Comment Re:He's also right (Score 1) 502
If you have equal skill in optimization, but not necessarily equal time to spend optimizing.
Surely the effort required to optimize a program should factor in. Here, C may not fare so well.
NVIDIA Shows Interactive Ray Tracing On GPUs 260
MojoKid writes "During SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles, NVIDIA is demonstrating a fully interactive GPU-based ray tracer. The demo is based purely on NVIDIA GPU technology, and according to NVIDIA the ray tracer shows linear scaling during rendering of a complex, two-million polygon, anti-aliased automotive styling application. The article reproduces screenshots from NVIDIA's demo. At three bounces (rays being traced as they bounce three times through a scene), performance is demonstrated at up to 30fps at HD resolutions of 1920x1080 for an image-based lighting paint shader, ray-traced shadows, reflections and refractions running on four next-generation Quadro GPUs in an NVIDIA Quadro Plex 2100 D4 Visual Computing System." Meanwhile reader arcticstoat passes on Intel's latest claim that rasterisation will die out the next few years, possibly in favour of ray tracing.
YouTube Stands Up To IOC Over Free Tibet Video 187
Ian Lamont writes "The International Olympic Committee has withdrawn a DCMA takedown notice that targeted a two-minute long YouTube video of a Students for a Free Tibet protest at the Chinese consulate in New York. The video shows protesters gathering outside the building at night and projecting images of the Olympic symbol, 'tank man,' Tibetan riot footage and clips of victims of the Chinese police crackdown in Tibet. After receiving the request, YouTube contacted the IOC and asked if it really planned to pursue a claim. The IOC retracted the notice and the video was reposted within hours. Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society praised YouTube for 'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect free expression.'"
BBC's Open Player Claims Not Followed Through 311
ruphus13 writes "BBC's iPlayer was originally built on Microsoft's DRM-protected technology, and has never really been liked by folks like the FSF. The BBC is trying to play nice, though, recently claiming, 'the BBC has always been a strong advocate and driver of open industry standards. Without these standards, TV and radio broadcasting would simply not function. I believe that the time has come for the BBC to start adopting open standards such as H.264 and AAC for our audio and video services on the web.' This article argues that actions speak louder than words, and this is where the BBC falls short. 'The fact that both AAC and H.264 are encumbered with patent licenses that make their distribution under free licenses problematic flies in the face of this definition. It's good to see a major organization like the BBC switching from closely held secretive codecs to more widespread and documented ones. But it would be even better to see them throw their considerable weight behind some truly open formats.'"
Strange Ubuntu/Vista Compatibility Bug, Solved 140
Walter Vos writes "Since I've been running Vista and Ubuntu in dual boot with a shared FAT32 partition for my personal folders, I've been seeing some strange compatibility issues between these two operating systems. Somehow Vista locks the folders on the FAT32 partition that are used for folders like Documents, Downloads, etc. A blogpost I wrote gives a detailed description of the problem and a fix for it."
How Can You Measure a Wiki's Worth? 78
moldar writes "I have been involved in a major project to migrate documentation from multiple sources to a wiki (Media Wiki, if you must know). Now, the PHBs are all asking questions about how organized the data is. I've already googled for various wiki metrics ideas, but mostly they focus on page counts, average page sizes, rates of edits, etc. Can anybody suggest better ways of measuring the quality of a wiki? Things like uncategorized pages, articles that are too small, etc? Any help or fresh ideas would be appreciated."
Using Photographs To Enhance Videos 102
seussman71 writes with a link to some very interesting research out of the University of Washington that employs "a method of using high quality photographs to enhance a video taken of the same subject. The project page gives a good overview of what they are doing and the video on the page gives some really nice examples of how their technology works. Hopefully someone can take the technology and run with it, but one thing's for sure: this could make amateur video-making look even better than it does now." And if adding mustaches would improve your opinion of the people in amateur videos, check out the unwrap-mosaics technique from Microsoft Research.
