I also simply don't understand why everyone seems to equate paper receipts with: "voter gets to keep the receipt." Where does this thinking come from?
That's what "receipt" means. It's what you recieve; what you take with you when you leave.
Re:BitTorrent is no-go for small files..
on
RSS & BT Together?
·
· Score: 1
This is not deserving of an +5 status as it shows a complete lack of understanding of how BitTorrent works.
The difference between "reports in when it gets, or fails to get, a piece" (what he said) and "percentage complete that the client reports" (what you said) is insigificant, and his conclusion is perfectly valid.
A normal RSS download is not really more work to serve than to maintain a tracker. (Less, actually, because the HTTP server code is probably more optimized than the BT tracker)
Merely opening the TCP/IP connection is a sizable chunk of the "work" needed to distribute RSS over HTTP. BitTorrent can't save you from that.
All that needs to happen is for browsers to handle torrent links.... Change the RSS to use the new URL scheme, and there you go.
I don't see how this is supposed to help. The problem that BitTorrent addresses is different from that faced by a popular RSS service.
BitTorrent has proven useful so far to preserve bandwidth. It's handy when distributing files of greater than 1 megabyte in size- usually much larger, such as 650 meg ISO images. It's effectiveness comes from the fact that indivudual downloaders will take a long time to get the entire file, so they will be online serving to other requestors. (Note that the originator of the file is running the "tracker", and this computer must do a small introductory handshake with every new downloader)
That doesn't apply to blogs. RSS files are fairly small, right? Just the recent headlines, much less than one megabyte. Chances are, the entire size of the file not much bigger than the amount of metadata passed around to initiate a typical BitTorrent session.
It's the superhero-comicbook genre! Insulting the audience's intelligence is old hat.
Comic books are all about lone crackpot inventors who whip up hightech weapons that put McDonnel-Douglas to shame. That's how their world works.
In the case of Spider-Man, he has the extra excuse of his inherent climbing ability. Just prepend some pseudoscientific babble: "Studying my own mutated fingertips under the electron microscope revealed an amazing nanoscale pattern of unprecedented adhesiveness, which I shall attempt to synthesize in the UC..."
The US PTO is paid regardless of them doing anything.
Patent examiners working for the PTO, however, are paid salary plus a bonus for productivity. Where "productivity" is measured in how many filings they've processed... and it is much, much faster to approve a patent than to withhold it.
Unix applications don't talk to each other via strange, binary, unreadable protocols such as Corba, COM, DCOM, COM+ or whatever MS is selling these days.
Corba is a Unix protocol. So is rpc/portmap. So are X11 and DCOP and Bonobo... None of them are something I'd care to read.
They talk text. Simple, human readable, text.
Uh huh. So this "cat/dev/sda1" command you mentioned will produce simple, readable text for me, eh? I'd paste the results in here, but Slashdot has filters to prevent raw, ugly, incomprehensible binary.
The Unix idea of a standard input and output stream for each program was a good idea, but not followed through enough. In particular, from a programming language standpoint, there's something very important missing: type safety. Or even types at all.
It's ironic that Unix was supposedly tightly related to the C language, and yet C's weak typesystem is stronger than whatever Unix provides. Is the failure of Unix to provide transmission of datatypes more well-defined than an anonymous bytestream that created an opening for a proliferation of overcomplex IPC protocols.
You could wipe Linux and everybody off the face of the planet in less than a year, if you would just make Windows Unix-compatable.
Oh, and that's backwards. It's a classic case: reduced barriers to switching benefits holders of minority marketshare more than their larger competitors. (So in the extreme, a monopolist will never want to encourage compatibility)
The incompatibility of Microsoft Windows vs Unix-like OSes is helpful to Microsoft. It prevents people from easily switching away to other providers.
If Microsoft creates effective Unix-like support, then future vendors of Windows applications will use these features. Eventually they might transition to them entirely. (Why would Oracle or Adobe continue to write separate Windows, Mac, and Unix releases of products, when they can just move everything to a Unix-targeted codebase?)
When that happens- when some major Windows applications are using its Unix API, not the Win32 one, then it will be easier for users to switch away from Microsoft's OS, while keeping their applications intact.
So, to protect their shareholders, Microsoft should avoid anything that'll help customers switch.
