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Comment Re:I've got a great idea! (Score 1) 89

Why are you using "Waterfox" and 64 bit nightlies? The official Firefox builds themselves have been 64 bit for several years now.

Assuming you're using Mac OS X or 64-bit Linux. It's just Windows that doesn't have a 64-bit Firefox for some dumb, poorly explained reason. (Keep in mind that 64-bit Firefox on Mac OS X managed to support 32-bit plugins, so it's not that. Clearly they can manage.)

Comment Re:I've got a great idea! (Score 3, Insightful) 89

Firefox already is 64-bit and has been for quite a while.

Just, not on Windows. I think their excuse was something to do with third party plugins not being 64-bit. (Although I'm pretty sure they have a 32-bit plugin shim that works on Linux and Mac OS X, so whatever.)

I don't really care, though, since Firefox 30 entirely broke Firefox with the proxy where I work. Now I can't access outside sites at all due to OCSP errors and I can't access internal sites since they removed NTLMv1 support as a "security hole."

Comment Re:So much wrong (Score 1) 167

If you had a "bog-standard iOS app that was a very simple UI in front of a website" that has complex long-running code in the UI thread, or for that matter complex code that takes "nearly a minute" to run in the first place, well ... that's not the simulator's fault.

But the fact that it hid it until someone finally tried it on a device is the simulator's fault.

And you've never had websites that did anything even somewhat complicated in JavaScript, huh? Since you aren't allowed to run interpreted code on iOS, it had to be redone in Objective-C, and the initial version turned out to be very slow. (Think "charting.")

I mean, sure, we could have just embedded a webpage and done it that way, but the existing JavaScript was already unacceptably slow or we wouldn't be looking at making an iOS app, now, would we?

Comment Re:So much wrong (Score 0) 167

Bullshit. You don't even need to be doing game development for the simulator to be useless.

Every experience I've had with the simulator has been that it's entirely useless for determining how the code will run on a real device. I mean, hell, you don't even have actual iOS running on the simulator, you're running a Mac OS X binary!

The simulator is effectively WINE for iOS: it reimplements the iOS APIs under Mac OS X, and the toolchain compiles an x86 binary instead of an ARM binary. No one should have to explain why that's entirely useless for trying to build an ARM app on iOS.

It isn't just game development. I had a bog-standard iOS app that was a very simple UI in front of a website. Try it in the simulator and it seems nice and snappy. Try in on a real device, and it's slow as molasses and nearly unusable.

Why? Because it turns out some code being run in the UI thread was excessively slow. So it had to be moved out to a new thread. (Which, arguably, it should have been anyway, but I'm not the guy who wrote the original code.) But on x86, it was fast enough that no one even noticed.

I remember optimizing said chunk of code so that it ran in around 0.2 seconds on the simulator - and took nearly a minute on an actual device.

The simulator is entirely useless for developing an actual app.

Comment Re:Massive conspiracy (Score 5, Informative) 465

You've missed what the scandal was.

no Tea Party groups were denied their application from what i remember, but at least one progressive group was.

That was exactly the point. The IRS was making demands for data so onerous as to be literally impossible to comply with. They never denied Tea Party groups - but they just never allowed them, either, leaving them in a legal limbo. They instead demanded an impossible amount of documentation from them to "prove" their legality.

The fact that a progressive group was able to submit an application and be denied actually proves the IRS's malfeasance: they were capable of submitting an application at all, while Tea Party groups simply could not possibly meet the IRS's impossible demands for their applications.

Comment Re:No Democratic groups were targeted (Score 1) 465

I'm pretty sure that article actually proves my point, but it's impossible to tell, because the very first thing they do is throw up a histogram where they should be using a pie chart. (At least, I think those bars are showing percentages. It's hard to tell because their method of data collection is utterly inscrutable.)

But it looks like the "progressive" groups that were targeted were almost exclusively pro-marijuana groups. You know, progressive groups that are against the current administration's policies. Which is what I said: the only progressive groups targeted were those that went against the current administration. (Remember, while Obama may be left of center, many progressive groups are even further left.)

Groups backing the current administration were simply not targeted. Only those against it - be they right or left of the administration - were targeted.

Comment No Democratic groups were targeted (Score 2) 465

Tons of libs targeted too.

Name one.

As far as I know, the only "liberal" groups that were targeted were liberal groups that were also against the current administration. Pro-Democrat Party groups, on the other hand, were not targeted.

This is absolutely a political issue and a gross overstepping of power on behalf of the current administration and they absolutely should be investigated for it.

Comment Re:yeah whatever (Score 5, Insightful) 225

Also to get rid of troublesome extensions like Adblock Plus. I seem to recall Google kicking Adblock Plus from the Google Play store, which while not the same thing as the Chrome Web Store, does seem a bit worrying.

