If you purchased a CD, would you kick up a shitstorm about not being able to play that back on your walkman?.. probably not. You'd just get your tape deck and record the CD straight to tape.
What? That was the bloody point! We had the freedom to format shift back then too. It just took longer. How many here used a CD player and tape deck to make mix tapes for yourself and friends? That was what I did in high school in the 90's before CD burners were affordable. Everyone had a walkman for that exact reason. One of your friends would say "Dude I just got this new CD!" You then borrow it and what did you do? That's right make a copy to tape. And if you only liked certain songs you only recorded those songs or did a tape to tape copy later. Yea it wasn't digital quality but it worked well enough for everyone. Hell Even my mother and father made tapes from their CD's for their cars.
As for VHS, those tapes were indestructible when compared to DVD's. People with children will know that. My friend lost four DVD's and a CD to his 1.5 year old who likes shiny things. VHS tapes were like a tank.
In my house we had Cable, a VCR and a roof antenna hooked to the TV in our living room. The VCR and cable box were all hooked to the TV via coax. I used a 3 way splitter and ran a line to the kitchen TV and my parents bedroom. Using a few switch boxes we could pipe the Cable, antenna or VCR to any of the 3 TV's. It worked perfectly as my mother could watch PBS in the kitchen and we could watch the VCR in the living room while cable was on in the bed room. Or we could watch any of the two on all three TV's if we wanted. It wasn't convenient as you had to go into the living room to work the cable box and VCR but it worked perfectly. I had my own VCR and Cable box.
Gigabit Ethernet is a vast improvement over 100Mbit. Two windows boxes with fast SATA drives I see no less than 20 megabytes/second transfer speeds on a Vista64 XP64. Top speeds exceed 30 MB/sec (~300+Mbps)! My home server runs Linux but for some reason SAMBA is dog slow no matter how much I tweak the damn conf file. 10-12MB/sec tops for Linux Windows (without tweaks it was 3-4MB/sec!).
I have a four disk 1.5TB raid 5 array using SATA disks on a pciX controller and mdadm. Copying from the array to an **old crusty 20 gig ATA** root drive I see 40+ MB/second! So saying today's drives are too slow is not the case. I would love to see the speed with an SSD, bet it would easily soar over 100MB/sec! Wish SAMBA could keep up.
I have yet to actually test my Linux notebook with NFS to the server as I just use wireless so its always going to be slow. But saying you see no increase means you aren't really taxing the network.
PS if anyone knows how to speed up SAMBA under Ubuntu 8.04 please let me know. I used all the tcp_nodelay and the other tcp settings but nothing really works.
Its like the old days of the wild west. No one really controls the land and you are free to roam and *almost* do as you please. If someone misbehaves a posse is rounded up to take care of the problem, the community helps itself. OSS is the same way.
Hopefully no one entity or group ever takes control of our virtual land.
And I understand you point. But I suppose I was thinking more about the "everyone I love is dead" scenario. Don't tell me you wouldn't be depressed knowing your siblings, parents and friends are all gone and you have no social ties to the current world. I would adjust but I certainly wouldn't be all that happy for a while.
To be honest if I had terminal cancer why would I want to be frozen and then wake up to find out that all my family and friends are dead? Seriously how could someone adjust to that? Having no close family or friends?
If it were only 10 or 20 years you might still have plenty of family and friends. People do tend to go about their own lives and things would be allot different for your socially.
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DISCLAIMER: **We will not be held responsible for any fingers or mod points lost to snapping or biting trolls.** **Always wash your hands after feeding or petting the trolls at the designated washing station.**
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How about support the developers and buy the game but just download the no-DVD crack from game copy world. That's what I did for Crysis after I bought a new DVD burner and suck-rom hung when trying to launch.
The best bottled water I have had is Poland Spring. As for tap water so far of the places I have visited NYC tap is the best hand down. Yes it does have allot of chlorine but you have to realize its surface water. You have fish and birds shitting and pissing in it (sounds gross but gives it character). Run NYC tap through a filter and the water tastes damn good. Orlando, Florida has the most foul and putrid water I have ever had the displeasure of drinking. You can smell the sulfur as soon as you open the tap or flush the toilet. Its close to undrinkable and only becomes drinkable after running it through a Brita filter once or twice. Every restaurant down there has a filter setup for the soda fountain. I feel bad for anyone living in Orlando.
