Anti-aliasing is done with math, and could be done by hand, but it would take forever (from the ars article).
This goes to the heart of software patents. They are not patents on computer software. They are patents on mathematical algorithms which need not be run on computers at all.
They can be run on water powered wooden clockwork, by pen and paper, and on Turing machines built in Minecraft. They can be run by choreographed groups of Hungarian folk dancers. They can be run in the human mind.
And an exclusive licences to run these algorithms, without even having to write them, are being handed out like confetti by an office that's not even supposed to be granting them.
By that measure yeah. But since I can get 100+ cable channels for 30 a month, which works at about, say, 4x7x30=840 hours, or about 0.04 per hour, by THAT measure games are actually outrageously expensive.
Minecraft isn't finished? Amidst the exploration of the fantastic structures created across thousands of servers, and the investigations of the wealth of possibilities of the engine and gameplay, I really hadn't noticed.
So I'm going to get more out of this for my 15 bucks. Best 15 bucks I ever spent.
Cheaper, smaller, faster, better, only allows us to do what we already can do, just in a more "efficient" way. Real progress involves creating entirely new tools and systems which enable us to go beyond what is possible today.
The world is not going to be changed by 5g iPhones, and bigger hard discs. It's changed by things like lasers, mobile phones, and P2P software. Big umbrella ideas change things, not refinements on those ideas.
This has nothing to do with religion, or fundamentalism, or the Cold War or anything else. This simply has to do with the Pakistani's giving the US the finger. And they're right to do so.
Face it. The US all but sent the SEALs into Pakistan to kill Bin Laden in a drive-by. They even dumped the body in an unknown location when they were done. How do you expect the Pakistani's to react? Can you imagine what would happen if, say, British Intelligence flew a chopper into Washington D.C., across the river from the Pentagon, riddled some retired IRA operative with bullets and dumped his body in the Chesapeake Bay? Do you think the Pentagon would give back their helicoptor?
More to the point, do you think that the US would have to be some raving fundamentalist theocracy with a deep seated hatred of the British and their way of life before it gave the helicopter to say, the French? Hell, the US would give the helicopter to the Russians if they thought the Brits would get even more pissed off.
Hypotheticals aside, the US is lucky that the Pakistanis didn't expel over US diplomat, solider, civilian, and corporation from their country after what happened. Osama Bin Laden was assassinated not 1000m from a national military base, by unauthorised foreign soldiers with neither warrant, permission, or approval, and who fled the country with the corpse in tow within minutes of the deed. This from a country which supposedly respects the rule of law. My eye!
They killed Bin Laden in a drive-by, stuffed the body into the trunk and sped off. US soldiers, on Pakistani soil. Give the helicopter to the Chinese?! Hell, I'd have put that fucker on public display, parts open for inspection to anyone that wants to see. I'd have invited the Ayatollah himself around for to pose for photographs. Anything just to piss the Pentagon off.
And if I was the US, I'd still consider myself as having got off lightly. Very lightly.
1) BART has no obligation to assist them in doing so. BART had every right to turn off their equipment.
So you think that companies can provide a public service and then just withdraw it arbitrarily whenever they like? Maybe that's your idea of an ordered society, but it's not mine.
Taking down people for organizing some store-burning though, no. Many of the rioters seem to be cowards who were only smashing and stealing because they assumed they could get away with it, or they were going with the crowd. I suspect a few arrests will send most of the rioters to cover.
It's more than that. The rioters are the first generation of young people to come of age after the News of the World inspired pedophile hysteria campaign, which made every adult in the western world afraid of children.
All these young people have ever known from adults is a cold apprehension. Even their teachers are afraid to discipline them or be too friendly. Hearing of millionare undergraduates and Olympic representatives taking part in the riots, I wonder if part of the cause of these riots is an entire generation of Social Genies, with the riots being some demented form of collective attention seeking.
I still think that the main cause is the public following the example from the top, but as the list of those accused becomes ever more bizzare, I can't help but wonder if these spontaneous riots are some form of emergent social response by an ostracised generation? How did these young people become feral anyway?