(and the simplified filenames where '/' and '\0' are the only reserved characters)
That's not entirely true. Yes, from the filesystem perspective there are only 2 reserved characters. But looking at Unix as a whole (especially as it was delivered 20 years ago), you really had to treat other characters as revserved.
Like " ", "*", and especially "-". Many programs and commands that are fine in general will choke up or become randomly destructive when fed names like that. Or at the very least, the user-friendliness of the CLI is destroyed.
In fact if Microsoft had just made Windows Unix-compatable
Legally, it already is Unix-compatible, in that Microsoft(tm) achieved POSIX certification for Windows NT.
What legitimate need does a single person have when downloading 40 gigs of data over a short period of time?
The single most obvious answer is videophone. Someone streaming the high-res output of a firewire camera can generate gigabytes of new data every hour, copyrighted only to him.
Another possible answer: He may be downloading music and movie files, and he could've paid for them. Or (more likely, today) he could be collecting hundreds of huge, public-domain movies
While it's currently true that no major legit service offers decent digital movie downloads, the ISP industry shouldn't assume it has to stay this way. If they advertise unlimited, they should try to provide it, or change the ads.
It's quite reasonable to suspect that if 40GB of data was taking place of the port Kazaa uses, that he's not transfering a family photo album or business documents from his office network.
If criminal activity is suspected, they should contact the police.
Usally not. The league will have a list of known forbidden bugs, which can get you ejected (they try to get them patched or modded, so the game software can referee instead of a human). But someone who finds a new "bug" (more likely a balance oversight by the game designers) isn't often penalized. (The bug may be added to the forbidden list, of course, but they don't seem to punish retroactively)
(ie. If a balance change in Starcraft fu*ks up a pro's strategy, is that player allowed to withdraw from the league/tournament without penalties?)
The league simply won't allow changes to the underlying software while a season is in progress. They'll freeze at a predetermined version number. (Alternatively, some leagues may allow a newer version than they've officially chosen, if both opponents consent to it)
And of course, Starcraft is 5 years old. Such a game won't any significant changes coming along. The time for balance patches is over.
There was one patch last year, which removed a bug which could somehow fly zerg builders across the map. (It would've been obivous if anyone used it in a game). Blizzard took some flak for that, because it broke compatibility with previously recorded matches.
And if nobody converts their files to ogg's, why would manufacturers waste development time and costs putting ogg support into their products?
So they can have a superior format without the risk of Apple or Microsoft quadrupling the license fees 9 months down the line.
Actually, because Microsoft is pushing their own audio format, manufacturers will have a low-cost chance to push Ogg. They're going to have to expand the devices to recognize non-mp3 files anyhow... why not throw in the free integerized Ogg code while they're at it?
I guarantee you he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back.
But... his sperm can fly! Each time he ejaculates, a swarm of airborn flagellates burst off faster than a bullet, using their x-ray vision to find attractive eggs to fertilize...
Only someone like Wonder Woman has a strong enough uterus to carry his kid.
they're still making Peter Parker a geek. True to the comic's heritage and spirit.
I don't think so. Yes, Petey still had his scientific background, but in the movie, he doesn't do anything with it. It's not part of his super-power.
For the sake of two funny scenes about awkwardly adjusting to biological web-slingers (the cafeteria fumble and his rooftop recitation of superhero slogans), they stripped out the whole gadgeteer aspect of the character.
Spider-Man (from 1960) was in many ways a hybridization of the two most successful superheros (from the 1930s). On one side is Superman, whose powers are intrinsic to his being. The opposite is Batman, who suffered criminal trauma and fights with gadgets and guile.
In the middle is Spiderman, who is physically abnormal (but not to the stupifying extreme Superman is), but who lost a family member and carries unique gizmos, Batman-like.
At least, that's how it's supposed to be. But instead of Spidey's technical prowess being an integral part of his identity, it only gets lip service. In the movie he doesn't build slingers, he grows them. Using the body, and not the mind. That moves him out of the nerd herd and into the jock camp.
Next up, Spiderman 3.. Introducing Venom!
I wonder how they'd manage this. First, the film has to establish him as wearing this strange suit, for an extended period of crimefighting.
The best approach is for him to rescue astronauts from a bad landing, where a falling glass canister of space-goop cracks over his head. Back home, painstaking application of bleach does nothing to prevent the stain from spreading over the whole thing in the wash...
