Do you have any more specific information on the talk he gave? Is there an online translation, audio or video version of the talk? OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows. Also consider the fact that OpenGL is not only geared toward hardware acceleration but can also be rendered in software if desired. Direct 3D is hardware only.
I am fully aware of the fact that yes hardware rendering is the way to go but with today's multicore and specialized CPU's and GPU's we might find ourselves using software rendering systems running on gp-gpu or super multicore systems. Concider that the Intel laurabee is a bunch of stripped down x86 cpu's, it is nothing more then a cluster of x86's on one die. OpenGL, ray tracing and direct3d drivers will be nothing more than software render engines running on the multitude of laurabee cores with an added raster pipeline. And OpenGL has the advantage of being open source so drivers can be open source or developed to take advantage of certain features. Optimizations can easily be made to the driver and open source 3D drivers can be easily written. Pair that with OpenCL and you are really cooking with gas.
Because bareback is the way mother nature intended and it feels a hell of allot better. My first girlfriend at first insisted on using condoms each time and I had no problem with that. Then one night right in the heat of the moment my rubber broke while putting it on. She pretty much just said to hell with it and we did it with no condom. At that point we liked the feeling so much better that we stopped using condoms and I just pulled out every time. After a scare she decided to go on birth control which increased the fun as I could now finish the job without worrying about being a father. She put on some weight (like 7 pounds) and that was enough for her to quit the pill. We went out for three years and contraception was only used for a total of about 6 months of that with no pregnancy. Not too bad. Although after her I always use rubbers after learning a friend got his girlfriend pregnant even though he pulled out.
So its a big fucking no duh as to why men don't want to use rubbers. I still wish I could be that naive and uncaring but I have to be smart.
Re:I stopped reading the summary
on
Best eSATA JBOD?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Best method I have of backing up my data is simple. First equip/upgrade a few existing computers with 1TB disks even if you never plan to fill them up. They can be at your parents house, siblings house or work. Copy your really important data like work, projects, photos, music, video (movies, tv shows and p0rn don't count), basically anything that is irreplaceable. Copy that to a 1TB USB disk and copy all the data to the computers you equipped with the backup drives. Now you have your data spread out all over. You can use rsync over the net or via a USB disk to keep things updated between machines. You can even partition the large 1TB disks and make a separate partition for your data so it cannot be tampered with. If a machine fails then from any of the others you can replicate the data.
Sounds like a pain in the ass but I keep copies on my brothers PC and my work PC. Its only about 400GB total so its not even half of the 1TB disk which costs about 75 bucks, small price to pay for peace of mind. I have a big software raid 5 array for personal file serving needs but it is in no way shape or form a backup system. I once had my raid 5 go haywire because of some disk controller problems. After a hardware upgrade I almost lost the array but it came back up and had to rebuild itself. Thankfully it didn't send me into a panic because I had my most important and irreplaceable data backed up.
I had a friend in grade school who's uncle was one of those guys. He and a small crew used to drive around JFK international with shot guns and kill tons of seagulls. Apparently one of the animal rights groups made a stink about it and the practice was stopped. Something about threatening the gull population which never appeared to be a problem. I don't know if they still do it but JFK is right on Jamaica Bay so its real good seagull territory.
Funny this should be mentioned. Last week a local men's club was busted for gambling. Guys would get together drink beer, play poker and watch sports on big screen TV's. Well they apparently added poker tournaments to their list and were making big bucks. They were there for three or four years until someone didn't like the percentage the house was taking and squealed to the cops. They raided the place with about forty officers, seized everyone's money, confiscated the chips and arrested twelve people. The people arrested were the owners friends who were running the club and game as well as all the dealers. The players got to leave but had their cash seized. None of the equipment was destroyed or taken by the police. Usually the cops cut up the poker tables with knives and sometimes even seize electronics like TV's and computers. The interesting part was the cops explained to those in charge that if they didn't take a percentage of the pot then they wouldn't have been in trouble.
To me its a waste of time. Those men weren't hurting anyone and the players were enjoying themselves. So they made a bit of money, big deal. Guys getting together and playing poker is nothing new. And with the whole hold em craze going on it makes them want to compete in addition to just playing. Gambling is one of those vices that shouldn't be a vice for the cops to deal with. Give the club owners an option to apply for a license and let them claim their cut of the winnings as income for tax purposes. Then everyone wins and the cops can take care of more important business. But knowing the government they would manage to screw up the licenses and put so many stupid restrictions and limits on it that there would still be no point in obtaining one.
