> Traditionally, a "sandbox" in a computer is an isolated portion of a computer...
Actually a sandbox is traditionally a box filled with sand, and is often used by children for playing it with little toy diggers, spades, buckets and the like. Sure, in computer science circles it may mean an area where you can play around without harming the rest of the system, but that really only applies to computer science. If you're talking about gaming it makes a lot more sense to refer to the free-form play aspect of sandboxes.
Okay, so you have a Mac. Okay, so you don't like the Real software, and they don't have their music shop software for the mac anyway. I still don't understand why them selling tunes to Windows iPod owners is a bad thing though?
I don't belive that if they had anything looking that good that you could actually play that they wouldn't release some footage of it actually being played.
Also, given this quote: "Since we're already developing the GT4's system on the PS2 hardware, we're planning to port that directly to the PSP", I find it rather unlikely they have anything running on the PSP that is ready to be shown yet.
This is like the Betamax / VHS argument all over again. Betamax was the better technology but because of clever marketing only, VHS succeeded.
I thought the general consensus was that Betamax had very little over VHS, whereas a VHS tape could hold two hours of video as compared to Betamax's one.
Therefore, you wre much more likely to be able to fit a movie on a single tape with VHS, which was much more important to people than minor differences in image quality.
The Gran Turismo footage shows nothing more than PS2 footage being played back as a video on the PSP. Note there's never any interaction.
There is one bit with the weird game featuring a kitty when he presses a button and the cat appears to start speaking, but I'm still not convinced that it wasn't just him pressing a button at the appropriate time to make it look like interaction.
I'm sure it's great and all, but it would be nice to actually see someone playing a game on it sometime...
A lot of people don't seem to like that they've done it with what is effectively a small desktop machine.
Listen, it's all very well complaining that they didn't do the whole thing with $50 and a PIC, but the advantage of doing it with something like XPE is that it's a lot easier to scale up to something grander.
Wanna get waypoints out of Autoroute? Sure - no problem. Need to change your GPS unit to a different USB model? Again. No problem. Want to add some basic computer vision stuff to it getting input from a USB webcam? Easy!
Now, if you're trying to make an autopilot that weighs 45g and attaches to a foam parkflyer, you're going to have to use something smaller and simpler. However, with a larger plane you might as well stick with something bigger that leaves you with more options.
Writing code for an autonomous UAV to do nothing more than take off, fly around a bit, and land isn't really that hard.
I can't help feeling that you've never actually written any code for an autonomous UAV...
No, I don't think it's immensely difficult code to write, but writing code that works well in a simulator and making a system that works well in real life is quite different, especially as you can't really afford to have it go wrong on you.
Sure, its not groundbreaking, but it is an achievement.
I suspect that the reason Lucasarts didn't fix this themselves was because it's quite possible that they could no longer build the game. Certainly I've worked at games companies where we've wanted to do a build of an old game and suddenly foung it much harder than we'd expected. Sure, you manage to find an old version of the code somwhere, but it's not been packaged alongside the art assets. Suddenly you need to work out which version of the art assets go with which version of the code. You then find out that although somebody took care to save the source code, nobody thought to make a copy of all the libraries that you were using at that time. Or perhaps the incompatibility was due to a third-party library, and they don't do a 2000/XP version of it any more, and maybe have gone out of business.
The thing is that unless you take a lot of care when backing up your old code, it can be very easy to find yourself in a tricky situation, especially if the person who did it originally has left the company.
Re:'Detecting a pulse' for those who don't have on
on
Living Without a Pulse
·
· Score: 1
If I understand it correctly the reason they teach this method to First Aiders is that it's generally easier and more accurate for those who've not had a great deal of training or experience in detecting pulses.
Re:'Detecting a pulse' for those who don't have on
on
Living Without a Pulse
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Apparently the reason they now teach this method is because it's more reliable for those who haven't had a great deal of training - i.e. most First Aiders.
Obviously the pulse check is only used after you've already checked for breathing.
'Detecting a pulse' for those who don't have one
on
Living Without a Pulse
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
A few months back I did a first-aid course at work. One of the interesting things I found out was the technique they use for checking to see if someone's heart is beating:
Basically, you pinch their earlobe. This forces the blood out of the lobe, and then you let go. If colour returns to the lobe, then the heart is beating and blood has been pumped back in. If it does not then blood is no longer moving around the body.
This technique would probably also work for those with no pulse.
"The reason would not be because Real is a threat (they aren't), but because of the precedent it sets," he added in the e-mail. "Microsoft will be coming out with their own online music shop this fall, and they will be a threat. Better to nip such competition in the bud." (My emphasis)
God forbid that we might have competition in the marketplace!
