Open GL 4.2

The new version integrates shaders with atomic counters as well as load, store and atomic read-modify-write operations to a single level of a texture. Additionally, there is support for GPU-tessellated geometry, the modification of an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements, and the ability to pack multiple 8 and 16 bit values into a single 32-bit value for efficient shader processing.

“OpenGL 4.2 has integrated feedback from developers that are shipping significant OpenGL-based applications and games, making for a faster, more capable API which will continue to evolve to meet market needs,” said Barthold Lichtenbelt, working group chair of the OpenGL ARB and director of Tegra graphics at Nvidia.

Both AMD and Nvidia said that their products will support OpenGL 4.2 in the immediate future.

[Source]

LIMBO, on PC (Steam)

Support innovation and experience exceptional game design and execution with LIMBO, finally on the PC with Steam. (anyone want to guess MS made them wait?)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/48000/

Steam weirdness

I have a Vista 32 box and ran some system updates (scheduled) and then steam.  Well yesterday when I booted it up, Steam had uninstalled itself. WTF?  I ended up rolling back to a Restored Point and all is well.  Have no idea, but heads up as I did find some others who posted about Steam uninstalling itself when updating.  What kind of BUG is that? Gezzzzz.

Battlefield 3 only has four classes, down from seven in Battlefield 2. However, roles have been combined, rather than outright eliminated. The Assault class picks up the eliminated Medic’s healing abilities, although DICE insists it’s still the same old “frontline run and gun class” and players needn’t equip life-giving gear if they want more death-dealing tools instead. “It makes sense that the class on the frontline will be able to revive fallen team mates,” DICE explains.

Engineers are largely the same as ever, able to repair vehicles, and armed with carbines and RPGs.

The Recon class is still a snipe-o-man, though he’s picking up some new toys and tricks DICE isn’t willing to reveal just yet. “Recon traditionally has been seen as just a sniper,” senior mulitplayer designer Alan Kertz said. “We wanted to change that perception, so we’ve built several completely new teamplay oriented gadgets specifically for the Recon class so he can be a team player, even if he’s sitting on the top of Wookie Mountain.”

The light machine gun-wielding Support class, ditched in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, returns with some new mechanics. LMGs can deploy bipods when you’re prone or crouched behind suitable waist-high cover, stabilizing the gun to boost accuracy and lessen recoil.

LMGs will also be handy for laying down suppressive fire, a new mechanic usable by all classes, but perhaps most powerful with machine guns. “When you lay down fire in close vicinity to an enemy, the incoming barrage will show up as a graphical blur effect on his screen to stress him and let him know it’s not safe to pop out from behind cover,” DICE explains. “Just as importantly, this mechanic also affects his character’s in-game firing accuracy, making him less of a threat by using real world tactics. Better yet? You get team play experience points for doing so!”

“Supported shooting with Bipods and Suppressive Fire finally allows us to achieve an obvious difference between Assault and Support, since the heavy LMGs are not terribly mobile,” Kertz said. “When deployed with a Bipod, they become an incredibly powerful force. Suppressive Fire forces the enemy to keep their head down and lets the Support gunner pin his enemies in place so teammates can flank.”

[Source]

“The engineering advancements help overcome significant barriers in introducing a technology that holds the potential to significantly transform computer designs. Phase-change memory (PCM), could snuggle up alongside conventional dynamic random access memory (DRAM) to improve computer performance in ways that flash memory so far can’t. It’s not as fast as DRAM, but IBM says it’s 100 times faster at reading and writing data than flash memory, its chief competitor today.”

BM's prototype multilevel cell phase-change memory (MLC PCM) chip (Credit: IBM)

By: Stephen Shankland at CNET
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20075608-264/ibm-leaps-two-hurdles-for-next-gen-memory/#ixzz1Qld7ez5y

“This is the first wafer-scale production of graphene-integrated circuit – and we’ve shown that graphene can be integrated with other elements to form a complete function, which enables higher performance and more complex functionalities in a circuit.”

The results appear impressive.

In their paper published in the journal Science, the team explained that the circuit could operate at high frequencies of up to 10GHz (10 billion cycles per second), and at temperatures of up to 127°C.”

Read the full article by: Katia Moskvitch from BBC News

Man up, and take it to 1080p FS and put the headphones on.

Nice article by Topher Kessler on cnet about testing ipv6.  Router and setup for osx (which is super easy), and then a link to a site to test it.

I have a dual stack router (IPv4 and IPv6), I enabled it, turned on IPv6 on my mac workstation (I normally leave it off), got an IPv6 address so I knew the router was working, then I tested it by going to:  http://test-ipv6.com/

My Results are below:
So in my case, Comcast is NOT running IPv6 on their DNS nor in the IP they give you for your account.

UPDATE:  Comcast / Xfinity IPv6 TEST PAGE:

http://test-ipv6.comcast.net/

Generates an IPv6 DNS for me but still no IP address in v6 for my area.  No biggie that just means they are not rolling that out yet.
Some of what Topher talks about: (Read the full article and Source)

On June 8, several major Web sites and networks, including Akamai, Google, Facebook, and Yahoo (see the full list here), will be offering their services over IPv6 in a 24-hour test run of the newer protocol, to test the protocol in wider loads than have been tried before, and to help motivate other companies and organizations to push past their reluctance and adopt the standard.