Did you miss the part about construction? A large mecha like that could be used to easily lift and place large steel beams or concrete forms into place. Something that is done by cranes and guys climbing all over a structure trying to pull yank and maneuver a multi-ton beam into place. Imagine how easy it would be to dig a trench and then lay 36+ inch concrete pipe for drainage systems. Just grab a bucket and dig with both "hands". Would be much faster then a guy with a joystick. Then just let go of the buckets, grab a 4000 pound section of pipe and put it in place. There are many uses for something that could give an operator near human like range of motion but offer the ability to manipulate multi ton objects. Some arms could also have attachments or even a multi tool system like drills, torches, welders etc.
Imagine these things used for demolition. Just walk up to a house or building and rip it apart. Hell even heavy duty towing and recovery could use them to pick up rolled trucks or load wreckage onto other trucks. How about even bigger ones that could lift 30-40 ton intermodal containers.
For military use big mecha don't exactly sound like a great idea for combat situations. But for heavy duty lifting it sure will, any one remember the mecha forklift used by Ripley in Aliens? Might come in handy.
LEft 4 dead has a wide audience appeal. Half Life was an amazing game for its time and I still play it through from time to time. Half life 2 had similar game play. But its tough to create a game that has such great game play that it sucks you in.
Left4dead to me was a cheap cop out. A zombie shooter from valve? I played the demo and was a bit impressed but the game play was repetitive. The same old 20 zombies popping out of nowhere. On line play is also a bitch as its very tough. If your playing 4 V 4 and someone dies or just quits the game is ruined. Team fortress 2 is 100 times the online game dead rising will ever be. Thankfully Valve finished it. And where the hell is Episode 3?
Left 4 dead 2 is also featuring weapons like a frying pan and bat, didn't dead rising do that? And dead rising had much better game play.
Screw the game industry and Valve for taking the easy route. They just churn out one generic bland game after another and make a profit. Sure there is a market for bland games like Madden, Halo or Gears of War. But please keep the gems coming. Please don't push them aside for more profitable games.
I have used file scavenger (windows) with great success. File scavenger has restored files from disks that were unreadable or disks that come up as un-formatted. Even if you accidentally reformat the disk and write some data to it file scavenger will find what ever has not yet been corrupted and copy it to where ever you want it to go. Files that cant be recovered are still written to the backup disk but are given a zero byte size. You can then search for zero byte files and see what was unable to be recovered. Also files that are found but cannot be identified are copied to a "lost and found" folder. These might have been deleted files or partially overwritten files. Its pretty cheap too, about $35 USD.
The other day I recovered a friends 160GB USB disk (formatted NTFS) using file scavenger after it suddenly came up as unformatted. Every file was restored since the disk had not been tampered with. I then zeroed out the disk using dd under Linux and ran badblocks to see if there were any bad sectors. None were found and I formatted the disk, copied the data back to it and returned it to him. I also keept a backup on my system for him.
Under Linux I have used dd to grab an entire disk structure from a dying disk (clicking but working) to a server. Then restore the dd image to a new hard disk. I have yet to need to recover any lost data from a Linux system but I hear TestDisk is one of the best. It can locate lost super blocks and undelete files from NTFS, FAT and EXT2. R-linux is also good for ext2/3 recovery.
On his Xbox 360 the optical port is only accessible by plugging in the analog cable. BUT the HDMI port is right on top of the analog port so when the analog cable is plugged in the HDMI port is partially blocked. Its the Version that came right after the first model that did not come with HDMI. So for his model you cannot use HDMI and optical audio at the same time.
That's the way to go. When I bought my HDTV I mainly used it solely as a HTPC monitor and console monitor (have cable now so its a TV too).
The biggest offense of HDMI is the simple fact that multiple HDMI inputs on a TV/monitor are useless. If you want to use a home theater receiver for surround sound then you have to upgrade to one that has HDMI inputs. Why? Well Hollywood decided that HDMI cannot have its digital sound passed through the optical or coaxial output of your TV. So if you are thinking of using that shiny new HDTV with four HDMI inputs as your AV switch box then your out of luck. Even though that TV has an optical/coaxial output it will be disabled for HDMI, only analog outputs will work. You need to buy an expensive HDMI receiver for that setup to work.
My friend learned the hard way after purchasing a 47 inch HDTV with four HDMI inputs. He connected his XBox 360, PC and cable box. After digging through menus and testing his receiver he emailed the manufacturer of the TV and found out that his perfectly working Dolby digital receiver was now useless. He wound up getting an optical switch box to switch between inputs but OH wait the XBox 360's optical port is blocked when using the HDMI port. Fuck them for screwing us like that. HDCP and all the other copyright protection is a fucking sham.
