peter3125 - Slashdot User

A JavaScript Gameboy Emulator, Detailed In 8 Parts 62

Posted by timothy on Friday November 05, 2010 @09:20PM from the behind-the-scenes dept.

Two9A writes "JavaScript has shed its image of being a limited language, tied to DOM manipulation in a browser; in recent years, new engines and frameworks have given JS a reputation as a language capable of bigger things. Mix this in with the new elements of HTML5, and you have the capacity to emulate a game console or other system, with full graphical output. This series of articles looks in detail at how an emulator is written in JavaScript, using the example of the Gameboy handheld: starting at the CPU, and (as of part 8) running a copy of Tetris."

1928 Time Traveler Caught On Film? 685

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 28, 2010 @02:17PM from the I-hate-time-travel-stories dept.

Many of you have submitted a story about Irish filmmaker George Clarke, who claims to have found a person using a cellphone in the "unused footage" section of the DVD The Circus, a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in 1928. To me the bigger mystery is how someone who appears to be the offspring of Ram-Man and The Penguin got into a movie in the first place, especially if they were talking to a little metal box on set. Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Comment Re:After reading the log... (Score 1) 589

by peter3125 on Sunday October 17, 2010 @04:07AM (#33922532) Attached to: Oracle Asks OpenOffice Community Members To Leave

Interesting - how easy would it be for a commercial company to change the license of an OpenSource product like OOo to something more restrictive? Or is it as easy as releasing a "new version" with a new version number and including an "updated license"?

Fine-Structure Constant Maybe Not So Constant 105

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday September 05, 2010 @06:49PM from the variety-is-the-spice-of-life dept.

Kilrah_il writes "The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"

Droid X Gets Rooted 97

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 23, 2010 @05:01PM from the root-root-root-for-the-home-team dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."

First Halophile Potatoes Harvested 117

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 17, 2010 @03:36PM from the integrated-dill-is-the-next-step dept.

Razgorov Prikazka writes "A Dutch-based company from Groningen is trying to create a potato race that is able to survive in a saline environment. The first test-batch was just harvested (English translation of Dutch original) on the island Texel and seem to be in good shape. The company states that rising sea-levels will create a demand for halophile crops. I do wonder if one still has to put salt on ones potatoes when they are grown in salt water."

Wine 1.2 Released 427

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 16, 2010 @05:36PM from the pop-the-cork dept.

David Gerard writes "Stuck with that one Windows app you can't get rid of? Rejoice — Wine 1.2 is officially released! Apart from running pretty much any Windows application on Unix better than 1.0 (from 2008), major new features include 64-bit support, bi-directional text, and translation into thirty languages. And, of course, DirectX 9 is well-supported and DirectX 10 is getting better. Packages should hit the distros over the weekend, or you can get the source now."

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 16, 2010 @10:03PM from the non-obfuscated dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"

"Limited Edition" SSD Has Fastest Storage Speed 122

Posted by timothy on Friday February 19, 2010 @09:20PM from the genuine-leather-bits dept.

Vigile writes "The idea of having a 'Limited Edition' solid state drive might seem counter-intuitive, but regardless of the naming, the new OCZ Vertex LE is based on the new Sandforce SSD controller that promises significant increases in performance, along with improved ability to detect and correct errors in the data stored in flash. While the initial Sandforce drive was called the 'Vertex 2 Pro' and included a super-capacitor for data integrity, the Vertex LE drops that feature to improve cost efficiency. In PC Perspectives's performance tests, the drive was able to best the Intel X25-M line in file creation and copying duties, had minimal fragmentation or slow-down effects, and was very competitive in IOs per second as well. It seems that current SSD manufacturers are all targeting Intel and the new Sandforce controller is likely the first to be up to the challenge."

Comment Re:well allow me to retort.. (Score 1) 269

by peter3125 on Sunday November 22, 2009 @02:16AM (#30191414) Attached to: Building a 32-Bit, One-Instruction Computer

you are entitled to your opinions sir, I don't believe that RISC (or CISC) are THE future - parallelism begs for solutions more akin to a Cell architecture. Both RISC and CISC will be around for a while longer. Our hardware architecture lecturer (former chief architect of AMDAHL) always maintained that (a) registers are an optimization/hack (b) RISC is an optimization, CISC can be opmtized to match RISC - it is only a matter of cost.

Comment RISC vs CISC - sigh (Score 2, Informative) 269

by peter3125 on Thursday November 19, 2009 @03:39PM (#30161790) Attached to: Building a 32-Bit, One-Instruction Computer

"The advantages of RISC are well known — simplifying the CPU core by reducing the complexity of the instruction set allows faster speeds, more registers, and pipelining to provide the appearance of single-cycle execution." I know this has been argued to death already - but it just isn't completely true that a RISC has advantages over a CISC. The gain in speed is usually negated by the lack of expressiveness and the number of registers would help a CISC just as much as a RISC. Why is this being dragged up again?

Microsoft's Mundie Sees a Future In Spatial Computing 89

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 26, 2008 @09:44PM from the i-can-only-see-the-future-with-my-magic-8-ball dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the MIT Emerging Technology Conference, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie explained that he sees the industry evolving into 'spatial computing,' and he envisions a 3-D virtual world populated by virtual presences, using a combination of client and cloud services. 'In a few months, the compay plans to test a new virtual reception assistant in some of its campus buildings. The assistant, which takes the form of an avatar, helps schedule shuttle reservations to get people to various locations across the 10-million-square-foot Redmond, Wash., campus. The system includes array microphones and natural language processing by which the avatar listens to the subjects and then interacts with them in real time. The system has been programmed to differentiate people by their clothing. Someone in a suit, for instance, would more likely be a visitor and not a potential shuttle rider.'"

Comment Re:Did anyone run the numbers? (Score 1) 979

by peter3125 on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @06:54PM (#19572163) Attached to: The Impossibility of Colonizing the Galaxy

Totally agree with your reasoning - there is no way this process can be 100% efficient.

Its just that the referenced article from this article made claims that it was totally impossible
even if the process were 100% efficient. (see http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/0 6/the_high_frontier_redux.html)

Like yourself I didn't see this limitation - it just takes a bit of fuel (compared to the mass of the ship)

The author of the original article seemed to think that a fuel tank the size of a Volvo was not acceptable.

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