It's pretty well known that China has been sending spies disguised as academic scholars/PhD students to appropriate information on research projects conducted in the US
That's just regular academic behaviour. The whole point of sending students to study abroad is so that the student picks up skill and techniques which can brought back home with them. It also promotes the exchange of ideas. This is how academia works.
As for the spies, most of those just bribe western company executives to get what they want.
Now, the TAS videos run doesn't display the same problem, but that was probably run from Snes9x, not ZSNES(technically from a custom Snes9x build supporting re-recording). So the issue is not the processing power required but simply the fact that the Snes9x and ZSNES developers focused on different features.
Overall, it can be seen from all three videos that in general, a good emulator can emulate the underlying hardware with extremely high fidelity for the vast majority of games and gameplay.
Fidelity isn't a burning issue in modern 8 or 16 bit emulation. Emulators are now literally concerned with advanced features like recording, "rewinding", and video and audio filters that actually improve the games graphics and sound beyond what the hardware was capable of. The only outstanding feature I personally feel is missing from most emulators is cross platform support.
The difference is whether the people rioting have higher moral principles than the people they're protesting against.
And THAT is exactly the point. That is the key to the rioting and looting this time around. I've posted this in two place now, but here's goes again: The London riots cannot be divorced from the recent political and financial scandals in the UK and beyond.
In the last few years, the general public has been made privy to the monumental failure of ethics and responsibility in institutions both public and private. Bankers and financiers have been seen publicly seen to profit enormously from feckless and irresponsible behaviour. Politicians and civil servants have been shown to be inept at best, and in collusion at worst. And--in particular in the UK--the media and police force have been found to be involved in the most scandalous, unscrupulous and unethical behaviour of recent times.
We are living in an age of irresponsibility.
It's interesting to see that many of the rioters are expressing no political, social, or ideological motivations. They are either engaged in arson or larceny. It is simple opportunism. But this behaviour not a random incident; it is an inevitable consequence of our times. I would hold that these rioters across the UK, discontented from the effects of austerity and unemployment, and cynicised by the endless stream of unresolved scandals, have simply decided to have their own slice of the rotten pie.
If bankers can loot the nation without consequence, if the media can destroy lives with impunity, and politicians lie without consequence, then why should a young unemployed man with few prospects turn up what may be his only opportunity to own a big flatscreen TV, or some designer clothes, or to vent his rage at the state? Because it would be "wrong"? Because it is "immoral", "unethical"? But for his entire life this young man has been shown by example that crime pays, that ruthlessness and wrongdoing pays, that rage and emotion pay.
I don't wish to sound like a religious reactionary, bemoaning the loss of public morality. But what kind of ethics have these young men learned from their leaders and public and private institutions? In the UK and beyond. Where are the ethical pillars of our society who lead by example? In politics? In the church? In the media? In private industry? I see none such. And moreover, I see those in such influential positions profiting from their poor examples.
Remember to these young people, the state over the last 10 years is all they have ever known. A state that has lied and warred. A media that has colluded and harassed. Public institutions who have lost all sense of civic duty. Industries that have profited from the most wanton recklessness and greed. And everywhere, none have been held to account.
There are other underlying causes such as deprivation, unemployment, and hooliganism. But such things have always existed in the UK and elsewhere, but I see this spontaneous outbreak of criminal opportunism first and foremost as a sign of our times. These opportunist rioters have been lead by example by our corrupted ruling classes. As the saying goes, "As above, so below".
It is really crazy how blatant and out of control copyright has become in our society. I'm all for just abandoning or totally revising the concept altogether.
As an academic, I'm dismayed that research up to 70 years old and paid for with public money money can just be locked off for no reason at all. And that the essential right of citizens to acess the public internet can be interdicted by private corporations. It's time governments do something about this.
Encryption and identity have to be tied together. It's a fundamental aspect of the mathematics.
