Seriously though, while OSS is good and all, there is a bit of an issue with day-to-day usability. You can't expect a random user to jump through a dozen hoops to get sound working properly (yes there are still random issues with sound all the time).
Security issues are irrelevant in a lot of cases. Scientific computing isn't done on computers attached to the internet...it is done on intranets consisting of specialized hardware streamlined for the needs of HPC. Most HPC programs don't even attach themselves to ethernet networks, but rather to things like Myrinet (bypass OS calls to reduce overhead GREATLY) that are intended for HPC. Being DDoS'd, or having a 'zombie cluster' etc are not really issues here.
I think the advantage of a MS solution might be ease-of-use, especially in server clusters that are up for hire (that is, up for timesharing). If you are some group performing research that requries lots of power but aren't focused in a CS-related field, you may not have the resources to go use the (often arcane) parallel (MPI) debuggers etc. and churn out a top-grade program for a supercomputer. An MS solution might indeed be cheaper OVERALL because of time-to-solution (time = money). Let's face it, VS.NET is a dream to code in - compared to other well-featured IDE's like Eclipse, it is light-weight, easier to use (Eclipse has major bloat issues), etc. So who knows - as the article mentions, it might indeed become part of an end-to-end scientific process, where the computational parts seamlessly fit in.
Furthermore, everyone who is talking about licenses per processor are not thinking properly...do you really think they would achieve penetration with the barrier to using the software so high? Of course not! Instead of speculating negatively, let's just wait and see what the licensing programs are when the product is released.
...the one in the top 5 that is not running Linux is ASCI Purple, and it is running AIX. In case you haven't heard of it, AIX is a version of Unix developed by IBM:
I am in a robotics research team here at UC Berkeley and we too found that often companies patent random stuff that they haven't even fully developed yet. Because patents can be overly broad (like the one on the hardware 'double-click') this can cause problems especially in cases where there is perhaps only one solution (or one cost-effective and viable one anyways) to a given problem. The solution may be blatantly obvious to the scientifically-inclined, but if someone holds a patent on it, what can you do...
I wouldn't complain as much if the patent system hired people halfway-knowledgeable or if they allowed patents only on something very specific (aka ethical to 'patent') and genuinely ingenious. But these concepts of ethics etc. are so hand-wavy that we might as well not even try to 'reform' the system, and instead just get rid of it because otherwise it will be hard to meet the standards we expect.
Perhaps another way to go at it is to have a board of scientifically-inclined folks to preside over the patent system and work at it with newer laws on what can and cannot be patented. Over time as new technologies and ways of thinking come about, such a board can continue to refine the laws. My bid for the people to serve on these boards: college professors from a mix of technical majors from various universities.
In any case, the other question is why would researchers who face this barrier file patents themselves? To do it before someone else does - it's not like prior art holds weight in today's patent system, so it is a quick solution to making sure you don't face problems in the future.
Apparently you seem to know nothing about the game and just posted something half-assedly controversial to get modded up.
The game has many novel features. First, every single NPC in the game has its own life cycle including eating meals, working, sleeping, idle activities (note that I said idle activities, not just idle actions such as those in Far Cry). This enhances the 'immersion' factor, which was a VERY big part of Morrowind. Oblivion takes place over a fairly large amount of land (the # of sq. mi. is at Oblivion's website), has a weather system, open-endedness that Morrowind had (feels a lot like Fallout in the sense that you have lots of stuff to do other than the 'main quest').
The physics engine is awesome even without cloth physics. Trees, grass, arrows, etc. If you look at one of the gameplay videos here you will see a demo where the player character fires arrows into a bucket hanging from the ceiling or something, and the bucket sways and the row buckles etc. from the arrows hitting it. You can then walk up to the bucket, and you will notice that depending on how the arrows penetrated the wood in the bucket (angle, force, etc.), the bucket is tilting or perhaps moving slowly to a stop. When the player character removes the arrows from the bucket, the bucket moves to reflect each arrow you pull out, taking a different 'tilted' position or whatever as per physics. I don't know about you, but the job they did in modifying Havok is pretty damn good.
Graphics: you have to be retarded if you think the game is just bloom effects. First, you might have noticed the large number of textures and colors in the world (in the cities for example). Graphics = technical quality (engine) + artwork (textures). Second, the tree generation (I believe they are using Speedtree like Gothic and Unreal 2007) is awesome, it actually feels like a forest instead of a few scattered trees with few leaves on them. Lastly, you may have noticed that the shader effects are present almost everywhere, whereas in Morrowind they were (mostly) confined to the water. There is soft-shadowing, self-soft-shadowing, and a host of other effects you would want in a tier-1 game as well.
Sound: If you check out the videos I pointed above, you will hear some of the same songs that were in Morrowind. These songs are extremely well done, and conducive to the atmosphere of the game. Oblivion apparently has many more songs now, as expected, and an awesome all-star cast of narrators that really make characters come through more realistically.
For those who enjoy games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, or really any of the Black Isle works, Morrowind and Oblivion are a must-play.
Funny how when Slashdot talks about Google and the Summer of Code, everyone's jumping up in joy praising Google for their work while when Microsoft does something beneficial to consumers, someone HAS to nitpick about the motives. Correct me if I am wrong but Google stands to profit from SoC as well since they use so much FOSS.
In any case, a company's job IS to make money, but why should we complain when we (consumers) stand to benefit. Having a big name like MS back up the CDT, ACLU, and EPIC is a good thing.