Are they implying Monty Python stole the joke or that it has just been done before? It seems like a pretty strait forward joke and I can see it being reinvented. Either way it was a damn funny sketch.
He should just buy a digital watt hour meter that uses 2 piece or clamp type current transducer coils. It might use rs-232 or usb and just read in the values from the device. There are plenty which are commercially available.
You can make your own using a micro controller with a few A-D channels to read the values of the current transducers and voltage using isolating transformers. Then just read in the two values, figure out the power factor and multiply the volt-amps by the power factor for watts. Then just tell the PMC to stream out the readings at intervals. Then use your PC to read the values from the PMC and your set.
Image processing is over complicating the entire system. Most of your time and code is going to be spent on "looking" at a meter.
Honestly it works just fine. I don't know what all the bitching and mud slinging is about. Not an M$ fan boy at all, use linux at work and home too. Those systems are our gaming rigs.
"I mean, with high quality onboard audio (7.1, dolby etc) now pretty much standard on even budget motherboards, aren't the days of buying a separate soundcard history now?"
Please dont say that. I just upgraded to a new socket AM2 board and I have had more problems with the on board sound then I ever had with a card. I used to have a Turtlebeach Santacruz and now with the horrid realtek garbadge I am fed up with on board sound. Realtek leaves the driver and interface software design to the motherboard manufacturer which always results in very poor quality and design. With a sound card from a respectable manufacturer (not realtek) the drivers are handeld by them and they mostly work the way they are designed. The turtle beach has no vista drivers for it:(. Realtek should write their own driver and take responsibility for their crap.
The boards in question are Gigabyte Nforce 750SLI boards. Great boards but my god the realtek garbage just tarnishes an otherwise great board. I cant get my microphone to function properly in halflife 2 games which was never a problem. The mic mysteriously looses gain and upon restart works again. My brothers system with the same board always minimizes his games because the sound driver detected a jack was plugged in to the front panel when nothing was. Now he has XP 64 and I have Vista 64. I can disable the auto jack insertion notification in Vista but he cant in the XP 64 driver. WTF! I had to disconnect his front panel audio jacks which complicated things. One board a friend bought had not only hard disk clicking coming out the speakers but every time he scrolled or clicked the mouse he heard it. Why I don't know but it was either crappy board design or drivers (most likely the former). It also had a realtek chip. Pure crap.
This brings up a good idea. Write a program that batch converts all images to negatives. Then any scan for illicit pictures based on color content will turn up nothing. Or if they are smart and scan for both, write a program that shifts the color by a chosen value.
But seriously does one really need porn when they travel? I know my friend always has porn on his laptop but its all legal. If you were storing CP on your laptop or ipod, why let it hang out in the open or carry it at all? Some people are just plain stupid.
I can agree with you a bit there but light is an excellent deterrent. Go to high crime areas here in New york city and they are lit up like Times Square. Light gives them no cover to loiter and cause problems as they can easily be seen. I remember driving through Jamaica Queens one night and some of the stores on Jamaica Ave east of Archer Ave have multiple or massive HID lights illuminating small store fronts.
In front of our building we installed two flood lights and it has made a noticeable impact on deterring graffiti vandals. Light helps when you keep the publicly viewable portions of your property illuminated. My home has three lights around it. They are "60 watt" CF bulbs, not too much light but enough to keep the yard, porch and alleyway lit. Anyone lurking around will easily be spotted.
Honestly most break ins are by desperate thieves who more than likely have zero technical know-how. My house was broken some years ago and my neighbor saw the guy run away, a skinny looking junkie. Same thing last month when some guy made a laughable attempt to break into my grandmothers house. He was so messed up he couldn't even aim rocks at a window 10 feet away. He also cut five screens and ripped two out but never broke a single window. He was that disoriented. A neighbor chased him away before he could do anymore damage. My aunts house was robbed as well, her cordless phone and jewelery were taken. Simple and fast grabs.