I've studied the mathematics of the RSA algorithm in some depth, even written a basic implementation, and nowhere in the algorithm does the concept of "identity" emerge in any way shape or form.
There are only public keys and private keys(Technically there are only dual sets of keys). If you don't know someone's proper public key, the problem isn't with the mathematics.
This is what happens when an entire culture abandons any sense of morality. I'm not talking Xtian morality, I'm talking about teaching the most basic right from wrong.
What's in it for these youths to adhere to your morality? A low wage job, long hours, no security, unpayable bills and continued poverty? Should they run the straight and narrow, full of ethics and scruples so that they achieve success like--say--those in the banking and finance sector? Should they break their backs to pay a mortgage, or just go into arrears and call the banks bluff.
You want people to adhere to the system, but is is plain for all to see that the system is increasingly rewarding bad behaviour and punishing good behaviour? The difference between you and these youths is they have achieved this insight and made the rational, and in some sense moral decision to break the rules for personal gain, instead of follow them to personal ruin.
And where will these Neutral ISPs get all their bandwidth? Why, from the big telcos, and we're back to square one.
You can believe whatever you want to about "violent states", but I believe that strict regulation with competition provides the best service. Letting private companies do what they like provides only chicancery, poorer services, and ultimately the collapse or failure of the entire system.
The "violent state" needs to step in and tell the Big Telcos how high to jump. If they object, they can simply surrender their operating licences and go home, and the government can take their assets into custodianship in the national interest. This is a responsible way to run an essential public utility and not dissimilar to the way banks are run--in the US at least.
How about you make a NEW superhero that is black or gay, or whatever, and for the superheroes that I grew up with just leave them the fuck alone! Where's your goddamn originality
To be fair, not only you, but your father, and your father's father, grew up with most of these characters.
The whole point of comic book superheroes is that they are escapist fantasies for middle class young white men. Consider Superman and in particular Clark Kent in this regard. Superman's success lies in the fact that he is a hero while still being everything a young man is expected to be.
They don't work--that is, sell well--if they are a) female or b) not white. This is the result of focusing the product on "the experience" rather than the underlying content or story.
Slashdot Mirror
They're going to be driving around Israel, not the West Bank.
This goes to the heart of software patents. They are not patents on computer software. They are patents on mathematical algorithms which need not be run on computers at all.
They can be run on water powered wooden clockwork, by pen and paper, and on Turing machines built in Minecraft. They can be run by choreographed groups of Hungarian folk dancers. They can be run in the human mind.
And an exclusive licences to run these algorithms, without even having to write them, are being handed out like confetti by an office that's not even supposed to be granting them.
Nonsense. The chip will record your movements in real time.
Marketing.
But by then it will be far too late!
By that measure yeah. But since I can get 100+ cable channels for 30 a month, which works at about, say, 4x7x30=840 hours, or about 0.04 per hour, by THAT measure games are actually outrageously expensive.
Minecraft isn't finished? Amidst the exploration of the fantastic structures created across thousands of servers, and the investigations of the wealth of possibilities of the engine and gameplay, I really hadn't noticed.
So I'm going to get more out of this for my 15 bucks. Best 15 bucks I ever spent.
Cheaper, smaller, faster, better, only allows us to do what we already can do, just in a more "efficient" way. Real progress involves creating entirely new tools and systems which enable us to go beyond what is possible today.
The world is not going to be changed by 5g iPhones, and bigger hard discs. It's changed by things like lasers, mobile phones, and P2P software. Big umbrella ideas change things, not refinements on those ideas.
Oh will you ever fuck off.
This has nothing to do with religion, or fundamentalism, or the Cold War or anything else. This simply has to do with the Pakistani's giving the US the finger. And they're right to do so.
Face it. The US all but sent the SEALs into Pakistan to kill Bin Laden in a drive-by. They even dumped the body in an unknown location when they were done. How do you expect the Pakistani's to react? Can you imagine what would happen if, say, British Intelligence flew a chopper into Washington D.C., across the river from the Pentagon, riddled some retired IRA operative with bullets and dumped his body in the Chesapeake Bay? Do you think the Pentagon would give back their helicoptor?
