From http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/: The PEAR program has used three generations of random event generators, with different primary sources of white noise, but important common features of design. The original "benchmark" experiment used a commercial random source developed by Elgenco, Inc., the core of which is proprietary. Elgenco's engineering staff describe the proprietary module as "solid state junctions with precision pre-amplifiers," implying processes that rely on quantum tunneling to produce an unpredictable, broad-spectrum white noise in the form of low-amplitude voltage fluctuations. The PEAR Portable REG uses Johnson noise in resistors, which is so-called "thermal noise" and is also a quantum level phenomenon that produces a well-behaved broad-spectrum fluctuation. The PEAR Micro-REG uses a field effect transistor (FET) for the primary noise source, again relying on quantum tunneling, and providing completely uncorrelated fundamental events that compound to an unpredictable voltage fluctuation. At least it doesn't sound like a pseudo-random generator.
You know, trolling is really disruptive for serious discussions and erosive to real communities. Yes, partially this is the fault of people who allow themselves to be trolled, or who are unable to recognize a troll for whatever reason and take it seriously.
But provoking this out of boredom, lack of self-esteem or whatever, is not only rude, it's fucking destructive. It's like shitting on someone's table and grinning at his disgust.
Also, it's drastic abuse of Free Speech. Moderation (=censorship, in a way) wouldn't be neccessary, were it not for provocateurs like you. Go and look in the mirror, and consider that the person you see there is hurting people and communities, and is damaging basic human rights. Are you happy with yourself now?
No wintel PC offers the same combination of price, form factor, silence, computing power and style.
They may outperform the Mac mini in a few of these categories, but only at the expense of drastically underperforming in the others: A fast PC usually isn't small nor silent. If it's silent, it's usually large, expensive and not all that hot in terms of performace. If it's cheap, it will be large and f'ugly.
If you consider that and the software the mini is shipped with, you'll find that the mini has a vastly superior price/value ration than virtually all of the x86 world. Plus, it brings the convenient safety of (at the moment) not being targeted by malware authors. I could very well imagine Apple winning big with the Mini.
You mean like SDL? Open-source, object-oriented and very cross-platform, provides facilities for 2d and OpenGL graphics, sound, input, and timers. Unfortunately nothing in the networking department.
I think many of the popular emulators use it... don't know about "big" games though.
Let's stay civil here, okay? No need for insinuations and insults.
Scratches are an inherent risk in an unprotected optical medium. Personally, I haven't scratched a disc yet either, but it doesn't take more than a bit of bad luck to end up with a damaged disc.
Also, if the movie is tied to the medium, its lifespan is limited by that as well. Say I want to re-watch an anime in 20 years from now... only having to discover that the DVD data layer has oxidated beyond readability.
Not a problem with hard drives, if you back up and migrate to new drives once in a while.
You're right about surround sound. Personally, I don't need it, as I don't have the equipment, but it might be an issue for those that do.
Visual quality is of course highly subjective, I for one can't distinguish a good XViD encode from an MPEG2 file several times its size.
"Let me guess: you don't know Japanese worth squat, do you?" Well, apart from 1.5 years worth of univerity-level japanese, no, why? Seriously, fansubs often seem to be more close to the original meaning, resulting in sometimes slightly awkward english. But I prefer it that way, as a learning tool, too. YMMV.
Part of the problem is that fansubs are infinitely more practical to handle than DVDs. A series just takes 2-4GB of hard disk space, and allows me to watch the whole thing without ever fumbling with the disks (and risking scratches in the process).
Since fansub quality is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from DVD, and the translations are often even better than their commercial counterparts, I actually prefer fansubs these days. (Note: this doesn't mean that I don't have many of the series I like sitting on my shelves... mostly unwatched.)
Pirating takes (obviously) less money, less effort, and delivers a superior product compared to buying them in a shop. IMHO, that's the real threat of fansubs.
I do wonder what it is that makes you think that his position is a delusion, but yours is not - from a probabilistic standpoint, it's just as likely.
Many people have tried to prove or disprove God, through logical and empirical means. None are convincing to me: because, by the very definition, God isn't part of this world. If he's omnipotent, omniscient and atemporal, he's beyond the range of all our means of insight.
Hence, there cannot be a definitive, knowledge-based, pro OR contra position. Well, at least that's what I believe.;-)
There is actually a quite practical way for anonymous, secure p2p filesharing - Freenet and Frost.
