Sorry but that's absolutely wrong. The reason why movies and tv work at 24fps and games don't is simple: motion blurring. A camera captures all motion within a certain timeframe (equal to the shutter-time of the camera). A computer renders a single snapshot of this motion, which appears very sharp. For the first, your brain creates sharper images than there actually are, even at 24fps, and sees them as motion.
For the computer generated ultra-sharp snapshots however, you need a lot more images per second to convince your brain of it being a fluent motion. There is no way this is affected by screen size, focus or your eyes. It's your brain that has to be fooled, not the eye. And for sharp static images - you need at least 60fps to fool your brain in every situation, and Carmack knows this very well...

Well, then I'm sure you're free enough to be able to move to a more densely populated area in the USA where you can get a 100Mb down/5Mb connection... New York City has about 8 million people living on 468.9 sq miles, Belgium about 10 million on 11,787 sq miles (source: wikipedia)... Shouldn't be a problem there I think?

And maybe it's the silly US "2 big parties with 1 winner" democratic system that makes you distrust your government as much as you do. Democratic governments are there to take care of the population, not be against them. And I'm pretty happy with the fact that my crazy-ass neighbor can't just walk into a store and get a gun. I myself would not even want a gun in my house with little children running around, that is an accident waiting to happen - but that's a personal preference. Thing is - that's mostly the attitude here in Europe. Guns are dangerous, don't forget these laws were not just made "for fun", Europe has had more than it's share of violence in it's history. For being a developed country, the USA's homicide rate is scary high and gun accidents kill about 500 kids/year in the USA according to a 5 second google. That are things I expect my government to take care of, because clearly people are too stupid to do this them-self. Apparently, making it very hard to own a gun seems to work pretty well (note that it is perfectly possible for me to buy and own a gun, I would just have to get myself a permit).

Also, you may be able to deny the holocaust, I can say "fuck" on tv without being beeped out. If it offends someone - they have to deal with it. I was allowed to drink when I was 16, and actually had my first beer when I was 12, and nobody cared. Different freedoms? There's a huge difference in law-enforcement, which actually shocked me when I was in the USA for the first time. And freedom of speech? Well, some of my opinions and world views clearly shocked people, and they expected me to shut up about them, which didn't really feel like "freedom of speech" to me. Also, don't generalize, nazi symbols are not forbidden in all European countries.

We might have a few laws extra - but to me, that's not any different from the "you are not allowed to steal" law, which as far as I know, also exists in the USA. They protect me, and I'm pretty happy with that. I'm not saying I agree with all laws, but most of the time they do make sense, and in general, small offences are not enforced as violently and unforgiving as I have seen in the USA. When my cousin (who has lived his entire life in the USA) was here, he couldn't believe his eyes when we were walking through a park, and some dude lighted a joint in public. When 2 cops walked by and just asked the guy - in a very friendly manner - to put it away, he couldn't believe what he just saw. A lot of USA citizens have a very deformed image of what life in Europe is like, most of them have never left the USA in their entire life, and probably never will. In Europe, it's hard not to get out of your country at a certain point and be confronted with different cultures. I myself have seen quite a bit of the world, been in the USA, Africa, and most of the Western-European countries, and I can't say I feel less free than anyone I've ever met on my trips.

Don't get me wrong, I like the US, it's the country with the most open and friendly people I've ever been to, but moving there permanently? (which I am free to do if I wouldn't be happy here) I don't think I could do that. Silly speed limits would probably be nr 1 reason on a pretty lengthy list :D

I can assure you, none of my tax-money goes to subsidizing internet providers. Governments supporting private companies is extremely regulated in the EU, and mostly forbidden by anti-competitive laws. There was quite a bit of noise here in Europe when countries wanted to support the car-manufacturers financially for exactly this reason.

And I pay 55Eur/month for phone + cable-tv + 20mbit down/1mbit up cable internet. I do have a 50gb/month limit, but for 99eur, I can have 100mbit down / 5mbit up with no limits with the same company. Compared to what they offer in the surrounding countries here, that's both actually pretty expensive...

