NASA has a rule that contractors cannot use the missions they work on for commerical self-promotion, because that might imply the government is endorsing a particular product or service, which is taboo (for NASA at least).
The graphics may have changed and look better, but the physics and implementation are still awful. When I see spiderman swing, he just falls too fast and the swing doesnt look natural with the cgi (like, his body doesn't react or stiffen to the G-force).
I think a lot of awkward motion ends up in final shots because the animatics (rough animations created for blocking/editing purposes) aren't detailed enough to show that the timing is off, but by the time the animators get around to finishing the shot, it's too late to change the timing.
For instance, if the approved animatic has Spider-Man jumping from building A to building B in 25 frames, and the editors lock that into their cut, then the final shot needs to have him jump in 25 frames, even if the animator later realizes it would look much more realistic if the jump were 40 or 50 frames. If caught early enough this can be corrected, but often it's too disruptive to make timing changes late in the production schedule.
Ironically, the PS2's flaky DVD playback makes it an ideal platform for QA testing. When my authored DVDs play on the PS2, I can be pretty sure they will play everywhere else.
Right, this is why people shouldn't be surprised when their insurance doesn't cover "forseeable" expenses like dental cleanings (or even pregnancy). Insurance means "risk spreading," not "free money." (except when it is used as camouflage for subsidies)...
Today SGI's core competency is not graphics hardware (NVIDIA/ATI blow them out of the water), it's large single-system-image supercomputers. i.e., 512+-CPU NUMA monsters you can log into as a single machine, which are better for certain applications than a cluster of 512+ commodity Linux boxes.
Re:Flash as an application development platform
on
The Future of Flash
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Another great advantage for Flash video is that it doesn't throw one's machine into an unresponsive spasm of hard disk activity the first time it is loaded. Even QT is fairly disruptive to one's browsing experience. Like PDF/Acrobat ("Is that PDF file going to be interesting enough to be worth the chugging while Acrobat loads?")
I was just telling someone the other day that internet access is the one thing I need to make long-haul flights more bearable! I'd probably pay up to $100 per flight for it...
I honestly don't get why this is causing so much ruckus. I thought everyone already knew that bank transactions are being monitored by the government, and have been for years.
This is in contrast to the previous revelation about NSA wiretapping, which seemed genuinely new.
Subsetting must hurt compatibility though - different vendors will implement different "10%"s of the features.
This is why I cringe whenever I hear about some spiffy new feature in the MPEG standard. I already know most "MPEG" implementations won't be able to handle it.
Yes, I think AOL is out of place on that list. From the perspective of a hard-core internet user, maybe they are a bad influence. But they picked their market and served it well. And unlike most products on that list, AOL was a smashing financial success. (RealPlayer and ZIP drives couldn't have done too bad either)
Just a wild guess - maybe it's a two-pass approach, where the first rendering pass uses a shader that indicates which texture tile applies to each pixel, then the engine reads back the image and loads all the needed tiles into memory (using some sort of cache), and finally renders the image.
Supporting Windows applications on OSX might backfire against Apple.
OS/2 was killed in part by its ability to run Windows programs. Developers stopped writing OS/2 software because they figured everyone could just run the Windows version. This helped Microsoft more than it helped IBM.
If Apple implemented Windows-on-OSX, it would be great for users in the short run, but might hubble OSX in the long run. Many developers with cross-platform projects would drop their OSX versions, leaving Apple with no way to attract new customers with OSX-specific innovations.
Self-policing is the primary means of censorship in the Chinese media. This bit of news just means that Chinese websites are adopting the same practices as the print media. The new consortium may just be a CYA type move to prevent any one site from being singled out by the government.
Hong Kong's Octopus card system works much the same way. It can be used for all forms of public transport (subway, bus, ferry, tram, etc), and is now accepted for payment at 7-11 and MacDonalds.
Ironically this system was created by us (through the actions of the US government) when we forced studios to sell off the theaters they owned. In the old system there was no need for a "split" because the studio owned the theater outright.
The downside was that studio-owned theaters could play games like refusing to run movies from other studios. And studio-owned theaters had no option not to run an obviously bad studio film.
