I also maximize almost everything. That's why I can't stand Mac OS X. It has no maximization, or at least not in the way that Windows and KDE have it (there is a button, but it works different from program to program and doesn't make the window take up the entire screen...)

I agree. I have played Gorilla.bas, Scorched Earth, Worms, etc. But for me, this one is special because of the characters and especially the sounds. The smile and the laughs of the pigs scoffing at me when failing a level never fail to make me laugh. I think I'd have delete the game long ago if not for those little but important details.

Also, it's not only the satisfaction of parabolic ballistics, but also the satisfaction to demolish things! Worms also had that to an extent, but it's not the same without the structures and the physics engine. This one feels more like destroying real things, which is well-known to be pleasurable and relaxing for most humans.

I don't think this game's success can be explained by a single factor. They came up with a magic formula that worked.

So this means that in the US anyone can vote in primaries, even the supporters of the opposite party?

That sounds a little crazy to me, precisely because you can do things like this... in my country, to vote in a party's primaries you have to be a member of that party (and of course anyone can be a member of a party if they pay a fee, but they won't let you be a member of two rival parties at the same time).

With this totally open primary system, what I wonder is why the democratic party hasn't tried to present one of their candidates to the republican primaries, or vice versa... it sounds like an efficient strategy.

That would be true if code only needed to be written, not read. In many cases, autogenerated verbosity makes code more readable and therefore saves time.

Compare throwing an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException ("ar" + Ctrl+Space + Return in Eclipse) to throwing an "OOBExc" or similar that you type yourself. I'd rather have the first one: the IDE types the long name for me and it makes the code easier to understand.

I suppose he is quoting the tiobe index because the numbers match: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html - however, taking this as an estimate of the amount of code that has been written in a given language is a wild guess at best.

If I had to take my own wild guess off the top of my head, I think I'd give Java more than 18% of the code written in 2010, though. C and C++ added together get quite more popularity than Java, but I don't think their usage in the enterprise is comparable to that of Java.

Why a netbook or tablet? There are a lot of eInk readers that support formats without DRM. Off the top of my head, there is the iRex iLiad (which I have), the HanLin eReader, the Sony readers, several Netronix models, the Entourage Edge... here in Spain we even have local brands like the Grammata Papyre.

It's sad that so many Americans seem to think that there's no eInk life outside of the Kindle... when the Kindle is the most closed and DRM-laden option, and there are quite a bunch of open alternatives. Really sad.

Certainly. For example I have paid once, at work, and I will probably download from my own home and from my parents' home. Since they ask us to save bandwith I'll probably download each game from one location and save them to an external HD, but it isn't hard to imagine that many people are not going to do that. Clicking and downloading again is much easier.

I just can't help it.

Without cheating, I wouldn't get the first post.

What? "Not doing anything?" They were doing their jobs. The scientists' job is to do science, the government's job is to take care of spending and deficit.

Some government spendings, in my particular country (Spain), that should be cut before science:

- Subsidies for the local film industry
- Subsidies for coal mining (which, apart from polluting, is not even profitable, they just keep it so miners can keep their job - it would probably be better to pay them a salary for life for doing nothing and close the mines once and for all)
- The 30K (!) official cars that different government officials, mayors, etc. have
- SGAE (i.e., the local version of the RIAA) and the so-called Ministry of Culture which seems to spend half of its time protecting copyright while impeding access to culture
- Ministry of Equality (which creates blatantly unfair "affirmative action" laws)
- Unnecessary spending due to having too many intermediate government layers (central government - autonomous community (~"state") governments - provinces - mayorships: at least one layer - arguably, two - are unnecessary, and this is a huge money sink)
- The military, of course
- The Catholic church (yes, that's right, our government gives money to the church)
- Subsidies to promote local languages

And I could keep listing. There are lots of things that can be "picked" for financial cuts before the ones you say. Cutting science spending while leaving these is an insult to intelligence.

In Germany, they have decided to make budget cuts in almost everything but science. In Spain it's the opposite, science is suffering the steepest cuts. But then, of course, Germany is the country that is already soaring out of the crisis with a two-point-something GDP growth, and Spain is the country with 20% unemployment that hasn't seen light at the end of the tunnel yet.

If you actually optimise coin systems for efficiency, you get much weirder results than that: see

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/3839/title/Coins_for_Making_Change_Efficiently

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/do-we-need-a-37-cent-coin/

Of course, this would make sense for robots but not so much for a bunch of self-indulgent monkeys that find it easier to add 20 or 25-cent coins than 37-cent coins.

We had that in my country and I don't miss it at all. I prefer the 20 cent coin.

If you have a 50-cent coin or two in your pocket, having also a 25 cent coin gives you the possibility to easily pay 25 or 75 cents. However, having more than one 25 cent coin doesn't get you more choices of amounts.

On the other hand, if you have a 50-cent coin or two in your pocket, having also a 20 cent coin gives you easy access to paying 20 or 70 cents. Having two 20 cent coins gives you easy access to paying 40 or 90. Having three adds the possibility of paying 60.

This gives you much more flexibility, which is what matters in practice, more than optimising the number of coins in an abstract setting where you have an infinite number of each. IMO the 20 cent coin is the single best improvement the new monetary system has brought to my country (the fact that coins are smaller and lighter than before is also nice).