As I mentioned in a post somewhere above, I recently helped a friend build a Gray-Hoverman according to the new design. My friend has been using a Yagi he made out of a broomstick, copper pipes from a refrigerator, and one of those antenna-to-coax adapters.
So, we "borrowed" a cable signal tester from work and did a little antenna shoot-out. You know, like ya would.
Surprisingly, although my friend built his Yagi specifically for one frequency (since we only get one HD channel OTA), the Yagi outperforms the Hoverman on many other frequencies in addition to beating it by 25% on that one! I should mention that the Hoverman uses coat hangers for the conductive material, which may be hurting it when compared to the Yagi's proper copper piping. Also, my TV reports a 90% signal strength (whatever that means) on the one HD channel for the Hoverman, as opposed to 98% for the Yagi. And being digital, since both are good enough to get the MPEG-2 through, that means the same quality picture.
Below are some stats for various channels (the one HD channel we get is on the same frequency as 24) showing signal strength in dB, and Carrier-to-noise ratio. The cable tester we used wouldn't show the exact C/N below 30, so that's why there are a bunch of "<30"s in there. Can't seem to make it line up properly either, sorry!
I'm in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada), and I have recently started receiving HD OTA from CBC (good ol' state media), from a Hoverman built by myself and a friend from materials he happened to have lying around in his basement. It's a 17.89 Mbps MPEG-2 signal, and it looks waaaay better than Rogers' HD digital cable offerings.
Last year, Rogers wasn't so bad, but this year I've noticed a huge difference in one thing: hockey. Local Senators games look much worse than they used to. Granted, some people don't seem to notice, but when you can't read the numbers on the players' sleeves, and the sticks are almost compressed out of existence when held diagonally, it kind of jumps out at me.
Being a Canadian, hockey is very important to me. Luckily, come playoff time (in a couple of weeks) CBC has exclusive rights to all the games. Goodbye, Rogers!
Actually, I just did a side-by-side of The Nature of Things OTA vs. QAM (nice panning shot of the Rockies from a plane, would need a damn good bitrate to make it look good), and the OTA was obviously superior, especially during the pan. They simply can't keep up with OTA's bitrate.
IBM has one for the Cell processor. On my PS3, with the default scene, I get about 4fps at 720p, but you can plug a bunch of Cell-based machines into the same network and they will cluster and distribute the workload.
Am I the only one who thinks they may be talking about a software platform, like a Universal SDK, rather than a single console?
A Platform is anything that your code runs on. Yes, the PC is a platform, for Windows and linux (among other things). Windows is, in turn, a platform for applications. A JVM is an application whose platform is some OS that is itself a platform for Java applications.
If there were some SDK which could, for example, introduce the concept of a "job" that managed some aspect of a game, like AI or audio, the libraries for the PS3 could dispatch that job to a SPE, while the same application code on the Xbox360 could create just another thread running on one of the PPCs. While on the Wii, the library would return null because there wasn't enough hardware resources to handle another job. I kid.
But seriously, "Platform" does not necessarily mean "hardware".
They probably have to buy hardware too, which is why the cost is expected to drop in a few months.
I will happily pay this, considering that the alternative is to do all manual scheduling. I have no idea when or where the shows I watch are on, and that's the way I likes it!
But speaking of alternatives, how is that screen-scraper you're apparently releasing as open-source?
(And speaking of screen scraping, how's MythWeather working for you lately?;) )
Linux does not use it for its own benefit - the extra SPE is not usable by linux to enforce what Sony calls "O/S security". E.g. ensuring that linux cannot access the PS3's partition on the hd.
I would hardly say this benefits linux.
In either case, the important thing to note is that the SPE is not being used to perform raytracing.
when you spent the last 6 hours wandering through the ice level, lava/radioactive level, jungle terrain and arrid desert - token level designer staples - oh and the "totally fucked up and not necessary alien world full of pixel-accurate jumping puzzles" at the end..
I've got a PS3 and 3 games as well: Resistance, NHL 2K7, and Dark Kingdom. While Resistance is great, and well worth the money, Dark Kingdom is awful. As for NHL 2K7, it's more fun than any other game I've ever had, but it has a problem where it crashes when you're playing a season; sometimes 10 games in, sometimes 30, but once it happens to you it will happen every game that season.
