I was told by a blood drawer at my HMO, that veins can drift around a bit under the skin.
as for a severed hand... water heated to 99 degrees with a pump that matches heart speeds.
which made me think... what if the system rejects too high of a heartrate?, man holding a gun to your head boosts your pulse quite a bit I suppose... better for the company if the door stayed closed...
It's not unnatural to divide everything in half, heck our bodys are mostly symmetrical; the distiction comes in where the dividing line is.
We can weight our decisions in endless ways, if someone makes a statement, our belief of that statement depends on how many times we have heard it, our trust in the stater, if it meshes with known facts in the current context.
What I wonder is how far can a human mind be pushed in terms of concepts it can grasp and control it has, can a human visualise a 5 dimensional virtual object? control emotional responses, without supressing them? hold multiple contridictary world models? accelerate long-term memory access?
Even if you think of an electronic computer, it's just hordes of electrons rushing down pathways, only reliable because the voltage levels are continually refreshed at each step, a few electrons might wander off the path, but they are replaced at the next junction. Quantum Mob Rule.
That's why I kept Video out of the list of tasks that can be split off.
If the core, essential game logic still remains in one thread, the video frame buffer is still updated just as you say; but if you offload the non-critical tasks to another CPU, the main thread is less likely to get interupted, delayed, have a cache miss, block on I/O, etc., leading to faster frame rates.
So, no, 2x CPU's don't mean 2x the frame rate; but when the physics modal wants to make the sounds of a a bomb going off, scattering debris around the area, shattering windows, making your virtual ears ring, it would be handy for CPU #2 to take that load while the main process just worries about drawing it. You won't hear the differance between 10 and 9 different materials shattering at once; but you would notice dropped frames caused by the sound mixer blowing the cache.
and, I'd have to say, nothing is actually critical in a games runtime; unless it's a military simulation or something =)
If you can't deal with simple multi-threading, you shouldn't be a professional programmer.
It's not very hard, as long as you divide your tasks logically.
some possible divisions are:
User Input: The CPU spends far more time waiting for the user than the user on it, this can be it's own thread, that sends messages to the other threads as needed. Invalid button?, send a note to the Sound thread. Analog movement within margin of error of not really moving?, queue it up. Fire button? interupt another thread.
Sound: generally, you have a signal to start playing a sound, and it plays until it's done. nowdays you have 3-d sound, so you have to calculate doppler, stereo effects, reverb, etc. hopefully this is taken care of by hardware, but a seperate thread to manage the hardware could be handy.
I/O: waiting for a disc or network is very slow, and you might have to filter packets, or re-try errors, as well as compression and encryption...
Being fail-safe is nice as well, for example, in Final Fantasy VII, if you ejected the disc while a battle scene was loading, it would try to continue the battle with the characters that were able to load.
So, lets say you push the wrong button, the User Input thread gets the press, and sends a note to the sound thread; the sound thread notices the error beep is not in memory, so sends a request to the I/O system to load it into memory... but the disc is scratched! the sound thread keeps playing it's other sounds, and the UI thread keeps accepting input, while the disc tries to re-read. the timeout for the I/O request is reached, and the sound thread is notifed that the sound could not be loaded, but referancing the request from the UI thread, this request is non-critical so it fails silently.
Anyone explain exactly how not trading with a nation is supposed to improve the lives of it's citizens.
I attribute it to selfishness. People want the benifits without the costs. Cheap products without losing high paying jobs. Well, guess what? In order to have a high paying job, you have to produce something that people will pay a high price for, and if you arn't willing to pay high prices, why would you expect anyone else to?
I figure, for example, once the Indian phone support folks become skilled enough, and their local economy starts to catch up to ours, they will start demanding more pay; or at least be busy enough providing support to other Indians that they'd rather work for a local company than for some U.S. company.
By allowing them to support U.S. consumers, they are being indoctrinated to our culture in a way, learning English, American phone ettiquite, dealing with American companies. I would bet that they dislike dealing with Americans more than we dislike talking to them when we have a problem.
In the U.S. you can have a home, a car, a cell phone, a TV, a PlayStation, etc. and still be considered very poor. Grocery stores discard tons upon tons of slightly blemished food, Charities only accept brand new in the package toys quality clothing and no computers under 500mhz. Gasoline is half the price it is in Europe, and a 7-11 is usually a short stroll away. The excess we have here is almost disturbing.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"; This does not refer just to Americans. Denying the things we hold dear to the peoples of other lands, just because they arn't living on this particular landmass is rediculous. If they, or their government on their behalf, choose not to partake that's fine, but if we show them the best bits of democracy, instead of encouraging un-elected leaders to bad-mouth democratic nations, perhaps in this day and age, non-violent revolution is possible.