It was kind of a pain to find out, so I figure I'll share the news... it's not particularly cheap to use ($245 - "Save $50!") unless you're just a student and not doing *any* paid work (then it's $30)
Not quite true - you can have the cheaper $30 version as long as you're not using it commercially. For instance, I'm a software developer, but I have Komodo Personal ($30) at home because I don't do any commercial stuff at home. At work I have a copy of Komodo Pro, but more recently I've been using Eric3 instead because I've found Komodo 2.5 to be rather slow on Linux (It seems fine on Windows). I wonder if it's better with Komodo 3?
As with all medical procedures in this country, you cannot be compelled to receieve anything without your will (Or without your parents' will if you are a minor).
There has been over the last few years a scare over the MMR (Mumps, Measles and Rubella) vaccine and the vaccination rates have gone right down. In some areas the rates of unvaccinated children have hit a critical mass, so you are seeing mini epidemics of measles. I read a couple of months ago about some children who were disabled by bad cases of measles. The irony of it was that their parents wanted them vaccianted, but due to an allergic reaction to the vaccine, they couldn't take it. Their only defence was other parents doing their duty and vaccinating their own children.
These children would have been spared if vaccination was mandatory, but rightly the state cannot force treatment onto an individual without their consent.
I used to have that problem, until I formulated a simple rule:
After playing a game, unplug any controllers you have plugged in, wind the cables round them, and put them in a box sat next to your TV for that specific purpose.
You'll never have wires all tangled everywhere, and it only takes two minutes. Sure, with n consoles plugged in to the TV you'll still have a cable jungle around the back, but at least it's not sprawled all across your living room / bedroom floor.
Okay, so let's assume all our lightbulbs start being made from LEDs... At some point soon we're going to have to start changing our lighting circuits to 5V, or something like that. It's madness that each lightbulb will have to contain it's own little transformer - it'll make the bulbs vastly more expensive and wasteful.
There are a selection of appliances that work well with 110/230V AC - things that require a lot of power like kettles, hoovers, heaters, washing machines, hobs, tumble driers and the like. However, there's an increasing number of appliances in a modern household that would be much better served by a 12V DC supply.
How long do you think it'll be before we start changing over?
Slashdot Mirror
> Traditionally, a "sandbox" in a computer is an isolated portion of a computer...
Actually a sandbox is traditionally a box filled with sand, and is often used by children for playing it with little toy diggers, spades, buckets and the like. Sure, in computer science circles it may mean an area where you can play around without harming the rest of the system, but that really only applies to computer science. If you're talking about gaming it makes a lot more sense to refer to the free-form play aspect of sandboxes.
... because the plastic casing is the most expensive part of the camera?
Okay, so you have a Mac. Okay, so you don't like the Real software, and they don't have their music shop software for the mac anyway. I still don't understand why them selling tunes to Windows iPod owners is a bad thing though?
A better word would be 'blocking'.
If it was censorship, it would be banned because of its content. As it is it is simply geographical blocking.
I think the point is that programs using sound under Windows just Pretty Much Work (TM). Sadly I can't say the same for Linux.
Yes, they both have much extended playlengths now, but I belive when the VHS first hit the street, it had a longer playlength than Betamax.
I don't belive that if they had anything looking that good that you could actually play that they wouldn't release some footage of it actually being played.
Also, given this quote: "Since we're already developing the GT4's system on the PS2 hardware, we're planning to port that directly to the PSP", I find it rather unlikely they have anything running on the PSP that is ready to be shown yet.
This is like the Betamax / VHS argument all over again. Betamax was the better technology but because of clever marketing only, VHS succeeded.
I thought the general consensus was that Betamax had very little over VHS, whereas a VHS tape could hold two hours of video as compared to Betamax's one.
Therefore, you wre much more likely to be able to fit a movie on a single tape with VHS, which was much more important to people than minor differences in image quality.
The Gran Turismo footage shows nothing more than PS2 footage being played back as a video on the PSP. Note there's never any interaction.
There is one bit with the weird game featuring a kitty when he presses a button and the cat appears to start speaking, but I'm still not convinced that it wasn't just him pressing a button at the appropriate time to make it look like interaction.
I'm sure it's great and all, but it would be nice to actually see someone playing a game on it sometime...
Uh... since when has /. had anything to do with journalism?
A lot of people don't seem to like that they've done it with what is effectively a small desktop machine.
Listen, it's all very well complaining that they didn't do the whole thing with $50 and a PIC, but the advantage of doing it with something like XPE is that it's a lot easier to scale up to something grander.
Wanna get waypoints out of Autoroute? Sure - no problem.
Need to change your GPS unit to a different USB model? Again. No problem.
Want to add some basic computer vision stuff to it getting input from a USB webcam? Easy!
