The problem with 'virtual protests' is that you are 'living' in the world of its creators. Meaning, the people who brought you the virtual stuff can take down/modify/etc. content, so that it doesn't harm the company in the end.
Case in point: game forums. Lot's of people bitch and complain, flame and curse the games they love and hate. It is a protest in that sometimes your voice gets heard(i.e. 3dfx bowed to pressure that Voodoo Rushes were falsly advertised to be as fast as Voodoo Graphics video cards, and many wanted their money back. 3dfx instead replaced their cards and gave 'em Voodoo Graphics).
But remember this: a company owns the forums and can moderate or completely shut down forums to protect its image. This is what sort of happened with Origin's single-player Ultima game. There were just so many bugs and false promises about this game, that people were literally fscking hounding the game and giving it a very,very bad image(game developers fault btw).
Before Origin released the game in the UK, it shutdown all forums so that the people overseas don't know how bad the game really was, proving that virtual protests will not work when your enemy is providing the means of the protests.
"New York has the highest population density in the US, comparable to the density of Paris and London. New York's cell service sucks, especially if you're on Sprint or Verizon which uses (surprise) Code Division Multiple Access instead of GSM (used in Europe)"
A better example: All of Canada's population could fit into New York.
"It's just that Intel/AMD didn't make a song and dance about breaking the GFLOP barrier..."
I don't know 'bout AMD, but Intel has these funny BunnyPeople to promote anything from breaking speed limits to new processors as shown here. So contrary to what you believe, yes Intel does make a song and dance(plus commercial) about [insert_marketing_gibberish_here]!
I'd like to see such people face to face. Lot of people complain the 2D performance is really bad compared to X, yadda yadda yadda.
Then ask these clueless individuals how come flash renders faster in my remote xwin32 server than on my local IE browser. Also, if X is so slow, how come Quake3 fps in Linux is on par with Windows?
The beauty of X windows generality is also its weakness: all WMs and desktop managers use X differently. Such that getting basic things like proper smooth fonts configuration is such a hassle. Right now, smooth fonts depends on whether qt or gtk have them compiled in and enabled AND if apps get compiled with such fonts.
If X had a layer *directly* above it, providing higher level features(standard WM, font config, standard cut-copy-paste system(and not just for text for but generic objects like bitmaps),etc), then we could at least have some interopability between desktop managers.
most consumers of broadband don't use it all, allowing service providers to oversell bandwidth, but most of the time, you don't get what you paid for.
This is why in Canada, dominated by a single cable company(Rogers) and telephone company(Bell), have moved or are moving to cap total upload and downloads. This business model of overselling bandwidth is not working out, or they just wanna make more money from the bandwidth hogs.
To throw some numbers around, Bell is currently charging $44.99CAD for 5GB Upload and 5GB Download. Some other smaller DSL providers are charging the same price for 7GB. Rogers is going to move to a 5GB ul/5GB dl limit in december at the same price point. If you want more bandwidth, you gotta pay $7CAD/GB.
I find this a bit limiting. A mainstream user like myself who downloads a couple of divx movies month and my bros(3 of them) who also download quite a bit(movies and mp3s), the 5GB limit will quickly be used up.
What's even more shitty, is that these DSL and Cable providers have in recent months increased the price by $5 bucks and force you to use their local cable or telephone service. If you don't, you gotta pay another hefty $10 bucks. This brings the total to $60 bucks/w taxes.
And now the limit. Wonderful. This is why you're right: whatever way you look at it, we consumers are fucked.
[Ctrl]+[Esc] -> r -> notepad -> Do you want to live, human? -> [F4]
under a second. Leaves the poor things troubeled. Confused. Hungering for the sweet realse of alcohol or a shotgun.
This reminds me of something, once I was using VNC to connect to my home's win98 machine. You see, my funny little brother was using the computer at the same time, and when he saw all this windows pop-up automatically and shut-down...he literally went nuts. Lo and behold, he thought the computer had a virus and shut the computer off right way.
Boy was I pissed when I lost my VNC connection; right about when I was ready to download "my stuff" queue on fridays.
As a player of GTA3 and having played many,many violent FPSs on the PC, I can say that GTA3 is NOT really violent.
Sure I can go kill the hooker, steal the cab, and shoot the officer. It's fun for the first couple of times, but it gets boring real fast.
