I think if you look closely you'll see that they used materials very sparingly. The man behind the curtain (IMO) is that they're dedicating all their GPU and memory bandwidth to ray tracing computations, at the expensive of traditional raster manipulations.
Who cares? Well, I think if you're playing a game where you are free to run where you like, you may care.
I agree, nVidia is showing that ray tracing doesn't scare them at all. And when it's ready to happen, it will. I disagree that it's ready to happen any day now.
The fact that they had to qualify liberalism with "classical" more or less highlights that there really is no "liberal" either.
The only conservative or liberal is "I like how it is right now"/"I don't like how it is right now". I think ~70% of americans are liberal, to the shock, dismay and disgust of ~20% of us. McCain, for the conservative, does want to make some changes, that left wing bastard.
It's unhelpful in the extreme to label a side of an issue as being liberal or conservative, big government or small government, capitalist or communist. That enables people to pick their side by associating with their friends. I want it to be illegal to label a position. I'll work on legislating that.
I think we want our government selection to be something more educated and thoughtful than "Hook'em Horns".
You may disagree with me on national health care, but I hope it's because you've personally evaluated your health care spending (and medical troubles), talked to your friends about their medical excursions, and really looked at your corporate health care. I believe you can do those things and still disagree with me, and that's just fine. But believing the bullshit talking man on TV because he's wearing an elephant on his shirt and his jersey says "McCain", should disqualify you from voting.
I want to live in a country with more pro-gun, anti-big business, pro health care, anti-monopoly, pro-capitalist, anti-centralization, pro-civil rightsists, and all the shades therein, and fewer republicans and fewer democrats. All the issues are vastly complicated, and finding the right mix and accurate information is pretty tough, we deserve more viewpoints and more choices than "a" or "b". Further, for those with lots of power and little concern for the greater good, who constantly work to muddle the issues and spread disinformation: it's much easier to work us over with only 2 positions than with 10.
Exactly. Either these people are exceptionally stupid, or this was planned.
The plan may not have been as well architected as an x-man comic. It could be they don't actually have funding YET, but are playing a bit of chicken...but I think PC vendors would be foolish not to find a way to surreptitiously fund them. The PC industry needs OS X.
If a large PC maker is funding them, it's not about image. People don't buy PC brands because of image anyway, there's very little brand loyalty (with good reason, I grant you). It's about letting someone with shallow pockets take a risk and possibly fail without jeopardizing your large business. Apple has a long history of slapping its customers in the face and being praised for it. They'll spin this as "defending the experience for Apple users" or some crap, and true believers will eat it up.
This is going to cost a pretty penny, but it will be nothing compared to the corporation(s) funding them. If it succeeds, it opens up ~10% of the market to PC vendors, and displaces MS as the dominant player on PC hardware. Further, it would drive a great demand for new "Leopard Compatible" hardware, picking up PC sales the way Vista didn't. In my opinion this could be a really great thing, and is worth paying attention to. That said, while I believe OS X is the superior OS, I have never liked Apple's business model or its hardware. I am thus not a true believer, and my loyalties continue to be with PC systems.
The only reason I suspect this didn't happen sooner is that it would have been cheaper if Vista didn't suck and actually rivaled OS X in popularity. However MS has completely lost its way and I think PC makers have grown impatient.
...Also, many democrats are younger and don't have 'time' for politics, but do have time for comedy... I think you are making a very good point
I hope not. Often his over-the-top portrayal of some conservative policies does fail to indicate there's another side to the story. Colbert is sometimes more evenhanded than Stewart in that regard, but if it's the difference between a laugh and accuracy, it's a laugh every time.
This show should only be watched for comedic value, lest one runs the risk of being the left wingnut to counter Colbert's right wingnut.
As an adult of sound mind, fully aware of the risks, I say if you want to play with drugs and your responsibilities to society are met, go nuts. As long as what you do, and the consequences of what you do are self contained you're absolutely right, it's none of my business. A side debate is how capable society is of letting you destroy yourself, and how capable you are of having 0 net impact on the rest of us. It's a hard argument so I tend to side with you, let it be.
