You have a good point; both matrix multiply and ray tracing are embarrassingly parallel problems. They lend themselves to this type of optimization.
Consider a two NxN matrices, A and B, multiplied together to make a matrix C. Each element of C (Cij), is the sum of Ai[0..N] and Bj[0..N]. This is an almost trivial parallelization problem, commonly one of the first coding exercise learned in a parallel processing class.
IMHO, this is interesting but has a long way to go before its useful for anything but a narrow set of problem.
Unless, four months down the line, you loose your job. Seriously, companies loose contracts, restructure, fire people, etc all the time. You would not have seniority or experience with their company, who exactly do you think they start cutting when times get tough? Now, you are unemployed with five jobs in ~20 months. That kind of job hopping would prevent you from even getting a interview in a lot of companies.
Yes, Japan does love their handhelds. However, lets consider the PS2 sales numbers.
Cumulative Production Shipments of Hardware / PlayStation®2 ...
2006/12/31 115.36 million units (Japan: 24.76 million/ USA: 46.53 million/ Europe: 44.07 million)
So, the US purchased ~2x PS2s as Japan, US and Europe accounted for ~79% of all PS2s sold. So, the answer is neither yes or no. No market is small enough to be easily ignored, however Japan is far from the big tuna in this particular pond.
The 'lucky few'? I, along with the vast majority of employed people in the US, have insurance through our employers. Do you know how much its costs for me (er, I mean SO) to have a kid, from first checkup, hospital, etc to 2 week old checkup? 15$(first co-pay), total. Paid maternity and paternity leave is also covered by every employer I have ever had. Yes, there are plenty of people uninsured or paying for their own insurance. I do not believe in universal health care anyways, see the inefficencies with UKs NHS for a example why.
The US has a social welfare system, is yours better? If it is, don't post as a AC and tell me why.
In the US, schooling through highschool (12th grade, ~18 years old), is free. Universities cost (often times a lot!!), but there are a lot of scholarships, grants, and loans.
In short, stop spreading lies, lucky few my buttocks.
You need to stop using words like 'logic', 'research', and 'perspective' around environmentalist. Why would they cloud their busy minds with such trivialities? They like their cars, power, houses, and so those bird deaths are 'regrettably' OK. However, the evil wind turbines, they have to go.
1) I would expect MS to sell a solution that works with their own proprietary software. It has the advantage of running on windows PCs and the 360. You might note that there are a couple 360s and Windows PCs in existance, so it has the advantage of working with the largest slice of the pie.
2) Porting a driver won't do you a whole lot of good if your linux distro is running in a hypervisor that controls access to the RSX. "The Nvidia graphics card is not supported beyond framebuffer mode. This does not reduce the quality of the image, but does not provide accelerated video nor OpenGL support. Refer to the this HOWTO for information about HDMI, Multi-Out and associated TV/Monitor connections." From here.
That protection will be circumvented eventually, but they Sony will release a new firmware (think PSP ) that closes that hole. So, no, PS3 linux isn't competitive with MS XNA.
I think the parent has hit upon the best solution. Also, it makes you look good because you are 1) Protecting your current employer's (and Goverment's) IP/secrets and 2) being pro-active seeking a solution.
Personally, if I had to code a small example I would recreate a extensible hash function I wrote back in college. A fast implementation is not trivial, but mine was less then 300 lines of code (c++). I suggest this because it:
1) Shows a understanding of several different data structures, pointers, classes, inheritence (depends on implementation)
2) Shows a understanding of space/time tradeoffs
3) Allows for a number of eligent(sp?) optimizations
4) Allows for a interesting challenge developing a seed
5) Small enough to cover in less then a hour
6) Has well defined requirements (see google)
Wow, you are so proud of your beliefs that you take the cowards way out? You can at least criticize and insult somebody to their face, as a man/woman, not hiding behind internet 'anonymity'.
More on topic, hunters are not sadists. Neither are people who eat meat. You are welcome to your opinions.
On topic:
Its a shame about the dolphins went extinct, I am sure a more resilient species will replace them.
Could it be because they weigh significantly less per volume? So, if you need 20% more by volume but the battery weighs 50% less (I just made up these numbers), your battery might be bit larger but it weighs a LOT less. I could see how this might be a acceptable tradeoff for certain applications.
Or, Sony is tired of replacing exploding batteries and is looking for a new type that fails in a less spectacular fashion:)
A significant number of rich people are rich because they got up off their butts, worked hard, maybe got educated, and bettered themselves. They remain rich (or get richer) because they CONTINUE to work hard and better themselves. Of course there exists "influence peddling, crony-ism, threats and corruption", in the rich people and poor people. Lets not lambaste a certain segment of the population for the failings of the whole.
