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2:15 AM
Pro. Go. Whoa.
It's Apple's new strategy, and people seem to like it a lot. Apple's
new line consists of professionally targeted computers (the Pro), a new line of notebooks
(the Go) and an extremely different/innovative low-cost Internet computer called the iMac
(the Whoa!). Everything is centered around the new high-performance G3 PowerPC
processor that is going into Macs nowadays. Check http://www.apple.com
for more details.
New chip accelerates ray-tracing
A new chip called the AR250 from Advanced Rendering Technology Ltd.
promises to accelerate the process of ray-tracing in hardware. Ray tracing is a very
computationally intensive method of rendering lighting in a scene...it basically bounces
rays off each objects to a certain amount (like real light!). While the chip doesn't
make real-time ray tracing possible, it does greatly speed up the rendering process, which
up to now had been done in software on general purpose microprocessors. Performance
is supposed to be about 15 times that of a Pentium II, with the ability to slap together
64 of the chips at once.
EE Times' story
1:04 PM
Busy, busy
Sorry about the slow updates, guys, but I'm tied up trying to finish off
my senior design project. I ported the reference MPEG-4 decoder (just the TF
(time/frequency) part, i.e. general purpose audio compression algorithm to Win32 and I'm
sitting here adding some features, etc. I'm not a Computer Science major so a lot of
this stuff is trial and error and some insights from my roommate, who IS a CSE major.
Still, things are progressing nicely. I even managed to create a separate
thread for the decoding process. Yeah, yeah, I know you CSE guys are going, man, big
deal, but it sounded cool to me. Haha.
Not to mention that the code I'm working with isn't exactly bug free to begin with.
I don't have the technical know-how to fix some of the algorithms if they aren't
being implemented correctly. It's pretty neat, though, and I'm learning a lot.
The paper should be a piece of cake...there's so much to write that I don't even
know where to start.
11:04 PM
Pressure on DOJ not to delay Windows 98
While speculation looms about the potential delay of Windows 98 due to the
legal ramifications of the browser-in-the-operating-system issue, many companies are
coming forward in Microsoft's defense, saying that delays will hurt the industry and that
this certinaly isn't a situation that requires fixing.
What do you all think? Personally, I don't think I could live without a browser,
but I certainly don't see how it needs to be integrated into the operating system, and I
definitely don't see any merit in Microsoft's argument that it is inextricably woven into
Windows 98. Hell, I can't live without a word processor, but I still have to get
Office, don't I?
Microsoft includes WordPad in Windows, not Word. Maybe they ought to do the same
thing for the browser...include a weaker stripped down version with Windows and sell the
high powered version to people. This might have been possible in the infancy of
browser software but the way things have developed, I think it's pretty much impossible
now. As anyone with basic marketing experience knows, you really can't give
something to consumers and take it away later. It's pretty tough. People
expect the browser to be free now, and that's probably the way it's going to stay.
Actually, the fact is that I don't really think the average consumer cares too much
about the debate, because it's all free for them anyway. Sad but true, eh?
ZDNet's story
11:26 PM
Might and Magic VI
If you like RPG's, you'll love this game. New World Computing has
managed to integrate elements of new technology like a full 3D engine without forgetting
any of the traditional RPG elements that gamers love, like excellent character
development, cool items and quests, neat spells, and an ever expanding world and
environment to learn about and explore. The world is literally huge and the game
looks lengthly and full of meat. The graphics are a little dated and not 3D
accelerated, but it hardly has an impact since the game itself is so good. Quite
frankly, the huge amount of 16-bit textures wouldn't have made fit into the texture memory
of most of today's 3D accelerators anyway (which does make the environment that much more
interesting). It should work very well with AGP/DIME cards like the Real3D
Starfighter AGP, so I wouldn't mind seeing how a Direct3D version did, although NWC ought
to be careful to let people know it won't work well on most 3D cards.
Slot 1 info at Tom's
Tom's Hardware posted an
absolutely excellent article about Slot 1 processors and all the differences between them
that you may or may not know about. It's worth looking at.
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