Sure I can do anything in the game, take my my car and ram into cop mobiles, drive down the road and mindlessly shoot all the punks(yeah!) out of my left window, and get the cop helicopters on my ass. But it gets boring real fast, after the first couple of times.
Yeah, it's a big city and very explorable. But there is no incentive for being violent, 'cause you get nothing for it except some extra stats and a couple of bucks.
Compared to real life, these actions are 'violent' and will land you in jail very,very fast. But in GTA3 it feels as if I'm swatting bugs left and right, with no inherit guilt or pleasure of killing. There's no pleasure within the violence itself, aside from raking in $30K for each mission.
Now let's look at a violent game: Soldier of Fortune2. In this game I _actually_ feel like I'm blowing someone's head off, or felt like I really busted the baddies' chest open with my doube-barrel shotgun. In this game, I play with 'killing style'...i.e. reload my shotgun, pop into a room full of baddies, and take them all down in one swoop without reloading or taking fire from them. In other words, it's like ballet-with-guns.
That is what I call 'violent' in video games, and DAMN I LOVE IT. GTA3 doesn't give any of this, and is being called 'violent'. Pfft.
I am currently running Redhat 8.0 with an XFT version of Mozilla [newaol.com], and I must may my screenies [zipcon.net] are much prettier. With Xft, FreeType, and some good TrueType fonts, I finally have a Linux desktop with fonts prettier than WinXP.
Enable the "ClearType" font smoothing option in WinXP. It renders fonts, thick and muddy like Xft.
Yeah, I just grabbed Mozilla 1.2b yesterday and compiled with XFT support on RH 8.0.
But the AA fonts are too thick and damn blurry, plus the Gnome2 font properties doesn't affect Mozilla(i.e. "Constrast" option for AA fonts has not effect on moz). And EVERY font is AA'd, including menus and dialog boxes, which makes everything look muddy. It would be nice if AA fonts were only enabled for 16pts or higher. Also, with AA fonts, Mozilla is a lot slower at redrawing pages compared to all the other apps with AA enabled(OpenOffice,Nautilus,etc).
I hope people don't shoot me in the head, "RTFM and change/etc/blurryfontsoff.conf!". After reading all the howto's on fixing the butt-ugly fonts and using XftConfig, I don't have more time to invest to determine how to configure AA fonts in RH8.0 using fontconfig etc.
I mean, it just FONTS. Not a bloody driver I'm trying to get to work.
Nothing wrong with the RH 8 version. Its still KDE and still has all of the KDE apps. Konq is still there, Kmail is still there, Kate is still there. How is this no longer KDE?
Redhat 8.0's KDE equals KDE plus a theme. Don't like it? Change the freaking theme.
I agree. KDE in RH 8.0 feels,act, and looks like kde3. It just has that bluecurve theme and all. However Gnome2's bluecurve GUI setup(all the helper programs,preferences,etc) is a LOT more tighter than KDE.
But Gnome2 is dog slow both on my dual-500 rig and my 1 ghz P3 rig at work WITH the provided Redhat Kernel(2.4.18-14). Slow in terms of very shitty redraw rates(with or without AA fonts) and it being a memory hog(though KDE is the same in this regard). OTOH, KDE is LIGHTYEARS faster in redraw rates, and thus feels much more better in the end.
For those who want Gnome2 to be faster: The kernel that Redhat ships with(and the upgraded one) fuck up the Gnome2's redraw speed. That kernel uses the low-latency patches and uses 512Hz ticks instead of the defaul 100Hz ticks. I don't know the exact cause, but when I finally compiled and installed a stock 2.4.19 kernel, Gnome2 was now significantly faster(2x faster, though still not as fast as KDE).
An x86-based system that can run Doom3 at 9999 fps!
Re:SLI BACK AGAIN?
on
Tackling AGP 8X
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Remember VOODOO 2's SLI feature that we all so loved?
Yeah, those were the days. But SLI only increased fill-rate, and not triangles/second. Granted, it was one of the best features around. By one card, get kick ass graphics and speed. Then by the second card, hook up in SLI, and boom you've effectively doubled your fillrate.
I fail to understand how giving other people freebies "fucks you over."
It's a cheapshot trying to win you over. This is why IE, Media Player, Messenger, Hotmail, etc. were given away free by Microsoft: it was part of the "value-added" portion of purchasing a Windows OS.
