This is, of course, a completely bogus statement. The NRA is a staunch defender of both the 1st and 2nd amendments. They're currently waging a campaign against CFR, which is a direct, unadulterated attack on the single most important kind of free speech : political speech.
On the other hand, the ACLU is clearly not in the same boat. They do absolutely ZERO to protect 2nd amendment rights.
Frankly, I'm still puzzled why so many people refuse to see the inherent connection between the 1st and 2nd amendments. For Pete's sake, they're RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. Very clearly, the FF's intended that they be preserved as a critical, fundamental right of the citizenry. They're the bulwark of freedom. Yes, I know people like to scoff at that word, but there you have it.
No, but the point he's trying to make is that scene organization works at a differerent 'magnification' (for lack of a better term) these days. Back in the days of Quake 1 and Carmack's zero-overdraw schemes, there was a premium on every triangle and every pixel that had to be processed.
Today, the issue is significantly different. Consider an old 'gigapixel' card. 1 billion pixels per second at 60 frames per second == 16.6 million pixels per frame. Even at 1600x1280 there's only about 2 million pixels onscreen at once. What does this tell you? You can now afford to sink some time into overdraw because it just doesn't matter.
Also, consider the fact that 1600x1280 == 2.04 million pixels onscreen. Even if you draw a single polygon per pixel @ 60 hz, you're still only looking at 120 million polys/second. That's going to be a pretty reasonable number for next-gen hardware (Xbox2). What does this say? Well, unless you really need 1 poly per pixel, you can afford to draw some extra polygons.
Now, let's say you've got a scene with 10,000 discrete objects. This is a pretty reasonable number these days. Even on a 3ghz processor, doing distance-to-plane checks for plain jane frustum culling is pretty darn expensive when done 10,000x per frame. Multiply that number by some constant C to do N world space occlusion checks. All of a sudden you're sinking multiple milliseconds into just doing scene graph traversal. Don't forget, you only get 16ms per frame @ 60hz. PVS on triangle strips or individual triangles? Teehee - you'll spend forever trying to process all that crap. Throw a simply quadtree or octree onto a scene, and cull at the object level (where object == say, 1000 to 10,000 polys). Let the video card deal with the little bit of extra overdraw and wasted polys. Point is, -you- have saved, say, 4+ milliseconds of raw CPU time. 4ms is a lot. Send that extra time to Havok or Karma. Send it to a fancy effects system. Don't waste it doing needless old-school culling. Don't forget, if you're doing things right, the 'rendering' is really just DMA slinging verts and textures in the background to the GPU. Paralellism with the GPU. These mega hoopdeedoo X800+ cards can deal with a little excess load.
The point is, these algorithms are most decidedly not advanced. They're from 2-3 years ago! Quite literally, that's ancient history in the games world. Ridiculous, but true. The real brilliance of these new generation GPU's is not wacky implementation of bizarre obscure culling algorithms. The brilliance is that they are so powerful, they allow you to spend your programming time implementing beautiful shaders and effects. In 1-2 years, graphics programming will have truly morphed from glorified bookkeeping (managing and organizing data has been the hallmark of the 'hardcore' graphics programmer for several years now) into actual effects and shader programming.
I cannot wait until dicking with exporters and preprocessors, and goofy custom renderers are a thing of the past. With some clever planning, graphics peeps will be able to really sink more and more time into making things beautiful, instead of being forced to be excessively clever to make things happen. There will always be room for 'real' advanced stuff (like modern GPU + CPU shadow techniques, spherical-harmonic lighting, and other esoterics), but the power of these new cards lies in freeing up graphics programmers to actually write graphics code instead of being accountants.That's the real practical results of this next generation of hardware:)
Ugh, cripes. No, you're reading it wrong. I was implying that libertarians and conservatives live day to day, witnessing this encroachment of various rights they (we) hold sacred.
Not to get into a Constitutional debate, or discussion of English, but.
"The right of the people" is the exact same wording in both the 1st and the 2nd amendments. Unless you'd like to interpret 'free speech' as 'state's rights' under some equally disingenuous interpretation of the 1st amendment, this argument is invalid.
As for 'necessary' I suspect you're taking the view of a bunch of kooky backwoods guys fighting off, say, the invading Soviet army. In reality, the 2nd amendment is targeted at internal tyrannies, not external.
