I've not done a lot of DX programming, but iirc you can query to see what features are supported by the current hardware. I don't know, but I'd imagine that in this case the game is querying the available featureset, finding it lacking, and refusing to start.
I've seen that with the Deus Ex 2 demo, which refused to run on my gf's PC due to lack of hardware support for T&L. That was the demo saying "no, sorry, won't play", not DX.
The OP means that this guy gets a number of stories posted every week, all containing links to (amongst other things) his blog.
That's rubbing a fair few people here up the wrong way, and personally I'm not surprised. Slashdot gets so many submissions from so many people, that to have so many accepted by the same person seems a little odd, especially given he always promotes his own site in them. Starts to feel like advertising...
1) that page, judging by the date at the bottom, is 7 years old - that's plenty of time for the situation to have completely changes 2) judging from the logo on it and the URL, the guy is particularly anti-MS; you might want to cite a source with a little more objectivity
On most games today it says "runs on either Nvidia card xxx or ATI card yyy".
Well, on most of the requirements I've seen recently, it'll list something like "Graphics card: 100% DirectX 8 compatible, 64MB RAM". Just because in today's hardware market that translates to "a recent card from NVidia or ATI" doesn't make that MS's fault.
So my non-nvidia card won't help me even though DirectX 9.0c claims to be running fine
Chances are, DX 9 *is* running fine, but your card lacks support for certain features used by the game. Now, the game devs could fall back to software, or even just disable those features; not doing so is not the fault of DX or MS.
Since I don't use Windows (and in fact never have, at least not on my home/work machines)
So, in other words you don't actually know what you're talking about, right? (I don't mean to rant at you, but I get as tired of that sort of thing as the "X is not slow" people do of that, and so on)
The Windows 9x line is not and never has been multi-user. The closest it gets is allowing you to setup usernames and passwords so different people can have different preferences set.
The Windows NT line is and always has been multi-user, at least as far as having truly seperate logins and user permissions is concerned. You can't have more than one person using the machine concurrently, however; for that, you need a Windows Server OS with sufficient Terminal Services licences. Then you can have truly simultaneous, interactive logons. "Normal" NT does support multiple simultaneous telnet sessions, however, I believe.
No one would take you seriously if you criticized the Windows GUI using examples from Win 3.1
To be fair to the OP, that sort of thing actually happens pretty often here, even in highly moderated comments. I see lots of complaints of the sort of stability problems I've not seen personally or heard of from friends in literally years.
Instead of wasting money "defending" against bogus patents, how about investing in fixing the patent system?
Two questions:
1) How exactly does a company do that? Sure, they can lobby, but despite common opinion here that often comes to nothing, and they wouldn't be lobbying unopposed. Also, given that this is MS we're talking about, the company that everyone loves to hate, the politicos may well be wary of being seen to be too cooperative.
2) In the meantime, they're still just as vulnerable to attack, with the added bonus of not being able to fight back as effectively. How does the CEO explain to the shareholders why they're deliberately avoiding taking out patents (thus reducing their assets relative to the rest of the industry) and simultaneously potentially leaving themselves open to costly litigation?
might even cause their patent hoarding spree to come to a halt
Am I the only person to have noticed that this "patent hoarding spree" only started (or at least, started to be publicised) since they were sued by Eolas?
Looks to me like someone's taken a major disliking to that, and is making sure it never happens again.
"Open source", somewhat unfortunately, has come to be something of a generic term for anything that is freely modifiable and/or redistributable. Hence you'll see people speaking of "open source" texts, etc as well as software.
Why bother shoving a patent-encumbered format in this field?
Maybe it's to prevent someone else from registering a patent for something that's broad enough/similar enough/outright identical to this and causing problems?
I've not RTFAed, but after the Eolas thing, I imagine that MS has become rather sensitive to that sort of thing happening, and so will probably now take out patents on everything it can to prevent it from happening again. Besides, merely owning a patent doesn't mean that you have to go after infringers - you can't lose them by not donig so. You're also at liberty to grant licences under whatever terms you see fit, including royalty-free for anyone who wants them.
Patents aren't bad, it's how they're used that can be.
I don't see him saying that Linux sucks, I see him pointing out that it still has some flaws, especially compared to other OSes. You may or may not care; that's your perogative. However, the collective entity that is the slashdot readership seems to want Linux to succeed on the desktop; if so, then these flaws will have to be addressed.
(I understand there are lots of different opinions here, not everyone wants that, blah blah blah - the impression I get from having read this site for the last few years is that the majority want Linux use on the desktop to spread; that's what I mean when I talk of the "collective entity")
why's the need to spread that linux sucks ?