So what ingredient of cola does this? Last I read most popular cola drinks like Coke and Pepsi are nothing more than sugar, water, cinnamon, vanilla and phosphoric acid. Most cola drinks do not even have kola nut ingredients in them.
On thing is sure I stopped drinking the stuff regularly when I went to the dentist and had eleven cavities. Yes I brush twice a day and use the water pick. The trick is to rinse your mouth out after drinking very acidic and sugary drinks. As soon as you drink the acid begins to attack your enamel so after your done with a soda rinse your mouth out thoroughly with water. The few hours between drinking an acidic drink and brushing is more than enough time for acids to attack your teeth. This is what my dentist told me as he was drilling, not fun.
The problem is there are no real standards within the mash up of software called Linux. The authoe hit the nail on the head.
Linux is a collection of software running on top of the Linux kernel. The basic system that provides the Unix like environment is called GNU. Everything else is just a mash up of software. In windows Microsoft provides all the integrated software components like API's Audio/Video systems, networking, configuration tools and basic software (paint, word, explorer, etc.) Its a big blob of software that is what it is. If you want the same environment under GNU/Linux there is a huge array of software that can fill those roles. Want a desktop? Pick from the big three like KDE, Gnome or XFCE. Want custom and lightweight? Fluxbox, Blackbox, ICEwm, enlightenment, sawfish, open step and the list goes on and on. That's the beauty of GNU/Linux, the OS is a Lego set that you build to suit your need.
As the article author points out there are still many incompatibilities and cruft lurking about the system. And my biggest beef is with X and the sound system. If you wanted a visual analogy of what X looks like under the hood imagine a pretty rug on top of a mound of dust and dirt. Someone needs to finalize a standard clean modern X API for developing X applications. QT and GTK are good but they break and the X API itself is strait out of the 80's. Take a look at xcalc, xclock or Xcircuit for an example of the ancient X API. OSS is a basic sound implementation that mostly works but is very lacking in features and exposes very little of the actual sound card hardware. ALSA fixes this problem and gives us hardware MIDI and mixing and other features but many times does not work out of the box.
Linux has so much potential for the desktop. But with the huge mess under the hood and multiple API's/UI's it presents a real problem for developers who have no Linux experience or were taught in windows using visual studio. So until this mash up of broken API's continues, developers will stick with Windows. If we want CAD Games and other productivity software to come to Linux we need to give those developers a clean standardized environment to develop for.
Whats so bulldozer about this? A piezo buzzer is used to drive the input of a common emitter BJT amplifier which then feeds a PMC with an ADC. That's hardly worthy of being compared with a bulldozer. This is an advertisement presented as news. It must have slipped by (yea right), a palm was greased or an MIT person with a/. buddy.
BUT, it is a great little tutotrial for beginners who want to take a crack at analog and digital design. The Amplifier math is taught in your into to electronics class during freshman year. The amplifier stuff can be a bit intimidating but its all rather simple once you get to know it. The fun part is the C code which will give others experimenting with mixed signal stuff a start in DSP software which presents a hurdle to developers who are very new to the whole idea. Just how do you make sense of stream of data from an ADC?
This isn't/. worthy news but is it electronics which I love. I believe more people should take interest and build their own experiments or equipment.
I play TF2 allot and MY classes are Spy, Pyro, Engineer and scout. I am not the best player out there but damn they keep making it more difficult to play an "honest" game. The more class updats they add the more difficult they make certain maps.
A spy with infinite cloak will be a problem on maps like dust bowl where a ninja cap will be a 1000x easier as a spy (or two) can stay cloaked indefinitely next to the point. Other maps with multiple cap points will not suffer that much such as payload maps and multipoint cap maps (eg steel). As more achievements and rumored classes emerge it will always thow off the balance.
But it will make my time as playing a spy allot more fun.
Slashdot Mirror
And the most expensive when compared to corn syrup porn, which is just as sweet but corny.
Do you have any more specific information on the talk he gave? Is there an online translation, audio or video version of the talk? OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows. Also consider the fact that OpenGL is not only geared toward hardware acceleration but can also be rendered in software if desired. Direct 3D is hardware only.