I'm disappointed in the game lineup, but I do think that next year at this time we'll be seeing some pretty impressive things coming out. The PS3 is a powerful, yet exotic, piece of hardware, and therefore difficult to learn to develop for effetively. Hopefully all the developers need is time.
Oh well, it spends more time running linux than playing games anyway.:)
Ever since I was but a lad I've loved that stuff. Nothing gets the train out of the station like Bran Flakes.
As for coffee, I prefer to be at work while having my first one, to take advantage of the brief period of complete awareness that accompanies the first coffee of the day. So I stop at the Second Cup on my way up. It's the next strongest thing to Starbucks.
You said I was "well behind the times", but I missed the part where you disagreed with anything I said.:)
Anyway, IMHO, you laid it out nicely, and I'd be surprised if Sun didn't see the writing on the wall. I'm sure they'll take whatever steps they can to maintain the lead, even if it means fully open-sourcing it, which they've already said they will do. What will be fun is if Sun opens their implementation up, then IBM does as well, and they both fight for the love of the open-source community (in which area Sun may have some catching up to do).
In any case, all this competition is good for everyone, since, as you said, there are implementations of Java to keep both the zealots and the commercial-support junkies happy.
The prospect of IBM releasing their own open-source implementation is interesting.
They haven't let up the pressure they've been putting on Sun while trying to become the go-to Java vendor, with their own VM, and the cleverly-named Eclipse. Beating Sun to the punch with open-source Java would continue what seems to be a years-long strategy to dominate the Java world. Of course, it may not be about domination as much as that they have so much invested in the platform that they are doing whatever they can to make sure it thrives.
Although, I can only hope that if IBM releases a Java with, as you say, "added features" and tries the ol' embrace-and-extend, that they get no goodwill from the open-source community. They'd probably get a nice lawsuit from Sun for their trouble as well, unless they were very careful to not present their version as pure Java.
...parents will have a hard time pronouncing it...
I wouldn't worry too much about parents being able to pronounce it. I've known parents who called the company "Nine-tendo", and it still seems to be doing well.
I agree. Saying that FOSS needs a single vision is like saying our economy needs a Central Planning Committee.
Give it time. FOSS will outpace the competition. Eventually corporations will be providing the cutting-edge apps on top of a massive base of FOSS, because centrally-managed software projects, much like economies, cannot scale effectively beyond a certain point.
FTFA: And though Microsoft is slow to adopt the community model of development, they are headed for it, Cunningham said.
I was surprised at this, given how much MS has attacked the open-source movement in the past. After all, OSS is communism, right?
But then I realized that "the community model of development" doesn't necessarily mean open-source, it just implies a certain amount of feedback from the "community", whatever that is, to the project's decision-makers.
Everyone involved in a project within MS already has access to at least part of the source code, so it may just be a different way of managing a project in which the developers guide the process more than in the past, or it could be that they will foster development by the public, but they retain all rights to the source code, and you have to sign a NDA before you get to see it.
That way they get to maintain their position on OSS, and take reap some of the benefits of an open development process
Another post mentioned Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels. If you like reading, I think you should give them a try, sounds like you'd enjoy them.
In the novels, Psychologists use the theory of Psychohistory to predict the future on a large scale, because populations have grown so large - 40 billion on the capital planet iirc - that their actions are almost totally predictable.
If you want to have stronger friendships, have leverage, enough money, or charisma to keep people hovering around you. These variables can be added into the equation and then there are patterns...
According to the article, it seems as if they could go the other way, and infer who has at least one of these properties based on the statistics. This would make the technique of interest to some people. Unfortunately, offhand it seems as if using it to more effectively market a product would be the most likely application. Marketers may be able to use this method to determine who sets the trends, and get them using their product.
Slashdot Mirror
As I mentioned in a post somewhere above, I recently helped a friend build a Gray-Hoverman according to the new design. My friend has been using a Yagi he made out of a broomstick, copper pipes from a refrigerator, and one of those antenna-to-coax adapters.
So, we "borrowed" a cable signal tester from work and did a little antenna shoot-out. You know, like ya would.