I'm really dubious about that. Unless you're amazingly generous with the word "fine".
I mean, when Quake3 came out, the press was all over it for not supporting unaccelerated graphics at all. There is no software rendering in that game.
Sure, if you have a software OpenGL driver (like Mesa) you can get Q3 to run, and I suppose Wine may pass though the calls OK, but getting any acceptable fps seems unlikely. Definately, my Athlon XP 1300 couldn't make Q3 playable without an accelerated card.
This description is really just describing a bug in the 3D rendering libraries.
Not exactly, but that bug would make it horribly more blatant.
With a proper game engine and graphics API, there is no reason any sane person would ever turn off VSYNC.
Even if your specific game library is free of blocking-for-flip bugs, players will still want to have the fastest drawing possible.
With VSYNC off, the screen shows part of the prior frame, and part of the current one. Enabling VSYNC means you only see the prior frame, none of the current.
And making decisions based on old data is bad. (Another respondant said the same thing, but with amazing succinctness)
Of course, as overall fps increases, the lateness of the prior frame is reduced, so that factor becomes less important. But at the same time, the penalty is reduced, as any tearing is harder to percieve.
Oh, and another reason to leave VSYNC disabled: nonuniform scene complexity.
Suppose your monitor has "100hz refresh", and configuring the game with low or medium graphical quality will give you 100fps in normal use. So naturally you'd leave it on medium, to get a more detailed image onscreen.
But then suppose occasionally 7 enemies come over a hilltop and shoot you with laser-guided rockets. There's so much going on, that the card simply can't output 100fps. If VSYNC is on, you're dropped down to the next slowest multiple (80 fps or whatever, although these are fake numbers). But if VSYNC is off, you might go down only to 93.6 or so, making a less jarring transition, and leaving you better able to manuver when it's needed most.
Two reasons. The first (and undisputable one) is that for scientific purposes of measuring system performance, you want to have as precise numbers as possible. So when starting to tweak for speed, you certainly have to be in a configuration where the effect of every setting changed can be detected. Vertical-sync locking might hide the effect (positive or negative) of weirdly-labeled OpenGL options.
But there's another reason, so people may want to leave vsync disabled after figuring out the tweaks they want. It's almost too simple to bother typing out: "Because it gives higher frame rates".
You said "faster frame rate in numerical terms". But that just means "faster overall".
surely it means that your monitor is showing two or more frames at once (eg the top 1/3 of your screen showing two frames ago, middle 1/3 showing one frame ago, bottom 1/3 showing current frame)?
Not three, just two. Your description is as if there was no such thing as hardware pageflipping. In reality, there will be a single "tear" line going horizontally across the screen, with the prior frame above it and the current below. (vertical syncing forces that line to always stay at Y=0 at the top of the screen, meaning you see only one frame)
The reason the tear-line doesn't matter at all is a fundamental principle of visual perception. "Persistence of vision". I won't go into lengthy details, just look it up.
Hint1: A movie projector shows you fully black screens 50% of the time, yet that doesn't bother anybody.
Hint2: the higher the framerate is, the smaller the difference between the prior and current frame will be, making the "tear" even less detectable. At above 50 fps, it's hard to see, even if you're looking.
If your monitor is set to 100hz vertical refresh then that's your optimal frame rate. No more. No less.
Absolutely not, especially in games based on Quake. There's MUCH more than your monitor to consider. There's also the simulation model inside the game. The tight coupling between client and server can have weird effects. For example, if you're playing Quake3, the forward distance you can jump is maximized with a framerate evenly disible by 125. Going at 130 fps will unsync you from the underlying physics code, cutting 4-7 units off your jump height, and generally impairing all your movements (by a tiny amount, but serious deathmatches are won by slim margins)
(I don't know if other games exhibit fps effecting the server's processing, but that phenomena is well documented in Quake)
Doesn't matter. They still won't give it away. Releasing it for free might mean that someone will grab it any release an improved version (still for free), and that it might get a few users, and those people might have less time to buy the company's upcoming for-profit releases.
That's the real reason the entertainment industry wants eternal copyrights- not because old works are still earning them money, but because they'd be competition with their new releases.
You are basically saying that the GPL lacks the viral properties because you can elect to not use it.
"Viral" means without a choice.