If you don't understand this, then understand drugs. If you want to try drugs, the first couple of 'shots' are free. It's only when your addicted and the same people say, "sorry, but that hit is going to cost you $50 bucks. No money, no drugs". Now you're really fucked monetarily and physically, because you wants the goods badly.
So, to sum it up: you don't get fucked over right away, but it'll happen soon enough. If you ever think someone is giving you something free for nothing, well I'd say 9 out of 10 times you're wrong buddy.
Remember when awesome games could fit on a handful of floppies? I think that could fly today if they tried. Look at the Demo scene. 64k can do alot of graphics. The most awesome games like Betrayal at Krondor were only a few floppies.
Someone kick this guy in the balls. It's one thing to say that games these days are using more and more resources that stress your CPU, memory, and I/O(graphics,disk,etc)--which is true. But it's completely stupid to say, how come we can't have good graphics fit into 64K of memory.
Is it to say that game engines are becoming crappy? Possibly. But really it's the massive amounts of textures, sound, model vertex info, etc. that take the lion's share of your memory.
Because M$ has 0wn3d the decision makers within goverment circles. If someone was throwing a lot of money at you, would you actually want to get rid of 'em? I guess not, as that's how corporate bodies work.
It doesn't matter whether it's happening in America or in some distant country like Taiwan: the rich always bend rules to benefit them. And they implement policies to make them rich even more.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with 'virtual protests' is that you are 'living' in the world of its creators. Meaning, the people who brought you the virtual stuff can take down/modify/etc. content, so that it doesn't harm the company in the end.
Case in point: game forums. Lot's of people bitch and complain, flame and curse the games they love and hate. It is a protest in that sometimes your voice gets heard(i.e. 3dfx bowed to pressure that Voodoo Rushes were falsly advertised to be as fast as Voodoo Graphics video cards, and many wanted their money back. 3dfx instead replaced their cards and gave 'em Voodoo Graphics).
But remember this: a company owns the forums and can moderate or completely shut down forums to protect its image. This is what sort of happened with Origin's single-player Ultima game. There were just so many bugs and false promises about this game, that people were literally fscking hounding the game and giving it a very,very bad image(game developers fault btw).
Before Origin released the game in the UK, it shutdown all forums so that the people overseas don't know how bad the game really was, proving that virtual protests will not work when your enemy is providing the means of the protests.
"New York has the highest population density in the US, comparable to the density of Paris and London. New York's cell service sucks, especially if you're on Sprint or Verizon which uses (surprise) Code Division Multiple Access instead of GSM (used in Europe)"
A better example: All of Canada's population could fit into New York.
Myrinet Software. Not only does it support Windows plus a whole range of *NIXes.
"It's just that Intel/AMD didn't make a song and dance about breaking the GFLOP barrier..."
I don't know 'bout AMD, but Intel has these funny BunnyPeople to promote anything from breaking speed limits to new processors as shown here. So contrary to what you believe, yes Intel does make a song and dance(plus commercial) about [insert_marketing_gibberish_here]!
"or who feel the performance isn't up to snuff."
I'd like to see such people face to face. Lot of people complain the 2D performance is really bad compared to X, yadda yadda yadda.
Then ask these clueless individuals how come flash renders faster in my remote xwin32 server than on my local IE browser. Also, if X is so slow, how come Quake3 fps in Linux is on par with Windows?
The beauty of X windows generality is also its weakness: all WMs and desktop managers use X differently. Such that getting basic things like proper smooth fonts configuration is such a hassle. Right now, smooth fonts depends on whether qt or gtk have them compiled in and enabled AND if apps get compiled with such fonts.
If X had a layer *directly* above it, providing higher level features(standard WM, font config, standard cut-copy-paste system(and not just for text for but generic objects like bitmaps),etc), then we could at least have some interopability between desktop managers.
I guess you get my point.
With all these rat and ants infestation stories, I guess I better buy usb cameras and stick them inside my computer.
That way I can monitor ants and other little creatures getting into my computer! It a "live" insect scanner!
Has anyone else tried doing this?
Shut the #$@$#@ up! I've never laughed so hard(where 99% of the +4 posts are funny). Why do you want me not to laugh?
kyou kmust knot klike kmy kname kvery kmuch knor kmy kemail kaddress!!
kAll kyour kbases kbelong kto 'The K's'.