Personally, I have never been a fan of government, I believe its a wasteful institution. Just a FYI, the bills addressed by the Congress in recent years: Congressional Bills.
A significant number of rich people are rich because they got up off their butts, worked hard, maybe got educated, and bettered themselves. Why should they be punished for making something of themselves?
Finally, somebody with some sense. I applaud your grasp of the real world!
A significant number of rich people are rich because they got up off their butts, worked hard, maybe got educated, and bettered themselves. Why should they be punished for making something of themselves?
Agreed. I enjoyed ST; TNG and DS9, but absolutely loved B5. It had rich characters, mystery, danger, and groundbreaking CG (at least to me at that age). A lot of people criticize the acting, it honestly never bothered me (caveat: I liked Farsape, acting and all).
I haven't seen the series in a while (have it on DVD), so the names of my favorite episodes escape me. Honestly, aside from a few setup episodes in season 1, I liked them all.
Personally, I don't think a revival is possible. It's almost doomed to failure. If they change anything, the people who like the original will not like it. If they don't change anything, it will be B5 regurgitated. They tried that with Crusade, which didn't work out. I hope they learn from the success of B5/Farscape/SG and try something new!
In my experience, they put down a laundry list of skills, certifications, and education for their absolutely ideal applicant. They don't honestly expect somebody to meet all of those requirements. The few people who actually meet all the requirements are probably going to want more money then they are offering anyway. The trick is figuring out which requirements they really care about and which ones are flexible (or even don't care). Some things like work experience are usually flexible. They want 4 years and you have 3, they will probably accept that. They usually won't accept little to no experience. Lets say your a programmer that knows 5 languages but not the one they value, they usually accept that. Once you learn 5 languages, the 6th is pretty easy. Obviously, the higher you go the more stringent their requirements. If they want a PhD Astrophysicists with experience in particle dynamics, it's hard to eek by with a BS in Physics.
Overall, I will apply for a job where I satisfy (or exceed) a significant number of what I think are core requirements. You don't need to have every certification they list, know every buzz word they spew. However, I would strongly suggest reading up on all the requirements/buzz words they list that are unfamiliar to you. They ask you about something, its much better to able to hold an intelligent discourse about it then say 'it's not something I have much experience in'. i.e. Interviewer:" So, what do you know about the.NET framework?" Me: "dot who?"
Agreed, I could care less. My Gamerscore is anemic, I believe about 300, mainly because Oblivion is the only game I have played on a XBox. What value does a gamerscore really have? Do you get a cookie or something if you achieve Xe27 points? Very sad.
MS achieved second place in a established market their first try. That is far from a 'failure'. It did cost them some money, but they sure make enough
Second point, that 5 billion lost, does that include revenue from games and Live? Care to give a cite somewhere?
Third, given the price I don't see 5 million 360s sold to be issue. I am sure they would like to sell more but a lot of people are waiting to see what the other players bring to the market.
Finally, I would be worried a lot more about sony floundering this generation. If you look at their financials, they have spend a lot of time in the red recently.
I expecially liked this part:
Sony: 2006 Revenue $ 63.5 B, Total Net Income $ 1.1 B
Microsoft: 2006 Revenue $ 44.3 B, Total Net Income $ 12.6 B
This is before Sony starts selling the PS3 at a loss. Considering MS made over 10 times Sony's profit on ~60% revenue, maybe you should re-examine your predictions.
Thats really a shame, I am personally about 30 hours into it (360 version), have been spending my time joining guilds and doing side quests. Oblivion is simply exceptional; the graphics, gameplay, and story are the best I have seen in many years. Stability is not perfect (3~4 hangs in that time). The only thing I wish it had is some type of co-op play, so my SO could play with me *sigh*.
Sweet, I hope they do better. I knew they were trying to improve up their Japanese game selection, just didn't realize they had made that much progress. Now they need to overcome their existing image. I agree the 360 is one well designed (and executed) console. XBLive is well very well done, the controller is the best I have ever held in my mits, the graphics and sound are surperb. Without a doubt the best console I have ever owned.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point!
How is this economical for these companies? It should be simple:
ProfitA = $MEDIA_INCOME - DRM R&D - DRM content - lawsuits - alienated customers - recalls (i.e. rootkit)
ProfitB = $MEDIA_INCOME - piracy loss
I would bet that ProfitB is significantly larger then ProfitA.
