Chrome is faster because it massively favors speed over customization and features. FF is slower because it favors customization, and assumes, correctly, that no one actually actually gives a flying fark if it needs slightly more than a 1/50th of a second to render a page that Chrome can do in 1/100th of a second. This isn't a problem, nor is it news. Now of course, you may do the occasional task where those milliseconds actually matter because your browser is processing something enormous, but then just install both browsers, use Chrome in those rare instances, and use FF for a primary browser.

Frame rate isn't really an issue either. You can point out that the human eye sees at roughly 60 FPS, so going under 60 is undesired, but let's be realistic. Those Flash games are usually built at 20-25 FPS, because running at 60 would make them freaking huge. Video on the web likewise runs at 60 FPS roughly never, because it needs to stream. Downloaded video WILL run at 60, but your browser isn't playing that.

This doesn't mean there isn't a couple of very specific tasks that FF is abnormally slow at and could use a code cleanup on, but for the most part, FF's speed difference vs. Chrome is utterly negligible in actual use.

If the inability to play Flash games would be the deciding factor in not buying an iProduct, then the huge number of valid apps that get rejected from the store would have the exact same effect. I would say not only would it not spell death for the device if Flash lives on, I would go so far as to say that at MOST, they'll lose a handful of customers to it.

Got an alternative to Flash games? No? Then it's not going anywhere, period.
Got an alternative to Flash animations (not using it as a video player - actually animating with it). No? Then it's not going anywhere, period.

Yes, Flash-based layouts suck. Yes, using Flash as a video player is lame. Yes, HTML5 should eliminate any reason to do so, and yes, I hope HTML5 kills Flash as a design tool completely. However, unless someone has a viable alternative for flash animations and games - and no, no one takes Silverlight seriously - it will remain a major platform.

I'd say Jobs is shooting himself in the foot by banning all Flash games from his devices, but then the iStore is already incredibly restrictive, so those wanting actual choice are already on the competition anyway.

The ATI video card I have fails hard on XP64, so I got a driver some random guy that has nothing to do with ATI made instead, and it works great. If I were stuck using only drivers that were ATI-approved, I'd be majorly SoL.

I'm all for having the hardware verify that the driver actually is a valid driver for the hardware in question, just make sure that's ALL it does, or we'll lose the ability to use someone's hack to force a piece of hardware to work.

Most sites are running off of crappy shared hosting services, and the guy actually running the site has no idea how the server was configured, and whether current (or any!) security patches have been applied. He can do things like call phpinfo() to make sure that's at least current and intelligently configured, but he has no idea if the server itself is set up well, and more importantly, no way to fix it if it isn't.

This creates a huge problem if the server is pulled. Suddenly, all the shared hosting accounts go dark, and no one can even retrieve their site. Even assuming the site owner has a reasonably current backup, things like forum posts get lost, and the site operator is forced to send off a mass email explaining the problem (if he even knows what happened!) and then frantically try to rebuild the site elsewhere. Oh, and the hosting company usually owns the domain, so when it does come back up, he's still missing a huge chunk of his userbase.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to estimate that 90% of websites are on shared hosting accounts. Granted, it's the 90% that don't get much traffic, but every site has to start somewhere, and many simply aren't intended to be for more than a handful of users.

I was pretty sure you were trolling, but that confirms it. See ya.

So you reply to an article about an innocent man being executed by saying I don't have a single name. I believe that man has a name.

Here's 138 people that were on death row while innocent, and later exonerated.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty

There's of course no similar list of innocent people that were actually executed, because once they die, it's very rare for people to continue to defend them, given how little that can accomplish. Pair that list with the article I previously posted though, and I think we can safely say there's been at least a few dozen... and one is too many.

It's obviously impossible to know how many there were, but read this article for an example of how it happens:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

Multiple gunshot wounds to the heart generally cause death (or at least unconsciousness that will lead to death) in a matter of seconds.

Lethal injections take several minutes to kill, and that's if they do them correctly. Remember - no actual doctor will do it as you can't violate the Hippocratic Oath much worse than that. There's been horror stories of paralyzed victims slowly losing the ability to breathe over 30-45 minutes, conscious, but unable to speak or move.

The only reason lethal injection became popular is that it makes the death LOOK painless due to the paralysis drug preventing the victim from expressing pain.

Given a choice, I can't imagine anyone choosing the needle.

While I'm against capital punishment both because it sends innocents to their deaths, and because it's based on vengeance instead of justice, I really don't see an issue with tweeting an execution announcement.

The actions of elected officials are supposed to be completely public, and stored in a form where there's no question as to what they are doing and why. His tweet made both his action and the reasoning behind his action completely clear, and stored it in a format where it remains archived, so it actually does accomplish keeping his electorate informed.

That being said, I do agree that it would have made more sense to type up a full statement on the matter, put it on his website, then tweet a link to that document, but as far as mistakes go, that's a pretty minor one, even if the topic of discussion was anything but minor. Now of course, if he doesn't later post a full document or hold a press conference on the matter, THEN arguments about him avoiding the issue become valid. I'll be very surprised, however, if that's the case.

If you enjoy both gaming and programming, you're naturally going to attempt to program a game at some point... but note the "if" there.

Simply enjoying games doesn't mean you want to build them any more than enjoying movies means you want to direct or act in one or liking cars means you want to be an engineer or mechanic.

