The mirror does seem to be at least partially working, but I have to admit I disagree with one of the designer's future intentions:
TTL rather than FPGA. My reasons here pretty much boil down to "because that's what I want to do." FPGAs do sound fun, but I really am drawn towards using technology that is similar to that which was current when I first became introduced to computers. Perhaps for Magic-2....
No! Magic-2 must be built out of discrete transistors, Magic-3 out of valves, and Magic-4 must be entirely mechanical. Successive technological anachronisms must increase in their level of insanity!:-)
I did a short course in digital microelectronics a few years ago (ever-so-coincidentally using 74xx chips as well) - it was great fun putting everything together, extending things, linking flip-flops and whatnot together. With parts 'borrowed' from others, I built a giant counter circuit, but who knows what I might have built given enough chips, breadboards and wires...
The goal seems to be to understand how cortical columns work, not to create a simulated mind. They actually will not even have enough "neurons" to match one human cortical column, but will probably still learn alot about the circuitry....
Again from the article:
Two new models will be built, one a molecular model of the neurons involved. The other will clone the behavioural model of columns thousands of times to produce a complete neocortex, and eventually the rest of the brain.
Sounds like they'll use the data from this first phase to develop a simplified model of how networks of neurons behave - more of an empirical simulation rather than a from-scratch physical one.
Could be slightly cheaper in terms of computational power, but what are the philosophical implications of neurons which aren't directly based on physical simulation?;-)
All it takes to simulate a human brain is 22.8 teraflops? I thought I was smarter than that.
From the article:
... [T]he initial phase of Blue Brain will model the electrical structure of neocortical columns - neural circuits that are repeated throughout the brain.... "These are the network units of the brain," says Markram. Measuring just 0.5 millimetres by 2 mm, these units contain between 10 and 70,000 neurons, depending upon the species.
In other words, one day they hope to simulate a whole brain, but to begin with they'll be modelling the behaviour of a particular neural unit - with physical data derived from many, many slices of mouse brains.
In terms of deciphering the behaviour of relatively large numbers of neurons, it could be incredibly useful (and once the model is tuned would mean fewer messy, difficult and unpleasant experiments involving live animals, brain electrodes and whatnot) - but it's admittedly only a small first step toward modelling a whole brain of any species. Still, it's one of the necessary building blocks - and any moral issues are left as an exercise for the reader...;-)
Big, unbreakable crates are remarkably useful for other things, too. Firstly, they're handy cover for the player to duck behind, and generally don't look out of place no matter where they get put. Secondly, a large crate parked in front of a door may actually be blocking visibility, making the map run at many, many more frames per second than it might otherwise.
Still, crates can get so utterly cliched, along with their traditional warehouse homes - I have managed to build a map with neither, fortunately.:-)
(Off-topic: If anyone has some hints on how to easily fix these errors, I'd love to hear it.)
Off-topic solutions!
MAX_MAP_MODELS: I think this one's when you have too many brush entities. The limit for the HL engine is 400, but you'd be best sticking under 200 or so for a multiplayer game. Actually, for a network game, the fewer entities of any kind, the better.
MAX_MAP_CLIPNODES: This one is a bit more fiddly, and is the result of the player clipping being too complex. First, if you're not using a custom build of the Half-Life compilation tools, I'd suggest moving over immediately - there are numerous tweaks and new features which are absolutely invaluable for someone building a larger map, such as turning ornamentation brushes into func_illusionary entities to remove their clipnodes completely (but watch the map models count!). There's also the glorious 'NULL' texture which is ridiculously useful, tricks for hugely increasing the maximum number of planes in the map, and last but not least, my lovely realistic light_environment hack.
The main trick to reducing the clipnodes count, however, is to put 'CLIP' brushes around any complex geometry. If you've got some roughly-cylindrical pipes, put a cuboid around them - likewise, if you've got some unreachable ceiling details such as vents, skylights or whatever, put another 'CLIP' brush around those too.
Turning something like, say, some chairs and tables into a func_wall will make visibility much easier to calculate, assuming you haven't done so already - to reduce the map models count, you can probably tie an entire roomful of furniture to one brush entity. Plus with a relatively modern HLRAD, you can get the furniture to cast shadows again, although it can dramatically increase lighting calculation time while compiling.
Finally, when you've got completely sick of the Half-Life engine, move on to Source. It's utterly awesome - maps can be so utterly, terrifyingly huge...:-)
I bet there's some scientists who'll be wanting the rover to reverse back a bit - it looks like they've dug the deepest trench yet on Mars, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've already done risk assesments regarding getting the rover to peer in with its instruments...;-)
My 4MB STB SVGA card back in 1996 could do 32 bit per pixel colour.