The Freenet system is designed to be completely decentralized, and it should be nigh impossible to track data paths over the nodes - no one knows which node originally requested the information, and the requesting node doesn't know where it's coming from. Also, all communications between the freenodes are encrypted, and everything in a freenode is stored in encrypted form as well. The owner of a freenode has no way of knowing what's stored in it.
All parts of the system are open-source and thus can be reviewed and trusted, unlike this eXeem garbage. As a bonus, it's written in Java and runs on a variety of platforms.
Finally, as you may have guessed by now - the system is slow as molasses flowing uphill in winter. Also, the freenode should best be running 24/7, which certainly is impractical for most.
But secure, anonymous filesharing is possible, today, with existing software.
An adapter for video output? Ooh... I'm starting to like this little box better and better! Provided that the video output is any good and the box is silent, it seems to be perfect as a "Home Media Center".
Overall, it might be even profitable for the company, too. For example, imagine that your average powergriefer will own three accounts. But he'll drive away 5 newbies and cause a couple of vets to quit.
The company would have been richer if they'd banned the griefer...
Well, I dunno about the "insightful" either, but I for one would never use a closed-source p2p client.
It's really just a matter of safety (and paranoia): only with opensource clients I can be relatively sure that the client won't rat out on me or install malware of various sorts. Honor among thieves (or pirates:)) is nothing I'll trust on...
I'd rather break the network connection than damage the accu. Even though li-ion-accus don't suffer from memory effect, they don't take kindly to deep-discharge.
Wow... a whopping 100 users? That's one hefty statistically sound sample size! Not. If you look at, for example, the slightly larger gamespy hl2 forum, you'll see quite a lot of complaints.
And yeah, I had access problems, too. I was able to play directly after release (which was cool), but the whole day after that, access to steam was erratic at best. Not cool.
The point stands: There's no need for a single player game to connect to its maker every damn time it is played. It's a measure of control, and the objective is to get the unwashed masses used to it. That's evil.
IANAL... but I think that confiscating foreign property might be illegal, I'd refrain from doing that. How is it (legally) different from theft?
Also, don't forget that bouncers (or "security" personnel) have no more rights than the ordinary citizen. I'd advise them to be very careful in their job.
Last but not least, I think that too much security actually creates a rather hostile athmosphere, which can create more problems in itself than it solves. But, as always, YMMV.
It most certainly won't go away. I'm sure Immersion will graciously grant Sony the right to use "their" incredibly inventive "technology" in the Dual-Shock controller as soon as Sony forks over the right amount of cash.
This is also known as 'licensing'.
(ACK on the Dual-Shock being the best design ever, by the way...)
If that PStwo still accepts a HDD, has a network adapter and will work with the Linux Kit, I might very well get one of these. Could be a sleek little desktop computer!
And for 150$ it wouldn't even be expensive. I just hope it will be less noisy than the original PS2...
I'd guess that, once the capsule was broken open, the samples were compromised anyway. Performing science on them would probably be potentially unsafe - where do you draw the line between original data and terrestrial contamination?
Well, a manned craft probably wouldn't have had this problem: Surely there would have been manual override controls.
This is precisely why probes and other un-manned spacecraft will never completely replace manned missions: If thinngs happen out of schedule, or different from a predicted sequence, a human will always be able to find a creative solution.
Same for the optical mouse: if memory serves right, Microsoft was the first to introduce that technology
That, at least, is untrue. I remember using an optical mouse on my Amiga 500. It required a special mousepad, displaying many small black dots on a white background, not unlike the surface pattern found on logitech's trackball balls.
So while it wasn't as advanced as optical mice today, it's still an example of pre-microsoft optical mouse technology.
Regarding the outdoor environments: What the heck do you base that opinion on? Have you played the Doom3 monorail ride? IMHO, that's a pretty feckin' impressive outdoor scene.
About the character modeling, I guess it's a matter of taste - I kinda liked it.
The only thing I was a bit disappointed in was that NPCs couldn't cast shadows on themselves or each other. A real player shadow would have been nice, too.
Re:Whats next for the maker of Doom, Quake and Wol
on
Life After Doom
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, while you're right in saying that there's still unfinished business with Doom3 (porting to other platforms, possible bugfixing), this will occupy only the "technical" part of the team.
The art and story people should be free, and why not ask them to start dreaming up concepts for the next game?
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure if it's the same one - but there does seem to be some sort of "mezzanine board" (whatever that means ;)) inside the Mac mini.
Maybe this will help you: Disassembly Documentation for the Mac mini.
