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User: Cuthalion

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  1. Re:Boycott on Blizzard Rains on Bnetd Project · · Score: 1

    Blizard is owned by Vivendi Universal, a company which has revenues in the dozens of billions. Their shareholders probably wouldn't notice if blizzard just ceased to exist alltogether.

  2. Re:Easier way? on Peek-a-Boo(ty) · · Score: 2

    To Peek-A-Booty developers: ever thought of creating a distributed document caching scheme for your anonymous proxy system, sounds like an idea.

    That ends up sounding very similar to Freenet.

  3. How does this apply to me.. on Sleep Less, Live Longer · · Score: 1

    Every 36 hours I sleep for 12..

  4. Re:Argghhh! on Sleep Less, Live Longer · · Score: 1

    Seven hours isn't really little enough to make one miserable. At least not most people.

  5. Re:Darwin. on Genetically Modified Mouthwashing Bacteria · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just like we're evolved to have lice.

  6. Re:ok, let me get this straight... on Concerning The Cancellation of Futurama · · Score: 1

    The tick was missing any of the crime-fighting element that kept the comic and animated versions moving. It was funny, but was just a sitcom where everyone wore tights.

  7. Re:Except... on California Court: EULAs are Inapplicable in Some Cases · · Score: 1

    How do you own the CD-ROM but not its contents?

    Pay more attention. The same way you own a book but not the text in it. If you buy a book, you can't legally make as many copies as you want. The same is true with a CD-ROM. In both cases you're buying some media, on which is some information which still belongs to the copyright holder. Yes, you are allowed to use it. Yes you are allowed to mutilate your book or cd. No you are not allowed to make copies. You are not allowed to photocopy a book and, without reading it, replace the copyright information (usually one of the first pages) with your own.

  8. Re:A good idea? on An Open Source Direct3D 8.0 Wrapper for Open GL · · Score: 1

    GRAAAAAH!!!

    Open Source Programmers are not fungible!

  9. Re:SDL/OpenGL vs DirectX OR the end of open standa on An Open Source Direct3D 8.0 Wrapper for Open GL · · Score: 1

    MS won't really have the power to enforce changes to DirectX 9 that would make it incompatible, because the devs will ignore them

    So who WILL add new features to expose the functionality of the next generation of video cards? Or will our APIs be so calcified that no hardware manufacturer can reasonably add anything new?

    New revisions of libraries like DirectX are neccessary, so long as there are fundamental changes in what various pieces of hardware are doing.

  10. Re:SDL integration on An Open Source Direct3D 8.0 Wrapper for Open GL · · Score: 4, Informative

    SDL provides kind of a minimal interface, which makes it really easy to pick up and learn. If you want to expose / accelerate all the features that DirectX does, you'd need a significant rewrite or extension of the SDL API.

    Just to provide one example (there are many others): In DirectDraw when you're blitting a sprite, you have the option of flipping it horizontally. There's no way to do that with SDL - you have to store two copies of your sprites if you think you'll want to blit it facing the other way. Or do it by hand each blit, but then you're not geting HW accel.

    Now this may be a concious design decision. A complaint I have about DirectX IS that it's interface is sort of boroque. For the most simple of blits, there's a lot of unused parameters, which is kind of irritating, and makes the code harder to read and the interface harder to learn. My initial reaction to SDL was "This is great - it's so easy!" until I started noticing not-so-advanced features that are missing. I've basically concluded that if I want any kind of powerful 2d support I might as well just use OpenGL directly rather than fuck around with SDL's hamstrung (but admittedly very easy to use) interface.

    So the upshot: DirectX is a proper superset of the SDL functionality, so writing an SDL plugin for directx would be a losing proposition at best (never minding the issues of adding a second, or on some platforms, third, layer of abstraction in what is already a time-critical interface)

    ps: don't even get me started on SDL_mixer

  11. Re:Just out of curiousity on California Court: EULAs are Inapplicable in Some Cases · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you buy a book you own the book. You don't own the novel. You can't turn around and publish it yourself, you can't sue the author, you can't photocopy the whole thing and give it away, etc.