32 bits per pixel, certainly, but eight of those would most likely have been ignored.
Yup, that's right - a full quarter of a modern computer's framebuffer is wasted in padding out a 24-bit colour value to a 32-bit long word. On my computer at the moment, that's a whole 2400KiB.
The reason? It's been years since I've seen a graphics card that did a true 24-bit mode - and that was horribly slow, due to it having to muck about aligning stuff over its 32-bit memory bus. The 32-bit mode was way faster.:-)
Ummm...... okay. 24 bit LCD, versus 32 bit CRT. Human eyes can distinguish between 16, 24, and 32 bit. (Play a game and wait for smoke and explosions to go off, you'll see what I mean)
That's nice.
Which graphics card are you using which outputs 32-bit colour? The best I can think of in terms of colour depth, the Matrox Parhelia, only does 30-bit. And nobody seems to be buying that...
Okay, so there was probably more actual game there than with some of this year's E3 'demos', but still there doesn't appear to be much correlation between year of award and year of release.
Has a certain Mr. Nukem won any trade awards for his forthcoming release yet?
A "quality full wave rectifier" can be made with four power diodes at less than a dollar each; the PX6007 springs to mind, or the BR106 bridge package if you need really heavy currents.
To be honest, I'd much rather be using a mercury arc rectifier - semiconductors are for wimps!;-)
Actually, Gilles Tran work is used as an example of what a submission _should_ look like. In the first explanatory paragraph of TFA.
Plus, later in the text...
We would like to thank our sponsors Appro, AMD, Zazzle, and Planet Mirror for making this competition possible, plus our judges Dennis Miller, Evan Hallein, David Hook, Gilles Tran, Lance Birch, and Juha ('Warp') Nieminen for taking time out of their busy schedules over the past two weeks to rank the entries.
D'oh! Note to self: in future, read article, don't just look at pretty pictures...;-)
Of course, no article on POV-Ray is complete without the obligatory link to the site of Monsieur Gilles Tran, surrealist and POV-artist extraordinaire...
Has he entered the competition? Haven't seen his name anywhere so far...
webcore they allow to freely download so anybody could download that and work on a better browser. and if the current lgpl violations can be worked out it could make yet another very good alternative to IE so together firefox netscape mozilla safari and other webcore browsers could take IE market share
Does your typing involve conscious thought, or merely involuntary, peristaltic regurgitation of mutated Slashdot memetic material?;-)
Webcore is indeed a very nice HTML renderer, but it's definitely not a whole web browser. You'd need to add a user interface, HTTP mechanisms, display code and whatnot, as well as integrate plugin code, Javascript etc.
There are no LGPL violations, merely some KDE developers frustrated that while everyone thought there was loads of happy, shiny collaboration going on between them and Apple, there wasn't.
You're not going to magically acquire another 10% of the market for another Win32 browser unless it does something remarkably new and/or different. Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and Opera are effectively niche markets already, sadly.
The aim of getting the same microchip is to ensure compatability [sic] in screening terrorist suspects.
Did this spelling mistake leap out at everyone else? I assumed it was the article submitter, but it's in the original too. Tut tut, Independent - you're turning into the Grauniad!:-)
Spore's system seems to break that. I welcome his ideas of genre hopping and asynchonous content sharing.
It reminded me a little of the venerable Elite - but instead of the game firing up the random number generator and hoping for the best, it gets the players to design the content to populate the worlds with, using the resulting popularity as the basis of survival of the fittest.
It does sound a rather impressive game, and the fact that you can design (or at least guide) your own life-forms, buildings, cities, planets and solar systems is just amazing.
Something both scares and fascinates me, though - how someone might find some tiny, backwater planet their computer has based on your own hours of work. The idea of anonymously setting your creations free for perhaps millions of players to discover sounds mind-bendingly cool to me - and I wonder if fan-designed systems for encoding information (such as nicknames) into creations will emerge.
Hmm... Encoding an email address into the arrangement of limbs on a millipede...
Then I noticed the looks I was getting from people walking past my office and stopped.
Speaking of funny looks - I think it's absolutely guaranteed that a family member, wife, girlfriend or whoever will peer at your computer screen just as your creations are, um, getting a bit intimate (described as 'procedural mating', complete with dodgy saxophone music)...