These people don't give a shit about fancy alarm systems. They will keep trying to break into one home after another until they find one that is empty and unprotected. This isn't Hollywood, there isn't a James Bond trying to steal secrets off your computer. Just junkies and desperate people trying to snatch as many small and expensive items they can find. They then turn them in for quick cash and get high. Sure there are more elaborate schemes but they are far and few between (any examples?). Those stupid shows on cable showing "professional" thieves stealing fucking chandeliers and furniture are over exaggerated nonsense.
Want to know what I lost when I was robbed? Three SLR cameras, a Playstation and two cable boxes. They are small, easy to carry and will get them enough money to feed their habit. How did the thief get in? He smashed a window and crawled in while we were school and work. Would an alarm have foiled him? Maybe but the cost of the items lost was far less then an alarm system. The less cover a thief has the less likely he is to target your house. Lights that keep vulnerable areas lit at night help allot, so do motion lights. Also keep shrubs trimmed down, don't give them cover. My home is now pretty sucky to break into by taking a few simple steps to keep it less enticing. Also don't leave objects around that act as a ladder allowing them to reach windows. I know this isn't always practical but it can help.
Schools like this aren't going to land you a good job. My brother went to Full Sail for their game development degree. Even though its only 22 months he received an accredited bachelors degree. His final project was a 5 month grind where he and 4 others made a game from scratch. They made a networked real time strategy game with a 3D engine, 3D sound using Fmod, 4 player networking and multiple game play modes. All totally from scratch, no tools or anything. In fact they had to write their own tools to handle a few tasks. They must document everything and manage the game as if they were a company by having an asset list to keep them focused. They are required to come up with a studio name and that class gets a publisher name as well. Another good thing is since Full Sail is a media school, graphic arts students make the textures and models while sound students do the sound effects for the teams. They are also now offering a masters degree as well.
The result? When he attended his international game developers association meetings he was the most experienced person there. He was able to speak and present himself well thanks to his public speaking classes. His C++ knowledge along with C#, assembler and java got him allot of attention. He can also land a regular programming job if he wanted.
I must say even I am impressed by his knowledge. My favorite project was for his machine architecture class where he had to write a game boy demo from scratch (that is where his assembler knowledge comes from). So if anyone is interested in a game development school look into Full Sail. But be warned over 50% drop out before the first year, and about 25% make it to graduation. It is a very intense degree. Each class is from 9-5pm sometimes with labs 5-1am! You are definitely prepared for a grueling job as a programmer after that school.
McMaster has the most intuitive search I have ever seen on an industrial suppliers web site. It not only has a good search bar but also an excellent visual drill down of your search that is very well broken down. Grainger's website was a total mess for a long time but has thankfully cleaned up their site.
And as for the original story, you should look for power transmission suppliers. Here is one I found at the top of Google after entering "power transmission" http://www.powertransmission.com/
"The tool can 'check every file passing through an Internet provider's network -- every image, every movie, every document attached to an e-mail or found in a Web search -- to see if it matches a list of illegal images.' "
How exactly is this going to be accomplished? The equipment cost must be staggering and would consume allot of power. Way to conserve electricity, I thought we were trying to reduce the amount of power the Internet consumes. Does also this remove the common carrier status of ISP's?
He does make a good point and its a throwback to the old days before GPU's existed. Look back to the days of Doom or Duke3D, You had to hand code and entire rendering engine for the game. No API's or 3D hardware was available, only a single CPU and a frame buffer and compiler. With current and upcoming technology like multi-core and stream processors, there will be plenty of new options for developers to take advantage of. IBM Cell, Intel's Terrascale and Larabee are three of those technologies but I still highly doubt the GPU is done for yet.
3D rendering isn't the only thing going on in games or other programs. You have physics which is used in both games and simulators. We also have AI, which in games is still severely lacking. 3D sound is still simply how far is player from object and attenuate the sound as necessary. So those areas could definatly use those multi core CPU's or Stream processors.