PS: If you wanna go by motives, please be more consistent with your judgements (this is for Slashdotters in general).
Correct me if I am wrong but power is measured in Watts...and usually for speakers and subwoofers, you need to look at RMS Power Consumption. For example, the Creative Gigaworks 750 pumps out 750 Watts RMS in total - it is billed as the most powerful computer speaker set.
The article mentions that the subwoofer can bottom out at 1Hz, which is certainly amazing, but let's get our terminology right here - this is frequency range, not power.
HDR has been around for a longer while than you think. It has been used in games before, it has been demoed before. Some of you may recognize HDR in the form of light blooms, especially from the earlier screenshots of the Unreal 3 Engine, as seen here: HDR Glow in Unreal 3
Although some say light blooms are NOT high-dynamic range (which is true for the case where you just make something radiate light in a way that washes out details of objects around it - see here), light blooms can be done with high-dynamic range color, which is what the Unreal 3 Engine page mentions in a brief caption for the above picture.
Anyways, there are other games that ALREADY do HDR, such as Far Cry (with patch 1.3 or above). The best place to get a good view of it is ON a beach in Far Cry that is directly in the sun. It is funny that Far Cry has been ignored as the first of its kind in many things, but it really did do a lot of stuff that Doom 3, Half Life 2, etc. did, except earlier. It was also virutally bugless, compared to for example, the stuttering bug common in Half Life 2. Most are misinformed in crediting games such as HL2 or D3 in bringing in the generation of shader-heavy games (aka 'next gen' games).
That being said, if you don't know what HDR is, the Anandtech Article on HL2:TLC is a good read.
Why is it that whenever Google does something, everyone is ready to praise them for pushing OSS etc? Google has much to gain from OSS software and advancements in it, because they use so much of it. Like any other company, they want to save where they can and that's all they are doing.
What we should be really doing is thanking the developers of OO. OO is a great program, especially given that it is relatively young and has to have a lot of functionality. As others have pointed out, 80MB is not at all massive for a program like OO. I am not sure what these speed issues others bring up are, it is quite fast for me. Whether it uses Java or not is irrelevant to the majority of users. You have to understand that most people don't care whether Java is closed or not. It is the final product's functionality that matters most, so quit your bitching.
What I think OO needs is a better interface and more of the lesser-used features that make MS Office such a complete suite. I know many of you think MS Office suffers from feature bloat, but there are always people who make use of a lot of the lesser known features (like Format Painter!) - for the stuff it packs in there, Office is quite blazingly fast. One bad example of bloat would be Eclipse, because when you have lots of features, speed and interface matter a LOT more. Hopefully, OO will get this right.
Oh come on, you think this guy is the only one who did it? Let me ask you this: you have a hypothesis. You spend a ton of money from your grants and have your grad students spend a lot of their time trying to prove their hypothesis. The data you get is basically useless since it doesn't prove or disprove anything. Do you just say "New research into immunology finds nothing?" Of course not.
We VERY rarely hear of research actually failing, when in fact we should be hearing it ALL THE TIME since taking stabs at new ideas shouldn't be successful all the time. Failure should be a natural part of research, and there really shouldn't be an urge to have to make your research fruitful everytime. Unfortunately, no one would actually do this even if they agreed with the thought - people would only expect other people to follow the rule.
It's not like it matters too much regardless - 90% of research papers are bullshit wrapped in a myriad of technical jargon which makes it seem like they achieved something ridiculously important.
...it could increase productivity because in the barren Martian landscape we would still have some sign of humanity around to keep us going.
"One could perhaps select for people who seem to have less need for sex, or at least don't use sex as a form of self-validation", a quote from some random psychologist not part of the NASA board, but happens to be quoted in this article (seriously...do journalists just accept anything that agrees with their news titles as evidence?).
Heh sex is a major part of all forms of life...why paint it in such a light. This is like moral judgement.
There is validity to both sides (free choice versus disruption of work), but I don't think personal matters should be part of NASA's decisions...it just seems to be outside of their jursidiction, if you will, especially on long-haul missions where astronauts are away from other human beings for long periods of time.
All you idiots who are talkin' shit about Bill Gates need to STFU. I mean seriously you are so far converted by the rhetoric of open source that you are blind and oblivious to anything else.
When Bill Gates came to speak at my college last year (UCB) I was impressed. He spoke well, answered the questions of our moderator (Dean of our college of engineering) completely and even with some wit. And then towards the end some idiot comes up during the question and answer session and rambles on talking about violations of so-and-so act, wasting everyone else's time because we all know damn well where that question is going (it was more like a thoughtless rant of a 10-year-old). Luckily, Bill's reply was extremely witty (I forgot what exactly he said) and he received a standing ovation for it.
That persons' little show was just like the questions you propose asking. I mean seriously...is there something you gain from asking such questions other than being known as the resident jackass? You are a complete idiot and are so far removed from logical behavior that you would probably be a prime example of WHY most students are averse to OSS.
Shut the fuck up and just take what you will from what he has to say.
PS: Here are some answers
Q1) Could Microsoft ever open its code and make more money from support than developement? A1) No that is retarded. MS is mostly about delivering products to consumer without customization. Furthermore, if you open up your code, there is always the problem that someone else can customize your code and get paid for the job.
Q2) What's up with Microsoft and Linux? Seems like you guys have the same goal of wanting to write geat software for the benefit of everyone. Why not collaborate? A2) It is called trade secrets. You are OK with it for hardware, so why not for software? It is a product like any other!
