Unfortunately, a lot of these patents are not even close to being creative, novel, or innovative. There's a lot of obvious solutions that any expert in the software field would develop the same way, or at least an infringing way, if tasked with a similar problem. The language used seems to be aimed at maximizing the potential that someone will infringe on the patent in some way.

Well, it's perhaps not that bad. All you need is a Java VM that runs on ARM with OpenGL working. Although if these devices only have OpenGL ES that might be a problem.

I was actually excited from the title, fabricating a custom chip to do this. Then the summary quickly dispels that.

Agree, the bar has been set pretty low on the story, I'm only vaguely paying any attention to it myself. But at least you can tell they put their focus in on the game play. With where it's at, I'd almost prefer the story to be scaled back even more, with just some brief hand waving about go forth and strike down evil.

Most rogue-likes never even bothered with it at all. And if you didn't dig through the readme files or hear it from someone, the only obvious thing was "we need to go deeper" and yet people still played the hell out of those and had a great time of it.

A deluxe feature such as that might be a little too much to give away in a service pack. That will probably need to wait until Windows 9.

Also the fact that Microsoft is working on their own tablet might indicate their level of caring about OEMs is starting to drop.

I have an M-Audio Firewire audio box that still doesn't have fully working drivers for Windows 7, at least if you consider working _not_ blue screening every few minutes. Apparently if you don't have a TI chipset for Firewire you can pretty much forget about that device ever working in Win 7. But the crazy part is I had this 100% stable working in Vista, no issues at all. Seriously screwed up lack of giving a shit on their part.

3rd Rule of Vista: If a driver says "stop", times out, or blue screens the up-time is over.

I'd doubt it. Probably like a version control system, nothing is ever really gone or lost. On the outside you only see trunk / latest rev, it will look gone at least.

One does not simply "file" a report in the UK.

...report to be filed, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Why exactly should this be a given? Even assuming they are at least thinking ahead in their programming and have a proper localization framework in place, that still doesn't mean all content is equally ready for distribution.

Tyler's words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person.

Listen to me. You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don't need Him. Fuck damnation, man. Fuck redemption. We are God's unwanted children. So be it! But first you have to give up. First, you have to know, not fear, know that someday you're gonna die. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

Nothing to do with the post/GP, but when did this stop being OK?

Then your competitor (if they can be called that) is garbage and it's no surprise at all they didn't get picked. Obviously there's no need to change anything at all. The question would have been far more interesting if the competitor actually did something better.

I've found it to be valuable for short time periods working through either specific integration tasks or refining certain code that multiple people have had input on. Or sometimes just as a sort of natural thing where I'd bring up an issue with someone and we'd work through it right then. I'd probably go crazy and find another job if I had to pair program all the time.