I am fully aware of the fact that yes hardware rendering is the way to go but with today's multicore and specialized CPU's and GPU's we might find ourselves using software rendering systems running on gp-gpu or super multicore systems. Concider that the Intel laurabee is a bunch of stripped down x86 cpu's, it is nothing more then a cluster of x86's on one die. OpenGL, ray tracing and direct3d drivers will be nothing more than software render engines running on the multitude of laurabee cores with an added raster pipeline. And OpenGL has the advantage of being open source so drivers can be open source or developed to take advantage of certain features. Optimizations can easily be made to the driver and open source 3D drivers can be easily written. Pair that with OpenCL and you are really cooking with gas.
Because bareback is the way mother nature intended and it feels a hell of allot better. My first girlfriend at first insisted on using condoms each time and I had no problem with that. Then one night right in the heat of the moment my rubber broke while putting it on. She pretty much just said to hell with it and we did it with no condom. At that point we liked the feeling so much better that we stopped using condoms and I just pulled out every time. After a scare she decided to go on birth control which increased the fun as I could now finish the job without worrying about being a father. She put on some weight (like 7 pounds) and that was enough for her to quit the pill. We went out for three years and contraception was only used for a total of about 6 months of that with no pregnancy. Not too bad. Although after her I always use rubbers after learning a friend got his girlfriend pregnant even though he pulled out.
So its a big fucking no duh as to why men don't want to use rubbers. I still wish I could be that naive and uncaring but I have to be smart.
Best method I have of backing up my data is simple. First equip/upgrade a few existing computers with 1TB disks even if you never plan to fill them up. They can be at your parents house, siblings house or work. Copy your really important data like work, projects, photos, music, video (movies, tv shows and p0rn don't count), basically anything that is irreplaceable. Copy that to a 1TB USB disk and copy all the data to the computers you equipped with the backup drives. Now you have your data spread out all over. You can use rsync over the net or via a USB disk to keep things updated between machines. You can even partition the large 1TB disks and make a separate partition for your data so it cannot be tampered with. If a machine fails then from any of the others you can replicate the data.
Sounds like a pain in the ass but I keep copies on my brothers PC and my work PC. Its only about 400GB total so its not even half of the 1TB disk which costs about 75 bucks, small price to pay for peace of mind. I have a big software raid 5 array for personal file serving needs but it is in no way shape or form a backup system. I once had my raid 5 go haywire because of some disk controller problems. After a hardware upgrade I almost lost the array but it came back up and had to rebuild itself. Thankfully it didn't send me into a panic because I had my most important and irreplaceable data backed up.
I moved to audacious, Xmms2 just seemed to be too bulky and gimmicky. I just want to play audio files.
And that is why you have to put a "no candy here" sign on your lawn every Halloween.
I had a friend in grade school who's uncle was one of those guys. He and a small crew used to drive around JFK international with shot guns and kill tons of seagulls. Apparently one of the animal rights groups made a stink about it and the practice was stopped. Something about threatening the gull population which never appeared to be a problem. I don't know if they still do it but JFK is right on Jamaica Bay so its real good seagull territory.
Funny this should be mentioned. Last week a local men's club was busted for gambling. Guys would get together drink beer, play poker and watch sports on big screen TV's. Well they apparently added poker tournaments to their list and were making big bucks. They were there for three or four years until someone didn't like the percentage the house was taking and squealed to the cops. They raided the place with about forty officers, seized everyone's money, confiscated the chips and arrested twelve people. The people arrested were the owners friends who were running the club and game as well as all the dealers. The players got to leave but had their cash seized. None of the equipment was destroyed or taken by the police. Usually the cops cut up the poker tables with knives and sometimes even seize electronics like TV's and computers. The interesting part was the cops explained to those in charge that if they didn't take a percentage of the pot then they wouldn't have been in trouble.
To me its a waste of time. Those men weren't hurting anyone and the players were enjoying themselves. So they made a bit of money, big deal. Guys getting together and playing poker is nothing new. And with the whole hold em craze going on it makes them want to compete in addition to just playing. Gambling is one of those vices that shouldn't be a vice for the cops to deal with. Give the club owners an option to apply for a license and let them claim their cut of the winnings as income for tax purposes. Then everyone wins and the cops can take care of more important business. But knowing the government they would manage to screw up the licenses and put so many stupid restrictions and limits on it that there would still be no point in obtaining one.