From http://www.princeton.edu/~rdnelson/:
The PEAR program has used three generations of random event generators, with different primary sources of white noise, but important common features of design. The original "benchmark" experiment used a commercial random source developed by Elgenco, Inc., the core of which is proprietary. Elgenco's engineering staff describe the proprietary module as "solid state junctions with precision pre-amplifiers," implying processes that rely on quantum tunneling to produce an unpredictable, broad-spectrum white noise in the form of low-amplitude voltage fluctuations. The PEAR Portable REG uses Johnson noise in resistors, which is so-called "thermal noise" and is also a quantum level phenomenon that produces a well-behaved broad-spectrum fluctuation. The PEAR Micro-REG uses a field effect transistor (FET) for the primary noise source, again relying on quantum tunneling, and providing completely uncorrelated fundamental events that compound to an unpredictable voltage fluctuation.
At least it doesn't sound like a pseudo-random generator.
You know, trolling is really disruptive for serious discussions and erosive to real communities. Yes, partially this is the fault of people who allow themselves to be trolled, or who are unable to recognize a troll for whatever reason and take it seriously.
But provoking this out of boredom, lack of self-esteem or whatever, is not only rude, it's fucking destructive. It's like shitting on someone's table and grinning at his disgust.
Also, it's drastic abuse of Free Speech. Moderation (=censorship, in a way) wouldn't be neccessary, were it not for provocateurs like you. Go and look in the mirror, and consider that the person you see there is hurting people and communities, and is damaging basic human rights. Are you happy with yourself now?
No wintel PC offers the same combination of price, form factor, silence, computing power and style.
They may outperform the Mac mini in a few of these categories, but only at the expense of drastically underperforming in the others: A fast PC usually isn't small nor silent. If it's silent, it's usually large, expensive and not all that hot in terms of performace. If it's cheap, it will be large and f'ugly.
If you consider that and the software the mini is shipped with, you'll find that the mini has a vastly superior price/value ration than virtually all of the x86 world. Plus, it brings the convenient safety of (at the moment) not being targeted by malware authors. I could very well imagine Apple winning big with the Mini.
You mean like SDL? Open-source, object-oriented and very cross-platform, provides facilities for 2d and OpenGL graphics, sound, input, and timers. Unfortunately nothing in the networking department.
I think many of the popular emulators use it... don't know about "big" games though.
Let's stay civil here, okay? No need for insinuations and insults.
Scratches are an inherent risk in an unprotected optical medium. Personally, I haven't scratched a disc yet either, but it doesn't take more than a bit of bad luck to end up with a damaged disc.
Also, if the movie is tied to the medium, its lifespan is limited by that as well. Say I want to re-watch an anime in 20 years from now... only having to discover that the DVD data layer has oxidated beyond readability.
Not a problem with hard drives, if you back up and migrate to new drives once in a while.
You're right about surround sound. Personally, I don't need it, as I don't have the equipment, but it might be an issue for those that do.
Visual quality is of course highly subjective, I for one can't distinguish a good XViD encode from an MPEG2 file several times its size.
"Let me guess: you don't know Japanese worth squat, do you?"
Well, apart from 1.5 years worth of univerity-level japanese, no, why? Seriously, fansubs often seem to be more close to the original meaning, resulting in sometimes slightly awkward english. But I prefer it that way, as a learning tool, too. YMMV.
Part of the problem is that fansubs are infinitely more practical to handle than DVDs. A series just takes 2-4GB of hard disk space, and allows me to watch the whole thing without ever fumbling with the disks (and risking scratches in the process).
Since fansub quality is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from DVD, and the translations are often even better than their commercial counterparts, I actually prefer fansubs these days. (Note: this doesn't mean that I don't have many of the series I like sitting on my shelves... mostly unwatched.)
Pirating takes (obviously) less money, less effort, and delivers a superior product compared to buying them in a shop. IMHO, that's the real threat of fansubs.
I do wonder what it is that makes you think that his position is a delusion, but yours is not - from a probabilistic standpoint, it's just as likely.
;-)
Many people have tried to prove or disprove God, through logical and empirical means. None are convincing to me: because, by the very definition, God isn't part of this world. If he's omnipotent, omniscient and atemporal, he's beyond the range of all our means of insight.
Hence, there cannot be a definitive, knowledge-based, pro OR contra position. Well, at least that's what I believe.
There is actually a quite practical way for anonymous, secure p2p filesharing - Freenet and Frost.