But looking at competitions (inherently more than one person), and the Olympics, and how many are below 18, and how many have been training since basically they were toilet trained...it's scarier. Yeah, think of the children, but I'm serious. We can bicker about the age, but I don't think it's possible to drive yourself as hard as they do AND have a healthy attitude and perspective about sports. Coupled with poor understanding of consequences AND a youthful belief that you're invincible, I would be concerned that not everyone taking the drugs is actually really aware of the issues. And this is for countries where caring parents are actually involved, if you're off in a government training camp...you will be the lab chimp.
Further, while there probably would be a decline in health problems for well understood drugs that are being abused/misused, the arms race for creating better drugs for the next event would probably conflict with proper testing. If a drug was made that would guarantee the athlete victory, he'd take it. Whether it'd kill him 5 years later or cause untold damage to her children...the question might not be asked, or answered truthfully. Further if you're training 14 hours per day, your knowledge of science and analytical skills might not be up to the task of asking the right questions and understanding statistical studies.
The only way to approximate a fair playing field is to ban the stuff entirely. It's imperfect, embarrassing, paranoid etc. The RISK of being found out does act to suppress widespread abuse. Imagine you're just some guy trying to compete on your own merits, and don't want to risk your life. You wouldn't stand a chance.
These competitions are not about technology. Any boat goes faster than a swimmer, any gun takes down a fencer and will be more accurate than a bow. I'm not sure what functional value gymnastics serves, but I'm sure we have or could invent machines that do it better. The competition is supposedly about the athlete in question. It's not about winning at all costs, it's about the discipline and dedication it took to win fair and square. Even I could win a swim meet if I could show up in body armor with a machine gun.
Regardless, non-compete clauses hurt people and are never justified. Where possible you shouldn't sign one, but that's rarely an option. Yeah sure we could work at McDonalds, but that's not helping anyone.
Individual employees have grossly inadequate buying power to make any tangible difference, the government needs to act to prevent abuse.
1) Stupid expensive 2) Potential Quality != Realized Quality (compression) 3) Stupid HDMI - Many of us have HD TV's or displays capable of the resolution, but not the interface. Yeah this isn't an unsolveable problem, but see #1
People will eventually switch, but it's just going to take a long time. No news here, this was by design.
Would it be as big of a deal if they did it on the schoolyard? What if an adult coached a particularly malicious child to approach this girl? Told him/her what buttons to push, gave the right information?
The problem is this girl was not sane. She may have been functional, but she was a danger to herself. She needed to be out of circulation and in a controlled environment. If there is a safety net to be created, it's around people in this situation, not around the rest of the world. It'd be great if the world were made of nerf, but it doesn't work that way.
Somehow making online forum rules enforceable as law is a horrible idea. I do not want to be required by law to fill in online forms truthfully, ever. There are a tremendous number of reasons for lying. I am constantly surprised on facebook by the faces I recognize but the names I do not. Everything from not wanting coworkers to see how you spent your sick day, to not wanting unsavory types to piece together too much of your personal information. Google is wrong, privacy is alive, it's called deception.
Creating new laws for old crimes seems like the wrong way to go. Is what she's doing any different than crimes we already recognize and prosecute? Isn't it illegal to arrange for someone to be killed? Isn't it illegal to allow someone to be killed or commit suicide? Isn't it illegal to provoke someone into an action you know will cause their death? Isn't it illegal to fail to render assistance to someone in mortal danger?
It seems like there is already a criminal charge for some of the behavior involved: manslaughter. IANAL but I can see the challenge to getting it to stick. You have malice but not intent, recklessness but no acknowledged danger. I'm sure smarter people are looking at it, but if new law is to be forged it seems like this is where it wants to live. Murder in its various forms is old, lots of thought has been put in to severity and mitigating factors. If there's something new, it's the ease with which a mean spirited person's reckless action could case the death of another by manipulation of emotions and sensitivities. Maybe that's the new interpretation someone wants to make, and certainly this woman is the most deserving to go through that fun ride in and out of prison for the endless trials and appeals.
