotguns and rifles, then they have just reduced our rights. Last I checked, automatic weapons were fire arms, and I plainly have a right to bear arms...
The same analogue holds for Free Speech. If you eliminate ANY speech, then you have undermined the right as a whole, and that is just what he is saying. I guess you were too busy living in that ivory tower to notice.
Anyone know where I can get the email addresses of my representatives and senators? I DO want to let them know what my opinion about MS is. What about the justices? Can someone give email for them too?
This is such disinformation...Software OpenGL under windows does not go through D3D. It is just not highly optimized. They are using the same Software OpenGL layer that they have always used and it existed before Direct3D was a glimmer in MS's eye...
Yes, its a crappy implementation, but its not THAT crappy. If you must have software OpenGL, then use Silicon Graphic's replacement or use Mesa.
Um...Half-life is not made by id software...It was written by Valve Software and published by Sierra. But ironically all Half-life would need to do is hand the source over to Loki, since it does support OpenGL already, and it could be ported readily. Links to prove it: http://www.valvesoftware.com/projects.htm http://www.sierrastudios.com/games/half- life
I really have very little respect for Tim Sweeney any longer. He has shown he can code C++ extremely well, and write games that are very nice...but he has no business attempting to dictate technology. He has made claims about OpenGL which are simply not true (for example his claim regarding texture swapping and memory usage being better on Direct3D.) I have also not seen ONE feature that he or any other engine maker has published in a game that BOTH API's couldn't handle equally or near enough. Maybe he has a vested interest in Microsoft (stock?) or something...
Well, don't they make toasters now with wider slots? I'd call that an improvement...Also, there is that company that is making the iToaster...(but that isn't really a toaster is it?) As for overclocking being for kids: With CPU's getting faster all the time, and Money$oft bloating their code in such a way as to make the computer appear to be running at the same speed, I think its important to stay just a bit ahead of the M$ curve. At least you feel like CPU's are making progress then, instead of just keeping up.
As for making SDRAM into RDRAM, would this mean that I could run SDRAM on a mobo that expected RDRAM? If so, then this is really a GREAT idea, since that RDRAM crap is just outrageously expensive for some reason.
Hmm...did that study take into account all the other drugs someone who regularly used ecstacy might be using as well, or were they able to limit their study to people who ONLY used ecstacy. As for the sleep disorders...well the one time I used ecstacy, I had a bad experience, and I believe an allergic reaction. Needless to say, I had sleep disorders and flashbacks for about two to three weeks following that.
Its not that I approve of drug use, its more that I disapprove of tests that are fixed in such a way as to show something is bad for you. Wasn't it Mark Twain that said, "There are liars, damn liars, and statistics." Well these tests are just statistics...
Maybe they are able to keep the UFO conspiracy secret because they don't TELL the president. If they did tell him, he would spill the beans himself since it would serve to make him look better. "Look what those Republicans have been hiding from our children all these years! Shame on them!"
Wow, this is almost a profound statement, but, similar to much of Katz's writings on culture, I still think its a gross over-generalization. I must agree that a large cross-section of the musicians I have met are extremely geeky in their own ways. I would even go so far as to lump the Freaks and the Band Queers into the same sort of culture/counter-culture geeky dichotomy, but this trend seems to vanish beyond high school. At least in my experience. Once beyond the socially dividing boundaries of public education, you see that professional musicians are extremely INTO music, in the same way that professional programmers are INTO programming, but if you actually look at the other professions (i.e. non-computer oriented and music-based) you'll see an equal, although different form of geekery. The fact is, you'll find that everyone is a geek in some sense of the word: a mechanic that is INTO cars, an archeaologist that is INTO dinosaurs. Almost all artsy-fartsy-type professionals are geeks. Teachers and professors are geeks. Accountants are geeks. The police are even pretty geeky. The sad (or is it celebratory?) fact is that humans are geeky about anything they are passionate about whether its music, computers, or flowers. Sure we go out of our way trying to be what we "think" normal is...but in the end, its only ourselves that we fool.
To place a note on topic: I don't think that piracy should be blanketly approved of as Katz suggests, but I do think he has a point when it comes to the industry's attempt at cracking down on the very people which would buy their records. The industry is going to lose this battle, and may have already done too much damage to recover. And like watching a wholly mammoth sink into the tar pits...its going to be both slow and painful to behold.