I hate it when uninformed Americans think "their system" is better when they have absolutely no clue about the "other systems". For me as a European citizen, it almost seems like "freedom" has become a marketing term for US companies as a scapegoat for higher prices. I don't think my freedom is in any way limited by our expensive taxation systems, and seeing what this system gives back to me, I pay them with a smile, knowing that I live in a relatively peaceful country which won't spend my tax-money on mind-bogglingly expensive wars abroad, and that our army will mostly be used for humanitarian and (mine) cleanup missions.

Apple only thinks of "User experience". They don't want to face the 'normal user' the choice of "do you want to install/enable flash - it could have a negative performance impact on your browsing experience". A normal user doesn't know or doesn't care about "flash". If they happen to play flash-games, that's because both Windows and OS-X have been shipping with it since ages. If you don't want Apple to make that choice for you as "the user" - don't buy Apple, because that's what they do, decide what's good for their user and what's not.

And to be honest, I don't get the fuzz about flash on mobile. They've been bitching about it for years - and only now they're ready for it? Good thing Apple added iAds to iOS4, so they'll be able to compete against the advertisement spam Adobe brings to Android under the false pretense of "choice".

What strikes me the most is that Adobe gets the geek audience behind them - just because they happen to support the "open" Android platform, while the "closed" Apple refused to add it. Flash is and remains proprietary technology - whatever Adobe's trying to tell you. It has deeply embedded DRM which they will never open up.

Bandwidth, their "review" system for the apps, maintaining an SDK & it's documentation, maintaining a scalable online store of that size in different countries, credit card handling, ... all costs them money. There's more to it than you would expect on first sight...

These digital backs have been around for quite a while now (though at a higher price-tag), and they're rarely used for the 'final' shot. I know someone who has one, and he uses the digital back for his test-shoots and lighting setup. It saves him a HUGE amount of time since he doesn't have to use a substitute digital camera which might give other results, and then do test-shots with real film which he has to develop - and retake the shot until it's good... Once the scene and lighting is set correctly, the back is removed and a full 80mm-film used for the final shot (which btw costs a bit more than $4 these days)

It's not the cost of the film that's, it's the time spent on set... 14k is dirt-cheap if you can save a day or 2 on each shoot...

"Ripping off" ??? If the BSD creators felt this way and would not approve such use, they would have used a different license... Apple does what it's allowed to do with the software. They don't want to reinvent the wheel, unlike some Redmond-based company, and are prepared to go for the best sollutions for their customers. They use/support webkit, they distribute Apache and countless other opensource applications with their OS. Want it or not - that's what they are allowed to do.

Most people here have to shut up about licenses - since 99% have never even written any code. It's the developer that decides what someone else would be able to do with his code, and that's nobody else's decision.

I really wonder how they addressed the mouse acceleration issue in OSX, it's impossible to disable, and is sucky for FPS games. There is a way to 'reduce' the mouse acceleration, but it's not 100% perfect - and relies on a deprecated API that could be removed in future OSX versions...

Hmm - in what time-frame are you stuck? You already know how to make fire?

I mean - wake up. Your view of the world is so damn limited it irritates me, and I see this a lot on /. Your life is simply not the center of the universe. Yes - you don't use Youtube, have something against javascript, cookies and flash (can't disagree on the last-one actually)... without knowing what the hell you're actually talking about. HTML5 and Javascript are married, the videotag without javascript is pretty useless. Cookies are usefull things that can be used to track you, but a decent browser makes sure this is limited. Privacy issues? Simply don't browse the web then. You're not in 1995 anymore.

For the vast majority of the users, only one thing matters: it works. It doesn't even have to work well or be the best. Just look at IE6's marketshare to prove that point. 99,9% of all firefox users don't give a damn about those things and go with the defaults. If firefox doesn't work, and the Internet Explorer also installed on their system does, they'll drop FF in an eye-blink...

I predict that the average IQ will go up somewhere in 2012...

Can only say one thing to this: http://www.dataliberation.org/

Apple never signed a contract saying they agreed not to do that. Palm in this case did and violated this contract AND a standard by doing so.

Strange thing is, that while he was at the job, - and if the license was GPL - it would have allowed him to copy and distribute this modified code, since he was effectively using it there...