In biology, a virus is something which invades a cell and modifies its reproduction without consent. In computer science, a virus is software which invades a program and modifies its code without consent.
Nothing that gives you an open choice to avoid it can be rightly called "viral". In fact, a Microsft-like click-through EULA could come closer to being "viral", depending on the terms it sneaks in.
What if you put an application together using Open Source tools. Let's say your application uses Linux as the OS, and PostgreSQL as the database.
What if you put an application together using Microsoft(tm) tools. Let's say your application uses Windows(r) as the OS, and SQLServer(r) as the database.
Now, would the database schema/design now belong to Bill Gates or to you?
It's really the same question. The GPL is irrelevant to this issue. The GPL (or any license) only kicks in when you've violated copyright. Exactly what kind of action counts as a copyright violation is up to your nation's legal system, and the license author can't change that.
(The licensor can losen restrictions if she wants, by promising to ignore some kinds of violations. But she can't toughen them)
The same problem has occured on Microsoft(tm) Windows(r) computers. Prehaps it's fixed by the XP/2003 versions, but recently you'd see a menu full of "Microsoft Word" "Microsoft Excel" Microsoft Powerpoint"...
That's actually much worse than how KDE does it, because instead of one meaningless extra letter there are 10 characters to read past before the name is disambiguated. (It looks horrible on the taskbar too)
Please mod this shameless, plagiarizing karma whore into oblivion.
That accusation is unfactual on all 3 of its points.
shameless: It is posted anonymously. Concealing your identity is a sign of shame in most cultures.
plagiarizing: To attempt plagiarizism, you must attempt to present someone else's writing as your own. Leaving aside the silly concept of anonymous plagiarism, the formatting is so blatantly newspaper like that clearly no attempt was may to disguise it as an original posting.
karma whore: Once again, as an anonymous post, it is completely unable to collect karma.
Slashdot Mirror
If you start exporting high tech jobs to Asia then who is going to be left to buy your products over here?
Do you know why sailboats don't have electric fans installed in the stern to blow wind onto the sails?
I also simply don't understand why everyone seems to equate paper receipts with: "voter gets to keep the receipt." Where does this thinking come from?
That's what "receipt" means. It's what you recieve; what you take with you when you leave.
This is not deserving of an +5 status as it shows a complete lack of understanding of how BitTorrent works.
The difference between "reports in when it gets, or fails to get, a piece" (what he said) and "percentage complete that the client reports" (what you said) is insigificant, and his conclusion is perfectly valid.
A normal RSS download is not really more work to serve than to maintain a tracker. (Less, actually, because the HTTP server code is probably more optimized than the BT tracker)
Merely opening the TCP/IP connection is a sizable chunk of the "work" needed to distribute RSS over HTTP. BitTorrent can't save you from that.
All that needs to happen is for browsers to handle torrent links.... Change the RSS to use the new URL scheme, and there you go.
I don't see how this is supposed to help. The problem that BitTorrent addresses is different from that faced by a popular RSS service.
BitTorrent has proven useful so far to preserve bandwidth. It's handy when distributing files of greater than 1 megabyte in size- usually much larger, such as 650 meg ISO images. It's effectiveness comes from the fact that indivudual downloaders will take a long time to get the entire file, so they will be online serving to other requestors. (Note that the originator of the file is running the "tracker", and this computer must do a small introductory handshake with every new downloader)
That doesn't apply to blogs. RSS files are fairly small, right? Just the recent headlines, much less than one megabyte. Chances are, the entire size of the file not much bigger than the amount of metadata passed around to initiate a typical BitTorrent session.
It's the superhero-comicbook genre! Insulting the audience's intelligence is old hat.
Comic books are all about lone crackpot inventors who whip up hightech weapons that put McDonnel-Douglas to shame. That's how their world works.
In the case of Spider-Man, he has the extra excuse of his inherent climbing ability. Just prepend some pseudoscientific babble: "Studying my own mutated fingertips under the electron microscope revealed an amazing nanoscale pattern of unprecedented adhesiveness, which I shall attempt to synthesize in the UC..."
The US PTO is paid regardless of them doing anything.
Patent examiners working for the PTO, however, are paid salary plus a bonus for productivity. Where "productivity" is measured in how many filings they've processed... and it is much, much faster to approve a patent than to withhold it.
