Microsoft is large. Very F**** large. Their development tool division, while it has had some hiccups over the years, overall has been pretty good, devs liked them and they were always pushing to embrace open source. The rest of the company, not so much.

So things like this look weird depending on where you're looking from. If you look at Microsoft the company that makes Windows and Office, this is awkward, they're trying too hard, etc.

If you look at it from Microsoft the company that makes C#, has been pushing a bunch of open source stuff for a pretty long time now, has Microsoft Research, etc, its really not that special and pretty much expected of them at this point, even if it wasn't true 15 years ago.

They're trying to take the "cool" division and make it do things that affect Microsoft's reputation as a whole. That will be long and hard.

NTSC stuff is so bad when viewed on a large TV. It is amazing how blurry things look when you flip back and forth between the HD and SD channels. That is part of what lead to the rise of big screen TVs was actually having content for them. With NTSC, a large TV just meant a big blurry image. With ATSC it can mean a nice large image.

Why shouldn't they continually improve their products? Even with NTSC sets this was done. New ones would be larger, have better focus, more clearly resolve the signal, have better phosphors, and so on. Why shouldn't this continue? They should keep trying to improve their products as technology allows.

None of that means you need to buy a new toy all the time though. You can stick with what you have until it breaks, or until the new stuff is a big enough leap that you wish to own it.

I think a lot of the whining from people comes down to simple jealousy. They'd like to own the new stuff, but cannot afford it, or do not wish to. So they try and hate on it and act like a luddite. You see it practically any time Slashdot has a story on new technology. People complain about it like it is somehow a bad thing that there might be something new.

Most panels in higher end screens are actually real 120fps panels. However that is just used for 3D and for reduced motion blur. The only set I know that advertises support for 120fps input is Vizio. Others could do it, if they wanted to, however.

As you say, the issue with higher refresh rates isn't in the display technology.

Part of it is just getting people used to the idea I think. We've seen shitty, jerky, frame rates in moves for so long people start to associate that with being "cinematic". People need to get used to the idea that's bullshit and maybe they'll start to like it more.

Hopefully sports and such will get shot at 60fps some day and that may help.

Where I work I think the bandwidth is fine but the latency is horrendous, with every individual connection having to be checked against an extensive list of unapproved sites. So on-demand loading is an irritant/causes jerky scroll motion, even when content rearrangement is not invovled.

You know, when something says that we are so close to destruction for over half a century... well you have to wonder why anyone would put any stock in it. It is a bit hard to reconcile with being on the edge of destruction, and yet everything continuing to not be destroyed.

Where "well-written javascript" means popping the images in while I'm reading, and not fucking waiting until I'm trying to scroll down to read more.

Yes, even in systems other than democracies it's usually on the people as to what they'll put up with. In ours the populace is ultimately to blame, for the corruption that exists (whether Leftism- or corporate-induced).

But in our defense, we've been disarmed. Both literally and figuratively. While maybe technology and deepness of pockets has rendered us no longer able to physically restrain our government and its ruling class, we've been societally neutered of the knowledge and background and spirit to resist a government and ruling class running amok. So how much can we blame the people in America today.

And having an open southern border is pure genius on the Left's part. We people used to come to here to leave communism because they hated it and were convinced that it didn't work, not because they thought it was the best for them if only it had a sufficient funding base. People used to come here who believed they could make it on their own, and wanted to assimilate. It's a dream come true for the Left to have masses of immigrants who believe communism just wasn't done right, and don't want to assimilate but stay divided in ethnic/cultural communities but coming together to vote Democrat.

So not only have we been disarmed, but we've been diluted. I live in SoCal and Latinos work very hard here, I notice the jobs they do and they're not easy or clean jobs, and they don't pay much I would imagine, and they don't complain. So it's not solely of them and the background they bring with them (of faith in communism and tolerance of corruption), it's also a function of America today.

I think when the Irish and Polish and Italian immigrant waves came, they actually liked the basic system of America and wanted to melt into it. They thought they could make it just fine on their own, by working. Now we have multiculturalism and its encouragement of cultural segregation, and of not learning the language and customs and fully joining in. Now suddenly these days it's like America is at a zenith of racism and the message that can and does resonate is that you can't make it on your own in America, without the Left's help.

