A little knowledge is a dangerous thing..I sometimes

[Simon F]

I sometimes wonder why I bother trying to help people.

Occasionally I browse Usenet and decided to correct a bizarre misunderstanding of a subject area
in which I'm fairly knowledgeable. This is what I wrote while this is what I got back for my efforts.

Opinions: Is this guy a troll (and hence the "Do not feed the trolls" rule comes in to play), or is it worth while trying to spread some enlightenment?

 

[Moffell]

I guess you're the stupid one or very very patient.

Of course what does that say about me? I read through the whole thing knowing what was in there in the first place. I want my ten minutes back.[/b]

 

[horvendile]

is it worth while trying to spread some enlightenment?

<Monty Python's Holy Grail>Run away! Run away!</Monty Python's Holy Grail>

I don't say it wouldn't be possible (in its strictest sense) to dispel some darkness, but it'd take a huge effort in both time and patience. I mean, you'd have to start by explaining the difference between memory bandwidth and memory usage and work your way up from there, all while being ferociously attacked by the verbal equivalence of Donald Duck. It might be possible, but it certainly isn't worth it - and he would never stoop to thank you!

This reminds me of another subject; however, it being another subject, I think I'll give it a separate thread instead of hijacking this one.

 

[darkblu]

I sometimes wonder why I bother trying to help people.

Occasionally I browse Usenet and decided to correct a bizarre misunderstanding of a subject area
in which I'm fairly knowledgeable. This is what I wrote while this is what I got back for my efforts.

Opinions: Is this guy a troll (and hence the "Do not feed the trolls" rule comes in to play), or is it worth while trying to spread some enlightenment?

the guy has no understanding of 3D graphics, pipelines working or mechanisms. if you're willing to educate him from ABC then go ahead, otherwise it'd be a waste of your time (which'd otherwise be much more appreciated here ; )

 

[pascal]

You obviouslly knows nothing about 3D and are wasting others time

 

[Simon F]

You obviouslly knows nothing about 3D and are wasting others time

Damn! I wish I'd noticed that sooner

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

That guy is a certifiable comedian!

I think that someone should invite him here, so that he can entertain us on a more regular basis!

CC

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I can't believe that out of all the people I met that YOU would be bored enough to browse Usenet.

 

[Gerry]

Wow. It's scary to think someone can use computers for such a long time (over 20 years if he's to be believed) and pick up so many missconceptions it defies belief. Could be a troll, admittedly, but I think the betting has to be that he's just one of those people who makes assumption after assumption about things they know little about until they come to a conclusion that is so spectacularly wrong that a three year old could pick holes in it.

I'd give up Simon. Not a chance you'll educate him, and since every sentence he writes contains at least one basic error, you'd end up spending a lifetime trying to correct everything.

 

[andypski]

Opinions: Is this guy a troll (and hence the "Do not feed the trolls" rule comes in to play), or is it worth while trying to spread some enlightenment?

I don't think he's a troll - I think he's a clown.

I doubt if he's going to be particularly open to being educated here - the tone of his comments would seem to preclude that as a possibility.

 

[davefb]

usenet is just a home for lunatics..... ahh the days of the 3dfx newsgroups .
in this case i dont think this guy is trolling, i just think he's an idiot trying to be a big fish in a small pond.........

personally the comment by ammonton is the correct way to deal with 'em.
-dave-

if this is a ps2 vga display thing, then it's interesting it's exhibiting the same issues as the ps2-linux kit,, ie being finikity about some monitors and sometimes not displaying.. i-i-r-c that prefered sync-on-green monitors ( or was that didnt like sync-on-green , i forget).

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Opinions: Is this guy a troll (and hence the "Do not feed the trolls" rule comes in to play), or is it worth while trying to spread some enlightenment?

Life's too short - do you want to waste precious seconds of your life on a lost cause?

 

[zurich]

He sounds like a first year CompEng student who's high on himself.

 

[Fred]

Bahh, no sympathy from me 8)

Try being a physicist, at least internet geeks (more often than nought) tend to know enough to recognize someone who knows more than they do in computer related fields.

I go to cocktail parties, much less physics newsgroups, and I am often 'corrected' for misunderstanding 'The Big Bang' and other things that I've spent 20 years studying.

The few of us that actually do know what we are talking about on the internet who wish to 'chat' about it, have pretty much been booted to obscure moderated newsgroups, so much is the 'crackpot' spam a problem.

Hmph!

 

[SMarth]

Welcome to usenet.. and the WORLD, did you live in a cave or what ???

 

[Saem]

I find it sad how quickly people give up on others. I don't believe a person is stupid, merely misfortunate because they didn't get a decent education.

Critical thinking needs to be introduced in more cirriculums. If you at least try to improve the world (a person at a time), well then there is at least a CHANCE that things will improve. Stupidity is a disease that can be cured.

 

[pcchen]

Well, I think the resource of the earth is limited. That means, we should spend our best effort on those who can be cured more easily first. This will help more people

 

[akira888]

Oh.. my... lord. And here I was on this board, thinking I was the town imbecile.

The source of his confusion (and many others have probably already picked up on this) are the old 8/16 bit consoles of yesteryear which had no frame buffer but instead stored in a pointer array the location of a 8x8 bitmap which would at scan-out time be loaded and sent to DAC for D-A conversion. On the NES which I have programmed there was a tile pointer buffer for backgrounds and also one for sprites. His mentioning of the Sinclair Spectrum might back up this theory. Still, how DC could possibly rasterize textured and lit triangles into predrawn tiles or how on God's Green Earth such an ancient piece of kit as the Speccy could have any relevance for the DC is mindboggling.

But my favorite part is where he talks about the low framerate, latency, and poor resolution of his webcam and blames this all on the "poor image handling capabilites" of Windows. I almost pissed myself when I read that, how dense can you be! Then there's the part where he claims to be able to make graphics on PS2 YABASIC that are superior to X-Box games. Then there's the time where he claims that collision detection is done by scanning the displayed graphics against the "real graphics." Ths has to be a joke.

 

[Gerry]

The source of his confusion (and many others have probably already picked up on this) are the old 8/16 bit consoles of yesteryear which had no frame buffer but instead stored in a pointer array the location of a 8x8 bitmap which would at scan-out time be loaded and sent to DAC for D-A conversion. On the NES which I have programmed there was a tile pointer buffer for backgrounds and also one for sprites. His mentioning of the Sinclair Spectrum might back up this theory.

Yup, that's the impression that I got. The Spectrum used to hold a byte of colour information for each 8x8 pixel block, which would store background colour, foreground colour and flash data. I think he's trying to pass this off as an example of a 'tile' and then imply this is what the DC does.

Very, very difficult to tell for sure though!

 

[Simon F]

But my favorite part is where he talks about the low framerate, latency, and poor resolution of his webcam and blames this all on the "poor image handling capabilites" of Windows. I almost pissed myself when I read that, how dense can you be! Then there's the part where he claims to be able to make graphics on PS2 YABASIC that are superior to X-Box games. Then there's the time where he claims that collision detection is done by scanning the displayed graphics against the "real graphics." Ths has to be a joke.

I just noticed it gets 'better' than that:

I've stated that Yabasic offers graphics up to and over twice as good as any format they've watched Toy Story 2 on.. So where ARE all these people who are going to warn _me_ not to fall for the *Sony hype*? Or refute my claim?
So who's talking bollocks?

Hmm...