Q3) Microsoft was recently sued by 20 states and found guilty of violatling the Clayton and Sherman anti trust acts. What have you done to rectify that? A3) Not much
Q4) It's still not possible to buy an MS-free computer from many vendords. Why? Will you personally pledge you will put no pressure on an vendors to sell "microsoft only" systems. A4) Why would he? His goal is to make money. That's wat businesses do. Most people like making money. Most people would like to have a lot of it.
Think before posting something which sounds like good rhetoric...whoever modded you up is an idiot.
I don't know too much about RUP (read here) but here is what I do know. With RUP comes the RUPP, a set of RUP Products that are meant to facilitate the development process that RUP is supposed to be all about.
However, some of IBM's products that are part of RUPP are shit. Rational Software Architect (the 'visual modeling' part of the RUP process) is the most bloated piece of crap I have ever used. It is unintuitive, a massive memory hog, slow, and overall just a bad piece of software. About the only thing it gets right is that it is UML 2.0 compliant and has all the different models...but I have found that there are many cheaper UML modelers that are better.
Heh in a way it is just like Eclipse (which is what RSA runs on top of) - too much crap that is inaccessible. The trend in software for a while has been adding new features that people don't know about. I believe MS had the same issue with Office in a survey they conducted, where they asked people what features they wanted to see in Office and 95% of the features were already there, but people didn't know about it. For every feature added for functionality, there should be two more added for usability!
Similarly, for a programming process/paradigm to take hold, developers need to be provided with (process-related) tools that are lightweight and approachable. A process that is too rigid, too heavy-weight, etc. will never be adopted - worse yet, some team will start using that process then slowly become lazy and soon they will be in a middleground of incomplete requirements, specifications, design docs, etc.
Google Ads have to be the only ads that I have actually purposely clicked on to get to something I might be interested in. The rest are just random crap that floods the internet chewing up bandwith for no reason.
I really hate the flash ones that float across the screen because they are a lot like telemarketers. They are unwanted, but they still call you thinking that you might actually buy their product. Look at the do-not-call list. Telemarketing companies want to get rid of the do-not-call list as if the people who want to block them will actually buy their products after having the do-not-call list dismantled.
Similarly, most internet ads are to most people, unwanted. If you force it upon them, there is an even less chance that the person will be interested in whatever you are advertising for, since they will be pissed off that you forced it upon them. Having non-intrusive ads like the quiet text-links google puts in its search results are the way to go.
Anyways to solve this problem, I am using AdBlock Extension (in Firefox of course) with a filterset to block all those bastards like casalemedia. If you use Firefox, check this out and your ad problems will all be completely solved.
Does anyone know how exactly they scored the Grand Challenge? I was watching the leaderboard the whole day as I was coding, and one of the CMU vehicles was the first to finish as far as I can recall...furthermore, the spread BETWEEN the top three vehicles (CMU, Stanford, CMU) seemed to vary from time to time.
I have my doubts as to the validity of the data since there were also a couple glitches during the race where all of a sudden a bunch of vehicles' mileage and stuff were kicked back by a good amount.
There is a map updated almost every minute automatically that will show you the position of all the teams and the times elapsed for each, etc. At the time of this post, Red Team Too, Stanford, and Read Team are all doing well, at 94+ miles each. Surprisingly, most of the teams are still in the running (that is, not eliminated). It is hard to compare one team to another however, because each team starts at a different time and perhaps the ones that are far behind are in the hardest part of the course and are thus moving slowly.
No game manufacturer is going to make a game that REQUIRES so much brute-force GPU power to play...that would kill the market. All this would do is make games playable with insane settings like 4x FSAA and 8x Anisotropic Filtering. But most gamers (read: the average gamer) can't tell the difference between different levels of anisotropic, or the difference between 2x and 4x FSAA unless they stop and look at the screen. When is the last time you ran through the jungle in Far Cry and said to yourself while being chased by a mutant monkey with uncanny ability to maul, "Damn these leaves need to lose some jaggies"?
The point is that as soon as games come out that need next generation GPU's, your SLI system is obsolete because it likely won't have HARDWARE features to perform next-generation effects. The analogy I like to make is that 4 GeForce 4 MX's can't match a single GeForce 4 Ti 4200 because the 4 MX doesn't have hardware shaders while the Ti does. So is it really worth dropping that extra money (don't forget, your mobo needs to have extra PCI x 8 or x 16 slot as well, so there is a little extra cost there too)?
That being said, this system you posted is quite beastly:)
I don't want to sound like the cold-hearted typical hardliner or something, but this is simply not true. When I use some sort of online recommendation system (for example Amazon's recommendations or things like Music Map), I am not trying to shelter myself from everyone else in the world, I am just trying to explore some area of interest of mine further. And one way to explore these areas is to see what areas other people in the same area (same part of the music map, for example) are checking out.
I prefer to call it guided exploration rather than recluse-like sheltering or a dismantling of social cohesion.
And, it actually often is better than the real world. One of the quotes in the article from Brynjolfsson is that in the real world you bump into random people but is that so true? Most people meet people that work with them, or parents of kids at the same school as one's own kids, or people who populate the same college campus, etc. It isn't really that random. There is also another issue: Would it be OK to talk about music (or whatever else) with all these 'random' people I bump into? Of course not - the conversation has to lead into a topic like music, the person has to be the kind that has some sort of music interest, etc.