My concern is that this fee isn't for an add-on feature above and beyond the ISP's existing service - they might just start degrading everybody's latency unilaterally, and only restore it back to normal if you pay the fee.
Modern businesses seem very adept at chipping away consumer surplus... Anything you take for granted but don't have a legal claim on, they'll just take away and charge you to get it back. Like good QoS for your consumer broadband connection, absence of advertising before movies, ability to walk through an electronics store without being hassled by overzealous salespeople, etc.
There are a couple of firms already offering these services. I have considered using Direct2Drive to buy games a couple of times. However I was turned away by two things:
1. When a game is patched, you have to wait for Direct2Drive to release a special version of the patch for your downloaded copy. This creates an annoying delay where you won't be able to play the same version of the game as everyone who bought a boxed copy. Also, there is no guarantee Direct2Drive will provide timely patches for older games.
2. The price is no lower than retail. While you do save sales tax and shipping, I don't see why there shouldn't be at least a minimal reduction in price since you aren't going to receive the physical disc and manual. (in fact, the three games currently advertised on Direct2Drive's home page - F.E.A.R., Empire Earth 2, and Everquest 2, are all available for several dollars less at Amazon right now!)
Plus the fact that modern processors do so much internal magic on the code stream that an "instruction set" is more of a transmission protocol than anything having to do with CPU internals.
From a developer's standpoint I agree it is a strange decision not to jump immediately to EMT64. Apple had a fine opportunity to eliminate all the compatibility headaches of supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit code in one system, and they chose not to take it. They are going to end up with the same DLL compatibility problems as Microsoft has with 64-bit Windows.
Perhaps Apple figured that most developers will need to support both PowerPC and Intel for some time to come, so it's no big deal to add a third platform? And they trust their "fat binary" system to take care of all the compatibility issues? There have got to be a lot of corner cases like shared-memory IPC and driver ioctls that can't be handled automatically... (e.g. Linux's emulation of the 32-bit system call interface on EMT64 is generally great, but there are plenty of device drivers that don't have properly implemented 32-bit interfaces).
Regarding performance - my experience has been that Intel chips do not perform much faster on 64-bit code as opposed to 32-bit. However, AMD chips gain a lot from running in 64-bit mode. I presume Intel just hasn't had enough time to optimize their EMT64 implementation as well as AMD has.
One bit of relief: the release of Intel Macs finally explains why there was never any effort towards a 64-bit user-mode for OSX/PowerPC:).
I agree that spam is on the decline IF you assume the use of a state-of-the-art filter. Modern filters have basically won the war; they bring spam down from "making email unusable" to the "very minor annoyance" they once used to be.
Of course the amount of spam traffic is higher than ever. But perhaps that will decline as more and more ISPs default to strong filtering, lessening the likelihood for newbies to get scammed, and thus the original motivation for spam.
I would be interested in an analysis of spam types over time... e.g. mortgages vs. Viagara vs. penny stocks vs. replica watches vs. phishing. Maybe that would provide a hint about which industries to invest in:)
I agree that the proliferation of writeable DVD formats is teh suck, but I think the reason they didn't make it as far as recording TV and home movies is that DVD-Video is just not designed as a real-time recording format. The DVD spec is based around an extensive offline authoring process that makes it very difficult to build a usable real-time recorder.
(I don't think this is a malicious DRM-type decision, I think it's just because way back when DVD was designed they had no idea of the demand for end-user recording; they must have figured people would just continue using VHS)
I don't think the author is aware of the hotfixes that Microsoft puts out all the time to fix vulnerabilities (which are easy to get via Windows Update). What he says was true several years ago, but MS has gotten way better about timely fixes. The number of individual fixes has dropped off lately, but I attribute that to stronger security in recently released OS versions, not lack of attention to security bugs.
Look at the first item on his "unpatched" list - UPnP GetDeviceList Denial of Service - follow the link. "Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 are reportedly not vulnerable." There you go. Perhaps he doesn't consider Service Pack 2 to be a "patch"?
The graphics glitches in those screenshots look like what happens when a modern graphics card overheats. For some reason the contents of the video RAM tend to get corrupted (covered with checkerboard blocks or rainbow colors) right before the system halts altogether.
I don't have an Xbox, but maybe you could try running it with the cover off or a fan blowing on it?