Unix applications don't talk to each other via strange, binary, unreadable protocols such as Corba, COM, DCOM, COM+ or whatever MS is selling these days.
/dev/sda1" command you mentioned will produce simple, readable text for me, eh? I'd paste the results in here, but Slashdot has filters to prevent raw, ugly, incomprehensible binary.
Corba is a Unix protocol. So is rpc/portmap. So are X11 and DCOP and Bonobo... None of them are something I'd care to read.
They talk text. Simple, human readable, text.
Uh huh. So this "cat
The Unix idea of a standard input and output stream for each program was a good idea, but not followed through enough. In particular, from a programming language standpoint, there's something very important missing: type safety. Or even types at all.
It's ironic that Unix was supposedly tightly related to the C language, and yet C's weak typesystem is stronger than whatever Unix provides. Is the failure of Unix to provide transmission of datatypes more well-defined than an anonymous bytestream that created an opening for a proliferation of overcomplex IPC protocols.
You could wipe Linux and everybody off the face of the planet in less than a year, if you would just make Windows Unix-compatable.
Oh, and that's backwards. It's a classic case: reduced barriers to switching benefits holders of minority marketshare more than their larger competitors. (So in the extreme, a monopolist will never want to encourage compatibility)
The incompatibility of Microsoft Windows vs Unix-like OSes is helpful to Microsoft. It prevents people from easily switching away to other providers.
If Microsoft creates effective Unix-like support, then future vendors of Windows applications will use these features. Eventually they might transition to them entirely. (Why would Oracle or Adobe continue to write separate Windows, Mac, and Unix releases of products, when they can just move everything to a Unix-targeted codebase?)
When that happens- when some major Windows applications are using its Unix API, not the Win32 one, then it will be easier for users to switch away from Microsoft's OS, while keeping their applications intact.
So, to protect their shareholders, Microsoft should avoid anything that'll help customers switch.
(and the simplified filenames where '/' and '\0' are the only reserved characters)
That's not entirely true. Yes, from the filesystem perspective there are only 2 reserved characters. But looking at Unix as a whole (especially as it was delivered 20 years ago), you really had to treat other characters as revserved.
Like " ", "*", and especially "-". Many programs and commands that are fine in general will choke up or become randomly destructive when fed names like that. Or at the very least, the user-friendliness of the CLI is destroyed.
In fact if Microsoft had just made Windows Unix-compatable
Legally, it already is Unix-compatible, in that Microsoft(tm) achieved POSIX certification for Windows NT.
What legitimate need does a single person have when downloading 40 gigs of data over a short period of time?
The single most obvious answer is videophone. Someone streaming the high-res output of a firewire camera can generate gigabytes of new data every hour, copyrighted only to him.
Another possible answer: He may be downloading music and movie files, and he could've paid for them. Or (more likely, today) he could be collecting hundreds of huge, public-domain movies
While it's currently true that no major legit service offers decent digital movie downloads, the ISP industry shouldn't assume it has to stay this way. If they advertise unlimited, they should try to provide it, or change the ads.
It's quite reasonable to suspect that if 40GB of data was taking place of the port Kazaa uses, that he's not transfering a family photo album or business documents from his office network.
If criminal activity is suspected, they should contact the police.
Is abusing a bug grounds of disqualification?
Usally not. The league will have a list of known forbidden bugs, which can get you ejected (they try to get them patched or modded, so the game software can referee instead of a human). But someone who finds a new "bug" (more likely a balance oversight by the game designers) isn't often penalized. (The bug may be added to the forbidden list, of course, but they don't seem to punish retroactively)
(ie. If a balance change in Starcraft fu*ks up a pro's strategy, is that player allowed to withdraw from the league/tournament without penalties?)
The league simply won't allow changes to the underlying software while a season is in progress. They'll freeze at a predetermined version number. (Alternatively, some leagues may allow a newer version than they've officially chosen, if both opponents consent to it)
And of course, Starcraft is 5 years old. Such a game won't any significant changes coming along. The time for balance patches is over.
There was one patch last year, which removed a bug which could somehow fly zerg builders across the map. (It would've been obivous if anyone used it in a game). Blizzard took some flak for that, because it broke compatibility with previously recorded matches.
And if nobody converts their files to ogg's, why would manufacturers waste development time and costs putting ogg support into their products?