But it's a real slippery slope, are we prepared to make being an asshole a criminal offense? Where do you draw the line between the idiot who drives slow in the fast lane, and the Myspace Manipulator who turns the knobs and pushes the buttons that might result in the undoing of an unstable person? Could your careless and heated forum post on the political forum that ended with "Go to hell", be construed as criminal manslaughter, should a reader combust?
Or maybe this is just a tragedy and we can't do anything about it, except help our kids build a concrete wall around their emotions, since that's what an increasingly social world will require anyway.
I assume by divorce that implied the spouses were either unaware or did not approve. I did not consider that perhaps they were aware but unable to tolerate the resulting embarrassment when it became public.
I agree he's an ass. We've all found him guilty of Assery of the 1st degree. He will probably come to a bad end, pardon the pun.
However there is no reason to feel sympathy for anyone in this case.
Agreed. The latest fad in corporate health care is for companies to ban smoking on property and remove unhealthy food from cafeterias...to save $ on health care costs. Whether those things are necessary or not should not be determined by my employer, who has my hands tied behind my back.
Health care is already socialized, but wouldn't you rather have it run by an elected body rather than your boss? There's no expectation of fairness in a corporation, but with your government you can at least fight for it. Don't you want to get, or not get a job entirely based on your skills and work ethic? Isn't that more important to the smooth operation of american businesses? Other than the option to decline, do you really have buying power now, or the ability to shop for better coverage/cost?
The only conversation we should be having about national health care is how it should work, not whether we need it.
In the original NYT it was said that Fortuny's prank cost several men their marriages (I forget the details). Those men really only deserve contempt anyway, you owe your spouse more than that.
As for those that were merely embarrassed or lost jobs...they were just stupid. If you are engaged in any behavior which if made public will cause you grief, you should spend a lot of time in concealing it. If you get found out, shut up, run, and hide. You will be forgotten in 3 months unless you hurt someone in the process, in which case you really have no moral high-ground to sit on.
Of course it's impossible to feel even the slightest sympathy for a troll. I don't know that he broke a law, at least not a law that we want on the books, but traditionally people who engage in this sort of behavior tend to have a rough go of life. Never did a punishment better fit a crime.
I have to agree with the GP, no one involved really deserves sympathy. We all lose on the grounds that our court system is busy untangling a mess created by one display of poor judgement after another, apparently without end. We all get to be drug through a childish war, and now are feeding the troll on a national level, allowing him to spew his self-righteous crap well beyond the forums he infests into otherwise respectable newspapers. The first person involved in this who yields and leaves bad enough alone gets my respect.
There's a difference between the quake engine and OpenGL. OpenGL is just a graphics library, it pretty much just outputs primitives.
The Quake engine manages meshes, does collision detection, handles all the mess of drawing the right textures for the right models, managing lighting etc.
If there were an OSI model for graphics, OpenGL would be layer 4, and the Quake Engine would be layer 5/6.
Except the part where GPUs have 256-512 bit wide, 2GHz + dedicated memory interfaces and Intel processors are...way, way less. Add that to the ability to write tight code on a GPU that efficiently uses caching and doesn't waste a cycle, compared to the near impossibility of writing such code on the host processor which you share with an OS and other apps... meh.
There might be some good stuff that can be done with this architecture, but I am not convinced it's a competitor to GPUs pound for pound. You have to really believe ray-tracing is the future, and that some of the multi-texturing shenanigans that drive memory bwidth in GPUs are in the past. That's a big leap of faith. I'd prefer to believe once they build it, we'll find a great use for it.
But if you think about it, 'nigger' is actually highly offensive and using it is likely going to brand you as a terrible person (unless you are black, in which case you are just ignorant). It's probably one of a few words my potty mouth will never use, it bothers me to type it. Pretty much any racial slur falls in to that category. They're mean spirited words intended to cause hurt. Yet there was a time when they were everyday bad words.