Thats why the Unix-gods invented user-level and group-level permissions. Hopefully the root user isn't typing rm -rf on a daily basis (unless they are REALLY sure of where they are in the file heirarchy.)
Last I checked...Win NT (at least 4.0) doesn't have this kind of file permissions. Maybe its just the admins here aren't using it...(which is just as bad...IMO) What good is file security if it isn't enforced by the OS?
Are you thinking of "shortcuts"? If so, then have you ever tried to shortcut a.dll? Just doesn't work, since shortcuts are NOT symbolic links. They don't represent a pointer to the inode. The bottom line regarding this "new" feature that M$ claims is so innovative, is that it isn't innovative. It may be a specific application of the generalized sym-link/hard-link concepts, but certainly not innovative. This sort of crap could be written into a command-line application easily in UNIX-land.
On the other hand, I believe Micro$oft will get its precious patent...but it won't be a broad sweeping patent, as it is only applicable for their file systems. Samba of course will have to support it...but as we've seen before with other M$ file system changes...that shouldn't take more than a few days to do...
So you didn't bother to read the article...eh? The lawsuit is asking for DoubleClick to be banned from collecting user information without the prior written consent of the user...not for money. Don't assume that lawsuits are always about money. Sometimes they are about doing the right thing.
Syntax looks almost like Tcl...except it would be more like: while {1} { eval $everything } Just be sure the everything variable has a meaningful script assigned to it...
(Not sure if the 1 is valid...if it isn't then use true.)
Boy I sure miss the days of Word 2.0...when you could put the whole application (minus the useless fluff that only tech writers use) on a 3 1/2 inch floppy...
Hehe, sorry if you misunderstand me. I understand you can use COM to interface with all these other languages...I am just taking an opportunity to bash Visual Basic...so relax...
Yes these are all gambles in a sense. But some things are not gambles. Anti-aliased polygons can make a scene look alot better (on the order of magnitude that bilinear and trilinear interpolation does)... so I would consider this to be less of a gamble. I imagine that nVidia will support this soon. 3dfx may have just done it first. As for the "revolutionary" T-buffer [tm]...this is just the accumulation buffer, and I've been wondering when someone would support it. The lighting in T&L I think may be a bit more of a gamble. Most games still use precalculated lightmaps. I must admit that hardware lights looks really nice and allow for alot of cool effects, but the problem is the limit on the number of active lights in a scene (which results in the coder resorting to light maps again or perhaps implementing a partial lightmap/dynamic light engine.) As for the Transforms...this is a good idea and one that I think we'll see more of. I would wager that there will be a point when a 3d card has ALL of these nifty features in hardware (meaning everything that OpenGL can do and more is done in the hardware *drool*) but until then...we get to wait and see what the 3D card makers and game writers think is MOST important.
So I agree that these things are all gambles in a way...but I think they are all bound to be supported by everyone eventually anyway...its really just a matter of priorities.
3dfx appeals to the greed in developers with their Glide API. By this I mean that the developers can port to Glide, and the framerates are 10-15% better than OpenGL or Direct3D. The reality is that if the developers want to kill the Glide API, they should just exercise some restraint and NOT code to it. Its not like 3dfx doesn't support OpenGL (although I have yet to see a fully compliant ICD, correct me if I missed it...since I use TNT's for development now) or Direct3D.
As for being happy about 3dfx putting out another competing 3D Board...you better damn well believe I'm happy. I love competition...it makes BOTH of the leaders better in the long run. Think about how competition has improved those frame rates and image quality just over the past 3 years. (thats even in spite of an initial head start with Glide by 3dfx.) Simply amazing really...
> They dumped opengl support becuase they couldnt control opengl. They made d3d
One thing...M$ is still on the OpenGL ARB (Architechture Review Board) so they are still effecting the destiny of this excellent library. My understanding is that the ONLY reason they remain is because they would remove OpenGL from the OS if they were not present. They then turn around and make Direct3D, an evolving COM-based library which gets better each release (if you can overlook that COM crap) yet we are only now getting OpenGL 1.2 out the door, and I have yet to see drivers for it. Seems obvious to me that M$ is holding back OpenGL while they push out their API and grease the palms of the driver writers to support them first. God bless Carmack and Nvidia or I bet there wouldn't even be a fully compliant OpenGL ICD for the general consumer base.