To be a coder, you have to like logic, puzzle solving, and the joy of automating stuff that sucks to do manually. Most coders start off by saying "hey, I want to build this", and figure it out from there. Your skills gradually improve, and eventually you reach the point where you say "ok, if I really want to get into this, I need to seriously study it." You then become a good coder. :) To enjoy game design, you have to be a creative person who likes building worlds, writing stories, etc. The best way to get experience is to do smaller projects - write a short story, run an RP campaign, that sort of thing to hone your design skills. Do it long enough, and you'll get quite good at it. To make a game yourself, you need both skill sets. Of course, it's always possible to focus heavily on one side, but then you need to find someone who can do the other half.

Note that being a gamer don't not require *either* of those sets of interests.

That being said, if the kid *does* have an interest, the key is to start simple. Yes, making a high end game takes a team of people years, but you don't start there any more than a novice director tries to make a 20 million dollar movie. I'd recommend starting with either browser games or flash games. You'll need one major language for either (PHP or Actionscript respectively), but you'll also need basic skills in a few other areas. A browser game maker needs to know the basics of making and querying a database, as well as how to do a decent web design. A flash game maker needs art.

Also, as others have said, you may want to start out by working with existing games. Some have some pretty powerful editors with built-in scripting languages, and this can be a good way to learn the basics of programming logic while building something others will actually want to play. Tools are another option - for instance, building a DB-driven fansite for a favorite game will allow you to learn all of the skills you then need to attempt an actual game.

Again though, I can't stress this enough - programming is NOT a common thing for people to enjoy. If there's no interest, don't try to force one.

It's not the abuses anyone is complaining about, it's the cover ups. Sure, every profession is going to have people who piss on the ethical standards of that profession, and there's no reason a religious profession would somehow dodge that.

The thing is, if a doctor violates the Hippocratic oath, he loses his medical license. A corrupt lawyer gets disbarred. A fraudulent scientist gets publicly shamed and unable to get money for future research. Jobs with less on the line usually just result in the offender being fired. Whatever the job is though, when someone is corrupt, they're generally removed, and when that fails to happen, the company they work for is punished instead.

With the catholic church, they covered up the pedophilia for decades, and now that they can't hide it any more, do they at least finally apologize, vow to fix it, and start making good on that promise by immediately kicking the most obvious offenders out of the clergy and turning them over the cops? Nope, they instead whine that that transparency of the internet is bad, because it makes their wrongdoing public. That isn't bad PR, that's a systemic failure of the morals they claim to uphold.

THIS is why so few still have any respect for them. Failing to discover abuse is one thing, but being fully aware of it and actively hiding it is when they very much cross the line between "good profession with the occasional douchebag" to "group that actively promotes evil behavior."

Similarly, you can look at the police in the US. Does anyone complain that there's a few evil, unethical cops? Of course not - sometimes you really can't weed them out until they majorly screw up... except they don't. They're "doing administrative work until an investigation can be thoroughly completed." Translation: We're keeping him off the street until the media focuses on something else, then pretending this never happened. Unsurprisingly, public opinion of the police is quite low - doesn't matter that the majority of cops are indeed good people, the system they work for actively promotes evil by refusing to punish the corrupt members of their organization.

There's 3 companies that pull this crap - EA, Ubisoft, and Activision. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Just avoid those 3 companies.

Then you realize they've purchased or destroyed nearly every other game company in the US, and you quickly realize those 3 are the overwhelming majority of the industry.

I do indeed vote with my wallet - indie games, Korean and Japanese imports, Flash game sites (you don't pay for these but every time you go to one, you're giving the company ad revenue), webgames, etc.

That's fine if you're aware of those channels, but someone walking into a game store isn't seeing indie games, will see few, if any Korean ones, and obviously, won't see *anything* that doesn't ship in a box. That leaves nothing but Japanese imports - not that there aren't plenty of good ones, but the bottom line is, the average gamer simply isn't aware of how many options they have to avoid these companies, and until that fact changes, they're going to remain multi-billion dollar companies.

We need to do more than vote with our wallets, we need to make our friends, and by extension THEIR friends aware that you very much CAN avoid this crap. Then, and only then, will the industry move forward on large scale.

IANAL, but AFAIK, there is in fact no federal murder law.

Is a life sentence mandatory on murder 1 & 2? Varies by state.
Is parole possible? Varies by state.
Does the death penalty exist? Varies by state.
Is murder ever justified? Self defense is generally allowed, but exactly what constitutes valid self defense varies by state, and whether there's a "justified homicide" law as well, again, varies by state.

We might call in the FBI to investigate and arrest, but in the end, it's up to the state where the crime was committed as to what actually happens to the guy. The only exception is when the attack was directly on the federal government.

This is a much different situation than with something like pot. Should it be illegal, legal for medical use only, or legal always? If there are cases where it's illegal, what penalty should exist if you break the law? There is no consensus whatsoever on this.

-Can you warp your head around coding logic?
-Can you avoid chaining yourself to a specific language, and instead choose one that works well for what you're trying to do, rather than force one to work outside of its intended scope?
-Can you handle both procedural code and OOP, and are you aware of the pros and cons of each?
-Can you write code others (not to mention you a month later!) can actually read?
-Are you willing to take the time to truly learn programming, rather than just copy-pasting a few functions and hoping it works?
-When you learn a language, are you willing to actually learn the language, and not just make it behave like one you already know?
-Are you aware that debugging often takes longer than actually coding, and are you willing to put that effort in for the sake of quality code?

If you answered yes to all of the above, you're probably going to be a pretty good programmer, whether you started on C/C++, Assembly, BASIC, or hell, ZZT-OOP. Every language has places it really shines, and every language has glaring flaws - if there was a prefect language that was good at everything, we wouldn't need a few dozen of them. :)