You have a good point; both matrix multiply and ray tracing are embarrassingly parallel problems. They lend themselves to this type of optimization.
Consider a two NxN matrices, A and B, multiplied together to make a matrix C. Each element of C (Cij), is the sum of Ai[0..N] and Bj[0..N]. This is an almost trivial parallelization problem, commonly one of the first coding exercise learned in a parallel processing class.
IMHO, this is interesting but has a long way to go before its useful for anything but a narrow set of problem.
Unless, four months down the line, you loose your job. Seriously, companies loose contracts, restructure, fire people, etc all the time. You would not have seniority or experience with their company, who exactly do you think they start cutting when times get tough? Now, you are unemployed with five jobs in ~20 months. That kind of job hopping would prevent you from even getting a interview in a lot of companies.
Yes, Japan does love their handhelds. However, lets consider the PS2 sales numbers.
...
Cumulative Production Shipments of Hardware / PlayStation®2
2006/12/31 115.36 million units (Japan: 24.76 million/ USA: 46.53 million/ Europe: 44.07 million)
So, the US purchased ~2x PS2s as Japan, US and Europe accounted for ~79% of all PS2s sold. So, the answer is neither yes or no. No market is small enough to be easily ignored, however Japan is far from the big tuna in this particular pond.
Nice troll
The 'lucky few'? I, along with the vast majority of employed people in the US, have insurance through our employers. Do you know how much its costs for me (er, I mean SO) to have a kid, from first checkup, hospital, etc to 2 week old checkup? 15$(first co-pay), total. Paid maternity and paternity leave is also covered by every employer I have ever had. Yes, there are plenty of people uninsured or paying for their own insurance. I do not believe in universal health care anyways, see the inefficencies with UKs NHS for a example why.
The US has a social welfare system, is yours better? If it is, don't post as a AC and tell me why.
In the US, schooling through highschool (12th grade, ~18 years old), is free. Universities cost (often times a lot!!), but there are a lot of scholarships, grants, and loans.
In short, stop spreading lies, lucky few my buttocks.
~nate
You have to add batteries somehow...
The guy survived, so Darwin is probably shaking his head and muttering "Lucky bastard".
You need to stop using words like 'logic', 'research', and 'perspective' around environmentalist. Why would they cloud their busy minds with such trivialities? They like their cars, power, houses, and so those bird deaths are 'regrettably' OK. However, the evil wind turbines, they have to go.
1) I would expect MS to sell a solution that works with their own proprietary software. It has the advantage of running on windows PCs and the 360. You might note that there are a couple 360s and Windows PCs in existance, so it has the advantage of working with the largest slice of the pie.
2) Porting a driver won't do you a whole lot of good if your linux distro is running in a hypervisor that controls access to the RSX.
"The Nvidia graphics card is not supported beyond framebuffer mode. This does not reduce the quality of the image, but does not provide accelerated video nor OpenGL support. Refer to the this HOWTO for information about HDMI, Multi-Out and associated TV/Monitor connections." From here.
That protection will be circumvented eventually, but they Sony will release a new firmware (think PSP ) that closes that hole. So, no, PS3 linux isn't competitive with MS XNA.
I think the parent has hit upon the best solution. Also, it makes you look good because you are 1) Protecting your current employer's (and Goverment's) IP/secrets and 2) being pro-active seeking a solution.
Personally, if I had to code a small example I would recreate a extensible hash function I wrote back in college. A fast implementation is not trivial, but mine was less then 300 lines of code (c++). I suggest this because it:
1) Shows a understanding of several different data structures, pointers, classes, inheritence (depends on implementation)
2) Shows a understanding of space/time tradeoffs
3) Allows for a number of eligent(sp?) optimizations
4) Allows for a interesting challenge developing a seed
5) Small enough to cover in less then a hour
6) Has well defined requirements (see google)
Just a Idea!
Wow, you are so proud of your beliefs that you take the cowards way out? You can at least criticize and insult somebody to their face, as a man/woman, not hiding behind internet 'anonymity'.
More on topic, hunters are not sadists. Neither are people who eat meat. You are welcome to your opinions.
On topic:
Its a shame about the dolphins went extinct, I am sure a more resilient species will replace them.
Could it be because they weigh significantly less per volume? So, if you need 20% more by volume but the battery weighs 50% less (I just made up these numbers), your battery might be bit larger but it weighs a LOT less. I could see how this might be a acceptable tradeoff for certain applications.