Shit on the other hand is just a "bad" word. Why it's bad has been lost to time. At most using it is impolite and brands the speaker as such...but that's a designation most people can tolerate.
I think all it says is today we're more sensitive to heredity than to social status. Insulting someones background is the most crude thing you can do. Perhaps in the future words like fag/queer/dyke/heshe etc. will also become taboo for the same reason. For the moment they're impolite words, best not used at work, but pretty common.
On a small scale, almost any system can work, including capitalism. If you all know each other, and have adequate controls on the rich and poor alike...there's no issue. But that's not helpful, such things won't exist in developed countries.
Not entirely. Already if you release a hardware device that interferes with, say, NBCs broadcast signal you're in trouble.
If you publish an article saying that Pepsi causes colon cancer, you're in trouble (unless you can PROVE it...which is hard even if true).
Hurting someones ability to sell their product without justification is and has always been on the wrong side of the law. There's no reason it shouldn't apply to software too.
They lost because of two things. Primarily they lost because Blizzard managed to show that Glider intentionally and unfairly hurts Blizzard's business. Then the other reason about the ram copyright bullshit...which won't really hold water for very long.
The only reason he'd threaten to GPL Glider, but not do it, is to ease the judgement against him and/or bilk some money out of Blizzard. If he wanted Glider to be released, it would have been done already.
personally, I hope it gets out. I have enough level 70s that I never play WoW anymore and cancelled my accounts over a year ago, but I'd like to experiment by modifying the code for a "do it yourself" group. I've always suspected I can replace any given 5 man (or raid) with preprogrammed event-driven AI, that would outperform humans. Glider would let me do that. I wouldn't be bothering anyone because i'd be in instances, but it'd be a blast.
But this happens anyway. As long as it is profitable to grow your business without bounds, there will be only a few worth mentioning. Any given industry is dominated by only a few players.
The less profit they make per customer, the longer it takes. Further, separating bandwidth from services by enabling 3rd party phones takes a big hunk out of their "free money" sails.
When selling a commodity it's essential to avoid the profit-killing, competing-on-price, race to the bottom.
In other words, it's essential to avoid free market capitalism?
The race to the bottom is happening, they're trying to give you as little as possible for whatever you pay...you just don't presently have a great amount of choice in what you pay.
No contracts, any phone you want. Compete on bandwidth * (latency)^-1/dollar. That's how competition happens and it's the best system so far. Like democracy, it's broken, but less broken than other things.
Provably incorrect. My digital watch displays nothing when the battery is dead. When it gets water in it, results vary but usually I see 18:88:88. These watches are wrong all the time.
Doesn't the UK refuse to extradite suspects who would face the death penalty in the US? (Also, usually our most high profile cases)
The numbers may not add up, but if our government can do as it pleases based on popular opinion, any refusal to hand over death row candidates becomes high profile and public opinion turns against the Commie Europeans. Having to dumb down charges just to get the suspects (i.e. take the death penalty off the table) presses some hot buttons. Worse it creates an environment where the rich can escape the same punishment that the poor would receive. That's politics.
On the other hand if the UK government blocks extradition of an espionage suspect...we'd probably do the same. That hits government paranoids a lot closer to home, so it's in no one's interests to block it.
You could say that in America, the economy sucks, the job market is frighteningly uncertain, and if we don't perceive a product to be exactly what we need and nothing more, at the lowest possible cost, we won't buy it.
Even in higher wage jobs like engineering, these calculations go through MY mind. I don't know if I'm going to have a job next month, every penny is being put in the bank or into reducing debt (i.e. mortages)and anything that might make weathering a >6 month bout of unemployment uncomfortable. This includes our "economic stimulus" kickback from the government, it's stimulating my bank account as we speak.
The scariest part? My company post profits every quarter. We're not hemorrhaging money, just people. Until we can get our government to return focus onto bad corporate behaviors within the US, I think you can expect to see us be tightwads.