Surprisingly, although my friend built his Yagi specifically for one frequency (since we only get one HD channel OTA), the Yagi outperforms the Hoverman on many other frequencies in addition to beating it by 25% on that one! I should mention that the Hoverman uses coat hangers for the conductive material, which may be hurting it when compared to the Yagi's proper copper piping. Also, my TV reports a 90% signal strength (whatever that means) on the one HD channel for the Hoverman, as opposed to 98% for the Yagi. And being digital, since both are good enough to get the MPEG-2 through, that means the same quality picture.
Below are some stats for various channels (the one HD channel we get is on the same frequency as 24) showing signal strength in dB, and Carrier-to-noise ratio. The cable tester we used wouldn't show the exact C/N below 30, so that's why there are a bunch of "<30"s in there. Can't seem to make it line up properly either, sorry!
Hoverman
========
ch dB C/N
--- ----- ----
4 6 <30
13 2 48
22 -19 <30
24 6 52
25 -11 <30
40 -9 40
Yagi
====
ch dB C/N
--- ----- ----
4 19.8 31.8
13 -2 47
22 -20 <30
24 7.5 52
25 -9 <30
40 -25 <30
I'm in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada), and I have recently started receiving HD OTA from CBC (good ol' state media), from a Hoverman built by myself and a friend from materials he happened to have lying around in his basement. It's a 17.89 Mbps MPEG-2 signal, and it looks waaaay better than Rogers' HD digital cable offerings.
Last year, Rogers wasn't so bad, but this year I've noticed a huge difference in one thing: hockey. Local Senators games look much worse than they used to. Granted, some people don't seem to notice, but when you can't read the numbers on the players' sleeves, and the sticks are almost compressed out of existence when held diagonally, it kind of jumps out at me.
Being a Canadian, hockey is very important to me. Luckily, come playoff time (in a couple of weeks) CBC has exclusive rights to all the games. Goodbye, Rogers!
Actually, I just did a side-by-side of The Nature of Things OTA vs. QAM (nice panning shot of the Rockies from a plane, would need a damn good bitrate to make it look good), and the OTA was obviously superior, especially during the pan. They simply can't keep up with OTA's bitrate.
Now, if only I got more than one channel OTA...
Sorry if my post was unclear. I was attempting to inform you that your information is out-of-date.
Try that link out.
Woops!
Here is some "delivery". :)
Some of these mods are fantastic, and definitely improve the experience of the game. The shield mod is great fun.
Am I the only one who thinks they may be talking about a software platform, like a Universal SDK, rather than a single console?
A Platform is anything that your code runs on. Yes, the PC is a platform, for Windows and linux (among other things). Windows is, in turn, a platform for applications. A JVM is an application whose platform is some OS that is itself a platform for Java applications.
If there were some SDK which could, for example, introduce the concept of a "job" that managed some aspect of a game, like AI or audio, the libraries for the PS3 could dispatch that job to a SPE, while the same application code on the Xbox360 could create just another thread running on one of the PPCs. While on the Wii, the library would return null because there wasn't enough hardware resources to handle another job. I kid.
But seriously, "Platform" does not necessarily mean "hardware".
Are those metric bunches?
Why would you want to relive Alzheimer's damage?
Sick bastards.
They probably have to buy hardware too, which is why the cost is expected to drop in a few months.
;) )
I will happily pay this, considering that the alternative is to do all manual scheduling. I have no idea when or where the shows I watch are on, and that's the way I likes it!
But speaking of alternatives, how is that screen-scraper you're apparently releasing as open-source?
(And speaking of screen scraping, how's MythWeather working for you lately?
Linux does not use it for its own benefit - the extra SPE is not usable by linux to enforce what Sony calls "O/S security". E.g. ensuring that linux cannot access the PS3's partition on the hd.
I would hardly say this benefits linux.
In either case, the important thing to note is that the SPE is not being used to perform raytracing.
I see you've played Twilight Princess too.
:)
I'll second that.
:)
I've got a PS3 and 3 games as well: Resistance, NHL 2K7, and Dark Kingdom. While Resistance is great, and well worth the money, Dark Kingdom is awful. As for NHL 2K7, it's more fun than any other game I've ever had, but it has a problem where it crashes when you're playing a season; sometimes 10 games in, sometimes 30, but once it happens to you it will happen every game that season.