In 6th grade the gave me a standardised I.Q. test, I basically broke the scale. (that particular test only claimed validity up to 150 though.)
On a standardized test in high school, I scored 212, second highest score in district history was 176.
I was in a school-related competition (FBLA club) and took a 100 item multiple choice quiz, I scored 98 in 15 minutes of the hour given for the test, second highest was 78.
They disqualified me because I must have cheated, they just had no idea how. That made me very angry, but I tried again the next year under close scrutiny, and did equally well, so they disqualified me again.
I became physically ill from the emotional distress this caused, and missed too many days to graduate on schedule, so I got a GED. Sucks that I'm too nice of a guy to have sued them over it, as it's probably too late now.
bitter bitter bitter.
FBLA is Future Business Leaders of America, but I like to think of them as FPHB, Future Pointy Haired Bosses. Those grapes were probably sour anyway, I didn't really want a scholorship from IBM, or a trip to D.C. or Anaheim.
the keywords can be whatever the hell you want while it's in 'X-' status, logs can be scanned to see which keywords people actually use (suggested lists would come with the browser or plug-in that implements this). Some people will lie in their demographics, but odds are they would just be blocking the ads otherwise. Ideally you could tailor which sites would get which 'meta-cookie'; 32/male might be allowed to the world, but the details restricted, all up to the client implementation.
No server should choke on the extra line, because if it did it would have been exploitable anyway.
Blocking web-ads is just as much an act of theft as skipping commercails with a PVR. But seriously, well targetted ads are a win/win, and a system that allows the user to control exactly what information is sent out, instead of trying to make assumptions based on other sites visited is simpler, more respectful, more accurate, and more acceptable than the alternatives.
That is, you would have to 'mark' a location in time/space by activating your equipment there to make one end appear, then wait for a while to open up the other end. Which would appear at the receiving end to happen instantly
Then you might be able to send single photons or such through, possibly a data stream.
In todays world, Data is very very valuable.
Food/Mates used to be the most valuable thing (Hunter/Gather) Then means of producing food, and protecting your mates(Farming/Towns) Then things you could trade for a place in a town or farm grown food (Gold/Silver) Then things that represented those things (cheap coins/paper money) Then data that represented those things (electronic currency, loans) Now data that represents the value of those things (Currency Exchange Rates, Stock Prices, Commodity Futures) might be the most valuable.
It may be surpassed by the systems and methods used to track and manipulate those data values; an accurate method to predict the future value of a commodity would be much more valuable than a few data points on it's graph.
Mathmatical formula's are bought and sold based on their ability to process data, it's called Software.
The source code to Linux 3.0 Kernal, or all the gold in fort knox?
forgot to say the reason I didn't complain about it... I also bought a $20 5 port 100 mbit switch while I was there, when I got to the register, it rang up for $5. I questioned that, and the clerk said that's what it is.
last time I was at Fry's here in Renton, WA I watched the sales people try to talk four customers in a row, including myself, out of an advertised special.
I once had a teacher that used to say " 'um' is not a word, it is not in the dictionary. " whenever a student speaker said 'um'. When she did it to me I open the dictionary on her desk to the 'U's...
um also umm Audio pronunciation of "um", interjection.
Used to express doubt or uncertainty or to fill a pause when hesitating in speaking.
I would suggest some standardised physics application, perhaps a model of a set of different shapes of windmills, at a set of wind speeds, driving a water pump.
Then they added Beastlords and Berzerkers... since they didn't want to displace any existing class, Beastlords ended up a jack-of-all-trades; while they tried (and failed) to add a new reation based combat system around when they introduced 'zerkers (iirc)
the problem comes in that people want to pick the best characters for the situation; If there are no undead in the area, why have a Pally? mosters dying fast, so why have a Necro?
the next problem was balancing a group with a shaman that can cut a monsters damage output by 75%, with one without. or one with a cleric, who can heal 10000 hp in a shot, vs. other healers that can't do more than 1000. In order for content to be a challange to a group with a Shaman AND and Cleric the monsters have to be able to rip through groups that lack them in a couple seconds, making a Cleric and a Shaman almost mandatory for grouping in most players eyes.
(I have 3 accounts, my Mage, then a Cleric and a Shaman set up on hotkeys to Heal and Slow)
my thought for a design...