We cant forget about really exciting stuff like real time ray tracing that is well suited for multi core and stream processing but its ways off. I don't think the GPU will disappear in the next five years but I do see it evolving to adapt to new rendering technologies. Instead of a very discreet GPU we will have a very fast accelerator chip that can do more general work. It not only will handle the 3D rendering pipe but also lend itself to tasks like video processing, DSP, audio processing and other compute intense tasks like physics. It is already happening with Nvidia's CUDA and ATI's Stream SDK. We still need a general purpose CPU to manage the OS and I/O but like the IBM cell it could very well move on die. Multi-core X86 CPU's are not the future. Instead we need one or two cores to manage resources and run legacy code.Then you let the stream processors (for lack of a better term) do all the compute intense dirty work. Hell we could even get rid of X86 and go with a more efficient and compact CPU like ARM or something else entirely.
Funny as I am typing this I realize I am pretty much describing the IBM cell processor and Intel Larabee. But still I doubt developers will be the ones holding the ball for interfacing with this new hardware. Hardware vendors and developers will (or rater should) come together and standardize a new set of API's and tools to deal with the new tech. If developers have a breakthrough that is better than ray tracing, they will definitely have the hardware to do it. Welcome to the future.
Thats a good point but I blame the damn execs and management who have no clue. The dev's (like my brother) really love what they are doing and it pains them when something doesn't work because of buggy copy protection. They would happily kick DRM to the curb where it belongs but they don't have the final say on how the game is shipped. He even uses cracks and patched exe's play his games.
I feel your pain. Its a lame arms race that they will never win. The DRM people are kept in business by these bozos and when their "copy protection" is broken they make an even more vicious and unstable version. They will NEVER win and should just release a patch that does not include the suckrom, starfarce or whatever in the executable. Even game consoles that were all touted to be hack proof were broken and even BLU-Ray which was also much more secure than DVD is also broken. The phrase "History tends to repeat itself" must elude them and also near-hind-sighted. Maybe they keep hoping the TPM trusted computing nonsense will one day save them from all the evil crackers and pirates.
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If you purchased a CD, would you kick up a shitstorm about not being able to play that back on your walkman? .. probably not. You'd just get your tape deck and record the CD straight to tape.
What? That was the bloody point! We had the freedom to format shift back then too. It just took longer. How many here used a CD player and tape deck to make mix tapes for yourself and friends? That was what I did in high school in the 90's before CD burners were affordable. Everyone had a walkman for that exact reason. One of your friends would say "Dude I just got this new CD!" You then borrow it and what did you do? That's right make a copy to tape. And if you only liked certain songs you only recorded those songs or did a tape to tape copy later. Yea it wasn't digital quality but it worked well enough for everyone. Hell Even my mother and father made tapes from their CD's for their cars.
As for VHS, those tapes were indestructible when compared to DVD's. People with children will know that. My friend lost four DVD's and a CD to his 1.5 year old who likes shiny things. VHS tapes were like a tank.
In my house we had Cable, a VCR and a roof antenna hooked to the TV in our living room. The VCR and cable box were all hooked to the TV via coax. I used a 3 way splitter and ran a line to the kitchen TV and my parents bedroom. Using a few switch boxes we could pipe the Cable, antenna or VCR to any of the 3 TV's. It worked perfectly as my mother could watch PBS in the kitchen and we could watch the VCR in the living room while cable was on in the bed room. Or we could watch any of the two on all three TV's if we wanted. It wasn't convenient as you had to go into the living room to work the cable box and VCR but it worked perfectly. I had my own VCR and Cable box.
Gigabit Ethernet is a vast improvement over 100Mbit. Two windows boxes with fast SATA drives I see no less than 20 megabytes/second transfer speeds on a Vista64 XP64. Top speeds exceed 30 MB/sec (~300+Mbps)! My home server runs Linux but for some reason SAMBA is dog slow no matter how much I tweak the damn conf file. 10-12MB/sec tops for Linux Windows (without tweaks it was 3-4MB/sec!).
I have a four disk 1.5TB raid 5 array using SATA disks on a pciX controller and mdadm. Copying from the array to an **old crusty 20 gig ATA** root drive I see 40+ MB/second! So saying today's drives are too slow is not the case. I would love to see the speed with an SSD, bet it would easily soar over 100MB/sec! Wish SAMBA could keep up.
I have yet to actually test my Linux notebook with NFS to the server as I just use wireless so its always going to be slow. But saying you see no increase means you aren't really taxing the network.