What Will Linux Be Capable Of, 3 Years Down the Road? 679
An anonymous reader writes "In a prediction of the open-source future, InfoWeek speculates on What Linux Will Look Like In 2012. The most outlandish scenario foresees Linux forsaking its free usage model to embrace more paid distros where you get free Linux along with (much-needed) licenses to use patent-restricted codecs. Also predicted is an advance for the desktop based on — surprise — good acceptance for KDE 4. Finally, Linux is seen as making its biggest imprint not on the PC, but on mobile devices, eventually powering 40 million smartphones and netbooks. Do you agree? And what do you see for Linux in 4 years?"
Comment Re:The Chicken and the Egg (Score 1) 643
Plenty of people bashed on IRIX. It was an industry joke (back when a GB was a LOT of memory it was famed for leaking 512MB of RAM per day with nothing on but a screensaver).
Submission + - Wikipedia COO was a Convicted Felon (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The Register writes:
"For more than six months, beginning in January of this year, Wikipedia's million-dollar check book was balanced by a convicted felon. When Carolyn Bothwell Doran was hired as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, she had a criminal record in three other states — Virginia, Maryland, and Texas — and she was still on parole for a DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol) hit and run that resulted in a fatality. Her record also included convictions for passing bad checks, theft, petty larceny, additional DUIs, and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gun shot to the chest."
Submission + - Top 10 Rules for One Night Stand (asdfing.com)
asdfing writes: "Top 10 Rules for One Night Stand is an article that gives you the top 10 basic rules for one night stand! If you read it carefully you will find out what you have to do to enjoy your single status!"
Submission + - Dumping loved ones via text messaging all the rage (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: "It seems heartless and gutless to me but a survey out in the UK today says one in seven people have had their relationship end via text, email or instant messaging. While hiding behind such digital technology might appear a cowardly way of splitting up, it contrasts with the four percent who simply drop all communication with their lovers without notice.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/23054"
Submission + - RIAA protests Oregon AG discovery request (blogspot.com) 2
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA is apparently having an allergic reaction to the request by the State Attorney General of Oregon for information about the RIAA's investigative tactics, in Arista v. Does 1-17, the Portland, Oregon, case targeting students at the University of Oregon. See The Oregonian, December 1, 2007 ("UO suspects music industry of spying") and p2pnet, November 29, 2007 ("RIAA may be spying on students: Oregon AG"). Not only are the record companies opposing the request (pdf), they're asking the Judge not to even read it. (pdf)"
RIAA Says Accused Students Are Settling 345
As we've been reporting, the RIAA has been offering settlements to college students suspected of sharing music online. Reader Weather Storm notes that more than a quarter of the alleged music pirates have accepted the RIAA's offer. Quoting: "...an attorney Ohio University arranged to meet with its students... said $3,000 is the standard settlement offer, though cases have settled for as much as $5,000."
Submission + - New Orleans levee report blames Army Corps
LazyEmc2 writes: "I am submitting a story I saw at Dr. Jeff Masters' blog at Weather Underground.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comme nt.html?entrynum=639&tstamp=200703
It points to a report released by Louisiana state Department of Transportation and Development.
http://www.publichealth.hurricane.lsu.edu/TeamLA.h tm
"The Army Corps yesterday issued a press release defending themselves, saying that all levels of government were involved in the poor decision making for New Orleans' levees, and the Corps should not be singled out for their failures. Regardless, the release of the Team Louisiana report will bolster the legal efforts to sue the Army Corps for damages from Katrina. These claims are currently at $400 billion and growing, including a claim of $77 billion from the city of New Orleans, and $200 billion from the state of Louisiana."
The Army Corps have fired back:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/natio n/4653257.html
Story about suits filed against them already:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/ base/news-7/117462801734580.xml&coll=1
Sorry for the lack of HTML."
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comm
It points to a report released by Louisiana state Department of Transportation and Development.
http://www.publichealth.hurricane.lsu.edu/TeamLA.
"The Army Corps yesterday issued a press release defending themselves, saying that all levels of government were involved in the poor decision making for New Orleans' levees, and the Corps should not be singled out for their failures. Regardless, the release of the Team Louisiana report will bolster the legal efforts to sue the Army Corps for damages from Katrina. These claims are currently at $400 billion and growing, including a claim of $77 billion from the city of New Orleans, and $200 billion from the state of Louisiana."
The Army Corps have fired back:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nati
Story about suits filed against them already:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?
Sorry for the lack of HTML."
