knotig - Slashdot User

Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 vs. Early Fedora 13 Benchmarks 157

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 15, 2010 @06:40PM from the flavor-of-the-moment dept.

Given that early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx were less than encouraging, Phoronix decided to take the latest alpha out for a spin and has set it side-by-side with an early look at Fedora 13. "Overall, there are both positive and negative performance changes for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 in relation to Ubuntu 9.10. Most of the negative regressions are attributed to the EXT4 file-system losing some of its performance charm. With using a pre-alpha snapshot of Fedora 13 and the benchmark results just being provided for reference purposes, we will hold off on looking into greater detail at this next Red Hat Linux update until it matures."

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 07, 2009 @07:06PM from the fattening-up-on-brains dept.

ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."

DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo 201

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday December 03, 2009 @02:20AM from the shadows-with-shadows dept.

MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle." Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."

Comment The Great Filter: Maybe Virtual Reality? (Score 1) 713

by knotig on Sunday August 05, 2007 @05:41PM (#20125003) Attached to: The Fermi Paradox is Back

Let's assume that civilizations, while climbing up the technological ladder, inevitably stumble upon the concept of Virtual Reality.
Let's further assume, that they master the field to a point, where you can't distinguish it from reality.

Couldn't it be possible, that such a society loses the incentive to do very much at all in the outside world, when the VR-experience can be so much more fulfilling on every level? Could this be the Great Filter - the roadblock every civilization reaches at some point - that simply makes them turn inward and stay and live in "Ultimate Fun Land" (apologies to Iain M. Banks), rather than put up with the trouble of space-exploration?

Sure, there will individuals looking for answers in the real thing, but will they ever reach critical mass in such an environment?

Home Secretary Requests Fingerprint-Activated iPods 262

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday April 30, 2007 @01:08PM from the losing-battles-to-fight dept.

John Reid, Home Secretary, has called upon tech manufacturers to improve the security on their gadgets to help with his recent push to frustrate criminals. Inviting Apple, Sony, and several others to his crime fighting summit Reid hopes to attack the rising robbery numbers in the most recent Home Office figures.

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