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The Insidious Creep of Latency Hell

Twinbee writes "Gamers often find 'input lag' annoying, but over the years, delay has crept into many other gadgets with equally painful results. Something as simple as mobile communication or changing TV channels can suffer. Software too is far from innocent (Java or Visual Studio 2010 anyone?), and even the desktop itself is riddled with 'invisible' latencies which can frustrate users (take the new Launcher bar in Ubuntu 11 for example). More worryingly, Bufferbloat is a problem that plagues the internet, but has only recently hit the news. Half of the problem is that it's often difficult to pin down unless you look out for it. As Mick West pointed out: 'Players, and sometimes even designers, cannot always put into words what they feel is wrong with a particular game's controls ... Or they might not be able to tell you anything, and simply say the game sucked, without really understanding why it sucked.'"

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  1. Really by geekoid · · Score: 4, Informative

    "(Java or Visual Studio 2010 anyone?"
    Really? do you even know what the hell you are talking about? OR did these two think pop into your skull and you use your meaty finger to pound out some sort of text in a vain effort to stay relevant?

    Replace:
    Java or Visual Studio 2010 anyone?
    With:
    Crappy programmers.

    And has anyone documented a repeatable real world test for 'bufferbloat' or is this still an academic issue?

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect