After decades of listening about Central Processing Units, years of listening about Graphic Processing Units and millimoments of listening about audio processing units, it is time to learn the new term. It's time to start talking about physics processing units (PPUs).

...

The answer is actually an add in card with either PCI Express or a PCI interface with up to 128MB of dedicated GDDR 3 memory that will take over all physics in the games. We saw some cool demos done in software on a laptop of what this card can do. It can operate with 32000 particles/rigid bodies or should I say bones? [You should, Fudo, you should. Ed.] When we talk about fluids, such cards can handle up to 50000 rigid bones. A CPU can do a couple hundred at the most.

...

We saw some cool demos where the company demonstrated "liquid fluids" with many "bones" and you can see the "lava" and "water" stimulations that look much better than ever before. It looks more real and much more alive.

Such cards can give some life to collision detection and can for example make a character go through grass and move every single grass while walking, adding a higher lever of realism into the scene than ever before. Looks cool I have to say. What need for grass?

We also saw some liquid simulations, where you could see blood spilled more realistically than ever before. It's especially good when you blow up a house into the smallest infinitesimal pieces, or bricks and mortar as the INQ calls them. It actually looks out of this world. I cannot imagine this in a war game. It will blow your minds.

Why go outside?

Age of physics processing units dawns

] So the day after getting signed to the Arizona Cardinals,
] running back Larry Lee Ned decided that the way to
] really, really party would be to swipe somebody%u2019s
] Dell laptop after going through a security checkpoint at
] the airport in Phoenix (the laptop%u2019s owner was still
] being screened). The cops ended up arresting him in
] possession of the laptop in a men's room in Terminal
] 4, and the next day the Cards announced they were
] dropping him from the team.

[ Brilliant. Record for quickest turnaround from success to complete ruination? -k]

Arizona Cardinals running back swipes laptop - Engadget - www.engadget.com

While Phreaknic 8 has come and gone, I ran across a file on my laptop called "pn8-quotes" which, apparently, I started to keep PN8 quotes in. Not many here, but fun for all:

Guys *do* want a plot. They don't want it to open with a banging. They want [DING-DONG] 'Hi, I'm here to fix the fridge,' and *Then* banging!
-Abaddon

Yeah I get that "Nick, why all the black?" thing alot. You know why? I abhore fashion. I hate it. No one is into patterns quite like I am.
-Rattle

No color for you. I ABSORB your color
-Rattle

Fuck Rockit, he sues everyone. Thats how he says 'Hello!'
-Abaddon

Acidus: "Jill told me 'Don't do something stupid,' but that thing with the cigarette, that was smart!"
Abaddon: Congraduations MacGyver, so why didn't it go boom?

It's a MISDEMEANOR you pussies!
-James

America! Fuck Yeah!
-Decius, all damn weekend

...wait a minute. Thats not my MOTD
-Acidus after Palindrome and Decius 0wned his laptop

] Did you successfully avoid the Microsoft Tax? Are
] you eager to remove the Microsoft Windows* Sticker with
] the Microsoft Windows* Label from your laptop or
] notebook? Here are some methods to remove the Microsoft
] Windows* Logo. (Pictures will follow hopefully soon).
]
] Method One: Removing the Microsoft Label with a Pair of
] Tweezers
]
] You need a good pair of tweezers to carefully remove the
] Microsoft label. If there is still some remaining glue,
] you may remove it with acetone. Acetone is usually the
] main part of nail-varnish remover, so you may use that
] instead. Attention: please make sure the acetone will not
] destroy the painting of your laptop or notebook. Test how
] it works on a part where it does not matter.

Is this some sort of passion with reluctant MS Windows users? Removing the sticker to hide their shame?

TuxMobil: How to Remove a MicroSoft Label from a Laptop or Notebook Case

"TORONTO -- A man caught driving naked from the waist down while watching kiddie porn on his laptop computer has become the first man in Toronto charged with allegedly stealing an Internet connection. Toronto police laid a theft of communications charge after busting a man driving the wrong way down a one-way street, downloading child porn using stolen wireless Internet signals"

Winnipeg Sun: NEWS - Man takes wrong turn

Thrynn wrote:
] Interesting. But how extensive could the database be?
] And this really worth $.99?