PS if anyone knows how to speed up SAMBA under Ubuntu 8.04 please let me know. I used all the tcp_nodelay and the other tcp settings but nothing really works.
Its like the old days of the wild west. No one really controls the land and you are free to roam and *almost* do as you please. If someone misbehaves a posse is rounded up to take care of the problem, the community helps itself. OSS is the same way.
Hopefully no one entity or group ever takes control of our virtual land.
The sig is a joke!
And I understand you point. But I suppose I was thinking more about the "everyone I love is dead" scenario. Don't tell me you wouldn't be depressed knowing your siblings, parents and friends are all gone and you have no social ties to the current world. I would adjust but I certainly wouldn't be all that happy for a while.
Bah! I am still waiting for the year of the BeOS desktop.
To be honest if I had terminal cancer why would I want to be frozen and then wake up to find out that all my family and friends are dead? Seriously how could someone adjust to that? Having no close family or friends?
If it were only 10 or 20 years you might still have plenty of family and friends. People do tend to go about their own lives and things would be allot different for your socially.
Sir, thank you for feeding the trolls. If you would like to feed them again please pay 1 karma point for another cup of troll food.
DISCLAIMER:
**We will not be held responsible for any fingers or mod points lost to snapping or biting trolls.**
**Always wash your hands after feeding or petting the trolls at the designated washing station.**
Thanks! And be sure to come again to the Little Slashdotters Troll Farm and Petting Zoo.
How about support the developers and buy the game but just download the no-DVD crack from game copy world. That's what I did for Crysis after I bought a new DVD burner and suck-rom hung when trying to launch.
The best bottled water I have had is Poland Spring. As for tap water so far of the places I have visited NYC tap is the best hand down. Yes it does have allot of chlorine but you have to realize its surface water. You have fish and birds shitting and pissing in it (sounds gross but gives it character). Run NYC tap through a filter and the water tastes damn good. Orlando, Florida has the most foul and putrid water I have ever had the displeasure of drinking. You can smell the sulfur as soon as you open the tap or flush the toilet. Its close to undrinkable and only becomes drinkable after running it through a Brita filter once or twice. Every restaurant down there has a filter setup for the soda fountain. I feel bad for anyone living in Orlando.
LOL Oh if I only had mod points.
A Snap-on 22 piece ratchet kit is over 500 bucks. Hell a tool box from them is over $300!
Looks fun but I am still waiting for 3ware Solaris drivers. And I am not holding my breath either.
Are they implying Monty Python stole the joke or that it has just been done before? It seems like a pretty strait forward joke and I can see it being reinvented. Either way it was a damn funny sketch.
He should just buy a digital watt hour meter that uses 2 piece or clamp type current transducer coils. It might use rs-232 or usb and just read in the values from the device. There are plenty which are commercially available.
You can make your own using a micro controller with a few A-D channels to read the values of the current transducers and voltage using isolating transformers. Then just read in the two values, figure out the power factor and multiply the volt-amps by the power factor for watts. Then just tell the PMC to stream out the readings at intervals. Then use your PC to read the values from the PMC and your set.
Image processing is over complicating the entire system. Most of your time and code is going to be spent on "looking" at a meter.
Honestly it works just fine. I don't know what all the bitching and mud slinging is about. Not an M$ fan boy at all, use linux at work and home too. Those systems are our gaming rigs.
"I mean, with high quality onboard audio (7.1, dolby etc) now pretty much standard on even budget motherboards, aren't the days of buying a separate soundcard history now?"
Please dont say that. I just upgraded to a new socket AM2 board and I have had more problems with the on board sound then I ever had with a card. I used to have a Turtlebeach Santacruz and now with the horrid realtek garbadge I am fed up with on board sound. Realtek leaves the driver and interface software design to the motherboard manufacturer which always results in very poor quality and design. With a sound card from a respectable manufacturer (not realtek) the drivers are handeld by them and they mostly work the way they are designed. The turtle beach has no vista drivers for it :(. Realtek should write their own driver and take responsibility for their crap.