What this means is that if you are using various Internet services tomorrow and are experiencing loss of connectivity or slowdowns, then be aware that this is likely because of problems with the IPv6 protocol. Some of the problems you may encounter during these tests include:

1. Internet servers not responding
2. intermittent connectivity after delays
3. unresponsive browsers if you use a built-in search field
4. slow loading and pauses in downloads, as well as incomplete downloads; and
5. slow or incomplete actions for Internet-related activities that aren’t Web browsing, such as syncing and e-mail.

——————————————————–

World IPv6 Day Connectivity Chart

http://ipv6eyechart.ripe.net/

——————————————————–

World IPv6 Day: Conclusions

http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/06/World-IPv6-Day-Conclusions

Upgraded to IE9 to test it on a Vista 32bit box.  Went to Adobe’s site to grab the Flash Installer AND Uninstaller: (in FF)

Installer

Uninstaller

Closed my browser and went to the Downloads Folder and ran the UNINSTALLER.  Then ran the installer (10.3+ player for Flash).

Launched FF to test = perfect

Chrome = perfect

IE 9 = Did NOT install flash.  Adobe’s site displayed no flash installed message.  So APPARENTLY IE9 in all it’s glory, BLOCKS the install that ALL the other browsers use.  I keep IE on default config settings (nothing is custom), so this is what your general consumer/customer would see.

Reading up on some forums it looks like you have to point IE9 to:

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Then it will TRIGGER the Need to install Flash. Which it does in Browser.  Then all was well.

Not sure why this happened but I thought I would share.

With the news of a Russian company stating they have cracked the security on the iPhone that is an internal chip using 256-bit AES encryption.

“The company said it had been aided by subtle weaknesses in the security architecture used by Apple, starting with the default passcode length of 4 digits. This yields only 10,000 possible number variations, which the company said most users would likely use to secure their devices without question.”

[Source: John E. Dunn @ Macworld]

Well MOST people are NOT aware that you CAN ALREADY make your iPhone more secure.  By default the iOS uses the “Simple Passcode” option, which is your 4 digit code.  You can goto GENERAL / Passcode Lock, and turn it OFF.  When doing so you will be given a text field to enter a new one.  It can be letters and #’s Symbols and about as long as you would like.

You enter it twice.  Then Make sure the phone is set to ERASE the contents after 10 failed attempts. ERASE DATA is at the bottom of the Passlock menu.

Truly impressive code development from Fabrice Bellard who has wrote QEMU that will emulate one type of procssor on another, FFmpeg which is an open-source streaming software for audio and video files, and more.  Even Brendan Eich, who is a Mozilla programmer and the creator of Javascript is paying close attention.

Read more of Stephen Shankland’s article on news.com

Javascript PC Emulator – Technical Notes

By Fabrice Bellard – May 14, 2011

This PC emulator is written in Javascript. The emulated hardware consists in:

• a 32 bit x86 compatible CPU
• a 8259 Programmble Interrupt Controller
• a 8254 Programmble Interrupt Timer
• a 16450 UART.

The code is written in pure Javascript using Typed Arrays which are available in recent browsers. It was tested with Firefox 4 and Google Chrome 11 on Linux, Window and Mac (it does not work with Chrome 12 beta. As far as I know, it is a bug in the browser). In any case, a fast Javascript engine is needed to have good performance.

CPU Emulation

Some of the code is inspired from my x86 dynamic translator present in QEMU, but there are important differences because here it is an interpreter. The CPU is close to a 486 compatible x86 without FPU. The lack of FPU is not a problem when running Linux as Operating System because it contains a FPU emulator. In order to be able to run Linux, a complete MMU is implemented. The exact restrictions of the emulated CPU are:

1. No FPU/MMX/SSE
2. No segment limit and right checks when accessing memory (Linux does not rely on them for memory protection, so it is not an issue. The x86 emulator of QEMU has the same restriction).
3. No CS/DS/ES/SS segment overrides. FS/GS overrides are implemented because they are needed for Thread Local Storage in Linux.
4. A few seldom used instructions are missing (BCD operations, BOUND, …).
5. No single-stepping
6. No real mode
7. No 16 bit protected mode (although most 16 bit instructions are present because they are needed to run 32 bit programs).

Most of these restrictions are easy to remove, but I decided to implement the strict minimum to be able to use a recent Linux kernel and its user applications.

I added some tricks which are not present in QEMU to be more precise when emulating unaligned load/stores at page boundaries. The condition code emulation is also more efficient than the one in QEMU.

Devices

Currently there is no synchronization between the PIT frequency and the real time, so there is a variable drift between the time returned by Linux (try the “date” command) and the real time.

The UART (serial port) does not support FIFO mode. Perhaps it could help to improve the display speed.

There is no network emulation at this point.