While Brynjolfsson suggests that people are (wrongly) turning to automated preference engines to sort the massive amounts of content we are faced with, the opposite is true - humans are incapable of providing much use to each other at this level where our society is quite defined by having an incredible amount of knowledge floating about. It is thus appropriate to turn to alternate methods to help us then, in making good use of all this information?
Finding help in choosing != sheltering one's self from society
Here at UC Berkeley most students hate these clickers (called 'PRS' here, for personal response system or some shit like that). It is so superficial. A professor throws on some multiple choice question, and people hit a button to answer it and get participation credit. Is this the second grade or something? What the hell is participation credit for - in colleges we don't need that kind of bullshit. If people don't want to pay attention to lectures, that is their choice - most of the time lectures are useless anyways. Not only that, it wastes $45 on each student's part.
The best solution is to not have any such system and simply DO example problems in lecture. The thing that college lectures lack is not something captivating (like hitting the button on a remote is actually captivating...) or innovative, but BETTER LECTURES. Period. Lecturers tend to go over things in too much of an 'overview' format (at least in the science/tech classes) and avoid doing actual example problems that might help us LEARN.
Instead of throwing materials and problems at students and saying 'Here go study and come take my test later', lecturers should try to teach the students legitimately and AIM to improving their testing performance...right now, all it feels like is that I am paying 20k a year for taking a few tests. A f***ing remote control won't solve this issue of boring, shitty lectures.
He points out things like 'conceptual integrity' and 'professionalism' and 'innovation', things that can be found in many OSS projects. What bothers me about writing open source code is simple: Where is my money.
Many say, that you should make money off support. However, that is plain stupid because the software is the hard part, the part that interests me, the part that I want to be paid for instead of something like support.
The reason I support many OSS is one thing: excellence of product, like Linus.
According to the article, this OS is touted for its extremely fast responsiveness, presumably to any interrupts from external devices (since it is targeted at an embedded platform) etc. because of the way it 'reserves' the CPU for such activities.
This decreases latency (response time to some stimulus, in the most general definition) but does not increase the total throughput.
For embedded applications such as perhaps a data acquisition system that might want to sample one external circuit's output when another circuit sends a line high, this is perfect because the system can react extremely quickly and thus increase the accuracy of the data.
However, it is conceivable that because of processor reservation, you will lose some of the power available to you. Thus, you cannot say for sure that it can run circles around XP based on simply this feature...especially for a feature like encoding a video which doesn't depend much on interrupts.
There might be other reasons for why Linux is a better platform for streaming, playing, recording, or encoding video. But I doubt this is it. Real-time OS's are aimed at embedded applications, usually systems that combine both external hardware and software...
While I cannot think off-hand of a game which has already done this, it seems such a mundane thing to be able to patent - it is just a system which adds points when you rest and subtracts them when you run into a scary creature.
And depending on that it adjusts the audio effects or adds various graphical effects right? Consider the flashbang effect in Half Life where you have retina-burn or the ringing effect from a nearby explosion, as seen in many games these days. How is this any more innovative except that the circumstance under which graphics or audio is changed is specific. Would it be OK if someone patented those effects?
Would it be OK for me to 'patent' a plot where some item has been taken by an enemy of the player character and must be recovered, which is the basis of the game's quest? Of course not - it is such a generic thing to patent. If graphics and aural effects were plots, then this would be just like patenting a different type of plot.
Granted, some of the effects (listed below) are cool and innovative, and would be interesting to encounter - but it shouldn't be patentable.
Here are the graphical effects: * Wall carvings coming to life and reaching out for the character * Something in wall or under floor moving by the character (Frighteners type of thing) * Statue watching the character (Head tracking) * Suit of armor moving (Relaxed to on guard stance) * Static statue or object that appears to follow the character when they're not looking * False doors that appear and disappear when the attempt to open is made * Glowing eyes blinking in the darkness, yet when the area is illuminated they disappear * Painting that shifts and changes along with its meaning * Points of interest markers that the character's head will watch
And the audio effects: * Ambient environmental sounds that get amplified or distorted * Heartbeat of character increases (May also be synchronized with Rumble Pak, a product offered by Nintendo) * Wind * Lightening * Cavern/damp-dripping sewer sound * Creatures sounds * Footsteps * Earth rumbles (e.g. great beast foot steps, may also be synchronized with Rumble Pak and camera shake) * Loud noises coming from beyond a doorway, but when opened there is only silence * Whispering sounds coming from random locations that fade in and out
Miscellaneous effects: * Hallucination: lights go out, and a creature appears as lights come on, then the lights go back off, then the light comes back on and the creature is gone * Stretching walls and corridors so they require more time to traverse * Bleeding walls * Enormous roar that emits from a tiny rodent (Mouse or rat) * Dripping water from above, but when the character takes a second look it is now blood * Shadows that appear to shift and change * Character's torch mysteriously blows out, loud noise then it is once again lit * Faint maniacal laughter (That gets louder and louder as the character draws deeper into insanity) * Ambient audio, such as a water drip could become louder as insanity increases, so a really insane character will occasionally have this irritating dripping sound to distract him * Lagging shadow (the character's shadow appears to follow the character)
Slashdot Mirror
anti-negative stories of Microsoft's
Does that mean they are positive?
Seriously though, while OSS is good and all, there is a bit of an issue with day-to-day usability. You can't expect a random user to jump through a dozen hoops to get sound working properly (yes there are still random issues with sound all the time).
