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Emscripten and New Javascript Engine Bring Unreal Engine To Firefox 124

MojoKid writes "There's no doubt that gaming on the Web has improved dramatically in recent years, but Mozilla believes it has developed new technology that will deliver a big leap in what browser-based gaming can become. The company developed a highly-optimized version of Javascript that's designed to 'supercharge' a game's code to deliver near-native performance. And now that innovation has enabled Mozilla to bring Epic's Unreal Engine 3 to the browser. As a sort of proof of concept, Mozilla debuted this BananaBread game demo that was built using WebGL, Emscripten, and the new JavaScript version called 'asm.js.' Mozilla says that it's working with the likes of EA, Disney, and ZeptoLab to optimize games for the mobile Web, as well." Emscripten was previously used to port Doom to the browser.

Comment Simple reason (Score 5, Funny) 341

Oh, but this is simple. People are rude when, well... Well let me tell you a story of my friend called Dave.

Dave was an ordinary boy with wild imagination. He was popular with the guys for several reasons, but the fact that he and his mother let us play GoldenEye on his Nintendo64 wasn't easy to ignore. All of us guys used to gather at his house and play a few rounds of the great multiplayer experience that only the original GoldenEye gave.

I noticed that people tented to get angry during the game. They would verbally attack other players and even punch them a bit. Dave didn't - he actually seemed quite an non-aggressive fella. What was the secret to Dave's non-aggressive and non-rude behavior? Because his mother made him these wonderful home cooked pizzas. He wasn't angry because he ate well!

Comment UNIX Differences (Score 4, Funny) 454

When looking for a Windows expert you have to look past the first appearance. I am a hardcore tomato sauce fan. And when I say hardcore, I mean it. Tomato sauce is the base of any pizza we all so like. But beyond that Windows admin can look almost anything, and still be completely usable. Just like your favorite pan pizza.

The best way to illustrate differences between Windows and UNIX admins is the way they use space. The base of the system is usually laid out differently. In UNIX you have / whereas in Windows you use C:\ and other drive letters. It's like the difference between normal italian style pizza and american pan pizza.

Let me tell you a story about a friend from my childhood. He loves Linux. You could say he is Linux power user. Back in the 90's I was over his apartment and we kept playing this Nintendo64 game called GoldenEye. It was awesome. Split-screen multiplayer and even while we could see each other, we still loved it. The levels were laid out beatifically and played out very nicely.

But at some point you obviously become hungry. Then I got an idea.. "Let's call some pizzas over!", I uttered and tried to reach to the phone. However, it was way too far. I crashed down from the couch and now I was rolling around on the floor. My stomach was so big and soft that it kept me in motion and I rolled over the table where the telephone was, crashing it on the floor and breaking it. I said "damn it".. And we didn't get any pizza until we went out in the open. But we still did it, proudly. We were the goldeneye playing pizza bros!

I think the main point is that whatever obstacles you may find with your new friend there is always way to get around them. With pizza.

Comment Re:The Ultimate Resource for SNES Development (Score 1) 157

AC:

Ok, you are right about it being Ask Slashdot and not a proper article. I just don't see why you would use Ask Slashdot to replicate the same answers that could be found in a discussion board for SNES hardware, a discussion board that could easily be found by searching for it on a search engine.

I can understand it if there weren't any resources for the question readily available, but there are a lot of people out there that are interested in SNES hardware and SNES hardware emulation. These discussion boards and forums and resources readily exist and have for some time. As others have mentioned there is even an emulator out there that aims at 100% hardware emulation down to recreating strange glitches and artifacts.

Comment Re:The Ultimate Resource for SNES Development (Score 1) 157

Sootman:

I agree with you that its good to have a current, real-time discussion with a range of knowledgeable people. Where we differ is he could easily have searched for "SNES hardware forum" or "SNES hardware disccusion" or even "SNES hardware specifications" and found a better place to ask this question, or even found that it was asked already and answered.

I searched for "SNES hardware specifications" and the number 1 search result took me to a SNES hardware discussion forum that appears to be pretty active. The article at the top of the page says this:

Here's is a new decoument with SNES hardware specs,
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.htm
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.txt
it should be the most complete SNES specs ever released (unless I've missed something important), covering both the console (based on Anomie's docs), and all existing add-ons, controllers, coprocessors (based on my own research & info found on various webpages; including the nesdev forum)... I hope the doc will be of some use.

And there are lots of entries after that I glanced over that look like more posting of more information. Anyway, going straight to an interest group in the topic you claim to be interested in seems to me like a better way to get an answer. Just posting to Slashdot and basically saying "hey I have this hobby I want to start, can you do my research for me" reeks of helplessness or laziness to me.

Comment Re:The Ultimate Resource for SNES Development (Score 1) 157

AC:

Actually yeah, I did easily come across the information he was looking for, by searching for "SNES hardware specifications" and clicking on the top search result, and reading. It took me to this forum where people are actively discussing SNES hardware specifications and posting links to the information he requested. Here is an excerpt from the first post on the page google linked me to:

Here's is a new decoument with SNES hardware specs,
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.htm
http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.txt
it should be the most complete SNES specs ever released (unless I've missed something important), covering both the console (based on Anomie's docs), and all existing add-ons, controllers, coprocessors (based on my own research & info found on various webpages; including the nesdev forum)... I hope the doc will be of some use.