(kdon't kgo klutzy know, kyour knot kseeing K's keverywhere...)
most consumers of broadband don't use it all, allowing service providers to oversell bandwidth, but most of the time, you don't get what you paid for.
/w taxes.
This is why in Canada, dominated by a single cable company(Rogers) and telephone company(Bell), have moved or are moving to cap total upload and downloads. This business model of overselling bandwidth is not working out, or they just wanna make more money from the bandwidth hogs.
To throw some numbers around, Bell is currently charging $44.99CAD for 5GB Upload and 5GB Download. Some other smaller DSL providers are charging the same price for 7GB. Rogers is going to move to a 5GB ul/5GB dl limit in december at the same price point. If you want more bandwidth, you gotta pay $7CAD/GB.
I find this a bit limiting. A mainstream user like myself who downloads a couple of divx movies month and my bros(3 of them) who also download quite a bit(movies and mp3s), the 5GB limit will quickly be used up.
What's even more shitty, is that these DSL and Cable providers have in recent months increased the price by $5 bucks and force you to use their local cable or telephone service. If you don't, you gotta pay another hefty $10 bucks. This brings the total to $60 bucks
And now the limit. Wonderful. This is why you're right: whatever way you look at it, we consumers are fucked.
[Ctrl]+[Esc] -> r -> notepad -> Do you want to live, human? -> [F4]
under a second. Leaves the poor things troubeled. Confused. Hungering for the sweet realse of alcohol or a shotgun.
This reminds me of something, once I was using VNC to connect to my home's win98 machine. You see, my funny little brother was using the computer at the same time, and when he saw all this windows pop-up automatically and shut-down...he literally went nuts. Lo and behold, he thought the computer had a virus and shut the computer off right way.
Boy was I pissed when I lost my VNC connection; right about when I was ready to download "my stuff" queue on fridays.
"I mean really, if I saw a p2 400 chip and a quarter lying side-by-side on a street corner, I'd pick up the quarter."
So if there were more people "like you", I'd bet all the homeless people around the streets would have pentium2s in their 'change cup'!
Only if those bums new that they could create a beowulf cluster...and have more computing power than IBM new 100000000000000000000000$$$ system:)
One word, Wolverine.
He can kick anyone's ass, and rip a Sentinal to shreds with his claws. His rage and anger is in essense, beautiful.
Plus, he has auto-heal ability:)
Offtopic sure, but two super heroes are really limiting:)
First time I've seen a person say, "I'm not a TSCCC".
As a player of GTA3 and having played many,many violent FPSs on the PC, I can say that GTA3 is NOT really violent.
Sure I can go kill the hooker, steal the cab, and shoot the officer. It's fun for the first couple of times, but it gets boring real fast.
Sure I can do anything in the game, take my my car and ram into cop mobiles, drive down the road and mindlessly shoot all the punks(yeah!) out of my left window, and get the cop helicopters on my ass. But it gets boring real fast, after the first couple of times.
Yeah, it's a big city and very explorable. But there is no incentive for being violent, 'cause you get nothing for it except some extra stats and a couple of bucks.
Compared to real life, these actions are 'violent' and will land you in jail very,very fast. But in GTA3 it feels as if I'm swatting bugs left and right, with no inherit guilt or pleasure of killing. There's no pleasure within the violence itself, aside from raking in $30K for each mission.
Now let's look at a violent game: Soldier of Fortune2. In this game I _actually_ feel like I'm blowing someone's head off, or felt like I really busted the baddies' chest open with my doube-barrel shotgun. In this game, I play with 'killing style'...i.e. reload my shotgun, pop into a room full of baddies, and take them all down in one swoop without reloading or taking fire from them. In other words, it's like ballet-with-guns.
That is what I call 'violent' in video games, and DAMN I LOVE IT. GTA3 doesn't give any of this, and is being called 'violent'. Pfft.
That file isn't used in rh8.0.
I am currently running Redhat 8.0 with an XFT version of Mozilla [newaol.com], and I must may my screenies [zipcon.net] are much prettier.
With Xft, FreeType, and some good TrueType fonts, I finally have a Linux desktop with fonts prettier than WinXP.
Enable the "ClearType" font smoothing option in WinXP. It renders fonts, thick and muddy like Xft.
Yeah, I just grabbed Mozilla 1.2b yesterday and compiled with XFT support on RH 8.0.