Security issues are irrelevant in a lot of cases. Scientific computing isn't done on computers attached to the internet...it is done on intranets consisting of specialized hardware streamlined for the needs of HPC. Most HPC programs don't even attach themselves to ethernet networks, but rather to things like Myrinet (bypass OS calls to reduce overhead GREATLY) that are intended for HPC. Being DDoS'd, or having a 'zombie cluster' etc are not really issues here.
I think the advantage of a MS solution might be ease-of-use, especially in server clusters that are up for hire (that is, up for timesharing). If you are some group performing research that requries lots of power but aren't focused in a CS-related field, you may not have the resources to go use the (often arcane) parallel (MPI) debuggers etc. and churn out a top-grade program for a supercomputer. An MS solution might indeed be cheaper OVERALL because of time-to-solution (time = money). Let's face it, VS.NET is a dream to code in - compared to other well-featured IDE's like Eclipse, it is light-weight, easier to use (Eclipse has major bloat issues), etc. So who knows - as the article mentions, it might indeed become part of an end-to-end scientific process, where the computational parts seamlessly fit in.
Furthermore, everyone who is talking about licenses per processor are not thinking properly...do you really think they would achieve penetration with the barrier to using the software so high? Of course not! Instead of speculating negatively, let's just wait and see what the licensing programs are when the product is released.
My 2 cents
...the one in the top 5 that is not running Linux is ASCI Purple, and it is running AIX. In case you haven't heard of it, AIX is a version of Unix developed by IBM:
IBM AIX 5L
Wikipedia: AIX Operating System
I am in a robotics research team here at UC Berkeley and we too found that often companies patent random stuff that they haven't even fully developed yet. Because patents can be overly broad (like the one on the hardware 'double-click') this can cause problems especially in cases where there is perhaps only one solution (or one cost-effective and viable one anyways) to a given problem. The solution may be blatantly obvious to the scientifically-inclined, but if someone holds a patent on it, what can you do...
I wouldn't complain as much if the patent system hired people halfway-knowledgeable or if they allowed patents only on something very specific (aka ethical to 'patent') and genuinely ingenious. But these concepts of ethics etc. are so hand-wavy that we might as well not even try to 'reform' the system, and instead just get rid of it because otherwise it will be hard to meet the standards we expect.
Perhaps another way to go at it is to have a board of scientifically-inclined folks to preside over the patent system and work at it with newer laws on what can and cannot be patented. Over time as new technologies and ways of thinking come about, such a board can continue to refine the laws. My bid for the people to serve on these boards: college professors from a mix of technical majors from various universities.
In any case, the other question is why would researchers who face this barrier file patents themselves? To do it before someone else does - it's not like prior art holds weight in today's patent system, so it is a quick solution to making sure you don't face problems in the future.
I'll leave you with that.
Apparently you seem to know nothing about the game and just posted something half-assedly controversial to get modded up.
The game has many novel features. First, every single NPC in the game has its own life cycle including eating meals, working, sleeping, idle activities (note that I said idle activities, not just idle actions such as those in Far Cry). This enhances the 'immersion' factor, which was a VERY big part of Morrowind. Oblivion takes place over a fairly large amount of land (the # of sq. mi. is at Oblivion's website), has a weather system, open-endedness that Morrowind had (feels a lot like Fallout in the sense that you have lots of stuff to do other than the 'main quest').
The physics engine is awesome even without cloth physics. Trees, grass, arrows, etc. If you look at one of the gameplay videos here you will see a demo where the player character fires arrows into a bucket hanging from the ceiling or something, and the bucket sways and the row buckles etc. from the arrows hitting it. You can then walk up to the bucket, and you will notice that depending on how the arrows penetrated the wood in the bucket (angle, force, etc.), the bucket is tilting or perhaps moving slowly to a stop. When the player character removes the arrows from the bucket, the bucket moves to reflect each arrow you pull out, taking a different 'tilted' position or whatever as per physics. I don't know about you, but the job they did in modifying Havok is pretty damn good.
Graphics: you have to be retarded if you think the game is just bloom effects. First, you might have noticed the large number of textures and colors in the world (in the cities for example). Graphics = technical quality (engine) + artwork (textures). Second, the tree generation (I believe they are using Speedtree like Gothic and Unreal 2007) is awesome, it actually feels like a forest instead of a few scattered trees with few leaves on them. Lastly, you may have noticed that the shader effects are present almost everywhere, whereas in Morrowind they were (mostly) confined to the water. There is soft-shadowing, self-soft-shadowing, and a host of other effects you would want in a tier-1 game as well.
Sound: If you check out the videos I pointed above, you will hear some of the same songs that were in Morrowind. These songs are extremely well done, and conducive to the atmosphere of the game. Oblivion apparently has many more songs now, as expected, and an awesome all-star cast of narrators that really make characters come through more realistically.
For those who enjoy games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, or really any of the Black Isle works, Morrowind and Oblivion are a must-play.
Funny how when Slashdot talks about Google and the Summer of Code, everyone's jumping up in joy praising Google for their work while when Microsoft does something beneficial to consumers, someone HAS to nitpick about the motives. Correct me if I am wrong but Google stands to profit from SoC as well since they use so much FOSS.
In any case, a company's job IS to make money, but why should we complain when we (consumers) stand to benefit. Having a big name like MS back up the CDT, ACLU, and EPIC is a good thing.
PS: If you wanna go by motives, please be more consistent with your judgements (this is for Slashdotters in general).