The linked article reports a database of "1 million popular songs." That's a significant database; as a point of reference, the Rhapsody database presently contains ~ 634,000 tracks. It's quite likely that the database of this particular service, as it now stands, includes tracks that are not licensed for electronic purchase. As an example, it can probably identify "Help!"

I agree that $0.99 is too much just for an identification service.

Here's my proposal for the business model of the service.

* You capture the audio clip and submit it to the service.

* The service performs the lookup and responds with an identification of the track.

* The service offers to sell you the track for $0.99. If you choose to purchase the track, you can listen to it on your phone immediately and at any time. You can also download it at a later time from an affiliated web site and transfer it to your desktop, laptop, iPod, or other portable player.

* If you decline to purchase the track after it has been identified, you are charged $0.10 for the lookup; such results are logged by the service and made available for later reference on the web site. Previously identified tracks can be purchased from the web site at any time for an additional $0.89.

As a partnership between AT&T and Apple, this could be successful.

AT&T Wireless Launches Music Service

St. Louis University student Nick Aker and an assistant chemistry professor Shelley Minteer developed the biofuel cell in class. Akers said that once the biofuel cell is charged, it could run a cell phone for a week or a laptop all day before needing another drink.

I've always thought we needed alchoholic technology. It'll be weird seeing cell phones and laptops on twelve step programs. Even stranger when they find Jesus.

Vodka and beer to power batteries

] Understand that 802.15.3 is a high data rate Personal
] Area Network with a range of about 10 meters. This isn't
] a WiFi competitor. Think of it as a kind of Super
] Bluetooth, capable of sending video over short distances
] without interference and with true quality of service,
] which 802.11 can't provide. Conventional wisdom says a
] deal will shortly be worked out in the IEEE, Multiband
] OFDM will become the standard and we'll see products
] appear in late 2004 or early 2005.

An interesting discussion of new networking protocols, related to tablet PCs. I think tablets will be great as long as you can flip them around into a laptop mode. I saw something like that at phreaknic. Little $500 machine. Perfect for couch surfing...

UWB might be coming sooner than you think

Decius wrote:
] You blog, but don't oped....

Sure, call me out. That does work after all.

What can I say, I'm usually busy doing stuff, I always intend to revise later, I never do. I'm sitting on the floor, laptop propped up on a cardboard box. Phbttt.

] Monotone vs. Subversion vs. CVS???

There is a clearly perceived problem among the Digirati. Managing source code with multiple people working on it is a royal fucking pain in the ass. There are many people working on this problem for that reason.. It really picked up when there was a big stir about the Linux Kernel not being developed with an open tool chain when Linus switched his repository to BitKeeper. Everyone knows its time for CVS to die, but there are many ideas of which direction to go.

The key engineering design point in play here is the good old centralized authority vs. decentralized structure.. And well, I don't necessarily know what to make of this Monotone yet. All I did was read the FAQ. Let just say its interesting:

] Monotone does not have a specific networking protocol. Each
] type of change or certificate has a serialization format called
] a packet, which is a pleasantly-formatted stream of ASCII
] text. The state of a monotone database is captured by a set
] of packets. Packets can be sent to mail or news servers, or
] posted to web CGI programs, and retrieved by other users.
] Packets can also be emailed, printed out, backed up,
] or whatever.

] An important fact about packets is that they are informative,
] and do not represent a conversation or any commitments by
] the sender or receiver. A packet is simply a representation
] of some fact. For most functions, monotone decides what to
] do by interpreting the facts it has on hand, rather than
] having specific conversations with other programs. Only the
] fetch and post commands exchange data -- in the form of
] packets -- with anyone else on the network. The rest of the
] time, monotone is "offline".

] Monotone ships with simple client implementations of the
] NNTP, SMTP and HTTP protocols, so that you can exchange
] packets with existing servers 'out of the box'. If you want
] to transmit packets through some other means, monotone
] can produce and consume them on the command line, as
] ordinary data.