The boards in question are Gigabyte Nforce 750SLI boards. Great boards but my god the realtek garbage just tarnishes an otherwise great board. I cant get my microphone to function properly in halflife 2 games which was never a problem. The mic mysteriously looses gain and upon restart works again. My brothers system with the same board always minimizes his games because the sound driver detected a jack was plugged in to the front panel when nothing was. Now he has XP 64 and I have Vista 64. I can disable the auto jack insertion notification in Vista but he cant in the XP 64 driver. WTF! I had to disconnect his front panel audio jacks which complicated things. One board a friend bought had not only hard disk clicking coming out the speakers but every time he scrolled or clicked the mouse he heard it. Why I don't know but it was either crappy board design or drivers (most likely the former). It also had a realtek chip. Pure crap.
This brings up a good idea. Write a program that batch converts all images to negatives. Then any scan for illicit pictures based on color content will turn up nothing. Or if they are smart and scan for both, write a program that shifts the color by a chosen value.
But seriously does one really need porn when they travel? I know my friend always has porn on his laptop but its all legal. If you were storing CP on your laptop or ipod, why let it hang out in the open or carry it at all? Some people are just plain stupid.
I can agree with you a bit there but light is an excellent deterrent. Go to high crime areas here in New york city and they are lit up like Times Square. Light gives them no cover to loiter and cause problems as they can easily be seen. I remember driving through Jamaica Queens one night and some of the stores on Jamaica Ave east of Archer Ave have multiple or massive HID lights illuminating small store fronts.
In front of our building we installed two flood lights and it has made a noticeable impact on deterring graffiti vandals. Light helps when you keep the publicly viewable portions of your property illuminated. My home has three lights around it. They are "60 watt" CF bulbs, not too much light but enough to keep the yard, porch and alleyway lit. Anyone lurking around will easily be spotted.
Honestly most break ins are by desperate thieves who more than likely have zero technical know-how. My house was broken some years ago and my neighbor saw the guy run away, a skinny looking junkie. Same thing last month when some guy made a laughable attempt to break into my grandmothers house. He was so messed up he couldn't even aim rocks at a window 10 feet away. He also cut five screens and ripped two out but never broke a single window. He was that disoriented. A neighbor chased him away before he could do anymore damage. My aunts house was robbed as well, her cordless phone and jewelery were taken. Simple and fast grabs.
These people don't give a shit about fancy alarm systems. They will keep trying to break into one home after another until they find one that is empty and unprotected. This isn't Hollywood, there isn't a James Bond trying to steal secrets off your computer. Just junkies and desperate people trying to snatch as many small and expensive items they can find. They then turn them in for quick cash and get high. Sure there are more elaborate schemes but they are far and few between (any examples?). Those stupid shows on cable showing "professional" thieves stealing fucking chandeliers and furniture are over exaggerated nonsense.
Want to know what I lost when I was robbed? Three SLR cameras, a Playstation and two cable boxes. They are small, easy to carry and will get them enough money to feed their habit. How did the thief get in? He smashed a window and crawled in while we were school and work. Would an alarm have foiled him? Maybe but the cost of the items lost was far less then an alarm system. The less cover a thief has the less likely he is to target your house. Lights that keep vulnerable areas lit at night help allot, so do motion lights. Also keep shrubs trimmed down, don't give them cover. My home is now pretty sucky to break into by taking a few simple steps to keep it less enticing. Also don't leave objects around that act as a ladder allowing them to reach windows. I know this isn't always practical but it can help.
None. Thats the amazing part.
Schools like this aren't going to land you a good job. My brother went to Full Sail for their game development degree. Even though its only 22 months he received an accredited bachelors degree. His final project was a 5 month grind where he and 4 others made a game from scratch. They made a networked real time strategy game with a 3D engine, 3D sound using Fmod, 4 player networking and multiple game play modes. All totally from scratch, no tools or anything. In fact they had to write their own tools to handle a few tasks. They must document everything and manage the game as if they were a company by having an asset list to keep them focused. They are required to come up with a studio name and that class gets a publisher name as well. Another good thing is since Full Sail is a media school, graphic arts students make the textures and models while sound students do the sound effects for the teams. They are also now offering a masters degree as well.
The result? When he attended his international game developers association meetings he was the most experienced person there. He was able to speak and present himself well thanks to his public speaking classes. His C++ knowledge along with C#, assembler and java got him allot of attention. He can also land a regular programming job if he wanted.