Did you miss the part about construction? A large mecha like that could be used to easily lift and place large steel beams or concrete forms into place. Something that is done by cranes and guys climbing all over a structure trying to pull yank and maneuver a multi-ton beam into place. Imagine how easy it would be to dig a trench and then lay 36+ inch concrete pipe for drainage systems. Just grab a bucket and dig with both "hands". Would be much faster then a guy with a joystick. Then just let go of the buckets, grab a 4000 pound section of pipe and put it in place. There are many uses for something that could give an operator near human like range of motion but offer the ability to manipulate multi ton objects. Some arms could also have attachments or even a multi tool system like drills, torches, welders etc.
Imagine these things used for demolition. Just walk up to a house or building and rip it apart. Hell even heavy duty towing and recovery could use them to pick up rolled trucks or load wreckage onto other trucks. How about even bigger ones that could lift 30-40 ton intermodal containers.
For military use big mecha don't exactly sound like a great idea for combat situations. But for heavy duty lifting it sure will, any one remember the mecha forklift used by Ripley in Aliens? Might come in handy.
LEft 4 dead has a wide audience appeal. Half Life was an amazing game for its time and I still play it through from time to time. Half life 2 had similar game play. But its tough to create a game that has such great game play that it sucks you in.
Left4dead to me was a cheap cop out. A zombie shooter from valve? I played the demo and was a bit impressed but the game play was repetitive. The same old 20 zombies popping out of nowhere. On line play is also a bitch as its very tough. If your playing 4 V 4 and someone dies or just quits the game is ruined. Team fortress 2 is 100 times the online game dead rising will ever be. Thankfully Valve finished it. And where the hell is Episode 3?
Left 4 dead 2 is also featuring weapons like a frying pan and bat, didn't dead rising do that? And dead rising had much better game play.
Screw the game industry and Valve for taking the easy route. They just churn out one generic bland game after another and make a profit. Sure there is a market for bland games like Madden, Halo or Gears of War. But please keep the gems coming. Please don't push them aside for more profitable games.
Yea, Dethklok recording their new album and a giant radioactive seahorse.
H2 = GMC Jimmy AKA Chevy Tahoe chassis
H3 = GMC Envoy AKA Chevy Trailblazer chassis
I have used file scavenger (windows) with great success. File scavenger has restored files from disks that were unreadable or disks that come up as un-formatted. Even if you accidentally reformat the disk and write some data to it file scavenger will find what ever has not yet been corrupted and copy it to where ever you want it to go. Files that cant be recovered are still written to the backup disk but are given a zero byte size. You can then search for zero byte files and see what was unable to be recovered. Also files that are found but cannot be identified are copied to a "lost and found" folder. These might have been deleted files or partially overwritten files. Its pretty cheap too, about $35 USD.
The other day I recovered a friends 160GB USB disk (formatted NTFS) using file scavenger after it suddenly came up as unformatted. Every file was restored since the disk had not been tampered with. I then zeroed out the disk using dd under Linux and ran badblocks to see if there were any bad sectors. None were found and I formatted the disk, copied the data back to it and returned it to him. I also keept a backup on my system for him.
Under Linux I have used dd to grab an entire disk structure from a dying disk (clicking but working) to a server. Then restore the dd image to a new hard disk. I have yet to need to recover any lost data from a Linux system but I hear TestDisk is one of the best. It can locate lost super blocks and undelete files from NTFS, FAT and EXT2. R-linux is also good for ext2/3 recovery.
Thanks for the heads up. He moved and hasn't setup his system yet so I will let him know.
On his Xbox 360 the optical port is only accessible by plugging in the analog cable. BUT the HDMI port is right on top of the analog port so when the analog cable is plugged in the HDMI port is partially blocked. Its the Version that came right after the first model that did not come with HDMI. So for his model you cannot use HDMI and optical audio at the same time.
That's the way to go. When I bought my HDTV I mainly used it solely as a HTPC monitor and console monitor (have cable now so its a TV too).
The biggest offense of HDMI is the simple fact that multiple HDMI inputs on a TV/monitor are useless. If you want to use a home theater receiver for surround sound then you have to upgrade to one that has HDMI inputs. Why? Well Hollywood decided that HDMI cannot have its digital sound passed through the optical or coaxial output of your TV. So if you are thinking of using that shiny new HDTV with four HDMI inputs as your AV switch box then your out of luck. Even though that TV has an optical/coaxial output it will be disabled for HDMI, only analog outputs will work. You need to buy an expensive HDMI receiver for that setup to work.
My friend learned the hard way after purchasing a 47 inch HDTV with four HDMI inputs. He connected his XBox 360, PC and cable box. After digging through menus and testing his receiver he emailed the manufacturer of the TV and found out that his perfectly working Dolby digital receiver was now useless. He wound up getting an optical switch box to switch between inputs but OH wait the XBox 360's optical port is blocked when using the HDMI port. Fuck them for screwing us like that. HDCP and all the other copyright protection is a fucking sham.