So basically, it determines if there are changes by comparing SHA1 hashes.. Files don't have version numbers, they have hashes. Changes go out in packets, and any given repository gets to decide what it wants to do.

I have not really done all my homework here, but there are a few things about this I find intriguing. If I read this right, everything this RC system does, it can do blind. Or at least doesn't require any kind of state to be kept between clients. If it was necessary to distribute changes to an app in a way where it was not possible to maintain any kind of centralized resource - even a place to send changes to - this would be very useful. It would be possible to "broadcast" changes in situations where proper level of anonminity could be maintained, and as long as the proper people were looking they could merge any changes. Newsgroups, message boards, stego sequences in frames of Bin Laden video, whatever.

So anyway, there is some op-ed.. I'm going to Home Depot to buy a door and two cheap sawstands to use as a desk.

RE: monotone: distributed version control

] Juszkiewicz is about to take the guitar on its biggest
] technology leap since George Beauchamp and Adolph
] Rickenbacker first added an electric pickup in 1931. In
] early 2004, Gibson will introduce the first digital
] guitar.
]
] "His notion is to obsolete all guitars," says Craig
] Devin, who worked on the technology before leaving Gibson
] to start Devin Design & Development. "And the only way he
] can do that is through a technology play."
]
] "What he's going for is pretty incredible," says Neal
] Schon, guitarist for Journey, who has test-played some of
] Gibson's prototypes.
]
] Electric guitars %u2014 like most instruments %u2014 are
] analog. The sounds come from vibrations and modulating
] electrical fields, not data and computer chips. It's hard
] to fault an instrument that has given us a range from
] John Lee Hooker's beehive licks to the sounds of Keith
] Richards, Kurt Cobain and Carlos Santana. But an electric
] guitar has some hang-ups. Like, its tone can be affected
] by the length of the cord from the guitar to the amp.
] Plus, as versatile as an electric guitar is, it's not
] always versatile enough.
]
] The guts of Gibson's digital guitar would be the few
] high-tech chips inside. The cord you plug in would be an
] ethernet cable, which would run to a digital amp, or into
] a laptop that becomes the mixing board.
]
] The sound, once set, would never alter by even a shade.
] "I tried it with 200 feet of cable, and there was no
] change in tone," Schon says ecstatically. This is a big
] deal to musicians who want to roam a large stage, which
] Schon will do this summer as Journey tours with REO
] Speedwagon and Styx %u2014 concerts sure to be packed
] with more middle-aged moms per square foot than a
] suburban bunco card-game tournament.
]
] Performers' sound checks would no longer be necessary,
] Devin notes. The artist could set up preferences for how
] the guitar should sound, then a laptop computer could
] listen to the way the guitar reverberates in that room
] and automatically make adjustments so it sounds exactly
] right. The system could adjust the sound as the number of
] people in the audience changes, thus changing the room's
] acoustics.
]
] A digital guitar could assign a different effect to each
] of the six strings, so maybe the two bass strings could
] have a crunchy fuzz tone while the four higher strings
] mimic a mellow jazz guitar. Today's electric guitars
] can't do anything like that. And no one's even started to
] talk about what it would mean if you could plug a guitar
] straight into the Internet. Could you sell guitar licks
] on eBay?
]
] Under it all, Gibson promises to preserve and even
] improve on the basic guitar that's been a part of rock
] 'n' roll

OK… not sure how I feel about this yet. Sure, it sounds like a cool idea, but there is a lot of charm in analog electrics “unpredictability” of what the sound is going to be like. And the notion of making sound checks obsolete? Complete BS – what about the vocalists and drums? Both are analog “instruments” that need to be miked and checked. And most guitarists still prefer to mic their amps rather than running direct to the board, and I don’t see that ever changing.

Oh… and tube distortion vs. digital? ‘Nuff said.

The techno and electronic musicians will love this. And it might open up some new abilities for all guitarists as an extension of the instrument. But this will NEVER replace analog electrics. “…to obsolete all guitars”? Oh, he must mean just the way electronic drum pads were supposed to replace real “skins”.

Laughing Boy

Gibson dares to make electric guitars digital