So they can have a superior format without the risk of Apple or Microsoft quadrupling the license fees 9 months down the line.
Actually, because Microsoft is pushing their own audio format, manufacturers will have a low-cost chance to push Ogg. They're going to have to expand the devices to recognize non-mp3 files anyhow... why not throw in the free integerized Ogg code while they're at it?
I guarantee you he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back.
But... his sperm can fly! Each time he ejaculates, a swarm of airborn flagellates burst off faster than a bullet, using their x-ray vision to find attractive eggs to fertilize...
Only someone like Wonder Woman has a strong enough uterus to carry his kid.
The powers don't manifest until 10 years old.
PS. Lex Luthor is Superman's grandfather...
they're still making Peter Parker a geek. True to the comic's heritage and spirit.
I don't think so. Yes, Petey still had his scientific background, but in the movie, he doesn't do anything with it. It's not part of his super-power.
For the sake of two funny scenes about awkwardly adjusting to biological web-slingers (the cafeteria fumble and his rooftop recitation of superhero slogans), they stripped out the whole gadgeteer aspect of the character.
Spider-Man (from 1960) was in many ways a hybridization of the two most successful superheros (from the 1930s). On one side is Superman, whose powers are intrinsic to his being. The opposite is Batman, who suffered criminal trauma and fights with gadgets and guile.
In the middle is Spiderman, who is physically abnormal (but not to the stupifying extreme Superman is), but who lost a family member and carries unique gizmos, Batman-like.
At least, that's how it's supposed to be. But instead of Spidey's technical prowess being an integral part of his identity, it only gets lip service. In the movie he doesn't build slingers, he grows them. Using the body, and not the mind. That moves him out of the nerd herd and into the jock camp.
Next up, Spiderman 3.. Introducing Venom!
I wonder how they'd manage this. First, the film has to establish him as wearing this strange suit, for an extended period of crimefighting.
The best approach is for him to rescue astronauts from a bad landing, where a falling glass canister of space-goop cracks over his head. Back home, painstaking application of bleach does nothing to prevent the stain from spreading over the whole thing in the wash...
I'm really dubious about that. Unless you're amazingly generous with the word "fine".
I mean, when Quake3 came out, the press was all over it for not supporting unaccelerated graphics at all. There is no software rendering in that game.
Sure, if you have a software OpenGL driver (like Mesa) you can get Q3 to run, and I suppose Wine may pass though the calls OK, but getting any acceptable fps seems unlikely. Definately, my Athlon XP 1300 couldn't make Q3 playable without an accelerated card.
This description is really just describing a bug in the 3D rendering libraries.
Not exactly, but that bug would make it horribly more blatant.
With a proper game engine and graphics API, there is no reason any sane person would ever turn off VSYNC.
Even if your specific game library is free of blocking-for-flip bugs, players will still want to have the fastest drawing possible.
With VSYNC off, the screen shows part of the prior frame, and part of the current one. Enabling VSYNC means you only see the prior frame, none of the current.
And making decisions based on old data is bad. (Another respondant said the same thing, but with amazing succinctness)
Of course, as overall fps increases, the lateness of the prior frame is reduced, so that factor becomes less important. But at the same time, the penalty is reduced, as any tearing is harder to percieve.
punctuation Nazi
Words, words, words. You really should've used "Zoilist" there instead of "Nazi". Much more precise.
Oh, and another reason to leave VSYNC disabled: nonuniform scene complexity.
Suppose your monitor has "100hz refresh", and configuring the game with low or medium graphical quality will give you 100fps in normal use. So naturally you'd leave it on medium, to get a more detailed image onscreen.
But then suppose occasionally 7 enemies come over a hilltop and shoot you with laser-guided rockets. There's so much going on, that the card simply can't output 100fps. If VSYNC is on, you're dropped down to the next slowest multiple (80 fps or whatever, although these are fake numbers). But if VSYNC is off, you might go down only to 93.6 or so, making a less jarring transition, and leaving you better able to manuver when it's needed most.
Two reasons. The first (and undisputable one) is that for scientific purposes of measuring system performance, you want to have as precise numbers as possible. So when starting to tweak for speed, you certainly have to be in a configuration where the effect of every setting changed can be detected. Vertical-sync locking might hide the effect (positive or negative) of weirdly-labeled OpenGL options.