Slashdot Mirror
NASA has a rule that contractors cannot use the missions they work on for commerical self-promotion, because that might imply the government is endorsing a particular product or service, which is taboo (for NASA at least).
I think a lot of awkward motion ends up in final shots because the animatics (rough animations created for blocking/editing purposes) aren't detailed enough to show that the timing is off, but by the time the animators get around to finishing the shot, it's too late to change the timing.
For instance, if the approved animatic has Spider-Man jumping from building A to building B in 25 frames, and the editors lock that into their cut, then the final shot needs to have him jump in 25 frames, even if the animator later realizes it would look much more realistic if the jump were 40 or 50 frames. If caught early enough this can be corrected, but often it's too disruptive to make timing changes late in the production schedule.
Ironically, the PS2's flaky DVD playback makes it an ideal platform for QA testing. When my authored DVDs play on the PS2, I can be pretty sure they will play everywhere else.
Right, this is why people shouldn't be surprised when their insurance doesn't cover "forseeable" expenses like dental cleanings (or even pregnancy). Insurance means "risk spreading," not "free money." (except when it is used as camouflage for subsidies)...
Today SGI's core competency is not graphics hardware (NVIDIA/ATI blow them out of the water), it's large single-system-image supercomputers. i.e., 512+-CPU NUMA monsters you can log into as a single machine, which are better for certain applications than a cluster of 512+ commodity Linux boxes.
Another great advantage for Flash video is that it doesn't throw one's machine into an unresponsive spasm of hard disk activity the first time it is loaded. Even QT is fairly disruptive to one's browsing experience. Like PDF/Acrobat ("Is that PDF file going to be interesting enough to be worth the chugging while Acrobat loads?")
I was just telling someone the other day that internet access is the one thing I need to make long-haul flights more bearable! I'd probably pay up to $100 per flight for it...
I honestly don't get why this is causing so much ruckus. I thought everyone already knew that bank transactions are being monitored by the government, and have been for years.
This is in contrast to the previous revelation about NSA wiretapping, which seemed genuinely new.
Subsetting must hurt compatibility though - different vendors will implement different "10%"s of the features.
This is why I cringe whenever I hear about some spiffy new feature in the MPEG standard. I already know most "MPEG" implementations won't be able to handle it.
Yes, I think AOL is out of place on that list. From the perspective of a hard-core internet user, maybe they are a bad influence. But they picked their market and served it well. And unlike most products on that list, AOL was a smashing financial success. (RealPlayer and ZIP drives couldn't have done too bad either)
Just a wild guess - maybe it's a two-pass approach, where the first rendering pass uses a shader that indicates which texture tile applies to each pixel, then the engine reads back the image and loads all the needed tiles into memory (using some sort of cache), and finally renders the image.
Supporting Windows applications on OSX might backfire against Apple.
OS/2 was killed in part by its ability to run Windows programs. Developers stopped writing OS/2 software because they figured everyone could just run the Windows version. This helped Microsoft more than it helped IBM.
If Apple implemented Windows-on-OSX, it would be great for users in the short run, but might hubble OSX in the long run. Many developers with cross-platform projects would drop their OSX versions, leaving Apple with no way to attract new customers with OSX-specific innovations.
Self-policing is the primary means of censorship in the Chinese media. This bit of news just means that Chinese websites are adopting the same practices as the print media. The new consortium may just be a CYA type move to prevent any one site from being singled out by the government.
Hong Kong's Octopus card system works much the same way. It can be used for all forms of public transport (subway, bus, ferry, tram, etc), and is now accepted for payment at 7-11 and MacDonalds.
Ironically this system was created by us (through the actions of the US government) when we forced studios to sell off the theaters they owned. In the old system there was no need for a "split" because the studio owned the theater outright.
The downside was that studio-owned theaters could play games like refusing to run movies from other studios. And studio-owned theaters had no option not to run an obviously bad studio film.
My concern is that this fee isn't for an add-on feature above and beyond the ISP's existing service - they might just start degrading everybody's latency unilaterally, and only restore it back to normal if you pay the fee.