Correct me if I am wrong but power is measured in Watts...and usually for speakers and subwoofers, you need to look at RMS Power Consumption. For example, the Creative Gigaworks 750 pumps out 750 Watts RMS in total - it is billed as the most powerful computer speaker set.
The article mentions that the subwoofer can bottom out at 1Hz, which is certainly amazing, but let's get our terminology right here - this is frequency range, not power.
HDR has been around for a longer while than you think. It has been used in games before, it has been demoed before. Some of you may recognize HDR in the form of light blooms, especially from the earlier screenshots of the Unreal 3 Engine, as seen here:
HDR Glow in Unreal 3
Although some say light blooms are NOT high-dynamic range (which is true for the case where you just make something radiate light in a way that washes out details of objects around it - see here), light blooms can be done with high-dynamic range color, which is what the Unreal 3 Engine page mentions in a brief caption for the above picture.
Anyways, there are other games that ALREADY do HDR, such as Far Cry (with patch 1.3 or above). The best place to get a good view of it is ON a beach in Far Cry that is directly in the sun. It is funny that Far Cry has been ignored as the first of its kind in many things, but it really did do a lot of stuff that Doom 3, Half Life 2, etc. did, except earlier. It was also virutally bugless, compared to for example, the stuttering bug common in Half Life 2. Most are misinformed in crediting games such as HL2 or D3 in bringing in the generation of shader-heavy games (aka 'next gen' games).
That being said, if you don't know what HDR is, the Anandtech Article on HL2:TLC is a good read.
Why is it that whenever Google does something, everyone is ready to praise them for pushing OSS etc? Google has much to gain from OSS software and advancements in it, because they use so much of it. Like any other company, they want to save where they can and that's all they are doing.
What we should be really doing is thanking the developers of OO. OO is a great program, especially given that it is relatively young and has to have a lot of functionality. As others have pointed out, 80MB is not at all massive for a program like OO. I am not sure what these speed issues others bring up are, it is quite fast for me. Whether it uses Java or not is irrelevant to the majority of users. You have to understand that most people don't care whether Java is closed or not. It is the final product's functionality that matters most, so quit your bitching.
What I think OO needs is a better interface and more of the lesser-used features that make MS Office such a complete suite. I know many of you think MS Office suffers from feature bloat, but there are always people who make use of a lot of the lesser known features (like Format Painter!) - for the stuff it packs in there, Office is quite blazingly fast. One bad example of bloat would be Eclipse, because when you have lots of features, speed and interface matter a LOT more. Hopefully, OO will get this right.
My 2c.
Oh come on, you think this guy is the only one who did it? Let me ask you this: you have a hypothesis. You spend a ton of money from your grants and have your grad students spend a lot of their time trying to prove their hypothesis. The data you get is basically useless since it doesn't prove or disprove anything. Do you just say "New research into immunology finds nothing?" Of course not.
We VERY rarely hear of research actually failing, when in fact we should be hearing it ALL THE TIME since taking stabs at new ideas shouldn't be successful all the time. Failure should be a natural part of research, and there really shouldn't be an urge to have to make your research fruitful everytime. Unfortunately, no one would actually do this even if they agreed with the thought - people would only expect other people to follow the rule.
It's not like it matters too much regardless - 90% of research papers are bullshit wrapped in a myriad of technical jargon which makes it seem like they achieved something ridiculously important.
My 2 cents.
...it could increase productivity because in the barren Martian landscape we would still have some sign of humanity around to keep us going.
"One could perhaps select for people who seem to have less need for sex, or at least don't use sex as a form of self-validation", a quote from some random psychologist not part of the NASA board, but happens to be quoted in this article (seriously...do journalists just accept anything that agrees with their news titles as evidence?).
Heh sex is a major part of all forms of life...why paint it in such a light. This is like moral judgement.
There is validity to both sides (free choice versus disruption of work), but I don't think personal matters should be part of NASA's decisions...it just seems to be outside of their jursidiction, if you will, especially on long-haul missions where astronauts are away from other human beings for long periods of time.
All you idiots who are talkin' shit about Bill Gates need to STFU. I mean seriously you are so far converted by the rhetoric of open source that you are blind and oblivious to anything else.
When Bill Gates came to speak at my college last year (UCB) I was impressed. He spoke well, answered the questions of our moderator (Dean of our college of engineering) completely and even with some wit. And then towards the end some idiot comes up during the question and answer session and rambles on talking about violations of so-and-so act, wasting everyone else's time because we all know damn well where that question is going (it was more like a thoughtless rant of a 10-year-old). Luckily, Bill's reply was extremely witty (I forgot what exactly he said) and he received a standing ovation for it.
That persons' little show was just like the questions you propose asking. I mean seriously...is there something you gain from asking such questions other than being known as the resident jackass? You are a complete idiot and are so far removed from logical behavior that you would probably be a prime example of WHY most students are averse to OSS.
Shut the fuck up and just take what you will from what he has to say.
PS: Here are some answers
Q1) Could Microsoft ever open its code and make more money from support than developement?
A1) No that is retarded. MS is mostly about delivering products to consumer without customization. Furthermore, if you open up your code, there is always the problem that someone else can customize your code and get paid for the job.
Q2) What's up with Microsoft and Linux? Seems like you guys have the same goal of wanting to write geat software for the benefit of everyone. Why not collaborate?
A2) It is called trade secrets. You are OK with it for hardware, so why not for software? It is a product like any other!
