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http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/05/29/ati.introduces/

ATI introduces new rendering technology

updated 06:20 am EDT, Tue May 29, 2001

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ATI today introduced its new TRUFORM rendering technology that uses N-Patches (PN Triangles), a new type of higher order surface composed of curved rather than flat triangles, to generate surfaces entirely within the graphics processor, without requiring significant changes to existing 3D artwork based on flat triangles: "TRUFORM can take 3D models with low polygon counts and generate smooth, highly detailed images...[it] effectively increases the memory bandwidth available to the GPU (graphics processing unit) by converting 3D images with low polygon counts to smoother, high polygon count versions in the graphics chip, a process known as tessellation."

by MacNN Staff

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05/29, 06:33am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Floored

I'm floored. MacGamer has a picture of the technology in use - Corey saw it in person - and it's really cool. It's easy for developers to implement, and there is practically no performance loss. It's incredible. If they can really do it.

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05/29, 06:33am | report spam | close Reply | delete
AQUA

Will this graphics thechnology help Aqua redrawing? This could be interesting.

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05/29, 07:52am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Question........

Is this something they can implement with the Radeon......or is this going to be only in new cards like the Radeon 2 (or something similar)?

Does anyone know?

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05/29, 08:20am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Caution!

Sounds like another marketing stuff...

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05/29, 08:25am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Question

Is this something they can implement with the Radeon.
Bloody well better had be. Were still waiting for the FSAA driver update ATI Have been promising for ages, to bring us up to par with the PC Radeon.

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05/29, 08:32am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re:Question

In the Press Release it states:

"a new rendering technology developed for future generations of graphics processors"

Look for it in R2

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05/29, 08:35am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Caution

It's not marketing...

Check it out...

http://www.macgamer.com/features/truform/truform.html

Forget GeForce3...

GIMME RADEON2

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05/29, 09:09am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Good Intentions, BUT....

ATI still to this day lacks a customer support focus by offering pathetic drivers and subpar customer service. All they want to do now is compete with nVIDIA. ATI can so go to h***!

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05/29, 09:09am | report spam | close Reply | delete
GameCube?

It's probably too late to use this in Nintendo's GameCube. But gives a devlish hint at the next NEXT generation of consoles.

It sounds a bit like Subdivision Surfaces in hardware. Which would be tr�s cool!

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05/29, 09:28am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Cool tech

Check out www.amdzone.com for more information.

This is NOT marketing stuff only.

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05/29, 09:31am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re; Good Intentions, but.

So I guess you want nVIDIA to got to h*** too?
If you think ATI support sucks what do you think of all the GeForce crappy drivers?

The fact that nVIDIA can't even provide drivers that work with the most popular games on the mac such as Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear, Rune, 4x4 Evolution, Warbirds 3, Water Racer, Sim Theme Park, Shogo, GLHexen2, Diablo 2, Sin Demo, Kawasaki Jet Ski (as shown on innermac.com).

Many of these games WILL NOT EVEN RUN on a GeForce2, yet the Radeon work without a hitch. I think you need to rethink which company sucks and which does not.

The Fact that nVIDIA puts out such a crappy product shows their lack of desire to compete with ATI.

It also shows their lact of commitment to the mac platform.

I would happily stick with ATI through h*** and highwater.

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05/29, 10:24am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Some facts....

First, to the person who wanted to know if this feature would become available in current Radeons. NO! This is a hardware feature, it'll come with the new chips, the Radeon 2s.

Secondly, there's a reason why ATI chose to use dolphins to demo their technology. Any 3D artist will tell you that what they're doing is basically subdivision surfaces in hardware. Subdivision is very good, and it's does make models look much better, but it will NOT magically add detail as the press-release seems to claim. It will only make surfaces look smaller. It's excellent for modeling a flowing surface with few polygons.

If the subdivision brings a minimal performance hit, it should be a great addition. However, it's not a replacement for the kind of stuff that Nvidia demoed at MWTY with Geforce3 like the vertex shaders and what not that gave [b]Id Developers[/b] the ability to do very detailed facial features for the upcoming Doom.