Who, for the love of Jesus, would write a Direct3D app in Visual Basic????? (which is the only reason for the COM-based architechture...)
Heh, it isn't just Fort Worth. Plano and Richardson (also in Texas) have installed hundreds of cameras on traffic lights, all in the name of keeping traffic moving... The weirdest part is that it seems like the cameras are always pointing AWAY from the streets and towards the local strip shopping center...
Slashdot Mirror
At my company, we have a group of people that are elected to a Technical Ladder. This ladder theoretically means that these people are competent in their field and have shown that they are leaders. Now a side-effect of this ladder is that the members are expected to give "Brown Bag" sessions during their lunch hours. At my company the brown bags are held in an auditorium we have here on campus, and this auditorium doesn't allow food or drink. So the "Brown Bag" is essentially a mini-training class that you have to skip lunch to go to...Preparation for the "Brown Bags" are not placed in the schedule, so the engineer that is giving the class has to prepare for it outside of work.
As you can imagine, there aren't alot of these sessions...
Now the good news on this end is that management is beginning to see the need for REAL training and is also understanding that Brown Bags should be given a bit more leeway in the schedule...but this has been a painful process and we are still taking baby steps...
Anyway...thats my experience...
Actually last I heard Tim Sweeney was drinking brandy and smoking cigars with Bill Gates. He uses Unreal as the poster-child of Direct3D. He has some definite misconceptions of the capability of OpenGL compared to Direct3D, and his proposal for an OpenGL extension that would provide for more efficient resident texture memory handling was pretty much laughed at by the industry (largely because he missed the obvious fact that the schemes he suggested within the extension were already supported with the glTexSubImage* functions and the glAreTexturesResident line of functions.) He has long suggested that the Direct3D version of Unreal was much faster and more efficient on his technology page, and yet I must agree with the above poster...OpenGL appears as good if not better. Sweeney may be able to program some mean template classes, but he is no way as knowledgeable about 3D technology as many others in the industry. (Carmack, for example)
;)
Oh, and Quake3Arena was more fun that Unreal Tournament.
Hmm, interesting turn of phrase. I have an answer, that many would disagree with. Maybe He doesn't need our worship. Maybe He just thinks that if you MUST worship something, it should be Him above anything else. Not too bad an opinion if your the Creator.
I believe the commandment was "Thou shalt have no other God before Me!" Not, though shalt worship me! See the difference?
C is not taught because the AP exams are not given in C. Last I heard they were Pascal. They would most likely move to Java before they moved to C. C, however, might be taught in an advanced class which would follow successfully passing the AP exam.
No that would be id software and metal music my friend. Not this one poster...
How so? When I took AP Computer Science, the latter half of the second year was a game programming project (and this was 10 years ago). The first half was AP exam related, but once that was finished, we had nothing more to learn. Programming a game utilizes a broad spectrum of programming disciplines and concepts. Its perfect for school and not only that its fun. Learning shouldn't be boring.
Were you running tin with any switches? I think I ran it as tin -r or something like that...Don't remember, as its been years since I did it. I seem to remember that running it WITH certain switches made it a very nice interface, while without the switches, it was virtually useless.
I disagree, in this case. He isn't talking about some nebulous form of Free Speech. He's talking about using the Internet as a conduit of Free Speech and he's is rightly comparing it with the efforts of certain legislators in removing the rights to bear arms. The Bill of Rights plainly states that we have a right to bear arms, as well as a right to free speech. If some congressman tries to lessen this right by saying we only have a right to bear small arms or shotguns and rifles, then they have just reduced our rights. Last I checked, automatic weapons were fire arms, and I plainly have a right to bear arms...
The same analogue holds for Free Speech. If you eliminate ANY speech, then you have undermined the right as a whole, and that is just what he is saying. I guess you were too busy living in that ivory tower to notice.
Anyone know where I can get the email addresses of my representatives and senators? I DO want to let them know what my opinion about MS is. What about the justices? Can someone give email for them too?
This is such disinformation...Software OpenGL under windows does not go through D3D. It is just not highly optimized. They are using the same Software OpenGL layer that they have always used and it existed before Direct3D was a glimmer in MS's eye...