Q3) Microsoft was recently sued by 20 states and found guilty of violatling the Clayton and Sherman anti trust acts. What have you done to rectify that?
A3) Not much
Q4) It's still not possible to buy an MS-free computer from many vendords. Why? Will you personally pledge you will put no pressure on an vendors to sell "microsoft only" systems.
A4) Why would he? His goal is to make money. That's wat businesses do. Most people like making money. Most people would like to have a lot of it.
Think before posting something which sounds like good rhetoric...whoever modded you up is an idiot.
I don't know too much about RUP (read here) but here is what I do know. With RUP comes the RUPP, a set of RUP Products that are meant to facilitate the development process that RUP is supposed to be all about.
However, some of IBM's products that are part of RUPP are shit. Rational Software Architect (the 'visual modeling' part of the RUP process) is the most bloated piece of crap I have ever used. It is unintuitive, a massive memory hog, slow, and overall just a bad piece of software. About the only thing it gets right is that it is UML 2.0 compliant and has all the different models...but I have found that there are many cheaper UML modelers that are better.
Heh in a way it is just like Eclipse (which is what RSA runs on top of) - too much crap that is inaccessible. The trend in software for a while has been adding new features that people don't know about. I believe MS had the same issue with Office in a survey they conducted, where they asked people what features they wanted to see in Office and 95% of the features were already there, but people didn't know about it. For every feature added for functionality, there should be two more added for usability!
Similarly, for a programming process/paradigm to take hold, developers need to be provided with (process-related) tools that are lightweight and approachable. A process that is too rigid, too heavy-weight, etc. will never be adopted - worse yet, some team will start using that process then slowly become lazy and soon they will be in a middleground of incomplete requirements, specifications, design docs, etc.
Google Ads have to be the only ads that I have actually purposely clicked on to get to something I might be interested in. The rest are just random crap that floods the internet chewing up bandwith for no reason.
I really hate the flash ones that float across the screen because they are a lot like telemarketers. They are unwanted, but they still call you thinking that you might actually buy their product. Look at the do-not-call list. Telemarketing companies want to get rid of the do-not-call list as if the people who want to block them will actually buy their products after having the do-not-call list dismantled.
Similarly, most internet ads are to most people, unwanted. If you force it upon them, there is an even less chance that the person will be interested in whatever you are advertising for, since they will be pissed off that you forced it upon them. Having non-intrusive ads like the quiet text-links google puts in its search results are the way to go.
Anyways to solve this problem, I am using AdBlock Extension (in Firefox of course) with a filterset to block all those bastards like casalemedia. If you use Firefox, check this out and your ad problems will all be completely solved.
Does anyone know how exactly they scored the Grand Challenge? I was watching the leaderboard the whole day as I was coding, and one of the CMU vehicles was the first to finish as far as I can recall...furthermore, the spread BETWEEN the top three vehicles (CMU, Stanford, CMU) seemed to vary from time to time.
I have my doubts as to the validity of the data since there were also a couple glitches during the race where all of a sudden a bunch of vehicles' mileage and stuff were kicked back by a good amount.
Here:
DARPA Grand Challenge 2005
There is a map updated almost every minute automatically that will show you the position of all the teams and the times elapsed for each, etc. At the time of this post, Red Team Too, Stanford, and Read Team are all doing well, at 94+ miles each. Surprisingly, most of the teams are still in the running (that is, not eliminated). It is hard to compare one team to another however, because each team starts at a different time and perhaps the ones that are far behind are in the hardest part of the course and are thus moving slowly.
Rather than reading posted text without the nice formatting, read it on mirrordot:
Here ya go
"Video Cards: 2 x NVIDIA Geforce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3, VIVO/, Dual-DVI"
:)
No game manufacturer is going to make a game that REQUIRES so much brute-force GPU power to play...that would kill the market. All this would do is make games playable with insane settings like 4x FSAA and 8x Anisotropic Filtering. But most gamers (read: the average gamer) can't tell the difference between different levels of anisotropic, or the difference between 2x and 4x FSAA unless they stop and look at the screen. When is the last time you ran through the jungle in Far Cry and said to yourself while being chased by a mutant monkey with uncanny ability to maul, "Damn these leaves need to lose some jaggies"?
The point is that as soon as games come out that need next generation GPU's, your SLI system is obsolete because it likely won't have HARDWARE features to perform next-generation effects. The analogy I like to make is that 4 GeForce 4 MX's can't match a single GeForce 4 Ti 4200 because the 4 MX doesn't have hardware shaders while the Ti does. So is it really worth dropping that extra money (don't forget, your mobo needs to have extra PCI x 8 or x 16 slot as well, so there is a little extra cost there too)?
That being said, this system you posted is quite beastly
I don't want to sound like the cold-hearted typical hardliner or something, but this is simply not true. When I use some sort of online recommendation system (for example Amazon's recommendations or things like Music Map), I am not trying to shelter myself from everyone else in the world, I am just trying to explore some area of interest of mine further. And one way to explore these areas is to see what areas other people in the same area (same part of the music map, for example) are checking out.
I prefer to call it guided exploration rather than recluse-like sheltering or a dismantling of social cohesion.