Same reason people say that Windows sucks, or Java, or perl, or C, or vi or emacs or Intel or AMD or NVidia or ATI - it's just something that some people do. Maybe they're reassuring themselves that their beliefs and choices were right, maybe they're trying to show other people the error of their ways, maybe they're just trolling. Whatever the reasons, it happens on all sides of all debates; thankfully, most people grow out of it eventually.
Where I work, the problem is one part getting some of them to make that effort (most are pretty damn good about it), and several parts getting them the time to make that effort.
Speaking of which, I have to go finish off some integration work for a deadline at 9am tomorrow. Let's hope the supporting code has been finished...
Please remember that a lot of people still use dial-up.
Which means that your scheme would have them paying for their web browser. It would also mean that either PC retailers/manufacturers would be forced to install each browser on the systems they sell/build, or people would buy a PC without what is effectively now an essential piece of software.
All in the name of fighting a battle that's been irrelevant for years. The commercial web browser market has been dead since IE 4 was released, and no amount of forced disintegration is going to revive it. Your effort would be better spent educating users.
This is the technology working badly for you.. the guy who sent you the text message can wait.. the guy infront of you is more important.
Well now, that really depends on the content of that text message, doesn't it?
I agree that a lot of the time text messages can wait, especially if it's just the two of you, but they can be urgent too. That said, if it's just me and one other person, I'll generally ignore my 'phone until a natural break (eg one of us goes to the bar or toilet, etc)
More likely the shop assistant/bank teller will spot the fakes (as they should be checking, unlike the mugger) and it'll be the mugger who loses out... at least until he mugs his next victim and makes sure it's worth his while.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the dangerous conditions faced by countries who get in the US's way, it's surprising civilized countries ever say no.
I've not done a lot of DX programming, but iirc you can query to see what features are supported by the current hardware. I don't know, but I'd imagine that in this case the game is querying the available featureset, finding it lacking, and refusing to start.
I've seen that with the Deus Ex 2 demo, which refused to run on my gf's PC due to lack of hardware support for T&L. That was the demo saying "no, sorry, won't play", not DX.
The OP means that this guy gets a number of stories posted every week, all containing links to (amongst other things) his blog.
That's rubbing a fair few people here up the wrong way, and personally I'm not surprised. Slashdot gets so many submissions from so many people, that to have so many accepted by the same person seems a little odd, especially given he always promotes his own site in them. Starts to feel like advertising...
Two things:
1) that page, judging by the date at the bottom, is 7 years old - that's plenty of time for the situation to have completely changes
2) judging from the logo on it and the URL, the guy is particularly anti-MS; you might want to cite a source with a little more objectivity
On most games today it says "runs on either Nvidia card xxx or ATI card yyy".
Well, on most of the requirements I've seen recently, it'll list something like "Graphics card: 100% DirectX 8 compatible, 64MB RAM". Just because in today's hardware market that translates to "a recent card from NVidia or ATI" doesn't make that MS's fault.
So my non-nvidia card won't help me even though DirectX 9.0c claims to be running fine
Chances are, DX 9 *is* running fine, but your card lacks support for certain features used by the game. Now, the game devs could fall back to software, or even just disable those features; not doing so is not the fault of DX or MS.
Since I don't use Windows (and in fact never have, at least not on my home/work machines)
So, in other words you don't actually know what you're talking about, right? (I don't mean to rant at you, but I get as tired of that sort of thing as the "X is not slow" people do of that, and so on)
The Windows 9x line is not and never has been multi-user. The closest it gets is allowing you to setup usernames and passwords so different people can have different preferences set.
The Windows NT line is and always has been multi-user, at least as far as having truly seperate logins and user permissions is concerned. You can't have more than one person using the machine concurrently, however; for that, you need a Windows Server OS with sufficient Terminal Services licences. Then you can have truly simultaneous, interactive logons. "Normal" NT does support multiple simultaneous telnet sessions, however, I believe.
Sure they benefit, but not as much as by having a job themselves.
another 17" monitor will set you back US$100. ...plus dual-head capable graphics card, bigger desk, increased power consumption costs...
I have a notebook with a 6GB drive that I need to dual boot.
No offence, but I think you'd be better off with a new notebook. 6GB these days is tiny - I have *games* that take up that much space...
No one would take you seriously if you criticized the Windows GUI using examples from Win 3.1
To be fair to the OP, that sort of thing actually happens pretty often here, even in highly moderated comments. I see lots of complaints of the sort of stability problems I've not seen personally or heard of from friends in literally years.
