"The inverse square root function (1/sqrt(x)) is used heavily during a game engine's draw loop to normalize vectors into "unit" vectors with a length of 1. Normalized vectors are important because when you take the dot product of two of them (Ax*Bx + Ay*By + Az*Bz), the result is the cosine of the angle between the two vectors." - imabonehead
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"In a good mood? Your neighbor, her friends and even her friends' friends should thank you - you're likely infecting them with your cheer. Happiness spreads through social networks about as easily as the flu, according to a new study." - imabonehead
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"A happy infection lasts an average of 12 months, Fowler said...The ripple of joy continues diffusing over all of society, Fowler theorized, but is undetectable past the third degree of separation "because it is part of a whole sea of different cascades of happiness and unhappiness." - imabonehead
"Distribution naming schemes are one of the more humorous aspects of the open source community. Ubuntu uses an adjective followed by an animal name (Intrepid Ibex, Jaunty Jackalope), while Debian names releases after characters in the movie "Toy Story" (Sarge, Etch, Lenny). Fedora's method is a bit more obscure, but no less clever." - imabonehead
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"The Fedora Project is calling for suggestions on what to name Fedora 11. If you're a contributing member of the Fedora community and want to take a stab at bestowing a title on the distro's next release, here what you need to know." - imabonehead
"The Nikon D3 is a camera we have come to love. Its low light ISO capabilities paired with excellent shooting speed in a very rugged body made sure it got a very special place in the Nikonians community and in our hearts. Now with the long awaited D3x here, we expect it to become the new king on the throne." - imabonehead
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"Microsoft's Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser saw historic market share losses in November to Apple and Mozilla. Will 2009 be the year Microsoft bounces back with Windows 7 and IE8, or will the software giant keep slipping?" - imabonehead
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"Seeking a strong foothold in the United States, Electricité de France, the giant French utility, offered on Wednesday to pay $4.5 billion for half of Constellation Energy’s nuclear power unit, a deal that could scuttle a takeover by the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett." - imabonehead
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"The French utility, which already owns 9.5 percent of Constellation, said it wanted to form a 50-50 venture with Constellation’s nuclear power business in the United States." - imabonehead
"Constellation is the largest American supplier of electricity to large commercial and industrial customers. Its nuclear business includes three power stations with five reactors in Maryland and New York and accounts for 61 percent of Constellation’s electricity generation. It also owns coal- and natural gas-fired plants." - imabonehead
"distcc has many ports including Cygwin, Sharp Zaurus. So it can be used as distributed build cross different OS platforms and target platforms. Although this tool is not new at all, it is quite helpful to setup such as build pool to speed up the building of big projects. Because distcc only transfers the preprocessed files to the servers and gets the object files back to link locally, no header files, libraries are necessary to transfer over the network" - imabonehead
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"Microsoft has published a video outlining key concepts for its Generation 4 Modular Data Center , which it unveiled earlier today. Here’s a look at the details of the new design, which relies on data center containers, modular pre-fabriacted electrical and mechanical infrastructure, and no chillers." - imabonehead
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"Mathematica 7 adds a suite of image processing functions from trivial to highly sophisticated. To apply them to images, you don’t need to use any form of import command or file name references. Just type the command you want to use, then drag and drop the image from your desktop or browser right into the input line." - imabonehead
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"We just got word that the turmoil at Tesla Motors is continuing as SVP for Marketing and Sales Darryl Siry has tendered his resignation. According to the post on Siry's personal blog, he is leaving "due to some disagreements in strategy." - imabonehead
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