First, decide on the 'ideal' group size, I think 5 is a good number.
then come up with a adventuring system that requires that number of distict abilities.
then, create classes that each can fill MOST jobs, instead of a few.
Heal, MeleeD, MagicD: Heal, MeleeD, MeleeP: Paladin type Heal, MeleeD, MagicP: Ranger type Heal, MagicD, MeleeP: Shaman type Heal, MagicD, MagicP: Druid type Heal, MeleeP, MagicP: Cleric Type MeleeD, MagicD, MeleeP: Shadowknight type MeleeD, MagicD, MagicP: MeleeD, MeleeP, MagicP: MagicD, MeleeP, MagicP:
well, obviously they don't all correlate to EQ classes, as that's the point. Everyone with a base ability should have the same level of power, just with different 'flavor'; which will lead to some situational advantages, but if, for example, the particular types of magic damage available to a druid-type class are ineffective in an area, he'd still be able to fully function as a Healer and protector vs. magic.
I already filed a patent for this in the mid '90's
I didn't pursue marketing the technology because this was around the time of Pokemon causing seizures in children, and the massive failure known as the 'VirtualBoy'
Slashdot Mirror
So, why havn't you filed suit against that competitor?
Better, Faster, Cheaper.
it's too hard to compete with.
so DON'T.
contact the best fan-sub groups, and HIRE THEM.
not only will you get folks that love the work, and so will probably do it cheap; you'll remove their illegitimate products from the 'market'.
I was told by a blood drawer at my HMO, that veins can drift around a bit under the skin.
as for a severed hand... water heated to 99 degrees with a pump that matches heart speeds.
which made me think... what if the system rejects too high of a heartrate?, man holding a gun to your head boosts your pulse quite a bit I suppose... better for the company if the door stayed closed...
I don't think the chunk of meat in my head works using digital logic; but I'd like to think my Mind does a reasonable job of it.
Natural numbers (1,2,3...), true/false, up/down...
It's not unnatural to divide everything in half, heck our bodys are mostly symmetrical; the distiction comes in where the dividing line is.
We can weight our decisions in endless ways, if someone makes a statement, our belief of that statement depends on how many times we have heard it, our trust in the stater, if it meshes with known facts in the current context.
What I wonder is how far can a human mind be pushed in terms of concepts it can grasp and control it has, can a human visualise a 5 dimensional virtual object? control emotional responses, without supressing them? hold multiple contridictary world models? accelerate long-term memory access?
Even if you think of an electronic computer, it's just hordes of electrons rushing down pathways, only reliable because the voltage levels are continually refreshed at each step, a few electrons might wander off the path, but they are replaced at the next junction. Quantum Mob Rule.
That's why I kept Video out of the list of tasks that can be split off.
If the core, essential game logic still remains in one thread, the video frame buffer is still updated just as you say; but if you offload the non-critical tasks to another CPU, the main thread is less likely to get interupted, delayed, have a cache miss, block on I/O, etc., leading to faster frame rates.
So, no, 2x CPU's don't mean 2x the frame rate; but when the physics modal wants to make the sounds of a a bomb going off, scattering debris around the area, shattering windows, making your virtual ears ring, it would be handy for CPU #2 to take that load while the main process just worries about drawing it. You won't hear the differance between 10 and 9 different materials shattering at once; but you would notice dropped frames caused by the sound mixer blowing the cache.
and, I'd have to say, nothing is actually critical in a games runtime; unless it's a military simulation or something =)
If you can't deal with simple multi-threading, you shouldn't be a professional programmer.
..
It's not very hard, as long as you divide your tasks logically.
some possible divisions are:
User Input: The CPU spends far more time waiting for the user than the user on it, this can be it's own thread, that sends messages to the other threads as needed. Invalid button?, send a note to the Sound thread. Analog movement within margin of error of not really moving?, queue it up. Fire button? interupt another thread.
Sound: generally, you have a signal to start playing a sound, and it plays until it's done. nowdays you have 3-d sound, so you have to calculate doppler, stereo effects, reverb, etc. hopefully this is taken care of by hardware, but a seperate thread to manage the hardware could be handy.
I/O: waiting for a disc or network is very slow, and you might have to filter packets, or re-try errors, as well as compression and encryption.
Being fail-safe is nice as well, for example, in Final Fantasy VII, if you ejected the disc while a battle scene was loading, it would try to continue the battle with the characters that were able to load.
