Comment Recreational programming is my drug (Score 1) 878
Subject says it all.
Comment Still relevant? (Score 2) 510
After reading this horror story I arrived to the conclusion that SSDs are not for me. I wonder if it's still true.
Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html
Comment The only reason it's "simple" (Score 1) 74
The only reason it's "simple" is that one of its parts is a full computing device.
I'd have preferred a "hardware" implementation...
Comment UI Update? (Score 1) 282
Well' I'm still waiting for tabs in the title bar on linux/gtk
Comment Bad marketing (Score 2) 68
They reach 1.0 and they don't bother to post even a single screenshot? Now, that's Meego successor for sure
Comment Re:Sony's war on their customers (Score 3, Interesting) 290
Quite surprising their mobile department is quite open. They published many driver source code and also they published an alpha and beta version of android ICS for some models. I guess the mobile department is still more Ericsson than Sony
Comment Structured Programming (Score 1) 624
Even if it's somehow outdated (and no longer in print), every single program we write today is highly influenced by "Structured Programming" by Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, C. A. R. Hoare and Ole-Johan Dahl. Before this book, programs used to be a mess of spaghetti code and the familiar constructs like if-then-else or while loops did not exist.
Comment Not very reassuring slides (Score 1) 479
"Qt will continue to be the development framework for Symbian and Nokia will use Symbian for further devices"
Yes, but they also say this:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/02/nokiawebcast-4.pdf-page-30-of-38.jpg
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/02/nokiawebcast-4.pdf-page-32-of-38.jpg
Comment Re:Goodbye Moto (Score 1) 757
Simply because different phone models only differ in their software. Android is a big PITA for all the marketing guys, because it makes all phones the same.
Comment Hypocrite (Score 3, Insightful) 192
Well, they are remaking the same exact game since Knight of the Old Republic. Take a look at KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. Always the same mechanics, always the same basic plot. While they are very good at it, they are not very "creative".
Comment Re:According to the latest article in "Duh" Magazi (Score 3, Insightful) 534
No, actually pretty everyone in the world is better than native english speakers at spelling, because they learn English mostly by reading it, instead of learning it by listening and speaking it...
Comment Re:Nice Demo... (Score 1) 378
This is pretty old stuff, see http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/69211/siggraph05_0265_final.pdf for example (but I'm sure I've read older articles on similar techniques).
At one point there was even a gimp plugin that worked decently well. Here: http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer/removal
Comment Re:It's true (Score 1) 965
It should be said that their SDK and their documentation are *very good*, especially the documentation, and especially if you compare them to what windows or linux have to offer...
Comment Re:Ironic (Score 4, Interesting) 197
I don't know where you found this info, and I never heard anything about it (and I actually have born and live in Torino). Also there are no "cliffs" around Torino, and Torino has nevere been a citystate in ancient times: in fact it was born as a Roman military camp.
New Graphics Firm Promises Real-Time Ray Tracing 136
arcticstoat writes "A new graphics company called Caustic Graphics reckons it's uncovered the secret of real-time ray tracing with a chip that 'enables your CPU/GPU to shade with rasterization-like efficiency.' The new chip basically off-loads ray tracing calculations and then sends the data to your GPU and CPU, enabling your PC to shade a ray-traced scene much more quickly. Caustic's management team isn't afraid to rubbish the efforts of other graphics companies when it comes to ray tracing. 'Some technology vendors claim to have solved the accelerated ray tracing problem by using traditional algorithms along with GPU hardware,' says Caustic. However, the company adds that 'if you've ever seen them demo their solutions you'll notice that while results may be fast — the image quality is underwhelming, far below the quality that ray tracing is known for.' According to Caustic, this is because the advanced shading and lighting effects usually seen in ray-traced scenes, such as caustics and refraction, can't be accelerated on a standard GPU because it can't process incoherent rays in hardware. Conversely, Caustic claims that the CausticOne 'thrives in incoherent ray tracing situations: encouraging the use of multiple secondary rays per pixel.' The company is also introducing its own API, called CausticGL, which is based on OpenGL/GLSL, which will feature Caustic's unique ray tracing extensions."