In Europe and Australia, the PlayStation 2 comes with a free Yabasic interpreter on the bundled demo disk. This allows simple programs to be created for the PlayStation 2 by the end-user. This was included in a failed attempt to circumvent a UK tax by defining the console as a "computer" if it contained certain software.
Slashdot Mirror
No! Magic-2 must be built out of discrete transistors, Magic-3 out of valves, and Magic-4 must be entirely mechanical. Successive technological anachronisms must increase in their level of insanity!
I did a short course in digital microelectronics a few years ago (ever-so-coincidentally using 74xx chips as well) - it was great fun putting everything together, extending things, linking flip-flops and whatnot together. With parts 'borrowed' from others, I built a giant counter circuit, but who knows what I might have built given enough chips, breadboards and wires...
Again from the article:
Sounds like they'll use the data from this first phase to develop a simplified model of how networks of neurons behave - more of an empirical simulation rather than a from-scratch physical one.
Could be slightly cheaper in terms of computational power, but what are the philosophical implications of neurons which aren't directly based on physical simulation?
"I think I think, therefore I possibly are..."
You forgot "I for one welcome..."
In Soviet Russia, supercomputers welcome you!
I'll get me coat...
From the article:
In other words, one day they hope to simulate a whole brain, but to begin with they'll be modelling the behaviour of a particular neural unit - with physical data derived from many, many slices of mouse brains.
In terms of deciphering the behaviour of relatively large numbers of neurons, it could be incredibly useful (and once the model is tuned would mean fewer messy, difficult and unpleasant experiments involving live animals, brain electrodes and whatnot) - but it's admittedly only a small first step toward modelling a whole brain of any species. Still, it's one of the necessary building blocks - and any moral issues are left as an exercise for the reader...
Big, unbreakable crates are remarkably useful for other things, too. Firstly, they're handy cover for the player to duck behind, and generally don't look out of place no matter where they get put. Secondly, a large crate parked in front of a door may actually be blocking visibility, making the map run at many, many more frames per second than it might otherwise.
:-)
Still, crates can get so utterly cliched, along with their traditional warehouse homes - I have managed to build a map with neither, fortunately.
(Off-topic: If anyone has some hints on how to easily fix these errors, I'd love to hear it.)
:-)
Off-topic solutions!
MAX_MAP_MODELS: I think this one's when you have too many brush entities. The limit for the HL engine is 400, but you'd be best sticking under 200 or so for a multiplayer game. Actually, for a network game, the fewer entities of any kind, the better.
MAX_MAP_CLIPNODES: This one is a bit more fiddly, and is the result of the player clipping being too complex. First, if you're not using a custom build of the Half-Life compilation tools, I'd suggest moving over immediately - there are numerous tweaks and new features which are absolutely invaluable for someone building a larger map, such as turning ornamentation brushes into func_illusionary entities to remove their clipnodes completely (but watch the map models count!). There's also the glorious 'NULL' texture which is ridiculously useful, tricks for hugely increasing the maximum number of planes in the map, and last but not least, my lovely realistic light_environment hack.
The main trick to reducing the clipnodes count, however, is to put 'CLIP' brushes around any complex geometry. If you've got some roughly-cylindrical pipes, put a cuboid around them - likewise, if you've got some unreachable ceiling details such as vents, skylights or whatever, put another 'CLIP' brush around those too.
Turning something like, say, some chairs and tables into a func_wall will make visibility much easier to calculate, assuming you haven't done so already - to reduce the map models count, you can probably tie an entire roomful of furniture to one brush entity. Plus with a relatively modern HLRAD, you can get the furniture to cast shadows again, although it can dramatically increase lighting calculation time while compiling.
Finally, when you've got completely sick of the Half-Life engine, move on to Source. It's utterly awesome - maps can be so utterly, terrifyingly huge...
I bet there's some scientists who'll be wanting the rover to reverse back a bit - it looks like they've dug the deepest trench yet on Mars, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've already done risk assesments regarding getting the rover to peer in with its instruments... ;-)
iCab predates not only WebCore, but even MacOS X by several years.
And it lived on the Atari ST (and descendants) for several years before that, too, as CAB - the Crystal Atari Browser. It got fairly advanced, too...
Well, it wouldn't. It's a site set up by the BBC to promote the latest series of Doctor Who.
Either that, or the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce is using a terribly effective Javascript-based password system.
I would appear to have hacked into the site. Wahey!
(Goes off to launch some ICBMs...)
My 4MB STB SVGA card back in 1996 could do 32 bit per pixel colour.