And, it actually often is better than the real world. One of the quotes in the article from Brynjolfsson is that in the real world you bump into random people but is that so true? Most people meet people that work with them, or parents of kids at the same school as one's own kids, or people who populate the same college campus, etc. It isn't really that random. There is also another issue: Would it be OK to talk about music (or whatever else) with all these 'random' people I bump into? Of course not - the conversation has to lead into a topic like music, the person has to be the kind that has some sort of music interest, etc. While Brynjolfsson suggests that people are (wrongly) turning to automated preference engines to sort the massive amounts of content we are faced with, the opposite is true - humans are incapable of providing much use to each other at this level where our society is quite defined by having an incredible amount of knowledge floating about. It is thus appropriate to turn to alternate methods to help us then, in making good use of all this information?
Finding help in choosing != sheltering one's self from society
Here at UC Berkeley most students hate these clickers (called 'PRS' here, for personal response system or some shit like that). It is so superficial. A professor throws on some multiple choice question, and people hit a button to answer it and get participation credit. Is this the second grade or something? What the hell is participation credit for - in colleges we don't need that kind of bullshit. If people don't want to pay attention to lectures, that is their choice - most of the time lectures are useless anyways. Not only that, it wastes $45 on each student's part.
The best solution is to not have any such system and simply DO example problems in lecture. The thing that college lectures lack is not something captivating (like hitting the button on a remote is actually captivating...) or innovative, but BETTER LECTURES. Period. Lecturers tend to go over things in too much of an 'overview' format (at least in the science/tech classes) and avoid doing actual example problems that might help us LEARN.
Instead of throwing materials and problems at students and saying 'Here go study and come take my test later', lecturers should try to teach the students legitimately and AIM to improving their testing performance...right now, all it feels like is that I am paying 20k a year for taking a few tests. A f***ing remote control won't solve this issue of boring, shitty lectures.
He points out things like 'conceptual integrity' and 'professionalism' and 'innovation', things that can be found in many OSS projects. What bothers me about writing open source code is simple: Where is my money.
Many say, that you should make money off support. However, that is plain stupid because the software is the hard part, the part that interests me, the part that I want to be paid for instead of something like support.
The reason I support many OSS is one thing: excellence of product, like Linus.
According to the article, this OS is touted for its extremely fast responsiveness, presumably to any interrupts from external devices (since it is targeted at an embedded platform) etc. because of the way it 'reserves' the CPU for such activities.
This decreases latency (response time to some stimulus, in the most general definition) but does not increase the total throughput.
For embedded applications such as perhaps a data acquisition system that might want to sample one external circuit's output when another circuit sends a line high, this is perfect because the system can react extremely quickly and thus increase the accuracy of the data.
However, it is conceivable that because of processor reservation, you will lose some of the power available to you. Thus, you cannot say for sure that it can run circles around XP based on simply this feature...especially for a feature like encoding a video which doesn't depend much on interrupts.
There might be other reasons for why Linux is a better platform for streaming, playing, recording, or encoding video. But I doubt this is it. Real-time OS's are aimed at embedded applications, usually systems that combine both external hardware and software...
Did anyone else read that as "Ohio White Boy Confesses to Attacks for Hire"?
The central parts of the city are still as before. Not much to see, move on...
While I cannot think off-hand of a game which has already done this, it seems such a mundane thing to be able to patent - it is just a system which adds points when you rest and subtracts them when you run into a scary creature.
And depending on that it adjusts the audio effects or adds various graphical effects right? Consider the flashbang effect in Half Life where you have retina-burn or the ringing effect from a nearby explosion, as seen in many games these days. How is this any more innovative except that the circumstance under which graphics or audio is changed is specific. Would it be OK if someone patented those effects?
Would it be OK for me to 'patent' a plot where some item has been taken by an enemy of the player character and must be recovered, which is the basis of the game's quest? Of course not - it is such a generic thing to patent. If graphics and aural effects were plots, then this would be just like patenting a different type of plot.
Granted, some of the effects (listed below) are cool and innovative, and would be interesting to encounter - but it shouldn't be patentable.
Here are the graphical effects:
* Wall carvings coming to life and reaching out for the character
* Something in wall or under floor moving by the character (Frighteners type of thing)
* Statue watching the character (Head tracking)
* Suit of armor moving (Relaxed to on guard stance)
* Static statue or object that appears to follow the character when they're not looking
* False doors that appear and disappear when the attempt to open is made
* Glowing eyes blinking in the darkness, yet when the area is illuminated they disappear
* Painting that shifts and changes along with its meaning
* Points of interest markers that the character's head will watch
And the audio effects:
* Ambient environmental sounds that get amplified or distorted
* Heartbeat of character increases (May also be synchronized with Rumble Pak, a product offered by Nintendo)
* Wind
* Lightening
* Cavern/damp-dripping sewer sound
* Creatures sounds
* Footsteps
* Earth rumbles (e.g. great beast foot steps, may also be synchronized with Rumble Pak and camera shake)
* Loud noises coming from beyond a doorway, but when opened there is only silence
* Whispering sounds coming from random locations that fade in and out
Miscellaneous effects:
* Hallucination: lights go out, and a creature appears as lights come on, then the lights go back off, then the light comes back on and the creature is gone
* Stretching walls and corridors so they require more time to traverse
* Bleeding walls
* Enormous roar that emits from a tiny rodent (Mouse or rat)
* Dripping water from above, but when the character takes a second look it is now blood
* Shadows that appear to shift and change
* Character's torch mysteriously blows out, loud noise then it is once again lit
* Faint maniacal laughter (That gets louder and louder as the character draws deeper into insanity)
* Ambient audio, such as a water drip could become louder as insanity increases, so a really insane character will occasionally have this irritating dripping sound to distract him
* Lagging shadow (the character's shadow appears to follow the character)