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05/29, 10:51am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Quake before and after

At the last page in the article at www.amdzone.com there is a small comparison of some monsters in original Quake, with and without Truform. It gives an impression of what to expect. Maybe not more real detail, but it looks nicer. (This game was of course never meant to be used with Truform.)

This another quote, based on impressions from E3...

The next realtime demo we saw was from Wild Tangent. Wild Tangent has created some plugins for Winamp to display their technology. The main one is a 'dancing girl,' available for download here. There is no joy like a nubile-female body on this TRUFORM technology. David Nalasco was more than happy to show us her 'curved surfaces.' The most obvious advantage of TRUFORM is the level of detail does not diminish as you zoom into the figure. No matter how far we zoomed in (and boy did we zoom) the surfaces still appeared curved and lifelike. Even the disco ball above her looked round instead of a multi-polygonal sphere.

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05/29, 11:29am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Cool, but not ultimate

ATI has been showing developers this technology since before the first Radeon shipped -- I believe it is actually in the first Radeon chip, but can't swear to that 100%.

It has the advantage of not requiring any new data, it works with existing lit models (i.e. you need the normals). It is really only useful for rendering models of humans, creatures, et al. (granted, this is a large set of things!). It introduces a few nasty issues with T-junctions so you pretty much have to subdivide and entire model to the same level of tesselation -- trying to tesselate just part of it leads to cracks between parts that are tesselated differently.

This is something unique to ATI, but the advantage is that you have to do very little to use it. nVidia's hardware contains support for curved surfaces too (in the form of bezier patches), but that is a new data type that you must model with. Ideally hardware would support both, but in the long run patches are probably more important.

No, this technology will not help Aqua in any way. It doesn't need to, either... there is plenty of more mundane capability in all the existing hardware that will make Aqua fly once the guys at Apple get it together and use it!

As for the comment's about nVidia vs. ATI driver quality: look how long (and how many complaints) it took for ATI to get their drivers to the level they are now. nVidia's first Mac product was released in January of this year... cut 'em a little slack!! Writing drivers for MacOS is highly complex, they take some time to get right (especially considering the number of APIs that need to be supported and how poorly they're all documented). Worst of all is that some of the RAVE API is ATI-specific extensions and since the Mac has been ATI-only for some time game developers have been freely using them without worrying about other potential hardware that doesn't support the ATI extensions. This is an area where Apple has really been off-the-ball.

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05/29, 11:47am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Geforce drivers

That must be Applenut going crazy about Nvidia's drivers again. He hates them with a passion, he can't wait for them to improve the drivers. He'd rather have us stuck with a single graphics chip and no competition so we can all envy the PC users like it used to be...

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05/29, 11:48am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Some facts

From the samples that I saw, TRUFORM seems to add great detail to smooth a curved surface (technical details are beyond me!)...

check out:
http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=701

Check out the conclusion on page 9 and see what it does to Quake1. Damn its hot!!!!

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05/29, 11:55am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Not convinced

The macgamer shots don't look right. I think the two screens are rendered differently. One looks like smooth phong with reflections, and the other just looks like plain rendering. Until I see some un-biased screen shots, I'm not convinced.

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05/29, 12:12pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE:Not convinced

There's nothing fake about it. If you have any 3D software, like Cinema 4D for example. Just drop a boxy, polygonal model into a hypernurbs parent and see how it looks. It's gonna be exactly the same effect.

This is nothing more than subdivision surfaces, I'm surprised no-one implemented it until now.

What might be a problem though is that not all low-poly models are gonna look good when sub-divided this way. Some might actually look worse, though smoother. But it's a very good tool that's gonna help game developers create better looking games, that's for sure. The way I'd like to see it is not an all over subdividing of all models in a scene. But giving the developers the choice on what models they want subdivided and which ones they don't. I'm pretty sure that's the way they did it. Though I'm also sure there'll be some patches for existing games that'll just round everything undiscriminatingly and make some of them look ugly.