Slashdot Mirror
I think if you look closely you'll see that they used materials very sparingly. The man behind the curtain (IMO) is that they're dedicating all their GPU and memory bandwidth to ray tracing computations, at the expensive of traditional raster manipulations.
Who cares? Well, I think if you're playing a game where you are free to run where you like, you may care.
I agree, nVidia is showing that ray tracing doesn't scare them at all. And when it's ready to happen, it will. I disagree that it's ready to happen any day now.
The fact that they had to qualify liberalism with "classical" more or less highlights that there really is no "liberal" either.
The only conservative or liberal is "I like how it is right now"/"I don't like how it is right now". I think ~70% of americans are liberal, to the shock, dismay and disgust of ~20% of us. McCain, for the conservative, does want to make some changes, that left wing bastard.
It's unhelpful in the extreme to label a side of an issue as being liberal or conservative, big government or small government, capitalist or communist. That enables people to pick their side by associating with their friends. I want it to be illegal to label a position. I'll work on legislating that.
I think we want our government selection to be something more educated and thoughtful than "Hook'em Horns".
You may disagree with me on national health care, but I hope it's because you've personally evaluated your health care spending (and medical troubles), talked to your friends about their medical excursions, and really looked at your corporate health care. I believe you can do those things and still disagree with me, and that's just fine. But believing the bullshit talking man on TV because he's wearing an elephant on his shirt and his jersey says "McCain", should disqualify you from voting.
I want to live in a country with more pro-gun, anti-big business, pro health care, anti-monopoly, pro-capitalist, anti-centralization, pro-civil rightsists, and all the shades therein, and fewer republicans and fewer democrats. All the issues are vastly complicated, and finding the right mix and accurate information is pretty tough, we deserve more viewpoints and more choices than "a" or "b". Further, for those with lots of power and little concern for the greater good, who constantly work to muddle the issues and spread disinformation: it's much easier to work us over with only 2 positions than with 10.
Exactly. Either these people are exceptionally stupid, or this was planned.
The plan may not have been as well architected as an x-man comic. It could be they don't actually have funding YET, but are playing a bit of chicken...but I think PC vendors would be foolish not to find a way to surreptitiously fund them. The PC industry needs OS X.
If a large PC maker is funding them, it's not about image. People don't buy PC brands because of image anyway, there's very little brand loyalty (with good reason, I grant you). It's about letting someone with shallow pockets take a risk and possibly fail without jeopardizing your large business. Apple has a long history of slapping its customers in the face and being praised for it. They'll spin this as "defending the experience for Apple users" or some crap, and true believers will eat it up.
This is going to cost a pretty penny, but it will be nothing compared to the corporation(s) funding them. If it succeeds, it opens up ~10% of the market to PC vendors, and displaces MS as the dominant player on PC hardware. Further, it would drive a great demand for new "Leopard Compatible" hardware, picking up PC sales the way Vista didn't. In my opinion this could be a really great thing, and is worth paying attention to. That said, while I believe OS X is the superior OS, I have never liked Apple's business model or its hardware. I am thus not a true believer, and my loyalties continue to be with PC systems.
The only reason I suspect this didn't happen sooner is that it would have been cheaper if Vista didn't suck and actually rivaled OS X in popularity. However MS has completely lost its way and I think PC makers have grown impatient.
...Also, many democrats are younger and don't have 'time' for politics, but do have time for comedy...
I think you are making a very good point
I hope not. Often his over-the-top portrayal of some conservative policies does fail to indicate there's another side to the story. Colbert is sometimes more evenhanded than Stewart in that regard, but if it's the difference between a laugh and accuracy, it's a laugh every time.
This show should only be watched for comedic value, lest one runs the risk of being the left wingnut to counter Colbert's right wingnut.
As an adult of sound mind, fully aware of the risks, I say if you want to play with drugs and your responsibilities to society are met, go nuts. As long as what you do, and the consequences of what you do are self contained you're absolutely right, it's none of my business. A side debate is how capable society is of letting you destroy yourself, and how capable you are of having 0 net impact on the rest of us. It's a hard argument so I tend to side with you, let it be.