/etc/blurryfontsoff.conf!". After reading all the howto's on fixing the butt-ugly fonts and using XftConfig, I don't have more time to invest to determine how to configure AA fonts in RH8.0 using fontconfig etc.
But the AA fonts are too thick and damn blurry, plus the Gnome2 font properties doesn't affect Mozilla(i.e. "Constrast" option for AA fonts has not effect on moz). And EVERY font is AA'd, including menus and dialog boxes, which makes everything look muddy. It would be nice if AA fonts were only enabled for 16pts or higher. Also, with AA fonts, Mozilla is a lot slower at redrawing pages compared to all the other apps with AA enabled(OpenOffice,Nautilus,etc).
I hope people don't shoot me in the head, "RTFM and change
I mean, it just FONTS. Not a bloody driver I'm trying to get to work.
Nothing wrong with the RH 8 version. Its still KDE and still has all of the KDE apps. Konq is still there, Kmail is still there, Kate is still there. How is this no longer KDE?
Redhat 8.0's KDE equals KDE plus a theme. Don't like it? Change the freaking theme.
I agree. KDE in RH 8.0 feels,act, and looks like kde3. It just has that bluecurve theme and all. However Gnome2's bluecurve GUI setup(all the helper programs,preferences,etc) is a LOT more tighter than KDE.
But Gnome2 is dog slow both on my dual-500 rig and my 1 ghz P3 rig at work WITH the provided Redhat Kernel(2.4.18-14). Slow in terms of very shitty redraw rates(with or without AA fonts) and it being a memory hog(though KDE is the same in this regard). OTOH, KDE is LIGHTYEARS faster in redraw rates, and thus feels much more better in the end.
For those who want Gnome2 to be faster: The kernel that Redhat ships with(and the upgraded one) fuck up the Gnome2's redraw speed. That kernel uses the low-latency patches and uses 512Hz ticks instead of the defaul 100Hz ticks. I don't know the exact cause, but when I finally compiled and installed a stock 2.4.19 kernel, Gnome2 was now significantly faster(2x faster, though still not as fast as KDE).
An x86-based system that can run Doom3 at 9999 fps!
Remember VOODOO 2's SLI feature that we all so loved?
Yeah, those were the days. But SLI only increased fill-rate, and not triangles/second. Granted, it was one of the best features around. By one card, get kick ass graphics and speed. Then by the second card, hook up in SLI, and boom you've effectively doubled your fillrate.
I fail to understand how giving other people freebies "fucks you over."
It's a cheapshot trying to win you over. This is why IE, Media Player, Messenger, Hotmail, etc. were given away free by Microsoft: it was part of the "value-added" portion of purchasing a Windows OS.
If you don't understand this, then understand drugs. If you want to try drugs, the first couple of 'shots' are free. It's only when your addicted and the same people say, "sorry, but that hit is going to cost you $50 bucks. No money, no drugs". Now you're really fucked monetarily and physically, because you wants the goods badly.
So, to sum it up: you don't get fucked over right away, but it'll happen soon enough. If you ever think someone is giving you something free for nothing, well I'd say 9 out of 10 times you're wrong buddy.
Remember when awesome games could fit on a handful of floppies? I think that could fly today if they tried. Look at the Demo scene. 64k can do alot of graphics. The most awesome games like Betrayal at Krondor were only a few floppies. Someone kick this guy in the balls. It's one thing to say that games these days are using more and more resources that stress your CPU, memory, and I/O(graphics,disk,etc)--which is true. But it's completely stupid to say, how come we can't have good graphics fit into 64K of memory. Is it to say that game engines are becoming crappy? Possibly. But really it's the massive amounts of textures, sound, model vertex info, etc. that take the lion's share of your memory.
Yes I'm cynical but I've always been of the belief that the bloat in XP is engineered, not the simple result of bad programming.
Woah...isn't "engineering" and "bad programming" synonymous to Microsoft? Look at all the stuff they engineered over the years!
So how come we're not bombing Microsoft?
Because M$ has 0wn3d the decision makers within goverment circles. If someone was throwing a lot of money at you, would you actually want to get rid of 'em? I guess not, as that's how corporate bodies work.
It doesn't matter whether it's happening in America or in some distant country like Taiwan: the rich always bend rules to benefit them. And they implement policies to make them rich even more.
That I see the Visual Studio ad here...
.NET ad in the comment page.
Actually for the past week or so I have seen Microsoft-related stories posted on slashdot as having a Visual Studio