I must say even I am impressed by his knowledge. My favorite project was for his machine architecture class where he had to write a game boy demo from scratch (that is where his assembler knowledge comes from). So if anyone is interested in a game development school look into Full Sail. But be warned over 50% drop out before the first year, and about 25% make it to graduation. It is a very intense degree. Each class is from 9-5pm sometimes with labs 5-1am! You are definitely prepared for a grueling job as a programmer after that school.
Here was his classes publisher, Degenerate Triangles. He was part of the Code or Die team. http://degeneratetriangles.com/
Agreed.
McMaster has the most intuitive search I have ever seen on an industrial suppliers web site. It not only has a good search bar but also an excellent visual drill down of your search that is very well broken down. Grainger's website was a total mess for a long time but has thankfully cleaned up their site.
And as for the original story, you should look for power transmission suppliers. Here is one I found at the top of Google after entering "power transmission" http://www.powertransmission.com/
"The tool can 'check every file passing through an Internet provider's network -- every image, every movie, every document attached to an e-mail or found in a Web search -- to see if it matches a list of illegal images.' "
How exactly is this going to be accomplished? The equipment cost must be staggering and would consume allot of power. Way to conserve electricity, I thought we were trying to reduce the amount of power the Internet consumes. Does also this remove the common carrier status of ISP's?
I hope this never comes to fruition.
He does make a good point and its a throwback to the old days before GPU's existed. Look back to the days of Doom or Duke3D, You had to hand code and entire rendering engine for the game. No API's or 3D hardware was available, only a single CPU and a frame buffer and compiler. With current and upcoming technology like multi-core and stream processors, there will be plenty of new options for developers to take advantage of. IBM Cell, Intel's Terrascale and Larabee are three of those technologies but I still highly doubt the GPU is done for yet.
3D rendering isn't the only thing going on in games or other programs. You have physics which is used in both games and simulators. We also have AI, which in games is still severely lacking. 3D sound is still simply how far is player from object and attenuate the sound as necessary. So those areas could definatly use those multi core CPU's or Stream processors.
We cant forget about really exciting stuff like real time ray tracing that is well suited for multi core and stream processing but its ways off. I don't think the GPU will disappear in the next five years but I do see it evolving to adapt to new rendering technologies. Instead of a very discreet GPU we will have a very fast accelerator chip that can do more general work. It not only will handle the 3D rendering pipe but also lend itself to tasks like video processing, DSP, audio processing and other compute intense tasks like physics. It is already happening with Nvidia's CUDA and ATI's Stream SDK. We still need a general purpose CPU to manage the OS and I/O but like the IBM cell it could very well move on die. Multi-core X86 CPU's are not the future. Instead we need one or two cores to manage resources and run legacy code.Then you let the stream processors (for lack of a better term) do all the compute intense dirty work. Hell we could even get rid of X86 and go with a more efficient and compact CPU like ARM or something else entirely.
Funny as I am typing this I realize I am pretty much describing the IBM cell processor and Intel Larabee. But still I doubt developers will be the ones holding the ball for interfacing with this new hardware. Hardware vendors and developers will (or rater should) come together and standardize a new set of API's and tools to deal with the new tech. If developers have a breakthrough that is better than ray tracing, they will definitely have the hardware to do it. Welcome to the future.
Thats a good point but I blame the damn execs and management who have no clue. The dev's (like my brother) really love what they are doing and it pains them when something doesn't work because of buggy copy protection. They would happily kick DRM to the curb where it belongs but they don't have the final say on how the game is shipped. He even uses cracks and patched exe's play his games.
I feel your pain. Its a lame arms race that they will never win. The DRM people are kept in business by these bozos and when their "copy protection" is broken they make an even more vicious and unstable version. They will NEVER win and should just release a patch that does not include the suckrom, starfarce or whatever in the executable. Even game consoles that were all touted to be hack proof were broken and even BLU-Ray which was also much more secure than DVD is also broken. The phrase "History tends to repeat itself" must elude them and also near-hind-sighted. Maybe they keep hoping the TPM trusted computing nonsense will one day save them from all the evil crackers and pirates.