But looking at competitions (inherently more than one person), and the Olympics, and how many are below 18, and how many have been training since basically they were toilet trained...it's scarier. Yeah, think of the children, but I'm serious. We can bicker about the age, but I don't think it's possible to drive yourself as hard as they do AND have a healthy attitude and perspective about sports. Coupled with poor understanding of consequences AND a youthful belief that you're invincible, I would be concerned that not everyone taking the drugs is actually really aware of the issues. And this is for countries where caring parents are actually involved, if you're off in a government training camp...you will be the lab chimp.
Further, while there probably would be a decline in health problems for well understood drugs that are being abused/misused, the arms race for creating better drugs for the next event would probably conflict with proper testing. If a drug was made that would guarantee the athlete victory, he'd take it. Whether it'd kill him 5 years later or cause untold damage to her children...the question might not be asked, or answered truthfully. Further if you're training 14 hours per day, your knowledge of science and analytical skills might not be up to the task of asking the right questions and understanding statistical studies.
The only way to approximate a fair playing field is to ban the stuff entirely. It's imperfect, embarrassing, paranoid etc. The RISK of being found out does act to suppress widespread abuse. Imagine you're just some guy trying to compete on your own merits, and don't want to risk your life. You wouldn't stand a chance.
These competitions are not about technology. Any boat goes faster than a swimmer, any gun takes down a fencer and will be more accurate than a bow. I'm not sure what functional value gymnastics serves, but I'm sure we have or could invent machines that do it better. The competition is supposedly about the athlete in question. It's not about winning at all costs, it's about the discipline and dedication it took to win fair and square. Even I could win a swim meet if I could show up in body armor with a machine gun.
Regardless, non-compete clauses hurt people and are never justified. Where possible you shouldn't sign one, but that's rarely an option. Yeah sure we could work at McDonalds, but that's not helping anyone.
Individual employees have grossly inadequate buying power to make any tangible difference, the government needs to act to prevent abuse.
1) Stupid expensive
2) Potential Quality != Realized Quality (compression)
3) Stupid HDMI - Many of us have HD TV's or displays capable of the resolution, but not the interface. Yeah this isn't an unsolveable problem, but see #1
People will eventually switch, but it's just going to take a long time. No news here, this was by design.
Would it be as big of a deal if they did it on the schoolyard? What if an adult coached a particularly malicious child to approach this girl? Told him/her what buttons to push, gave the right information?
The problem is this girl was not sane. She may have been functional, but she was a danger to herself. She needed to be out of circulation and in a controlled environment. If there is a safety net to be created, it's around people in this situation, not around the rest of the world. It'd be great if the world were made of nerf, but it doesn't work that way.
Somehow making online forum rules enforceable as law is a horrible idea. I do not want to be required by law to fill in online forms truthfully, ever. There are a tremendous number of reasons for lying. I am constantly surprised on facebook by the faces I recognize but the names I do not. Everything from not wanting coworkers to see how you spent your sick day, to not wanting unsavory types to piece together too much of your personal information. Google is wrong, privacy is alive, it's called deception.
Creating new laws for old crimes seems like the wrong way to go. Is what she's doing any different than crimes we already recognize and prosecute? Isn't it illegal to arrange for someone to be killed? Isn't it illegal to allow someone to be killed or commit suicide? Isn't it illegal to provoke someone into an action you know will cause their death? Isn't it illegal to fail to render assistance to someone in mortal danger?
It seems like there is already a criminal charge for some of the behavior involved: manslaughter. IANAL but I can see the challenge to getting it to stick. You have malice but not intent, recklessness but no acknowledged danger. I'm sure smarter people are looking at it, but if new law is to be forged it seems like this is where it wants to live. Murder in its various forms is old, lots of thought has been put in to severity and mitigating factors. If there's something new, it's the ease with which a mean spirited person's reckless action could case the death of another by manipulation of emotions and sensitivities. Maybe that's the new interpretation someone wants to make, and certainly this woman is the most deserving to go through that fun ride in and out of prison for the endless trials and appeals.