I'm disappointed in the game lineup, but I do think that next year at this time we'll be seeing some pretty impressive things coming out. The PS3 is a powerful, yet exotic, piece of hardware, and therefore difficult to learn to develop for effetively. Hopefully all the developers need is time.
Oh well, it spends more time running linux than playing games anyway.
Ever since I was but a lad I've loved that stuff. Nothing gets the train out of the station like Bran Flakes.
As for coffee, I prefer to be at work while having my first one, to take advantage of the brief period of complete awareness that accompanies the first coffee of the day. So I stop at the Second Cup on my way up. It's the next strongest thing to Starbucks.
I only clicked on the link to this story to see how many comments it would take to get a reference to that line.
Thank you.
He probably just wanted to find out, once and for all, what state Homer lives in.
Can you blame him?
I agree - they don't even tell you what PC-3SD is...
...a LAMPtop?
You said I was "well behind the times", but I missed the part where you disagreed with anything I said. :)
Anyway, IMHO, you laid it out nicely, and I'd be surprised if Sun didn't see the writing on the wall. I'm sure they'll take whatever steps they can to maintain the lead, even if it means fully open-sourcing it, which they've already said they will do. What will be fun is if Sun opens their implementation up, then IBM does as well, and they both fight for the love of the open-source community (in which area Sun may have some catching up to do).
In any case, all this competition is good for everyone, since, as you said, there are implementations of Java to keep both the zealots and the commercial-support junkies happy.
The prospect of IBM releasing their own open-source implementation is interesting.
They haven't let up the pressure they've been putting on Sun while trying to become the go-to Java vendor, with their own VM, and the cleverly-named Eclipse. Beating Sun to the punch with open-source Java would continue what seems to be a years-long strategy to dominate the Java world. Of course, it may not be about domination as much as that they have so much invested in the platform that they are doing whatever they can to make sure it thrives.
Although, I can only hope that if IBM releases a Java with, as you say, "added features" and tries the ol' embrace-and-extend, that they get no goodwill from the open-source community. They'd probably get a nice lawsuit from Sun for their trouble as well, unless they were very careful to not present their version as pure Java.
I think you're right on the money about Sun being scared of having Java highjacked, but I think they're more worried about IBM than Microsoft.
I wouldn't worry too much about parents being able to pronounce it. I've known parents who called the company "Nine-tendo", and it still seems to be doing well.
Lack of a single vision is FOSS's greatest asset.
I agree. Saying that FOSS needs a single vision is like saying our economy needs a Central Planning Committee.
Give it time. FOSS will outpace the competition. Eventually corporations will be providing the cutting-edge apps on top of a massive base of FOSS, because centrally-managed software projects, much like economies, cannot scale effectively beyond a certain point.
Here's a more in-depth treatment of this line of thinking: http://group18.hopto.org/?p=51
FTFA:
And though Microsoft is slow to adopt the community model of development, they are headed for it, Cunningham said.
I was surprised at this, given how much MS has attacked the open-source movement in the past. After all, OSS is communism, right?
But then I realized that "the community model of development" doesn't necessarily mean open-source, it just implies a certain amount of feedback from the "community", whatever that is, to the project's decision-makers.
Everyone involved in a project within MS already has access to at least part of the source code, so it may just be a different way of managing a project in which the developers guide the process more than in the past, or it could be that they will foster development by the public, but they retain all rights to the source code, and you have to sign a NDA before you get to see it.
That way they get to maintain their position on OSS, and take reap some of the benefits of an open development process
Another post mentioned Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels. If you like reading, I think you should give them a try, sounds like you'd enjoy them.
In the novels, Psychologists use the theory of Psychohistory to predict the future on a large scale, because populations have grown so large - 40 billion on the capital planet iirc - that their actions are almost totally predictable.
If you want to have stronger friendships, have leverage, enough money, or charisma to keep people hovering around you. These variables can be added into the equation and then there are patterns...
According to the article, it seems as if they could go the other way, and infer who has at least one of these properties based on the statistics. This would make the technique of interest to some people. Unfortunately, offhand it seems as if using it to more effectively market a product would be the most likely application. Marketers may be able to use this method to determine who sets the trends, and get them using their product.