Nothing of course, but I suspect that he meant that you couldn't implement the encryption using xml, not that you couldn't encrypt the xml.
What makes you think that anyone working for the USPTO has ever heard of lynx?
Instead of wasting money "defending" against bogus patents, how about investing in fixing the patent system?
Two questions:
1) How exactly does a company do that? Sure, they can lobby, but despite common opinion here that often comes to nothing, and they wouldn't be lobbying unopposed. Also, given that this is MS we're talking about, the company that everyone loves to hate, the politicos may well be wary of being seen to be too cooperative.
2) In the meantime, they're still just as vulnerable to attack, with the added bonus of not being able to fight back as effectively. How does the CEO explain to the shareholders why they're deliberately avoiding taking out patents (thus reducing their assets relative to the rest of the industry) and simultaneously potentially leaving themselves open to costly litigation?
might even cause their patent hoarding spree to come to a halt
Am I the only person to have noticed that this "patent hoarding spree" only started (or at least, started to be publicised) since they were sued by Eolas?
Looks to me like someone's taken a major disliking to that, and is making sure it never happens again.
"Open source", somewhat unfortunately, has come to be something of a generic term for anything that is freely modifiable and/or redistributable. Hence you'll see people speaking of "open source" texts, etc as well as software.
Why bother shoving a patent-encumbered format in this field?
Maybe it's to prevent someone else from registering a patent for something that's broad enough/similar enough/outright identical to this and causing problems?
I've not RTFAed, but after the Eolas thing, I imagine that MS has become rather sensitive to that sort of thing happening, and so will probably now take out patents on everything it can to prevent it from happening again. Besides, merely owning a patent doesn't mean that you have to go after infringers - you can't lose them by not donig so. You're also at liberty to grant licences under whatever terms you see fit, including royalty-free for anyone who wants them.
Patents aren't bad, it's how they're used that can be.
After all, some people are happy using Windows XP.
2.4GHz CPU, 1/2 gig of RAM... yes, XP runs perfectly smoothly, as do Java GUI apps, etc.
As you say, on modern hardware, for 90%+ of applications resource usage is a non-issue.
I don't see him saying that Linux sucks, I see him pointing out that it still has some flaws, especially compared to other OSes. You may or may not care; that's your perogative. However, the collective entity that is the slashdot readership seems to want Linux to succeed on the desktop; if so, then these flaws will have to be addressed.
(I understand there are lots of different opinions here, not everyone wants that, blah blah blah - the impression I get from having read this site for the last few years is that the majority want Linux use on the desktop to spread; that's what I mean when I talk of the "collective entity")
why's the need to spread that linux sucks ?
Same reason people say that Windows sucks, or Java, or perl, or C, or vi or emacs or Intel or AMD or NVidia or ATI - it's just something that some people do. Maybe they're reassuring themselves that their beliefs and choices were right, maybe they're trying to show other people the error of their ways, maybe they're just trolling. Whatever the reasons, it happens on all sides of all debates; thankfully, most people grow out of it eventually.
I know yuo're joking, but see this article; might wipe the smile off your face.
Where I work, the problem is one part getting some of them to make that effort (most are pretty damn good about it), and several parts getting them the time to make that effort.
Speaking of which, I have to go finish off some integration work for a deadline at 9am tomorrow. Let's hope the supporting code has been finished...
Actually 9.274 or 10% (like in your case) isn't very far off from 15%.
Not far off? It's 50% off...
(ie to go from a market share of 10% to 15%, you have to increase your install base by 50% - that's a pretty big leap)
Please remember that a lot of people still use dial-up.
Which means that your scheme would have them paying for their web browser. It would also mean that either PC retailers/manufacturers would be forced to install each browser on the systems they sell/build, or people would buy a PC without what is effectively now an essential piece of software.
All in the name of fighting a battle that's been irrelevant for years. The commercial web browser market has been dead since IE 4 was released, and no amount of forced disintegration is going to revive it. Your effort would be better spent educating users.
No. All devices have an off switch somewhere; learn to use it from time to time.
This is the technology working badly for you.. the guy who sent you the text message can wait.. the guy infront of you is more important.
Well now, that really depends on the content of that text message, doesn't it?
I agree that a lot of the time text messages can wait, especially if it's just the two of you, but they can be urgent too. That said, if it's just me and one other person, I'll generally ignore my 'phone until a natural break (eg one of us goes to the bar or toilet, etc)
More likely the shop assistant/bank teller will spot the fakes (as they should be checking, unlike the mugger) and it'll be the mugger who loses out... at least until he mugs his next victim and makes sure it's worth his while.