Modern businesses seem very adept at chipping away consumer surplus... Anything you take for granted but don't have a legal claim on, they'll just take away and charge you to get it back. Like good QoS for your consumer broadband connection, absence of advertising before movies, ability to walk through an electronics store without being hassled by overzealous salespeople, etc.
There are a couple of firms already offering these services. I have considered using Direct2Drive to buy games a couple of times. However I was turned away by two things:
1. When a game is patched, you have to wait for Direct2Drive to release a special version of the patch for your downloaded copy. This creates an annoying delay where you won't be able to play the same version of the game as everyone who bought a boxed copy. Also, there is no guarantee Direct2Drive will provide timely patches for older games.
2. The price is no lower than retail. While you do save sales tax and shipping, I don't see why there shouldn't be at least a minimal reduction in price since you aren't going to receive the physical disc and manual. (in fact, the three games currently advertised on Direct2Drive's home page - F.E.A.R., Empire Earth 2, and Everquest 2, are all available for several dollars less at Amazon right now!)
Plus the fact that modern processors do so much internal magic on the code stream that an "instruction set" is more of a transmission protocol than anything having to do with CPU internals.
From a developer's standpoint I agree it is a strange decision not to jump immediately to EMT64. Apple had a fine opportunity to eliminate all the compatibility headaches of supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit code in one system, and they chose not to take it. They are going to end up with the same DLL compatibility problems as Microsoft has with 64-bit Windows.
:).
Perhaps Apple figured that most developers will need to support both PowerPC and Intel for some time to come, so it's no big deal to add a third platform? And they trust their "fat binary" system to take care of all the compatibility issues? There have got to be a lot of corner cases like shared-memory IPC and driver ioctls that can't be handled automatically... (e.g. Linux's emulation of the 32-bit system call interface on EMT64 is generally great, but there are plenty of device drivers that don't have properly implemented 32-bit interfaces).
Regarding performance - my experience has been that Intel chips do not perform much faster on 64-bit code as opposed to 32-bit. However, AMD chips gain a lot from running in 64-bit mode. I presume Intel just hasn't had enough time to optimize their EMT64 implementation as well as AMD has.
One bit of relief: the release of Intel Macs finally explains why there was never any effort towards a 64-bit user-mode for OSX/PowerPC
I agree that spam is on the decline IF you assume the use of a state-of-the-art filter. Modern filters have basically won the war; they bring spam down from "making email unusable" to the "very minor annoyance" they once used to be.
:)
Of course the amount of spam traffic is higher than ever. But perhaps that will decline as more and more ISPs default to strong filtering, lessening the likelihood for newbies to get scammed, and thus the original motivation for spam.
I would be interested in an analysis of spam types over time... e.g. mortgages vs. Viagara vs. penny stocks vs. replica watches vs. phishing. Maybe that would provide a hint about which industries to invest in
I'd like to know what kind of hard drives are giving you over 50MB/sec in real-world conditions!
I agree that the proliferation of writeable DVD formats is teh suck, but I think the reason they didn't make it as far as recording TV and home movies is that DVD-Video is just not designed as a real-time recording format. The DVD spec is based around an extensive offline authoring process that makes it very difficult to build a usable real-time recorder.
(I don't think this is a malicious DRM-type decision, I think it's just because way back when DVD was designed they had no idea of the demand for end-user recording; they must have figured people would just continue using VHS)
PBS is producing a lot of content (e.g. NOVA) in 16:9 SD. I was told the reason is so that it can be upsampled to HD without the black bars.
I don't think the author is aware of the hotfixes that Microsoft puts out all the time to fix vulnerabilities (which are easy to get via Windows Update). What he says was true several years ago, but MS has gotten way better about timely fixes. The number of individual fixes has dropped off lately, but I attribute that to stronger security in recently released OS versions, not lack of attention to security bugs.
Look at the first item on his "unpatched" list - UPnP GetDeviceList Denial of Service - follow the link. "Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 are reportedly not vulnerable." There you go. Perhaps he doesn't consider Service Pack 2 to be a "patch"?
The graphics glitches in those screenshots look like what happens when a modern graphics card overheats. For some reason the contents of the video RAM tend to get corrupted (covered with checkerboard blocks or rainbow colors) right before the system halts altogether.
I don't have an Xbox, but maybe you could try running it with the cover off or a fan blowing on it?