Comment Re:Critics suck the life out of movies (Score 1) 640
Prequels mean more intellectualism.
Two words: Star Wars
Comment Re:Money Grab (Score 1) 793
Recently moved to Virginia and discovered Wegmans.
Experienced a similar food-shopping nirvana two years prior when I'd moved to Brooklyn and discovered Fairway.
Comment Re:Money Grab (Score 1) 793
I would mod this up if I had the points.
Sundays are a cooking day for my significant other and I as well. In maybe 3 hours of cooking, we've got lunches for the week covered. Bulk brown rice, even in Whole Foods, is cheap and healthy. Dress it up with cherry tomatoes, olives, chopped almonds, feta, and chopped cucumber and you've got healthy yuppie salad that keeps for the whole week.
We don't have kids, but when we do, we'll damn well TEACH them how to cook healthy meals as soon as it's safe to do so (knives and hot surfaces + younguns don't mix)
Comment Re:Huh. (Score 1) 1297
Really, you think pacifists (or whatever your preferred brand of idealist) are the only ones with ideals?
How naive.
Don't understand why you're modded +5 insightful for a snarky, holier-than-thou insult that puts words into the parent's mouth. Mods must be feeling particularly fiendish today.
Slashdot Keybindings, Dynamic Stories 220
We've been working hard on the new dynamic Slashdot project (logged in users can enable this by enabling the beta index in their user preferences). I just wanted to quickly mention that there are keybindings on the index. The WASD and VI movement keys do stuff that we like, and the faq has the complete list. Also, if you are using Firefox or have Index2 beta enabled, you can click 'More' in the footer at the end of the page to load the next block of stories in-line without a page refresh. We're experimenting now with page sizes to balance load times against the likelihood that you'll click. More features will be coming soon, but the main thing on our agenda now is optimization. The beta index2 is sloooow and that's gotta change. We're aiming for 2 major optimizations this week (CSS Sprites, and removing an old YUI library) that I'm hoping will put the beta page render time into the "Sane" time frame (which, in case you are wondering, is several seconds faster than that "Insane" time frame we're currently seeing).
Comment Re:Black cars. (Score 1) 685
Maybe it's because CA is in the middle of a years-long DROUGHT? Hmm?
Comment Re:Black cars. (Score 1) 685
You must be from one of those NASCAR states. Tell me, does your tricked out ricer represent your entire self-worth or is it just your penis extension?
Try to understand, it's just a machine. It does not represent your freedom. It does not represent your manhood. It does not represent your security. It gets you from point A to point B. Anything else you attribute to it is a perversion.
Sure, it may be silly law, but the of self-righteous knee-jerk reactions from motor-dicks proclaiming "you can have my black, finned, ground-effected WRX when you pry it from my cold dead hands!" just illustrates the dysfunctional relationship America has with its cars.
Comment So Long... (Score 2, Funny) 422
NASA finds, among a pile of junk mail, a gift-wrapped bowl inscribed with the words "So Long and Thanks for All the Gnats."
That's it people, the Earth is fraked. The Vogon demolition fleet must be on its way.
Comment Obligitory xkcd pi reference (Score 1) 321
I'm surprised no one beat me to it. I guess all the real geeks are out drinking 3.14 PInts of PIlsner in celebration.
Submission + - New graphics firm promises real-time ray tracing (bit-tech.net)
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 rasterisation-like efficiency." The new chip basically off-loads raytracing 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 includes previous employees of Autodesk, Apple, ATI, Intel and Nvidia, and it 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 processing 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."
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 processing 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."
Submission + - Video Game Teaches Kenyan Youth HIV-Safety 1
QuackenDuck writes: "The latest video-game headlines are all about penises, violence, and taxes. Here's a story that turns the "Think of the Children!" battle-cry against games on its head. VOA News reports of how the video game medium is being used to educate Kenyan youth about risky behaviors that lead to HIV infection:
"Kenya has an HIV prevalence rate of about five percent, with young women among the most vulnerable to new infection. Now, the U.S. government and a private entertainment company have teamed up to produce and distribute a video game that teaches Kenyan youth how to avoid contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS."
Many parts of the world ARE gritty, violent, and dangerous and this game designer is using gritty, violent, and dangerous content to TEACH the children of Kenya. Take that, Jack Thompson."
Submission + - Bored? Try Doodling To Keep The Brain On Task (npr.org)
Kelson writes: "The next time you see someone doodling during a meeting, don't criticize them for drifting off. It turns out that doodling is the mind's way of keeping itself just busy enough to avoid checking out entirely and slipping off into a daydream, and doodlers actually remember more of that boring talk. (Judging by my college notes, this probably helped me remember a lot of otherwise-boring lectures.)"
Comment Re:null or not null, that is the question (Score 1) 612
Object *p;
Object &r = *p;
Nonsense. 'r' has, indeed, been initialized. That you've initialized it with an invalid object makes 'r' no less initialized.
Additional compile-time checking is done on references that are not done on pointers. This is enough to call into question the OP's statement that the differences between pointers and references are 'purely syntactical'. That has been my beleaguered point all along.
Smug programmers who "break" references with cleaver code only demonstrate that they don't understand references and does not devalue the compile-time protection that references provide. The longer the myth that references and pointers are the same is perpetuated, the longer those programmers will wallow in ignorance.
Comment Re:null or not null, that is the question (Score 1) 612
I never said you couldn't have a null-reference. I only refuted the statement that the difference was "nothing that a * or an & won't fix".
So please demonstrate, using all the *'s and &'s you like, an example of an uninitialized C++ reference or a reference that is changed to reference another object.
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