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05/29, 12:33pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re:Re: Some Facts

To the untrained eye, maybe. If you were experienced with 3D modelling, you'd know that there really isn't any more detail there. It's just breaking up a big triangle into many smaller triangles.

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05/29, 12:44pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re; GeForce Driver

Sorry but the label applenut is incorrect. My points are not about hating nVIDIA, but not being content with the product that they, and many software and hardware developers put out. The fact that developers call their work final is annoying. The belief that this beta software can be placed on the market is done with any concern to what the consumer goes through when having to dealing with it.

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05/29, 12:58pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Geforce3

"It's not marketing...

Check it out...

http://www.macgamer.com/features/truform/truform.html

Forget GeForce3...

GIMME RADEON2 "

ummm I bet this card will make old games look little better but newer "high end" games will suck.

where as the Geforce3 will kick its A$$.

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05/29, 01:00pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Woo Hoo! This sucks!

This will be great for all the PC gamers but like the Charisma engine, this will never see the light of day on the Mac. Just look at the anti-aliasing on the GeForce3 on the Mac....its not there!

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05/29, 01:01pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Only future cards, games

This technology is only going to be available in future cards (Radeon 2) and in future versions of games written especially to take advantage of it. Kind of a "me too" to the Nvidia GF-3-only effects that work only on new cards and only with new versions of games written especially to include those effects. I'm sure the game developers are thrilled at having to support special effects that are Nvidia only and ATI only.

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05/29, 01:01pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE:Good Intentions..

ATI still to this day lacks a customer support focus by offering pathetic drivers and subpar customer service. All they want to do now is compete with nVIDIA. ATI can so go to h***!

An old competitor competing with its new competition, when they had little or none? NO, really? (I actually expected less from ATI too...Hope they CAN accomplish something. Maybe even good drivers and decent customer support.)

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05/29, 01:02pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
To be implemented in R2

Radeon 2 will ship and ATI will say, "Radeon 2 is Tesslation compliant, this feature will be implemented in a future driver update".

Remember what they said about FSAA on the Radeon? Yep, still waiting for it. I'll believe this new technology when I see it. The Radeon is a very good card but ATI makes too many claims, thus raising expectations to great levels that they cannot possibly fulfill.

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05/29, 01:05pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: future cards, games

They state that the software does not have to be written to take advantage of TRUFORM. It will be backward compatible with older software

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05/29, 01:07pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE:Good Intentions..

ATI still to this day lacks a customer support focus by offering pathetic drivers and subpar customer service. All they want to do now is compete with nVIDIA. ATI can so go to h***!

An old competitor competing with its new competition, when they had little or none? NO, really? (I actually expected less from ATI too...Hope they CAN accomplish something. Maybe even good drivers and decent customer support.)

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05/29, 01:12pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Reality?

Sorry, but it all sounds too much like its at the "Tech preview" stage, which means "For what we have working with it, it looks good". The big question is "When will it be available, really" and "What type of compatibility problems is it going to give us". A lot of times they announce this stuff early then take forever to iron out the bugs.

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05/29, 01:27pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: future cards, games

It is backwards compatible in the sense that a recompile of the program will enable Truform. This will probably not give optimal results.

It's not fair calling it 'me-too' to GF3. These are completely different additions to the GPU, read the article at amdzone for more info. It also seems that game developers have been informed about this for some time.

What is it with all the people that slams either ATI or nVidia? Shouldn't we be happy they are both giving us new technologies?

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05/29, 01:47pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: future cards, games

"What is it with all the people that slams either ATI or nVidia? Shouldn't we be happy they are both giving us new technologies?"

They're just idiots.

This is all good news for all of us. All these different features from Nvidia and ATI will balance themselves in the future. I'm pretty sure ATI will also include something that's essentially the same as Geforce3s vertex shaders in their next GPU and Nvidia will surely add this to NV30 or whatever if it garners interest. They just won't call it trueform, they call is subdivision surfaces, they seem to like to use more technical jargon like T&L instead of charisma engine...