Yes, its a crappy implementation, but its not THAT crappy. If you must have software OpenGL, then use Silicon Graphic's replacement or use Mesa.
Um...Half-life is not made by id software...It was written by Valve Software and published by Sierra. But ironically all Half-life would need to do is hand the source over to Loki, since it does support OpenGL already, and it could be ported readily.
Links to prove it:
http://www.valvesoftware.com/projects.htm
http://www.sierrastudios.com/games/half- life
I really have very little respect for Tim Sweeney any longer. He has shown he can code C++ extremely well, and write games that are very nice...but he has no business attempting to dictate technology. He has made claims about OpenGL which are simply not true (for example his claim regarding texture swapping and memory usage being better on Direct3D.) I have also not seen ONE feature that he or any other engine maker has published in a game that BOTH API's couldn't handle equally or near enough. Maybe he has a vested interest in Microsoft (stock?) or something...
Well, don't they make toasters now with wider slots? I'd call that an improvement...Also, there is that company that is making the iToaster...(but that isn't really a toaster is it?) As for overclocking being for kids: With CPU's getting faster all the time, and Money$oft bloating their code in such a way as to make the computer appear to be running at the same speed, I think its important to stay just a bit ahead of the M$ curve. At least you feel like CPU's are making progress then, instead of just keeping up.
As for making SDRAM into RDRAM, would this mean that I could run SDRAM on a mobo that expected RDRAM? If so, then this is really a GREAT idea, since that RDRAM crap is just outrageously expensive for some reason.
Hmm...did that study take into account all the other drugs someone who regularly used ecstacy might be using as well, or were they able to limit their study to people who ONLY used ecstacy. As for the sleep disorders...well the one time I used ecstacy, I had a bad experience, and I believe an allergic reaction. Needless to say, I had sleep disorders and flashbacks for about two to three weeks following that.
Its not that I approve of drug use, its more that I disapprove of tests that are fixed in such a way as to show something is bad for you. Wasn't it Mark Twain that said, "There are liars, damn liars, and statistics." Well these tests are just statistics...
Maybe they are able to keep the UFO conspiracy secret because they don't TELL the president. If they did tell him, he would spill the beans himself since it would serve to make him look better. "Look what those Republicans have been hiding from our children all these years! Shame on them!"
Wow, this is almost a profound statement, but, similar to much of Katz's writings on culture, I still think its a gross over-generalization. I must agree that a large cross-section of the musicians I have met are extremely geeky in their own ways. I would even go so far as to lump the Freaks and the Band Queers into the same sort of culture/counter-culture geeky dichotomy, but this trend seems to vanish beyond high school. At least in my experience. Once beyond the socially dividing boundaries of public education, you see that professional musicians are extremely INTO music, in the same way that professional programmers are INTO programming, but if you actually look at the other professions (i.e. non-computer oriented and music-based) you'll see an equal, although different form of geekery. The fact is, you'll find that everyone is a geek in some sense of the word: a mechanic that is INTO cars, an archeaologist that is INTO dinosaurs. Almost all artsy-fartsy-type professionals are geeks. Teachers and professors are geeks. Accountants are geeks. The police are even pretty geeky. The sad (or is it celebratory?) fact is that humans are geeky about anything they are passionate about whether its music, computers, or flowers. Sure we go out of our way trying to be what we "think" normal is...but in the end, its only ourselves that we fool.
To place a note on topic: I don't think that piracy should be blanketly approved of as Katz suggests, but I do think he has a point when it comes to the industry's attempt at cracking down on the very people which would buy their records. The industry is going to lose this battle, and may have already done too much damage to recover. And like watching a wholly mammoth sink into the tar pits...its going to be both slow and painful to behold.
Thats why the Unix-gods invented user-level and group-level permissions. Hopefully the root user isn't typing rm -rf on a daily basis (unless they are REALLY sure of where they are in the file heirarchy.)
Last I checked...Win NT (at least 4.0) doesn't have this kind of file permissions. Maybe its just the admins here aren't using it...(which is just as bad...IMO) What good is file security if it isn't enforced by the OS?