You seem to be taking the position that I'm saying the Constitution is abided by at all times. My stance is exactly the opposite.
Yes, the Constitution is designed to prevent the majority from tyrannizing the minority. If 98% of the people in the country voted that the remaining 2% of people were not allowed to, say, write newspaper articles - that would be unconstitutional.
Your examples are perfectly valid. They are cases where the consitution has failed in the past. But interestingly enough, the Constitution's (or more specifically the BOR) own provisions are the ones which have allowed these oversights to be fixed gradually over time.
Similarly, my cases are perfectly valid. They are examples of tyrannical moves to sidestep the Consitution.
In my view, we're in a dangerous position these days where these 'transgressions' are accelerating faster than they can be undone.
Did you read the whole comment? I suggested that people who support such measures (clear circumvention of the Constitution and BOR) have been doing the same end-run around our rights as this particular bill proposes. All under the asupices of 'well it doesn't affect ME' and 'well, it's for the better of society'.
In the case of CFR - an utter violation of the 1st amendment. Not only does it limit speech, it limits the single most important type of speech - political.
Gun control - despite reams and reams of intensely clear writings by the founding fathers, and the clear English reading of the 2nd amendment, we have judges and legislatures turning gun owners into felons everywhere.
In the case of gay marriage - judges overriding WRITTEN LAWS to suit their own political bent is judicial activism. This is explicitly uncontitutional, and was a hugely important issue to the old Federalists (heck, Jefferson too).
We are not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. And the particular beauty of our constitution is that it works 2 ways. It protects the majority from tyrannizing the minority and it protects the minority from tyrannizing the majority. The above are examples of simply saying 'Eh, in this case, who cares?' and it's been going on for decades.
This particular instance comes as no surprise to those who are familiar with people willing to sign away their rights. Perhaps it'll do some good and wake up the 'UN RULES!' crowd.:/
You'll have to pardon me while I stifle a smug chuckle here.
What's your stance on Campaign Finance Reform?
What's your stance on the gun control?
What's your stance on the judicial activities which recently overrode state law to grant gay marriage licenses?
If you answered "I'm all for them!" to any of these questions, you have been party to the constant, deliberate erosion of Constitutional rights for the better part of 3 decades. So now you know what it feels like to have someone actively and deliberately trying to turn you into a felon tomorrow, where you weren't one today. And doing so under the guise of 'it's what's best for you'.
Welcome to the world of the libertarian and the conservative.
I do both. Tivo is both a verb and a proper pronoun.
I love Tivo - it Tivo's all kinds of interesting things for me. I only hate when I have to 'discipline' Tivo and get it to understand that no, I do -not- want to see "The New Detectives" 39 times a week:)
You read Gibson and Stephenson, and their weird networkian futures seem more and more plausible. In our particular case, it seems we're heading that direction (ultra sophisticated, pervasive network software, virtual combat between parties with gray areas of good and bad) due to much effort being expended to stop the flow of information that 'wants' to keep flowing.
Hack the planet, indeed.
Disclaimer : I generally find hardcore cyberpunk a bit silly and masturbatory. But in this case, there's a lot of interesting parallels.
You know, I'm not one to break out the Star Wars quotes lightly, but :
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
What a dopey system. Everyone knows that the only way you're going to stop this kind of thing is through draconian legislation!:)
Trivially easy. This very moment, Canada is deliberating on C.250
This bills expands the definition of 'hate speech' to include sexual orientation. This little gem would literally make it a crime to criticize the morality of homosexuality. Lest there be any confusion, this is not about inciting violence against gays. No, the simple act of saying 'Homosexuality is wrong' will be a CRIME.
This legislation would very easily be the single most draconian attack on free speech the western world has ever seen. It would give license to those with a bone to pick to do such wonderful things as
- Making the Bible/Koran/Torah 'hate materials'.
- Target any sort of family and/or conservative websites (think : politically oriented ones) as hate sites, subject to shutdown.
- Prevent any sort of legitimate discussion of gay rights legislation because any opposition could be viewed as hate speech.
In any case, it's the real guillotine of free speech. It's up for a vote on April 20th (2 days hence).
Actually, all the hype behind American McGee came from the fact that he was an ex-ID level designer (famously responsible for the classic multiplayer map dm4). At the time (when American McGee's Alice kicked off development) that was a pretty trendy/cool label to have.