The Freenet system is designed to be completely decentralized, and it should be nigh impossible to track data paths over the nodes - no one knows which node originally requested the information, and the requesting node doesn't know where it's coming from. Also, all communications between the freenodes are encrypted, and everything in a freenode is stored in encrypted form as well. The owner of a freenode has no way of knowing what's stored in it.
All parts of the system are open-source and thus can be reviewed and trusted, unlike this eXeem garbage. As a bonus, it's written in Java and runs on a variety of platforms.
Finally, as you may have guessed by now - the system is slow as molasses flowing uphill in winter. Also, the freenode should best be running 24/7, which certainly is impractical for most.
But secure, anonymous filesharing is possible, today, with existing software.
An adapter for video output? Ooh... I'm starting to like this little box better and better! Provided that the video output is any good and the box is silent, it seems to be perfect as a "Home Media Center".
I'd rather have broken backwards compatibility than eternal stagnation: in the computer world, that's usually the price of progress.
Also, what's stopping you to distribute the Qt2 or Qt3 libraries with your program? Yes, it probably bloats the package, but the possibility is there.
Overall, it might be even profitable for the company, too. For example, imagine that your average powergriefer will own three accounts. But he'll drive away 5 newbies and cause a couple of vets to quit.
The company would have been richer if they'd banned the griefer...
Well, I dunno about the "insightful" either, but I for one would never use a closed-source p2p client.
:)) is nothing I'll trust on...
It's really just a matter of safety (and paranoia): only with opensource clients I can be relatively sure that the client won't rat out on me or install malware of various sorts. Honor among thieves (or pirates
The portability is an added (very nice) bonus.
I'd rather break the network connection than damage the accu. Even though li-ion-accus don't suffer from memory effect, they don't take kindly to deep-discharge.
If it's really just a corrupt boot sector, why not install another bootloader like GRUB and chainload Windows from there?
Wow... a whopping 100 users? That's one hefty statistically sound sample size! Not. If you look at, for example, the slightly larger gamespy hl2 forum, you'll see quite a lot of complaints.
And yeah, I had access problems, too. I was able to play directly after release (which was cool), but the whole day after that, access to steam was erratic at best. Not cool.
The point stands: There's no need for a single player game to connect to its maker every damn time it is played. It's a measure of control, and the objective is to get the unwashed masses used to it. That's evil.
If memory serves me right, the JWST won't work at visible wavelengths, though.
IANAL... but I think that confiscating foreign property might be illegal, I'd refrain from doing that. How is it (legally) different from theft?
Also, don't forget that bouncers (or "security" personnel) have no more rights than the ordinary citizen. I'd advise them to be very careful in their job.
Last but not least, I think that too much security actually creates a rather hostile athmosphere, which can create more problems in itself than it solves. But, as always, YMMV.
It most certainly won't go away. I'm sure Immersion will graciously grant Sony the right to use "their" incredibly inventive "technology" in the Dual-Shock controller as soon as Sony forks over the right amount of cash.
This is also known as 'licensing'.
(ACK on the Dual-Shock being the best design ever, by the way...)
If that PStwo still accepts a HDD, has a network adapter and will work with the Linux Kit, I might very well get one of these. Could be a sleek little desktop computer!
And for 150$ it wouldn't even be expensive. I just hope it will be less noisy than the original PS2...
I'd guess that, once the capsule was broken open, the samples were compromised anyway. Performing science on them would probably be potentially unsafe - where do you draw the line between original data and terrestrial contamination?
>> Thank God this thing was unmanned.
Well, a manned craft probably wouldn't have had this problem: Surely there would have been manual override controls.
This is precisely why probes and other un-manned spacecraft will never completely replace manned missions: If thinngs happen out of schedule, or different from a predicted sequence, a human will always be able to find a creative solution.
So while it wasn't as advanced as optical mice today, it's still an example of pre-microsoft optical mouse technology.
Regarding the outdoor environments: What the heck do you base that opinion on? Have you played the Doom3 monorail ride? IMHO, that's a pretty feckin' impressive outdoor scene.
About the character modeling, I guess it's a matter of taste - I kinda liked it.
The only thing I was a bit disappointed in was that NPCs couldn't cast shadows on themselves or each other. A real player shadow would have been nice, too.
Well, while you're right in saying that there's still unfinished business with Doom3 (porting to other platforms, possible bugfixing), this will occupy only the "technical" part of the team.
The art and story people should be free, and why not ask them to start dreaming up concepts for the next game?