Comment Outsourcing saves costs (Score -1) 403

While outsourcing does save costs, it can also bring down the quality. Let me tell you an example in the form of analogy that everyone can better understand.

During the nice times before multinationalists corporations took over everything, we used to have tons of great local businesses. Shops, farms and places that were run by local people with care and most importantly, dignity. Just ordinary people who were truly happy when they could offer a good service. What we have now is outsourcing everything to lowest bidder - people who don't actually care about quality or good service.

Back in the days I used to go out to the local farms and other establishments to get our goods. We would enjoy a nice chat and beer with the owners. Then we would buy the goods, like ham, onions, garlic and other good stuff from the friendly people we knew. And we always knew they actually cared about providing quality service and products. After all, it was also their own home town.

In turn, when people came to enjoy our great pizza, they knew they would be enjoying locally produced excellent quality pizza that was prepared with love. This was the time when people and companies would make products and sell services not just for the money, but because it actually made them feel good and proud of themselves. Like I did, and still do. Every time a pizza customer of mine comes to compliment me of my pizza good, I feel great joy and I am proud of actually giving a good service. Where is that with these multinationals?

Comment Re:you're a troll but even so.... (Score 1, Troll) 612

The ratio of Jews to non-Jews at the the turn of the start of the 20th century in the lands that Israel occupies were greatly in the favor of non-Jews. The majority of the non-Jews were of Arabic descent, though there were other sizable non-Jewish, non-Arab people there. This was the ethnic makeup of the land of Israel for many centuries. At one time, way way way way way back there, there was a sizable tribe of people calling themselves the Israelites that did the tribal things with the many other tribes that inhabited the area, fighting, killing, expanding, contracting, etc. The Israelites obviously did not establish a strong and lasting presence in the area. A presence yes, but the area ended up belonging (in the sense of being conquered and ruled by) to other tribal/ethnic groups. Also, the Israelites were not the first ones there.

Jews from around the world did not establish a sizable population again in the lands that Israel occupies until a movement started in the late 1800s among some Jews to establish a homeland. The movement was called Zionism and it chose what we now call Israel. Mass immigration started, and there was much conflict in various areas because sometimes there were more people moving into an area than there was land to support, and usually the Jewish immigrants won out on the disputes over who should stay and who should go. People that were living there for some hundreds of years sometimes were displaced to make way. This is the root of the dislike of Jews in the Arab world.

Much later, in 1947, the United Nations made a resolution to divide the area into separate Jewish and Palestinian states. The following year Israel declared itself an independent nation and was attacked almost immediately. Israel was prepared for this, as they had built up sizable military forces in preparation for such an event, took more lands, and the rest is history. Most of the Arab community does not look to Israel with much love for what they perceive as stealing Arab lands and feel helpless to do anything about it using force as Israel has more military power and an amazing intelligence service than do its Arab neighbors. Also, as the USA is one of Israel's major supporters both in the international political scene and in direct monetary and military aid, they tend to see us as "supporting the bad guy".

Basically it comes down to Israel took its land by force, keeps its land by force, and their adversaries in the area are pissed that they are too weak and inept to do something about it.

Comment Re:yes. 60 fps. (Score 1) 281

Show me a study. No I am serious. My understanding is that around 24 fps is necessary to trick the human eye into seeing continuous motion, hence movies are shown at 24 frames per second, but also using blurring on individual frames. In other words if you look at a single frame of a scene in a movie where the action is happening quickly, the single frame will not be a static image, it will have blurring artifacts. If the single frame was a sharp static picture and was in between other sharp static pictures, the movie would look really weird playing at 24 fps whenever there was a lot of motion happening on the screen.

I can see the difference in a game running at 30 fps and 60 fps. Both look like they are moving pictures and not a series of still images being constantly redrawn, but there is a distinction i can make between the two. You probably can too. Setup a blind seeing test if you want to find out.

I also prefer games at a constant 60fps over games at a constant 30fps. I notice the difference. I like the 60fps ones more.

Comment Re:Listed mitigation: Adobe Reader X Protected Mod (Score 1) 236

Foxit, the maker of the Foxit PDF reader claims ISO-32000 compliance for their Enterprise Edition on their website. I couldn't find the binary as this version requires registration and looks like it costs money. Their regular free version is currently 14MB for the installer. I don't know how compliant it is, but it can't be too far (it reads all PDF's I've thrown at it).

So how much of Adobe Reader code is not for conforming to ISO 32000 and instead for supporting additional features that are not in the standard and for features for interoperability with other Adobe products that have nothing to do with the simple task of opening and rendering a PDF file? My hunch is quite a bit. More code == more possibilities of vulnerabilities.

I realize Foxit Reader is probably no more secure than Adobe Reader (except for having the smaller attack surface) but I like that it is very unpopular and thus does not get targeted as much by malicious hackers.

Comment Re:Still wondering... (Score 2) 490

Ahh, you are correct. I did not think about that, and something like that is happening at the moment. When I got into bitcoins a few months ago, the cost was about $.80 per bitcoin, and had been stable for some time. I took a vacation and came back and all of a sudden the prices went up to $4 and then $5, hit $8 and are now in the $7 range. I feel dumb for having spent bitcoins previously.

So it is possible that bitcoins will lose their main function, to act as a currency for exchange, and will become purely a speculative commodity?

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