So, lets say you push the wrong button, the User Input thread gets the press, and sends a note to the sound thread; the sound thread notices the error beep is not in memory, so sends a request to the I/O system to load it into memory... but the disc is scratched! the sound thread keeps playing it's other sounds, and the UI thread keeps accepting input, while the disc tries to re-read. the timeout for the I/O request is reached, and the sound thread is notifed that the sound could not be loaded, but referancing the request from the UI thread, this request is non-critical so it fails silently.
I expect them to have 30 times the power consumption.
Don't use them on carpet, ensure good airflow, and buy some fire insurance.
We need a 'Duh.' rating.
agree, the software world is too fast moving, 20 year long patents stifle more than they benefit, particularly 'submarine' patents... .GIF .JPG...
I reacently started ADHD medication, now it takes me twice as long to read a book, but I'm getting more than twice as much out of them.
Remember when the narrator 'retires' from his office job in "Fight Club"...
The animatrontic characters, displays, and equipment at Chuck-E-Cheese?
I'm sure Disneyland has had even better stuff for much longer as well.
Anyone explain exactly how not trading with a nation is supposed to improve the lives of it's citizens.
I attribute it to selfishness. People want the benifits without the costs. Cheap products without losing high paying jobs. Well, guess what? In order to have a high paying job, you have to produce something that people will pay a high price for, and if you arn't willing to pay high prices, why would you expect anyone else to?
I figure, for example, once the Indian phone support folks become skilled enough, and their local economy starts to catch up to ours, they will start demanding more pay; or at least be busy enough providing support to other Indians that they'd rather work for a local company than for some U.S. company.
By allowing them to support U.S. consumers, they are being indoctrinated to our culture in a way, learning English, American phone ettiquite, dealing with American companies. I would bet that they dislike dealing with Americans more than we dislike talking to them when we have a problem.
In the U.S. you can have a home, a car, a cell phone, a TV, a PlayStation, etc. and still be considered very poor. Grocery stores discard tons upon tons of slightly blemished food, Charities only accept brand new in the package toys quality clothing and no computers under 500mhz. Gasoline is half the price it is in Europe, and a 7-11 is usually a short stroll away. The excess we have here is almost disturbing.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"; This does not refer just to Americans. Denying the things we hold dear to the peoples of other lands, just because they arn't living on this particular landmass is rediculous. If they, or their government on their behalf, choose not to partake that's fine, but if we show them the best bits of democracy, instead of encouraging un-elected leaders to bad-mouth democratic nations, perhaps in this day and age, non-violent revolution is possible.
Heh, why don't you do it yourself?
I have no upper-left sinus cavity.
It's all solid material there.
In 6th grade the gave me a standardised I.Q. test, I basically broke the scale. (that particular test only claimed validity up to 150 though.)
On a standardized test in high school, I scored 212, second highest score in district history was 176.
I was in a school-related competition (FBLA club) and took a 100 item multiple choice quiz, I scored 98 in 15 minutes of the hour given for the test, second highest was 78.
They disqualified me because I must have cheated, they just had no idea how. That made me very angry, but I tried again the next year under close scrutiny, and did equally well, so they disqualified me again.
I became physically ill from the emotional distress this caused, and missed too many days to graduate on schedule, so I got a GED. Sucks that I'm too nice of a guy to have sued them over it, as it's probably too late now.
bitter bitter bitter.
FBLA is Future Business Leaders of America, but I like to think of them as FPHB, Future Pointy Haired Bosses. Those grapes were probably sour anyway, I didn't really want a scholorship from IBM, or a trip to D.C. or Anaheim.
just add an entry to HTTP get requests along the lines of
X-Demographics: Age/32; Sex/Male; Location/Seattle; Hobbies/Games/WebComics/Everquest; Marital/Single; No/Loans/Credit Yes/Employment/Entertainment
the keywords can be whatever the hell you want while it's in 'X-' status, logs can be scanned to see which keywords people actually use (suggested lists would come with the browser or plug-in that implements this). Some people will lie in their demographics, but odds are they would just be blocking the ads otherwise. Ideally you could tailor which sites would get which 'meta-cookie'; 32/male might be allowed to the world, but the details restricted, all up to the client implementation.
No server should choke on the extra line, because if it did it would have been exploitable anyway.
Blocking web-ads is just as much an act of theft as skipping commercails with a PVR. But seriously, well targetted ads are a win/win, and a system that allows the user to control exactly what information is sent out, instead of trying to make assumptions based on other sites visited is simpler, more respectful, more accurate, and more acceptable than the alternatives.
Time travel would only be possible to a receiver.
That is, you would have to 'mark' a location in time/space by activating your equipment there to make one end appear, then wait for a while to open up the other end. Which would appear at the receiving end to happen instantly
Then you might be able to send single photons or such through, possibly a data stream.