Now, if you're trying to make an autopilot that weighs 45g and attaches to a foam parkflyer, you're going to have to use something smaller and simpler. However, with a larger plane you might as well stick with something bigger that leaves you with more options.
Writing code for an autonomous UAV to do nothing more than take off, fly around a bit, and land isn't really that hard.
I can't help feeling that you've never actually written any code for an autonomous UAV...
No, I don't think it's immensely difficult code to write, but writing code that works well in a simulator and making a system that works well in real life is quite different, especially as you can't really afford to have it go wrong on you.
Sure, its not groundbreaking, but it is an achievement.
I suspect that the reason Lucasarts didn't fix this themselves was because it's quite possible that they could no longer build the game. Certainly I've worked at games companies where we've wanted to do a build of an old game and suddenly foung it much harder than we'd expected. Sure, you manage to find an old version of the code somwhere, but it's not been packaged alongside the art assets. Suddenly you need to work out which version of the art assets go with which version of the code. You then find out that although somebody took care to save the source code, nobody thought to make a copy of all the libraries that you were using at that time. Or perhaps the incompatibility was due to a third-party library, and they don't do a 2000/XP version of it any more, and maybe have gone out of business.
The thing is that unless you take a lot of care when backing up your old code, it can be very easy to find yourself in a tricky situation, especially if the person who did it originally has left the company.
If I understand it correctly the reason they teach this method to First Aiders is that it's generally easier and more accurate for those who've not had a great deal of training or experience in detecting pulses.
Apparently the reason they now teach this method is because it's more reliable for those who haven't had a great deal of training - i.e. most First Aiders.
Obviously the pulse check is only used after you've already checked for breathing.
A few months back I did a first-aid course at work. One of the interesting things I found out was the technique they use for checking to see if someone's heart is beating:
Basically, you pinch their earlobe. This forces the blood out of the lobe, and then you let go. If colour returns to the lobe, then the heart is beating and blood has been pumped back in. If it does not then blood is no longer moving around the body.
This technique would probably also work for those with no pulse.
From the bottom of the article:
"The reason would not be because Real is a threat (they aren't), but because of the precedent it sets," he added in the e-mail. "Microsoft will be coming out with their own online music shop this fall, and they will be a threat. Better to nip such competition in the bud." (My emphasis)
God forbid that we might have competition in the marketplace!
Webster's also lists 'burglarize', so forgive me if I don't pay it any heed.
Hell, soon I won't even get ridiculized for using insane words like burgarizer...
But does it have an integrated python debugger?
Does Eclipse have a debugger? jEdit is lovely for editing python, but it doesn't have an integrated debugger.
It was kind of a pain to find out, so I figure I'll share the news... it's not particularly cheap to use ($245 - "Save $50!") unless you're just a student and not doing *any* paid work (then it's $30)
Not quite true - you can have the cheaper $30 version as long as you're not using it commercially. For instance, I'm a software developer, but I have Komodo Personal ($30) at home because I don't do any commercial stuff at home. At work I have a copy of Komodo Pro, but more recently I've been using Eric3 instead because I've found Komodo 2.5 to be rather slow on Linux (It seems fine on Windows). I wonder if it's better with Komodo 3?
As with all medical procedures in this country, you cannot be compelled to receieve anything without your will (Or without your parents' will if you are a minor).
There has been over the last few years a scare over the MMR (Mumps, Measles and Rubella) vaccine and the vaccination rates have gone right down. In some areas the rates of unvaccinated children have hit a critical mass, so you are seeing mini epidemics of measles. I read a couple of months ago about some children who were disabled by bad cases of measles. The irony of it was that their parents wanted them vaccianted, but due to an allergic reaction to the vaccine, they couldn't take it. Their only defence was other parents doing their duty and vaccinating their own children.
These children would have been spared if vaccination was mandatory, but rightly the state cannot force treatment onto an individual without their consent.
I used to have that problem, until I formulated a simple rule:
After playing a game, unplug any controllers you have plugged in, wind the cables round them, and put them in a box sat next to your TV for that specific purpose.
You'll never have wires all tangled everywhere, and it only takes two minutes. Sure, with n consoles plugged in to the TV you'll still have a cable jungle around the back, but at least it's not sprawled all across your living room / bedroom floor.
Okay, so let's assume all our lightbulbs start being made from LEDs... At some point soon we're going to have to start changing our lighting circuits to 5V, or something like that. It's madness that each lightbulb will have to contain it's own little transformer - it'll make the bulbs vastly more expensive and wasteful.
There are a selection of appliances that work well with 110/230V AC - things that require a lot of power like kettles, hoovers, heaters, washing machines, hobs, tumble driers and the like. However, there's an increasing number of appliances in a modern household that would be much better served by a 12V DC supply.
How long do you think it'll be before we start changing over?