So what ingredient of cola does this? Last I read most popular cola drinks like Coke and Pepsi are nothing more than sugar, water, cinnamon, vanilla and phosphoric acid. Most cola drinks do not even have kola nut ingredients in them.
On thing is sure I stopped drinking the stuff regularly when I went to the dentist and had eleven cavities. Yes I brush twice a day and use the water pick. The trick is to rinse your mouth out after drinking very acidic and sugary drinks. As soon as you drink the acid begins to attack your enamel so after your done with a soda rinse your mouth out thoroughly with water. The few hours between drinking an acidic drink and brushing is more than enough time for acids to attack your teeth. This is what my dentist told me as he was drilling, not fun.
The problem is there are no real standards within the mash up of software called Linux. The authoe hit the nail on the head.
Linux is a collection of software running on top of the Linux kernel. The basic system that provides the Unix like environment is called GNU. Everything else is just a mash up of software. In windows Microsoft provides all the integrated software components like API's Audio/Video systems, networking, configuration tools and basic software (paint, word, explorer, etc.) Its a big blob of software that is what it is. If you want the same environment under GNU/Linux there is a huge array of software that can fill those roles. Want a desktop? Pick from the big three like KDE, Gnome or XFCE. Want custom and lightweight? Fluxbox, Blackbox, ICEwm, enlightenment, sawfish, open step and the list goes on and on. That's the beauty of GNU/Linux, the OS is a Lego set that you build to suit your need.
As the article author points out there are still many incompatibilities and cruft lurking about the system. And my biggest beef is with X and the sound system. If you wanted a visual analogy of what X looks like under the hood imagine a pretty rug on top of a mound of dust and dirt. Someone needs to finalize a standard clean modern X API for developing X applications. QT and GTK are good but they break and the X API itself is strait out of the 80's. Take a look at xcalc, xclock or Xcircuit for an example of the ancient X API. OSS is a basic sound implementation that mostly works but is very lacking in features and exposes very little of the actual sound card hardware. ALSA fixes this problem and gives us hardware MIDI and mixing and other features but many times does not work out of the box.
Linux has so much potential for the desktop. But with the huge mess under the hood and multiple API's/UI's it presents a real problem for developers who have no Linux experience or were taught in windows using visual studio. So until this mash up of broken API's continues, developers will stick with Windows. If we want CAD Games and other productivity software to come to Linux we need to give those developers a clean standardized environment to develop for.
Whats so bulldozer about this? A piezo buzzer is used to drive the input of a common emitter BJT amplifier which then feeds a PMC with an ADC. That's hardly worthy of being compared with a bulldozer. This is an advertisement presented as news. It must have slipped by (yea right), a palm was greased or an MIT person with a /. buddy.
BUT, it is a great little tutotrial for beginners who want to take a crack at analog and digital design. The Amplifier math is taught in your into to electronics class during freshman year. The amplifier stuff can be a bit intimidating but its all rather simple once you get to know it. The fun part is the C code which will give others experimenting with mixed signal stuff a start in DSP software which presents a hurdle to developers who are very new to the whole idea. Just how do you make sense of stream of data from an ADC?
This isn't /. worthy news but is it electronics which I love. I believe more people should take interest and build their own experiments or equipment.
Good thing? Maybe.
I play TF2 allot and MY classes are Spy, Pyro, Engineer and scout. I am not the best player out there but damn they keep making it more difficult to play an "honest" game. The more class updats they add the more difficult they make certain maps.
A spy with infinite cloak will be a problem on maps like dust bowl where a ninja cap will be a 1000x easier as a spy (or two) can stay cloaked indefinitely next to the point. Other maps with multiple cap points will not suffer that much such as payload maps and multipoint cap maps (eg steel). As more achievements and rumored classes emerge it will always thow off the balance.
But it will make my time as playing a spy allot more fun.
No mention of power consumption or heat dissipation. My PC is already a radiator and in the summer fights with my AC.
I am interested in the computing power, 1.6 terraflops is no small number even if it is single precision.
Sorry. It was Compaq who owned the Alpha at that time. It was still DEC who designed it though.
Digital Broke that with the DEC Alpha (Was it DEC at that time?). Wasn't popular but it was a desktop CPU for high end workstations.
C-K-What?
That job title is called "commercial diver". Don't know about the nose part but the salary can easily attract a wife.