In todays world, Data is very very valuable.
Food/Mates used to be the most valuable thing (Hunter/Gather)
Then means of producing food, and protecting your mates(Farming/Towns)
Then things you could trade for a place in a town or farm grown food (Gold/Silver)
Then things that represented those things (cheap coins/paper money)
Then data that represented those things (electronic currency, loans)
Now data that represents the value of those things (Currency Exchange Rates, Stock Prices, Commodity Futures) might be the most valuable.
It may be surpassed by the systems and methods used to track and manipulate those data values; an accurate method to predict the future value of a commodity would be much more valuable than a few data points on it's graph.
Mathmatical formula's are bought and sold based on their ability to process data, it's called Software.
The source code to Linux 3.0 Kernal, or all the gold in fort knox?
A iPod is expensive enough, without having to pay another $699 to SCO.
forgot to say the reason I didn't complain about it... I also bought a $20 5 port 100 mbit switch while I was there, when I got to the register, it rang up for $5. I questioned that, and the clerk said that's what it is.
last time I was at Fry's here in Renton, WA I watched the sales people try to talk four customers in a row, including myself, out of an advertised special.
That's called bait-and-switch; and it's illegal.
english is a living language.
no 'astronauts' 100 years ago.
'bling' wasn't a word 10 years ago.
I once had a teacher that used to say " 'um' is not a word, it is not in the dictionary. " whenever a student speaker said 'um'. When she did it to me I open the dictionary on her desk to the 'U's...
um also umm Audio pronunciation of "um", interjection.
Used to express doubt or uncertainty or to fill a pause when hesitating in speaking.
2 days suspension for insubordination.
Don't buy anything from it!
Who the hell keeps giving these people money?
I swear if anyone I knew bought anything from spam, I'd have to torture them to death.
I would suggest some standardised physics application, perhaps a model of a set of different shapes of windmills, at a set of wind speeds, driving a water pump.
usually, there is one area in which a class outshines all others, for example in Everquest:
Clerics:Rezzing, Druids:Travel, Shamans: Debuffing
Wizards:Burst damage, Enchanters:Crowd Control, Magicians:Pets, Necromancers:damage-over-time spells
Warriors:Taking hits, Rogues:Traps/Sneak, Monk:Melee damage
Bards:mana regen, Rangers:Archery/Tracking, Paladins:Undead slaying, Shadowknights:Holding aggro
Then they added Beastlords and Berzerkers... since they didn't want to displace any existing class, Beastlords ended up a jack-of-all-trades; while they tried (and failed) to add a new reation based combat system around when they introduced 'zerkers (iirc)
the problem comes in that people want to pick the best characters for the situation; If there are no undead in the area, why have a Pally? mosters dying fast, so why have a Necro?
the next problem was balancing a group with a shaman that can cut a monsters damage output by 75%, with one without. or one with a cleric, who can heal 10000 hp in a shot, vs. other healers that can't do more than 1000. In order for content to be a challange to a group with a Shaman AND and Cleric the monsters have to be able to rip through groups that lack them in a couple seconds, making a Cleric and a Shaman almost mandatory for grouping in most players eyes.
(I have 3 accounts, my Mage, then a Cleric and a Shaman set up on hotkeys to Heal and Slow)
my thought for a design...
First, decide on the 'ideal' group size, I think 5 is a good number.
then come up with a adventuring system that requires that number of distict abilities.
Healing, Melee Damage, Magic Damage, Melee Protection, Magic Protection.
then, create classes that each can fill MOST jobs, instead of a few.
Heal, MeleeD, MagicD:
Heal, MeleeD, MeleeP: Paladin type
Heal, MeleeD, MagicP: Ranger type
Heal, MagicD, MeleeP: Shaman type
Heal, MagicD, MagicP: Druid type
Heal, MeleeP, MagicP: Cleric Type
MeleeD, MagicD, MeleeP: Shadowknight type
MeleeD, MagicD, MagicP:
MeleeD, MeleeP, MagicP:
MagicD, MeleeP, MagicP:
well, obviously they don't all correlate to EQ classes, as that's the point. Everyone with a base ability should have the same level of power, just with different 'flavor'; which will lead to some situational advantages, but if, for example, the particular types of magic damage available to a druid-type class are ineffective in an area, he'd still be able to fully function as a Healer and protector vs. magic.
I already filed a patent for this in the mid '90's
I didn't pursue marketing the technology because this was around the time of Pokemon causing seizures in children, and the massive failure known as the 'VirtualBoy'