Are you thinking of "shortcuts"? .dll? Just doesn't work, since shortcuts are NOT symbolic links. They don't represent a pointer to the inode. The bottom line regarding this "new" feature that M$ claims is so innovative, is that it isn't innovative. It may be a specific application of the generalized sym-link/hard-link concepts, but certainly not innovative. This sort of crap could be written into a command-line application easily in UNIX-land.
If so, then have you ever tried to shortcut a
On the other hand, I believe Micro$oft will get its precious patent...but it won't be a broad sweeping patent, as it is only applicable for their file systems. Samba of course will have to support it...but as we've seen before with other M$ file system changes...that shouldn't take more than a few days to do...
So you didn't bother to read the article...eh?
The lawsuit is asking for DoubleClick to be banned from collecting user information without the prior written consent of the user...not for money. Don't assume that lawsuits are always about money. Sometimes they are about doing the right thing.
Syntax looks almost like Tcl...except it would be more like:
while {1} {
eval $everything
}
Just be sure the everything variable has a meaningful script assigned to it...
(Not sure if the 1 is valid...if it isn't then use true.)
Boy I sure miss the days of Word 2.0...when you could put the whole application (minus the useless fluff that only tech writers use) on a 3 1/2 inch floppy...
Hehe, sorry if you misunderstand me. I understand you can use COM to interface with all these other languages...I am just taking an opportunity to bash Visual Basic...so relax...
Yes these are all gambles in a sense. But some things are not gambles. Anti-aliased polygons can make a scene look alot better (on the order of magnitude that bilinear and trilinear interpolation does) ... so I would consider this to be less of a gamble. I imagine that nVidia will support this soon. 3dfx may have just done it first. As for the "revolutionary" T-buffer [tm]...this is just the accumulation buffer, and I've been wondering when someone would support it. The lighting in T&L I think may be a bit more of a gamble. Most games still use precalculated lightmaps. I must admit that hardware lights looks really nice and allow for alot of cool effects, but the problem is the limit on the number of active lights in a scene (which results in the coder resorting to light maps again or perhaps implementing a partial lightmap/dynamic light engine.) As for the Transforms...this is a good idea and one that I think we'll see more of. I would wager that there will be a point when a 3d card has ALL of these nifty features in hardware (meaning everything that OpenGL can do and more is done in the hardware *drool*) but until then...we get to wait and see what the 3D card makers and game writers think is MOST important.
So I agree that these things are all gambles in a way...but I think they are all bound to be supported by everyone eventually anyway...its really just a matter of priorities.
3dfx appeals to the greed in developers with their Glide API. By this I mean that the developers can port to Glide, and the framerates are 10-15% better than OpenGL or Direct3D. The reality is that if the developers want to kill the Glide API, they should just exercise some restraint and NOT code to it. Its not like 3dfx doesn't support OpenGL (although I have yet to see a fully compliant ICD, correct me if I missed it...since I use TNT's for development now) or Direct3D.
As for being happy about 3dfx putting out another competing 3D Board...you better damn well believe I'm happy. I love competition...it makes BOTH of the leaders better in the long run. Think about how competition has improved those frame rates and image quality just over the past 3 years. (thats even in spite of an initial head start with Glide by 3dfx.) Simply amazing really...
-- DW
> They dumped opengl support becuase they couldnt control opengl. They made d3d
One thing...M$ is still on the OpenGL ARB (Architechture Review Board) so they are still effecting the destiny of this excellent library. My understanding is that the ONLY reason they remain is because they would remove OpenGL from the OS if they were not present. They then turn around and make Direct3D, an evolving COM-based library which gets better each release (if you can overlook that COM crap) yet we are only now getting OpenGL 1.2 out the door, and I have yet to see drivers for it. Seems obvious to me that M$ is holding back OpenGL while they push out their API and grease the palms of the driver writers to support them first. God bless Carmack and Nvidia or I bet there wouldn't even be a fully compliant OpenGL ICD for the general consumer base.
Who, for the love of Jesus, would write a Direct3D app in Visual Basic????? (which is the only reason for the COM-based architechture...)
Heh, it isn't just Fort Worth. Plano and Richardson (also in Texas) have installed hundreds of cameras on traffic lights, all in the name of keeping traffic moving...
The weirdest part is that it seems like the cameras are always pointing AWAY from the streets and towards the local strip shopping center...