:)
Or, Sony is tired of replacing exploding batteries and is looking for a new type that fails in a less spectacular fashion
A significant number of rich people are rich because they got up off their butts, worked hard, maybe got educated, and bettered themselves. They remain rich (or get richer) because they CONTINUE to work hard and better themselves. Of course there exists "influence peddling, crony-ism, threats and corruption", in the rich people and poor people. Lets not lambaste a certain segment of the population for the failings of the whole.
Personally, I have never been a fan of government, I believe its a wasteful institution. Just a FYI, the bills addressed by the Congress in recent years: Congressional Bills.
A significant number of rich people are rich because they got up off their butts, worked hard, maybe got educated, and bettered themselves. Why should they be punished for making something of themselves?
Finally, somebody with some sense. I applaud your grasp of the real world!
A significant number of rich people are rich because they got up off their butts, worked hard, maybe got educated, and bettered themselves. Why should they be punished for making something of themselves?
Agreed. I enjoyed ST; TNG and DS9, but absolutely loved B5. It had rich characters, mystery, danger, and groundbreaking CG (at least to me at that age). A lot of people criticize the acting, it honestly never bothered me (caveat: I liked Farsape, acting and all).
I haven't seen the series in a while (have it on DVD), so the names of my favorite episodes escape me. Honestly, aside from a few setup episodes in season 1, I liked them all.
Personally, I don't think a revival is possible. It's almost doomed to failure. If they change anything, the people who like the original will not like it. If they don't change anything, it will be B5 regurgitated. They tried that with Crusade, which didn't work out. I hope they learn from the success of B5/Farscape/SG and try something new!
~nate
So did I, again!
Step 1: Realize that camping overnight for a toy is moronic. Step 2: ?? Step 3: Profit!
Well, it might not help for male gamers...
In my experience, they put down a laundry list of skills, certifications, and education for their absolutely ideal applicant. They don't honestly expect somebody to meet all of those requirements. The few people who actually meet all the requirements are probably going to want more money then they are offering anyway. The trick is figuring out which requirements they really care about and which ones are flexible (or even don't care). Some things like work experience are usually flexible. They want 4 years and you have 3, they will probably accept that. They usually won't accept little to no experience. Lets say your a programmer that knows 5 languages but not the one they value, they usually accept that. Once you learn 5 languages, the 6th is pretty easy. Obviously, the higher you go the more stringent their requirements. If they want a PhD Astrophysicists with experience in particle dynamics, it's hard to eek by with a BS in Physics.
.NET framework?" Me: "dot who?"
Overall, I will apply for a job where I satisfy (or exceed) a significant number of what I think are core requirements. You don't need to have every certification they list, know every buzz word they spew. However, I would strongly suggest reading up on all the requirements/buzz words they list that are unfamiliar to you. They ask you about something, its much better to able to hold an intelligent discourse about it then say 'it's not something I have much experience in'. i.e. Interviewer:" So, what do you know about the
Agreed, I could care less. My Gamerscore is anemic, I believe about 300, mainly because Oblivion is the only game I have played on a XBox. What value does a gamerscore really have? Do you get a cookie or something if you achieve Xe27 points? Very sad.
~nate
MS achieved second place in a established market their first try. That is far from a 'failure'. It did cost them some money, but they sure make enough
Second point, that 5 billion lost, does that include revenue from games and Live? Care to give a cite somewhere?
Third, given the price I don't see 5 million 360s sold to be issue. I am sure they would like to sell more but a lot of people are waiting to see what the other players bring to the market.
Finally, I would be worried a lot more about sony floundering this generation. If you look at their financials, they have spend a lot of time in the red recently. I expecially liked this part:
Sony: 2006 Revenue $ 63.5 B, Total Net Income $ 1.1 B
Microsoft: 2006 Revenue $ 44.3 B, Total Net Income $ 12.6 B
This is before Sony starts selling the PS3 at a loss. Considering MS made over 10 times Sony's profit on ~60% revenue, maybe you should re-examine your predictions.
Thats really a shame, I am personally about 30 hours into it (360 version), have been spending my time joining guilds and doing side quests. Oblivion is simply exceptional; the graphics, gameplay, and story are the best I have seen in many years. Stability is not perfect (3~4 hangs in that time). The only thing I wish it had is some type of co-op play, so my SO could play with me *sigh*.
~nate
Sweet, I hope they do better. I knew they were trying to improve up their Japanese game selection, just didn't realize they had made that much progress. Now they need to overcome their existing image. I agree the 360 is one well designed (and executed) console. XBLive is well very well done, the controller is the best I have ever held in my mits, the graphics and sound are surperb. Without a doubt the best console I have ever owned.