:-)
32 bits per pixel, certainly, but eight of those would most likely have been ignored.
Yup, that's right - a full quarter of a modern computer's framebuffer is wasted in padding out a 24-bit colour value to a 32-bit long word. On my computer at the moment, that's a whole 2400KiB.
The reason? It's been years since I've seen a graphics card that did a true 24-bit mode - and that was horribly slow, due to it having to muck about aligning stuff over its 32-bit memory bus. The 32-bit mode was way faster.
Ummm...... okay. 24 bit LCD, versus 32 bit CRT. Human eyes can distinguish between 16, 24, and 32 bit. (Play a game and wait for smoke and explosions to go off, you'll see what I mean)
That's nice.
Which graphics card are you using which outputs 32-bit colour? The best I can think of in terms of colour depth, the Matrox Parhelia, only does 30-bit. And nobody seems to be buying that...
I wouldn't exactly call it "hacking," but I've been modding juiceboxes for years. All it involves is a straw...
Actually, you can 'overclock' said juiceboxes when empty by inflating them with the aforementioned straw, and then stamping on them very hard.
Cue a Very Loud Bang.
What does "best of" even mean for a show where most of the stuff isn't real? Do they have a "Probably Best Game of 2007" award?
Don't forget Valve's Team Fortress 2 won Best Action Game at E3 - in 1999!
Okay, so there was probably more actual game there than with some of this year's E3 'demos', but still there doesn't appear to be much correlation between year of award and year of release.
Has a certain Mr. Nukem won any trade awards for his forthcoming release yet?
I'm not a fan of any component that contains liquid mercury, I'd prefer a nice thermionic rectifier like the GZ34.
I'm not sure you're quite understanding what I'm getting at. Okay, so it contains large quantities of mercury, but which would you prefer - this puny effort or this manly, throbbing, glowing artefact?
A "quality full wave rectifier" can be made with four power diodes at less than a dollar each; the PX6007 springs to mind, or the BR106 bridge package if you need really heavy currents.
;-)
To be honest, I'd much rather be using a mercury arc rectifier - semiconductors are for wimps!
And he (or she?) put some sort of weird head scarf on her so he wouldn't have to render hair. Shame on you, Rene Bui.
;-)
And shame on you, Johannes Vermeer!
First off it's spelled "interstellar". Secondly, it's pretty obvious that it's celebrating human accomplishments and innovation.
:-)
Thirdly, it was actually rendered on a laptop in space thanks to a certain Mark Shuttleworth, most recently known for his Ubuntu Linux distribution.
He may be a multi-zillionaire, but I have to admit he spends it on some pretty cool stuff.
Plus, later in the text...
D'oh! Note to self: in future, read article, don't just look at pretty pictures...
Of course, no article on POV-Ray is complete without the obligatory link to the site of Monsieur Gilles Tran, surrealist and POV-artist extraordinaire...
Has he entered the competition? Haven't seen his name anywhere so far...
Does your typing involve conscious thought, or merely involuntary, peristaltic regurgitation of mutated Slashdot memetic material?
The aim of getting the same microchip is to ensure compatability [sic] in screening terrorist suspects.
:-)
Did this spelling mistake leap out at everyone else? I assumed it was the article submitter, but it's in the original too. Tut tut, Independent - you're turning into the Grauniad!
12. Ignore everything you read on Slashdot!
Okay!
Um...
Spore's system seems to break that. I welcome his ideas of genre hopping and asynchonous content sharing.
It reminded me a little of the venerable Elite - but instead of the game firing up the random number generator and hoping for the best, it gets the players to design the content to populate the worlds with, using the resulting popularity as the basis of survival of the fittest.
It does sound a rather impressive game, and the fact that you can design (or at least guide) your own life-forms, buildings, cities, planets and solar systems is just amazing.
Something both scares and fascinates me, though - how someone might find some tiny, backwater planet their computer has based on your own hours of work. The idea of anonymously setting your creations free for perhaps millions of players to discover sounds mind-bendingly cool to me - and I wonder if fan-designed systems for encoding information (such as nicknames) into creations will emerge.
Hmm... Encoding an email address into the arrangement of limbs on a millipede...
Then I noticed the looks I was getting from people walking past my office and stopped.
Speaking of funny looks - I think it's absolutely guaranteed that a family member, wife, girlfriend or whoever will peer at your computer screen just as your creations are, um, getting a bit intimate (described as 'procedural mating', complete with dodgy saxophone music)...
And perhaps the tax authorities' definitions of said word?