    Is software any different? You buy software, you own the cdrom, but not the data.

    The differences are that software is easy to copy, and they try to legally restrict you from transferring the license (used software stores? uh-uh.) Certainly if it that happened, it would not be uncommon to buy a program, copy / install it, sell the original to someone else. People DO do this with music, they also would with software. The reason people can do it with music is that it's legal to transfer the license.

    I'm not saying I agree with restrictive EULAs. Just trying to answer your confusion.

  12. Re:Creation vs. Evolution debate at my university on Still More Evidence for Evolution · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yes, maybe god's a filthy liar and a shithead, too. Actually, that really goes a long way to addressing many theological dilemas.

  13. Let's rephrase this a little. on Mythic Sued Over Blocking Auctions of Game Tokens · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it acceptable / legal to hire people to play the game for you?

    Is that the same question or not? I think it basically is.

  14. Re:Give me my 10K but ..patent pending on Google Programming Contest · · Score: 1

    10K doesn't sound like fair compensation.

    Depending on how crappy the entries are, 10K could be quite generous.

  15. Re:Hmmm... on Google Programming Contest · · Score: 1

    The only thing I'd want is for google to stay just the way it is though, don't bloat.

    Google is constantly adding new services. But they don't force them down your throat, so it doesn't matter.

    The term bloat doesn't really apply here. The fact that they made catalogs.google.com doesn't in any way affect people who don't go out of their way to use that service.

    To summarize: I don't care if they offer a lot of extra services, so long as they keep the front-end clean. Which they have a history of doing.

  16. Re:THIS is why I read slashdot. on Tom Lord's Decentralized Revision Control System · · Score: 1

    There are clients for CVS with recursive add built in. At least for windows, TortoiseCVS supports this, and is consistently delightful to use, IMO.

  17. Generalize on What Games are You Addicted To? · · Score: 1

    Here's a different question. What is it that makes an addictive game addictive?

  18. Re:Windows needs a clean break on Security Community Reacts to Microsoft Announcement · · Score: 2

    What's this passport deal?

    I mean it. I've been using XP for a good number of months. I don't have a passport account. I haven't even been prompted to make one. If I wanted to use MSN Messenger, I would have been, but I don't, and I uninstalled it (you have to poke around a bit to do that, but it's not impossible, or even difficult).

    Did it secretly make a Passport account and not tell me? Is this all just a load of crap? What's going on here?

  19. Re:Resume Item on Borland C++ For Linux · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You know, there's nothing stopping you from using GCC and whatever editor you like (RHIDE, emacs, whatever) under linux. If you absolutely must make it work under windows too, all the better - now you're learning how to write portable code. Even neverminding that, using GCC is much more practical linux experience than using Borland C++ will ever be, in that most everyone doing linux development will not drop everything and migrate to Borland's tools immediately.

  20. Re:Ogg Vorbis clearly wins on Non-MP3 Codecs? · · Score: 1

    Personally I replaced 128 kbps CBR mp3s (encoded with BladeEnc)

    Ah, well, there's your problem.

  21. Re:Linux - the key to oppression? on China Orders E-Mail Screening · · Score: 1

    I wonder if China will GPL their filtering software?


    Even if they do, they only have to share the source with the people they give the binaries to. Which will probably be nobody.

  22. Re:I think Google is getting a little too much cre on The Google Effect And Domain Name Speculation · · Score: 1

    At least for XP, the powertoys give you a reasonable interface to this registry key.

  23. Re:Small but important addition on Even Flash Can Get Viruses · · Score: 1

    What OS has flash as a part of it?

  24. Re:But dude... on The Rise And Fall of Ion Storm · · Score: 1

    Nice try, John. No game, no weiner.

  25. Re:Comments on The Rise And Fall of Ion Storm · · Score: 2

    I also wonder how many times Daikatana "started over"

    Well, an excellent account of the history of Daikatana is on the "news" site The Smoking Gun.

    Hey, it's on the internet, it must be true, huh?

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