I.e. sympathy for Leftist values has probably already reached critical mass here. So what could possibly cause the populace (the citizenry plus the non-citizenry, that is) to want to get more involved in standing up to corruption and the slide Leftward. When the passing along of the American independent spirit to the young is being suppressed, and our population is being backfilled by those who'd never had it and don't appreciate it or want it.

This doesn't set back fascism a little, just reveals it a little (and when the populace doesn't care, then those are not both one and the same). And too many laws is bad, but, at least at the amount that we have, that's not what's leading to uneven enforcement.

A couple of the earlier comment-leavers (I didn't read all of the comments) touched on the problems:

and:

One of the reasons we have uneven enforcement is because we have a ruling class in this country. It is comprised of those on the Left who are in power, and that is politicians as well as government employees (and which would be almost all of those), plus those of the Republican party in power who partially align with them, plus those on the Left in prominence in the news and entertainment media.

See what the criteria are. Power, or prominence. As Andy Stern once said (about the Leftist movement in general), paraphrasing, we'll either use the power of persuasion or the persuasion of power. Republicans out of office, no matter how sympathizing to the Left, have no use to them. And do you think either of your two trolls here would get special treatment under the law, just for being good Lefties. Nope, because they have neither.

And what that charlatan so-called leader of labor (as a worker, he represents me about as much as Al Sharpton represents much of those who are Black) said points to the other problem. It's what's also in the meaning behind the Left's "elections have consequences".

It's the mindset/political philosophy of having total disregard for stability and agreed-upon things and a system of rules and laws. That if I "win" (because to them, governing is a reward (and the most rewarding thing you can do, morally)), either through getting into power through elections or other means, or getting public opinion behind me through literally however I can, then I get to set the rules.

Then I should get to set them largely independent of precedent or existing systems of rules, is what it means to them. And therefore I should get to say when they apply. And when I'm a member of the ruling class, I say they don't apply to my class. (Without a whole class of people positioned to and dedicated to or complicit with moving the U.S. Leftward, favor could only be singled out based on familial or financial gain or other traditional grounds besides this secular religious movement one.)

And there you have it. Identify any holes if you care.

Thing thing is if you go and look at benchmarks of the cards in actual games, you find out the 970 wrecks shit, particularly given its price point. The 980 is an overpriced luxury (I say this as a 980 owner) because the 970 gets nearly the same performance for like half the price. The difference with its memory controller just doesn't seem to matter in actual games out there on the market.

And that's the real thing here the the spec head forget: You buy these to run actual software. If it does well on all actual software, then who gives a shit about the details?

Didn't replace anything that I could see, but I can't talk beyond that. The running theory, since it only affected very specific sites (big MMOs, Youtube, Netflix, etc...while you could easily download at maximum speed from Steam or Microsoft) is that it was just the same freagin crap that happened with Comcast, except they may actually have upgraded without needing to be bribed.

Yeah, you're right, you can't really fix stupid.

For a while (2-3 years ago) most (not all!) of FiOS customers, especially on the east coast, had terrible (TERRIBLE) experience on most popular streaming services. Worse than Comcast + Netflix. As in Youtube would barely play 360p videos.

You could see it on that youtube statistic pages that showed the average streaming speed per ISP. FiOS was abysmal.

From what I understand, its been fixed by now, but it it was so bad I had to switch back to Comcast when I realize everyone with FiOS in my region had that issue (their forums was flooded about it, etc). Worse, some MMORPGs were completely unplayable because of some bad routes... unrelated, but it made everything so painful...

Its not "cable in your house to a cable modem". Its using MoCA, and the router is a moca -> ethernet bridge (my terminology is probably off). Sure, its just semantic, but its just the easiest way for most people to have effectively an ethernet wired house, since its pretty damn unlikely you have fibers running in your walls. Since you don't share that coax with your neighbors, its fast enough.

And as someone else pointed out, whats telling you its coax cable on the street? You opened one up, removed its cover, and looked inside?

Thats very possible. The flu doesn't do permanent damage to healthy adults, but its a fairly serious illness with pretty rough symptoms. Most people never catch it, even though a lot do (googling around, 5-20% of people every year? That a lot less than a cold, so its very likely to never catch it).

I'm pretty sure I only caught it once, and I was a mess to begin with when I did.