More to the point, do you think that the US would have to be some raving fundamentalist theocracy with a deep seated hatred of the British and their way of life before it gave the helicopter to say, the French? Hell, the US would give the helicopter to the Russians if they thought the Brits would get even more pissed off.
Hypotheticals aside, the US is lucky that the Pakistanis didn't expel over US diplomat, solider, civilian, and corporation from their country after what happened. Osama Bin Laden was assassinated not 1000m from a national military base, by unauthorised foreign soldiers with neither warrant, permission, or approval, and who fled the country with the corpse in tow within minutes of the deed. This from a country which supposedly respects the rule of law. My eye!
They killed Bin Laden in a drive-by, stuffed the body into the trunk and sped off. US soldiers, on Pakistani soil. Give the helicopter to the Chinese?! Hell, I'd have put that fucker on public display, parts open for inspection to anyone that wants to see. I'd have invited the Ayatollah himself around for to pose for photographs. Anything just to piss the Pentagon off.
And if I was the US, I'd still consider myself as having got off lightly. Very lightly.
So you think that companies can provide a public service and then just withdraw it arbitrarily whenever they like? Maybe that's your idea of an ordered society, but it's not mine.
I think you have some outdated concept confused with management bonuses and remuneration.
"You don't shoot to tickle, you don't shoot to miss - you shoot to kill."
-- Sir Patrick Mayhew
It's more than that. The rioters are the first generation of young people to come of age after the News of the World inspired pedophile hysteria campaign, which made every adult in the western world afraid of children.
All these young people have ever known from adults is a cold apprehension. Even their teachers are afraid to discipline them or be too friendly. Hearing of millionare undergraduates and Olympic representatives taking part in the riots, I wonder if part of the cause of these riots is an entire generation of Social Genies, with the riots being some demented form of collective attention seeking.
I still think that the main cause is the public following the example from the top, but as the list of those accused becomes ever more bizzare, I can't help but wonder if these spontaneous riots are some form of emergent social response by an ostracised generation? How did these young people become feral anyway?
That's just regular academic behaviour. The whole point of sending students to study abroad is so that the student picks up skill and techniques which can brought back home with them. It also promotes the exchange of ideas. This is how academia works.
As for the spies, most of those just bribe western company executives to get what they want.
Well, there is a difference. Here's a ZSNES emulation of the LTTP intro, which you can compare with the Speed Demos Archive run. SDA don't actually accept emulator runs, so the video there is from an actual SNES.
Now, the TAS videos run doesn't display the same problem, but that was probably run from Snes9x, not ZSNES(technically from a custom Snes9x build supporting re-recording). So the issue is not the processing power required but simply the fact that the Snes9x and ZSNES developers focused on different features.
Overall, it can be seen from all three videos that in general, a good emulator can emulate the underlying hardware with extremely high fidelity for the vast majority of games and gameplay.
Fidelity isn't a burning issue in modern 8 or 16 bit emulation. Emulators are now literally concerned with advanced features like recording, "rewinding", and video and audio filters that actually improve the games graphics and sound beyond what the hardware was capable of. The only outstanding feature I personally feel is missing from most emulators is cross platform support.
And THAT is exactly the point. That is the key to the rioting and looting this time around. I've posted this in two place now, but here's goes again: The London riots cannot be divorced from the recent political and financial scandals in the UK and beyond.
In the last few years, the general public has been made privy to the monumental failure of ethics and responsibility in institutions both public and private. Bankers and financiers have been seen publicly seen to profit enormously from feckless and irresponsible behaviour. Politicians and civil servants have been shown to be inept at best, and in collusion at worst. And--in particular in the UK--the media and police force have been found to be involved in the most scandalous, unscrupulous and unethical behaviour of recent times.
We are living in an age of irresponsibility.