Additionally, I believe the story goes that he worked as a janitor in the building that ID had their offices in and somehow got his foot in the door that way.
The reigning king of this kind of sci-fi is Stephen Baxter. Everything he writes is absolutely cosmic in magnitude. If you love the 'huge' sci-fi, check out:
- The Xeelee sequence (Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring). I've never read any other stories that hit this level of magnitude.
- The Manifold trilogy (Time, Space and Origin)
Baxter is also a bigtime space program advocate. Several of his individual novels center around revitalized US space programs. Expect to see some interesting stuff from him if the new Moon/Mars programs come to fruition.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, the ACLU is clearly not in the same boat. They do absolutely ZERO to protect 2nd amendment rights.
Frankly, I'm still puzzled why so many people refuse to see the inherent connection between the 1st and 2nd amendments. For Pete's sake, they're RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. Very clearly, the FF's intended that they be preserved as a critical, fundamental right of the citizenry. They're the bulwark of freedom. Yes, I know people like to scoff at that word, but there you have it.
Today, the issue is significantly different. Consider an old 'gigapixel' card. 1 billion pixels per second at 60 frames per second == 16.6 million pixels per frame. Even at 1600x1280 there's only about 2 million pixels onscreen at once. What does this tell you? You can now afford to sink some time into overdraw because it just doesn't matter.
Also, consider the fact that 1600x1280 == 2.04 million pixels onscreen. Even if you draw a single polygon per pixel @ 60 hz, you're still only looking at 120 million polys/second. That's going to be a pretty reasonable number for next-gen hardware (Xbox2). What does this say? Well, unless you really need 1 poly per pixel, you can afford to draw some extra polygons.
Now, let's say you've got a scene with 10,000 discrete objects. This is a pretty reasonable number these days. Even on a 3ghz processor, doing distance-to-plane checks for plain jane frustum culling is pretty darn expensive when done 10,000x per frame. Multiply that number by some constant C to do N world space occlusion checks. All of a sudden you're sinking multiple milliseconds into just doing scene graph traversal. Don't forget, you only get 16ms per frame @ 60hz. PVS on triangle strips or individual triangles? Teehee - you'll spend forever trying to process all that crap. Throw a simply quadtree or octree onto a scene, and cull at the object level (where object == say, 1000 to 10,000 polys). Let the video card deal with the little bit of extra overdraw and wasted polys. Point is, -you- have saved, say, 4+ milliseconds of raw CPU time. 4ms is a lot. Send that extra time to Havok or Karma. Send it to a fancy effects system. Don't waste it doing needless old-school culling. Don't forget, if you're doing things right, the 'rendering' is really just DMA slinging verts and textures in the background to the GPU. Paralellism with the GPU. These mega hoopdeedoo X800+ cards can deal with a little excess load.
The point is, these algorithms are most decidedly not advanced. They're from 2-3 years ago! Quite literally, that's ancient history in the games world. Ridiculous, but true. The real brilliance of these new generation GPU's is not wacky implementation of bizarre obscure culling algorithms. The brilliance is that they are so powerful, they allow you to spend your programming time implementing beautiful shaders and effects. In 1-2 years, graphics programming will have truly morphed from glorified bookkeeping (managing and organizing data has been the hallmark of the 'hardcore' graphics programmer for several years now) into actual effects and shader programming.
I cannot wait until dicking with exporters and preprocessors, and goofy custom renderers are a thing of the past. With some clever planning, graphics peeps will be able to really sink more and more time into making things beautiful, instead of being forced to be excessively clever to make things happen. There will always be room for 'real' advanced stuff (like modern GPU + CPU shadow techniques, spherical-harmonic lighting, and other esoterics), but the power of these new cards lies in freeing up graphics programmers to actually write graphics code instead of being accountants. That's the real practical results of this next generation of hardware :)
Ugh, cripes. No, you're reading it wrong. I was implying that libertarians and conservatives live day to day, witnessing this encroachment of various rights they (we) hold sacred.
Not to get into a Constitutional debate, or discussion of English, but. "The right of the people" is the exact same wording in both the 1st and the 2nd amendments. Unless you'd like to interpret 'free speech' as 'state's rights' under some equally disingenuous interpretation of the 1st amendment, this argument is invalid. As for 'necessary' I suspect you're taking the view of a bunch of kooky backwoods guys fighting off, say, the invading Soviet army. In reality, the 2nd amendment is targeted at internal tyrannies, not external.