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05/29, 02:15pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
kyro][....

word Mr nVidia basher! I actually long for the days when the mac was supported with better beta drivers from 3dfx than 'final' drivers from the likes of nVidia and ati. Didnt nVidia buy 3dfx? didnt they learn ANYTHING from them? all they seem to have learnt, is how to announce a product and then procrastinate its shipment for a few months ....

Id be mucho happy to see some competition in the home GPU market - I'd like to see a kyro ][ with mac drivers.

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05/29, 02:42pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
ATI and Support....

You know, if it came down to a company like ATI that keeps promising, and never delivering, and one like nVidia that simply delivers, I think the choice is clear. I'm still waiting on the dual-head display card ATI promised 3 years ago, or better Mac drivers ATI keeps promising.

nVidia has both, and their driver groups keeps enhancing Mac drivers.

nVidia's getting my money.

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05/29, 02:45pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE KYRO ][

I would love to have that type of quality - and not have the c*** that we get stuck with, or the features that we get left out of!!

Hopefully the fact that Macgamer interviewed the Mac Prod manager Steph Castura and provided some info that Truform "...is the next step for ATI in providing graphical excellence..."

means that ATI will give us was the PCs get!

At least that is what I will be praying for...

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05/29, 02:50pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: ATI and support

since you say that nVIDIA is getting your money - with all it's poor drivers - then the saying 'a fool and his money are easily parted' must be true

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05/29, 02:51pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: ati and support

ya they deliver like microshank... late...late...late...

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05/29, 04:22pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
NVIDIA and drivers

PC NVIDIA driver revisions in the last 6 months: three

Mac NVIDIA driver revision in the last 6 months: one

Who is getting the shaft now?

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05/29, 05:44pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: NVIDIA and drivers

nVIDIA got what they wanted... they are now an OEM - but it seems that they do not care about supporting the hardware.

Lets see who long they stay in Jobs good book...lack of support...late delivery...bye bye...

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05/29, 07:27pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
now THIS is thinking...

"out of the box"

gotta give props to ati for this. rather than following the trend of generating cards that can churn out more polygons which then game makers have to create in their games, they just make more polygons out of the ones that ARE ALREADY THERE!

can you imagine the NEW life this is going to give all those old games on your shelf? any polygonal-based game will be like brand new! people will buy these cards just to breath new life back into their unreal tournaments, their deus ex's, the tomb raiders...

this is a shot across the bow of the flagship nVidia (and partially makes up for the useless "charisma engine".

CE, while nice in theory, required programmers to change api's (or so i had heard) in order to take advantage of it. apple learned the hard way with rhapsdoy that asking your programmers to rework the wheel is guaranteed bankruptcy. that's why radeon has yet to reach its full potential. heck, is ANYone writing their code to use CE??? i haven't heard any...

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05/29, 07:40pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Great

Now just give me some damn Mac games to play on it, and I'll be happy.

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05/29, 08:58pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
ATI is no good

ATI is bad. We use nVIDIA and will take over thanks to miracle applications and graphic processors from God. We love nVIDIA and will always use them.

ATI: You are asleep.

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05/29, 09:23pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: ATI is no good

Although everyone is entitled to their own opinion...I wonder what you base yours upon!

Miracle applications? I thought these guys made GPU's? What applications are you talking about? I hope your not taking about the pathetic drivers?

Graphic processors from God? What?????

Every test I have seen puts the Radeon ahead of the Geforce2...2d applications for graphic designers (which at the end of the day matters the most $$$$$$)...3D gaming performance (geforce2 could not even run many games).

I guess love is blind, but I think you are the ones asleep, not ATI.

Look for Radeon2 to smoke anything that nVIDIA has out.

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05/29, 10:32pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Attenton Mr. Radeon2

You know nothing and are lame. We will be first because we believe in ourselves and wonderful products that work. Your lies fall on deaf ears. We will make all the money. So take that Mr. Radeon2 lover. Sleep well!