But there's another reason, so people may want to leave vsync disabled after figuring out the tweaks they want. It's almost too simple to bother typing out: "Because it gives higher frame rates".
You said "faster frame rate in numerical terms". But that just means "faster overall".
surely it means that your monitor is showing two or more frames at once (eg the top 1/3 of your screen showing two frames ago, middle 1/3 showing one frame ago, bottom 1/3 showing current frame)?
Not three, just two. Your description is as if there was no such thing as hardware pageflipping. In reality, there will be a single "tear" line going horizontally across the screen, with the prior frame above it and the current below. (vertical syncing forces that line to always stay at Y=0 at the top of the screen, meaning you see only one frame)
The reason the tear-line doesn't matter at all is a fundamental principle of visual perception. "Persistence of vision". I won't go into lengthy details, just look it up.
Hint1: A movie projector shows you fully black screens 50% of the time, yet that doesn't bother anybody.
Hint2: the higher the framerate is, the smaller the difference between the prior and current frame will be, making the "tear" even less detectable. At above 50 fps, it's hard to see, even if you're looking.
If your monitor is set to 100hz vertical refresh then that's your optimal frame rate. No more. No less.
Absolutely not, especially in games based on Quake. There's MUCH more than your monitor to consider. There's also the simulation model inside the game. The tight coupling between client and server can have weird effects. For example, if you're playing Quake3, the forward distance you can jump is maximized with a framerate evenly disible by 125. Going at 130 fps will unsync you from the underlying physics code, cutting 4-7 units off your jump height, and generally impairing all your movements (by a tiny amount, but serious deathmatches are won by slim margins)
(I don't know if other games exhibit fps effecting the server's processing, but that phenomena is well documented in Quake)
It can't be commercially viable any more.
Doesn't matter. They still won't give it away. Releasing it for free might mean that someone will grab it any release an improved version (still for free), and that it might get a few users, and those people might have less time to buy the company's upcoming for-profit releases.
That's the real reason the entertainment industry wants eternal copyrights- not because old works are still earning them money, but because they'd be competition with their new releases.
Has anyone yet released a Doom/Heretic/ROTT/Whatever old-school game with tcp-ip support for joining games mid-way through
There's a rumor going around that Slashdot posters never read the articles they're replying to.
Apparently they don't even read the post being replied to either, because the software linked does exactly that.
You are basically saying that the GPL lacks the viral properties because you can elect to not use it.
"Viral" means without a choice.
In biology, a virus is something which invades a cell and modifies its reproduction without consent.
In computer science, a virus is software which invades a program and modifies its code without consent.
Nothing that gives you an open choice to avoid it can be rightly called "viral". In fact, a Microsft-like click-through EULA could come closer to being "viral", depending on the terms it sneaks in.
What if you put an application together using Open Source tools. Let's say your application uses Linux as the OS, and PostgreSQL as the database.
What if you put an application together using Microsoft(tm) tools. Let's say your application uses Windows(r) as the OS, and SQLServer(r) as the database.
Now, would the database schema/design now belong to Bill Gates or to you?
It's really the same question. The GPL is irrelevant to this issue. The GPL (or any license) only kicks in when you've violated copyright. Exactly what kind of action counts as a copyright violation is up to your nation's legal system, and the license author can't change that.
(The licensor can losen restrictions if she wants, by promising to ignore some kinds of violations. But she can't toughen them)
The same problem has occured on Microsoft(tm) Windows(r) computers. Prehaps it's fixed by the XP/2003 versions, but recently you'd see a menu full of "Microsoft Word" "Microsoft Excel" Microsoft Powerpoint"...
That's actually much worse than how KDE does it, because instead of one meaningless extra letter there are 10 characters to read past before the name is disambiguated. (It looks horrible on the taskbar too)
Please mod this shameless, plagiarizing karma whore into oblivion.
That accusation is unfactual on all 3 of its points.
shameless: It is posted anonymously. Concealing your identity is a sign of shame in most cultures.
plagiarizing: To attempt plagiarizism, you must attempt to present someone else's writing as your own. Leaving aside the silly concept of anonymous plagiarism, the formatting is so blatantly newspaper like that clearly no attempt was may to disguise it as an original posting.
karma whore: Once again, as an anonymous post, it is completely unable to collect karma.