Yes, the Constitution is designed to prevent the majority from tyrannizing the minority. If 98% of the people in the country voted that the remaining 2% of people were not allowed to, say, write newspaper articles - that would be unconstitutional.
Your examples are perfectly valid. They are cases where the consitution has failed in the past. But interestingly enough, the Constitution's (or more specifically the BOR) own provisions are the ones which have allowed these oversights to be fixed gradually over time.
Similarly, my cases are perfectly valid. They are examples of tyrannical moves to sidestep the Consitution.
In my view, we're in a dangerous position these days where these 'transgressions' are accelerating faster than they can be undone.
In the case of CFR - an utter violation of the 1st amendment. Not only does it limit speech, it limits the single most important type of speech - political.
Gun control - despite reams and reams of intensely clear writings by the founding fathers, and the clear English reading of the 2nd amendment, we have judges and legislatures turning gun owners into felons everywhere.
In the case of gay marriage - judges overriding WRITTEN LAWS to suit their own political bent is judicial activism. This is explicitly uncontitutional, and was a hugely important issue to the old Federalists (heck, Jefferson too).
We are not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. And the particular beauty of our constitution is that it works 2 ways. It protects the majority from tyrannizing the minority and it protects the minority from tyrannizing the majority. The above are examples of simply saying 'Eh, in this case, who cares?' and it's been going on for decades.
This particular instance comes as no surprise to those who are familiar with people willing to sign away their rights. Perhaps it'll do some good and wake up the 'UN RULES!' crowd. :/
What's your stance on Campaign Finance Reform?
What's your stance on the gun control?
What's your stance on the judicial activities which recently overrode state law to grant gay marriage licenses?
If you answered "I'm all for them!" to any of these questions, you have been party to the constant, deliberate erosion of Constitutional rights for the better part of 3 decades. So now you know what it feels like to have someone actively and deliberately trying to turn you into a felon tomorrow, where you weren't one today. And doing so under the guise of 'it's what's best for you'.
Welcome to the world of the libertarian and the conservative.
I love Tivo - it Tivo's all kinds of interesting things for me. I only hate when I have to 'discipline' Tivo and get it to understand that no, I do -not- want to see "The New Detectives" 39 times a week :)
Ice. Intelligent agents. 'Cryptoanarchists'. 'Cryptocapitalists'.
You read Gibson and Stephenson, and their weird networkian futures seem more and more plausible. In our particular case, it seems we're heading that direction (ultra sophisticated, pervasive network software, virtual combat between parties with gray areas of good and bad) due to much effort being expended to stop the flow of information that 'wants' to keep flowing.
Hack the planet, indeed.
Disclaimer : I generally find hardcore cyberpunk a bit silly and masturbatory. But in this case, there's a lot of interesting parallels.
You know, I'm not one to break out the Star Wars quotes lightly, but : "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." What a dopey system. Everyone knows that the only way you're going to stop this kind of thing is through draconian legislation! :)
This bills expands the definition of 'hate speech' to include sexual orientation. This little gem would literally make it a crime to criticize the morality of homosexuality. Lest there be any confusion, this is not about inciting violence against gays. No, the simple act of saying 'Homosexuality is wrong' will be a CRIME.
This legislation would very easily be the single most draconian attack on free speech the western world has ever seen. It would give license to those with a bone to pick to do such wonderful things as
- Making the Bible/Koran/Torah 'hate materials'.
- Target any sort of family and/or conservative websites (think : politically oriented ones) as hate sites, subject to shutdown.
- Prevent any sort of legitimate discussion of gay rights legislation because any opposition could be viewed as hate speech.
In any case, it's the real guillotine of free speech. It's up for a vote on April 20th (2 days hence).
Mod this bad boy up, it's scary as hell.
Additionally, I believe the story goes that he worked as a janitor in the building that ID had their offices in and somehow got his foot in the door that way.
- The Xeelee sequence (Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, Ring). I've never read any other stories that hit this level of magnitude.
- The Manifold trilogy (Time, Space and Origin) Baxter is also a bigtime space program advocate. Several of his individual novels center around revitalized US space programs. Expect to see some interesting stuff from him if the new Moon/Mars programs come to fruition.