It's interesting to see that many of the rioters are expressing no political, social, or ideological motivations. They are either engaged in arson or larceny. It is simple opportunism. But this behaviour not a random incident; it is an inevitable consequence of our times. I would hold that these rioters across the UK, discontented from the effects of austerity and unemployment, and cynicised by the endless stream of unresolved scandals, have simply decided to have their own slice of the rotten pie.
If bankers can loot the nation without consequence, if the media can destroy lives with impunity, and politicians lie without consequence, then why should a young unemployed man with few prospects turn up what may be his only opportunity to own a big flatscreen TV, or some designer clothes, or to vent his rage at the state? Because it would be "wrong"? Because it is "immoral", "unethical"? But for his entire life this young man has been shown by example that crime pays, that ruthlessness and wrongdoing pays, that rage and emotion pay.
I don't wish to sound like a religious reactionary, bemoaning the loss of public morality. But what kind of ethics have these young men learned from their leaders and public and private institutions? In the UK and beyond. Where are the ethical pillars of our society who lead by example? In politics? In the church? In the media? In private industry? I see none such. And moreover, I see those in such influential positions profiting from their poor examples.
Remember to these young people, the state over the last 10 years is all they have ever known. A state that has lied and warred. A media that has colluded and harassed. Public institutions who have lost all sense of civic duty. Industries that have profited from the most wanton recklessness and greed. And everywhere, none have been held to account.
There are other underlying causes such as deprivation, unemployment, and hooliganism. But such things have always existed in the UK and elsewhere, but I see this spontaneous outbreak of criminal opportunism first and foremost as a sign of our times. These opportunist rioters have been lead by example by our corrupted ruling classes. As the saying goes, "As above, so below".
I think the SETI people are more interested in spacing-out.
It is really crazy how blatant and out of control copyright has become in our society. I'm all for just abandoning or totally revising the concept altogether.
As an academic, I'm dismayed that research up to 70 years old and paid for with public money money can just be locked off for no reason at all. And that the essential right of citizens to acess the public internet can be interdicted by private corporations. It's time governments do something about this.
I've studied the mathematics of the RSA algorithm in some depth, even written a basic implementation, and nowhere in the algorithm does the concept of "identity" emerge in any way shape or form.
There are only public keys and private keys(Technically there are only dual sets of keys). If you don't know someone's proper public key, the problem isn't with the mathematics.
What's in it for these youths to adhere to your morality? A low wage job, long hours, no security, unpayable bills and continued poverty? Should they run the straight and narrow, full of ethics and scruples so that they achieve success like--say--those in the banking and finance sector? Should they break their backs to pay a mortgage, or just go into arrears and call the banks bluff.
You want people to adhere to the system, but is is plain for all to see that the system is increasingly rewarding bad behaviour and punishing good behaviour? The difference between you and these youths is they have achieved this insight and made the rational, and in some sense moral decision to break the rules for personal gain, instead of follow them to personal ruin.
Billions and Billions of years.
I was thinking more of Hive Primus in Necromunda. Good times.
And where will these Neutral ISPs get all their bandwidth? Why, from the big telcos, and we're back to square one.
You can believe whatever you want to about "violent states", but I believe that strict regulation with competition provides the best service. Letting private companies do what they like provides only chicancery, poorer services, and ultimately the collapse or failure of the entire system.
The "violent state" needs to step in and tell the Big Telcos how high to jump. If they object, they can simply surrender their operating licences and go home, and the government can take their assets into custodianship in the national interest. This is a responsible way to run an essential public utility and not dissimilar to the way banks are run--in the US at least.
To be fair, not only you, but your father, and your father's father, grew up with most of these characters.
The whole point of comic book superheroes is that they are escapist fantasies for middle class young white men. Consider Superman and in particular Clark Kent in this regard. Superman's success lies in the fact that he is a hero while still being everything a young man is expected to be.
They don't work--that is, sell well--if they are a) female or b) not white. This is the result of focusing the product on "the experience" rather than the underlying content or story.