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05/29, 10:58pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Hey morons...

All this "ATI vs. nVIDIA" c*** is a waste of everyone's time, and dangerous for the Mac. Don't you know that PC people laugh at us because for a long time we only had ONE company developing graphics car drivers? And now you want to start a stupid "war" between the only two graphics card companies left who are interested in supporting the Mac? Are you guys insane?

Let the companies duke it out if they so choose. I will make my own choice, but I hope that BOTH of them do well, I have no interest in participating in lamer warz.

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05/30, 01:12am | report spam | close Reply | delete
3dfx rules!

'Nuff said. Can't wait for the Voodoo 6 to come out!!!!

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05/30, 03:37am | report spam | close Reply | delete
ATI.....

is totally g**.

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05/30, 07:28am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Competition

While comments regarding having two card makers competing is totally true, in the fact this breeds better prices and higher performance.

The only problem comes when a company befieves that putting out a product is enough. When they have a lack of commitment and are more concerned with an increased shelf presence, and fail to put the resources into developing a truly great product. Just having either ATI or nVIDIA providing graphic cards to mac users IS NOT enough. They must also provide a product that is worth the money we spend. ATI has not provided as strong a product as is on the PS side (wouldn't the ALL-IN-WONDER be a great 'digital hub' card?) and nVIDIA has failed to this point giving use a card with many faults.

Having two compete for our dollar is great, just give use something worth buying

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05/30, 08:46am | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: attention Mr Radeon2

Good to know all you are concerned with is making money not putting out a great product. with an attitude like that, you will last long.

Maybe we do need Matrox and S3 to come into mac and blow out losers like you.

All you say is this person is g** or that person is lame. Well, point us in the direction to the reviews that show the GeForce is better. Provide info, otherwise don't waste our time. goof

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05/30, 10:42am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Hey "ATI is no good"

I sincerely hope that you are either a person from a non English speaking country or just some dopey 12 year old who never attends school. I wish this for you because it is hard to take a person seriously when they write derogatory posts in "Pidgeon" English. If you do really work for nVidia I hope your code syntax is better than your grammer.

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05/30, 02:50pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Hey Mr. ATI is not

We write beautiful code and run it with our perfect nVIDIA drivers. I use English as well as ignorant Americans who can't learn and smoke crack and sell drugs to babies. I hope your sleep is blissful. HA HA We will own you someday and you will bring me my dinner. HA HA

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05/30, 05:30pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: RE: Hey Mr. ATI is no

Thank you for providing such useful information.

Morons like you should make ATI feel very comfortable.

Besides the fact that you make no sense, you seem very delusional. Guess what?

You do not write beatiful code and you do not have perfect drivers - but keep thinking you do so we would have to deal with you when you go bankrupt.

Either that or please wake up so we can buy a useful product from you.

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05/30, 08:45pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
You are all ignorant

Americans are stupid and lazy. We live here and eat your food and take all your money while you work with cursed ATI products. Someday we will have it all.

Sleep well Stupid Americans!

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05/30, 09:21pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: you are all ingnorant

Let me guess...

You are some lonely, sexually frustrated 15 year-old trying to feel all-important.

Thanks for giving the rest of us something to laugh about.

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05/30, 10:41pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
You are all wrong

It is your sexual obsessions that keep Americans from success. We work hard every day and sacrifice to work with your wonderful technology. HA HA I will have all the s** I need when I rule the world with my killer apps that I wrote while you were jerking off in front of TV. Sleep well fool!

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05/31, 04:03am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: You are all wrong

HA HA I will have all the s** I need when I rule the world with my killer apps that I wrote while you were jerking off in front of TV.

You *will* have all the s** you need, as I shall bust your bunghole open wide enough to drive a train through.

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05/31, 09:03am | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: Train Man

Excuse me while I laugh my azz off at work!!!!!!!!

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ATI introduces new rendering technology

updated 06:20 am EDT, Tue May 29, 2001

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