Granted the reasoning used in that case (it "interfered with the operation of other apps") likely wouldn't apply to Chrome but it's the primary reason I want to be able to install extensions from non-Google "blessed" sources: I don't trust Google not to be evil.

Comment Re:So someone didn't follow the practice ... (Score 1) 152

Except I've heard of Titanfall, and I though "Infamous: Second Son" was the PS3 sequel to Infamous. Apparently it's in fact the third game in the series, proving just how good Sony is at both marketing and naming things.

Hilariously, when I Googled it to find that out, the top hit was "How Second Son Really Hurt The inFamous Franchise" so I'm not sure that's really a good exclusive to have...

Plus your own link points out Titanfall sold better than Infamous Second Son, it just did it across more platforms because it isn't a Xbox One exclusive, leaving the Xbox One version sales alone to do worse than Infamous Second Son.

Comment Re:So someone didn't follow the practice ... (Score 3, Informative) 152

Had they followed the practice, they would have a version of the source code that runs correctly (but slowly) that they could optimize for different target platforms.

I expect that when they started, they had no intention of porting to other platforms.

Naughty Dog is Sony these days. They only make games for Sony platforms. So they targeted only the PS3. I'll bet when development started, Sony hadn't finalized PS4 plans.

Now the PS4 is out and desperate for games (go ahead, name a PS4 exclusive), so Sony is having them port it to PS4. And since the game was never intended for anything other than the PS3, they're running into difficulties.

I wouldn't blame the programmers for optimizing for the only platform they were told to target, I'd blame the managers for suddenly springing a new platform on them after the game was done.

Comment Re:Damned If they do. Damned if they don't (Score 1) 384

So who in any of these examples is being "a depraved bigoted shitsack towards [LGBT people]?" The answer is no one.

But you still have people complaining.

Hell, PAX added a "diversity lounge" to try and appease the complaints of the LGBT community. (What were they complaining for? In what way was PAX non-inclusive? Not a clue. But they were anyway.) Did that go over well?

Nope. Just more complaining.

Wait, what am I thinking? I'm probably trying to engage with someone in the LGBT community, aren't I? And the first rule is to never bother, because you'll never win, no matter how much you try to meet their demands.

Comment Re:Damned If they do. Damned if they don't (Score 1) 384

Which is why, if anything has been learned from the Mozilla Eich fiasco, the lesson should be "always ignore the LGBT community."

They're never worth engaging. Ever. Apologies won't be enough, LGBT-friendly policies won't be another, nothing will be enough once you're in their sights. Despite apologizing, despite pledging not to change Mozilla's LGBT-friendly policies, despite giving in to all of their demands, the LGBT community would not let up and forced him to resign.

And, hey, guess what? This apology also isn't being accepted! All Nintendo has accomplished is legitimizing the complaints and getting them more widely recognized. They should have just ignored them. The LGBT community would continue their ineffective ranting on Tumblr and everyone else could go about their lives without caring.

Although, on the other hand, I had never heard of this game until people started getting outraged about it. Now I have. Maybe this will work out in Nintendo's favor in the end. After all, there is no such thing as "bad publicity."

Comment Re: First World Problems (Score 2) 384

Because marriage in the game is intended to produce children (note: not applying that to reality at this time, please don't argue that), and having two characters of the same sex breaks the game when it attempts to determine which character is the father and which is the mother.

It was literally a crash bug, which is why they patched it out.

Comment Re:It's the loophole (Score 4, Interesting) 93

I don't think that's the loophole, actually. Since technically as far as Sony cares you license everything, the physical disc just gives you a "license" to use the software on it.

No, the distinction is that the "unlock" is "DLC" and the full version is a "game."

One of the "perks" of a PSPlus subscription (in fact, the only perk prior to the PS4) was that you'd get discounts on the PlayStation Store and that sometimes you could get free games. If you got a "free" game through PSPlus, you only could use it while you have an active PSPlus subscription.

Well, guess what? The demo version of this game is, in fact, a "free" PSPlus game. It's only available to PSPlus subscribers. So as soon as you drop your PSPlus subscription, you lose access to the demo.

And the "full unlock" is DLC to said "free game," so if you drop your PSPlus subscription, you lose access to the entire game as you can no longer play the "base" game (the "demo").

This whole thing strikes me more as laziness than out-right maliciousness. Someone realized it screwed people over, and then rather than try and fix it by making an exception, Sony said "fuck it" and reverts to screwing customers over, in typical Sony fashion.

Still malicious (they could fix it, after all), but with a nice helping of being too lazy to fix a problem they clearly recognize exists.

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