But it's a real slippery slope, are we prepared to make being an asshole a criminal offense? Where do you draw the line between the idiot who drives slow in the fast lane, and the Myspace Manipulator who turns the knobs and pushes the buttons that might result in the undoing of an unstable person? Could your careless and heated forum post on the political forum that ended with "Go to hell", be construed as criminal manslaughter, should a reader combust?
Or maybe this is just a tragedy and we can't do anything about it, except help our kids build a concrete wall around their emotions, since that's what an increasingly social world will require anyway.
I assume by divorce that implied the spouses were either unaware or did not approve. I did not consider that perhaps they were aware but unable to tolerate the resulting embarrassment when it became public.
I agree he's an ass. We've all found him guilty of Assery of the 1st degree. He will probably come to a bad end, pardon the pun.
However there is no reason to feel sympathy for anyone in this case.
Agreed. The latest fad in corporate health care is for companies to ban smoking on property and remove unhealthy food from cafeterias...to save $ on health care costs. Whether those things are necessary or not should not be determined by my employer, who has my hands tied behind my back.
Health care is already socialized, but wouldn't you rather have it run by an elected body rather than your boss? There's no expectation of fairness in a corporation, but with your government you can at least fight for it. Don't you want to get, or not get a job entirely based on your skills and work ethic? Isn't that more important to the smooth operation of american businesses? Other than the option to decline, do you really have buying power now, or the ability to shop for better coverage/cost?
The only conversation we should be having about national health care is how it should work, not whether we need it.
In the original NYT it was said that Fortuny's prank cost several men their marriages (I forget the details). Those men really only deserve contempt anyway, you owe your spouse more than that.
As for those that were merely embarrassed or lost jobs...they were just stupid. If you are engaged in any behavior which if made public will cause you grief, you should spend a lot of time in concealing it. If you get found out, shut up, run, and hide. You will be forgotten in 3 months unless you hurt someone in the process, in which case you really have no moral high-ground to sit on.
Of course it's impossible to feel even the slightest sympathy for a troll. I don't know that he broke a law, at least not a law that we want on the books, but traditionally people who engage in this sort of behavior tend to have a rough go of life. Never did a punishment better fit a crime.
I have to agree with the GP, no one involved really deserves sympathy. We all lose on the grounds that our court system is busy untangling a mess created by one display of poor judgement after another, apparently without end. We all get to be drug through a childish war, and now are feeding the troll on a national level, allowing him to spew his self-righteous crap well beyond the forums he infests into otherwise respectable newspapers. The first person involved in this who yields and leaves bad enough alone gets my respect.
Ni!
There's a difference between the quake engine and OpenGL. OpenGL is just a graphics library, it pretty much just outputs primitives.
The Quake engine manages meshes, does collision detection, handles all the mess of drawing the right textures for the right models, managing lighting etc.
If there were an OSI model for graphics, OpenGL would be layer 4, and the Quake Engine would be layer 5/6.
Except the part where GPUs have 256-512 bit wide, 2GHz + dedicated memory interfaces and Intel processors are...way, way less. Add that to the ability to write tight code on a GPU that efficiently uses caching and doesn't waste a cycle, compared to the near impossibility of writing such code on the host processor which you share with an OS and other apps... meh.
There might be some good stuff that can be done with this architecture, but I am not convinced it's a competitor to GPUs pound for pound. You have to really believe ray-tracing is the future, and that some of the multi-texturing shenanigans that drive memory bwidth in GPUs are in the past. That's a big leap of faith. I'd prefer to believe once they build it, we'll find a great use for it.
Still it's nice to see something new happening.
But if you think about it, 'nigger' is actually highly offensive and using it is likely going to brand you as a terrible person (unless you are black, in which case you are just ignorant). It's probably one of a few words my potty mouth will never use, it bothers me to type it. Pretty much any racial slur falls in to that category. They're mean spirited words intended to cause hurt. Yet there was a time when they were everyday bad words.
Shit on the other hand is just a "bad" word. Why it's bad has been lost to time. At most using it is impolite and brands the speaker as such...but that's a designation most people can tolerate.
I think all it says is today we're more sensitive to heredity than to social status. Insulting someones background is the most crude thing you can do. Perhaps in the future words like fag/queer/dyke/heshe etc. will also become taboo for the same reason. For the moment they're impolite words, best not used at work, but pretty common.
On a small scale, almost any system can work, including capitalism. If you all know each other, and have adequate controls on the rich and poor alike...there's no issue. But that's not helpful, such things won't exist in developed countries.
Contracts are made to be violated by the masses, with guns if necessary.
Not entirely. Already if you release a hardware device that interferes with, say, NBCs broadcast signal you're in trouble.
If you publish an article saying that Pepsi causes colon cancer, you're in trouble (unless you can PROVE it...which is hard even if true).
Hurting someones ability to sell their product without justification is and has always been on the wrong side of the law. There's no reason it shouldn't apply to software too.
They lost because of two things. Primarily they lost because Blizzard managed to show that Glider intentionally and unfairly hurts Blizzard's business. Then the other reason about the ram copyright bullshit...which won't really hold water for very long.
The only reason he'd threaten to GPL Glider, but not do it, is to ease the judgement against him and/or bilk some money out of Blizzard. If he wanted Glider to be released, it would have been done already.
personally, I hope it gets out. I have enough level 70s that I never play WoW anymore and cancelled my accounts over a year ago, but I'd like to experiment by modifying the code for a "do it yourself" group. I've always suspected I can replace any given 5 man (or raid) with preprogrammed event-driven AI, that would outperform humans. Glider would let me do that. I wouldn't be bothering anyone because i'd be in instances, but it'd be a blast.
But this happens anyway. As long as it is profitable to grow your business without bounds, there will be only a few worth mentioning. Any given industry is dominated by only a few players.
The less profit they make per customer, the longer it takes. Further, separating bandwidth from services by enabling 3rd party phones takes a big hunk out of their "free money" sails.
When selling a commodity it's essential to avoid the profit-killing, competing-on-price, race to the bottom.
In other words, it's essential to avoid free market capitalism?
The race to the bottom is happening, they're trying to give you as little as possible for whatever you pay...you just don't presently have a great amount of choice in what you pay.
No contracts, any phone you want. Compete on bandwidth * (latency)^-1 /dollar. That's how competition happens and it's the best system so far. Like democracy, it's broken, but less broken than other things.
It makes a great ottoman. On a cold day, plug it in, voila, warm feet!
Provably incorrect. My digital watch displays nothing when the battery is dead. When it gets water in it, results vary but usually I see 18:88:88. These watches are wrong all the time.
Doesn't the UK refuse to extradite suspects who would face the death penalty in the US? (Also, usually our most high profile cases)
The numbers may not add up, but if our government can do as it pleases based on popular opinion, any refusal to hand over death row candidates becomes high profile and public opinion turns against the Commie Europeans. Having to dumb down charges just to get the suspects (i.e. take the death penalty off the table) presses some hot buttons. Worse it creates an environment where the rich can escape the same punishment that the poor would receive. That's politics.
On the other hand if the UK government blocks extradition of an espionage suspect...we'd probably do the same. That hits government paranoids a lot closer to home, so it's in no one's interests to block it.
You could say that in America, the economy sucks, the job market is frighteningly uncertain, and if we don't perceive a product to be exactly what we need and nothing more, at the lowest possible cost, we won't buy it.
Even in higher wage jobs like engineering, these calculations go through MY mind. I don't know if I'm going to have a job next month, every penny is being put in the bank or into reducing debt (i.e. mortages)and anything that might make weathering a >6 month bout of unemployment uncomfortable. This includes our "economic stimulus" kickback from the government, it's stimulating my bank account as we speak.
The scariest part? My company post profits every quarter. We're not hemorrhaging money, just people. Until we can get our government to return focus onto bad corporate behaviors within the US, I think you can expect to see us be tightwads.