Do you understand the difference between "has to be" and "can be"?
Steam is in charge of downloading and installing the game. After that, you can launch it directly.
If, and only if, the game was coded to additionally use Steam's DRM features, it will then check that Steam is running and attempt to authenticate (which can be as simple as the local Steam instance having a cached authentication).
If it doesn't use Steam's DRM, it will just run as a regular old executable. Steam does not mandate ANY DRM, it only mandates that if you use non-Steam DRM, you have to make a note of it on your store page.
I have dozens of games bought and downloaded on Steam that do not touch Steam's DRM. I've actually copied some of them over to other computers and had it still work without Steam even being installed.
Being a civil suit, she doesn't even have to convince a majority - just 9 of the 12 jurors.
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
Oh it means what they said. Civil suits only require a simple majority of the jurors to agree with you. Criminal Juries must be 100%, civil juries only require more votes for one side than the other.
A majority would be any number greater than 6 (AKA anything more than 50%), not 9 of the 12 jurors (75%)...
Rust is not yet production-usable. It has enough known bugs in the tracker that I can't even contemplate using it for a personal project, let alone for real.
And yet they're already pushing the marketing, proclaiming it as a guaranteed C-killer. I'm sorry, but they've said that about every compiled language since C, and it hasn't been true for one of them. And you're pushing it this hard, when you're still this early along in development?
Nobody uses C or C++ because they love the language. They use it because it has all the tools they need to debug, and all the libraries they need to run, and all the performance they need for the task. Rust maybe has the last one, but only has the second by being C-compatible (defeating the purpose of using a new language, particularly when you have to write this much wrapper code around it) and has none of infrastructure needed for large modern projects.
Dear Rust devs: stop writing articles about how great Rust will be, and start writing stuff to make your language actually usable. Maybe then people with their heads outside their asses will listen to you.
Steam itself doesn't universally apply DRM - a large number of games on Steam don't have DRM at all, you can just copy the files to wherever you want and run them.
They do offer their own DRM, which is about as non-intrusive as you can get while still being DRM, and they allow publishers to include their own DRM as long as it is noted on the store page. You can be mad about games using DRM, but Valve isn't the one to be angry at.
PS: Valve's talked about issuing a patch to disable the DRM if they ever go out of business. Realistically that probably won't happen (too many licensing problems), but the DRM is trivially bypassed as long as you have the game downloaded already, so they really can't stop it.
I can't see where it says that in the article but I can see
FTA:
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone —an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
emphasis mine.
It was her phone. Why would she do that?
Where do you see that it was her phone? TFA reads:
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Being a civil suit, she doesn't even have to convince a majority - just 9 of the 12 jurors.
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
A Central California woman claims she was fired after uninstalling an app that her employer required her to run constantly on her company issued iPhone—an app that tracked her every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Sadly, their brags of "only five years behind" is an underestimate. It's a 65nm chip - its heyday was 2006-2007, on tail-end Pentium IVs, early Core 2, and Phenoms. 45nm hit in 2008, followed by 32nm in 2010. In 2012 Intel hit 22nm, but most others were on a 28nm half-node. Currently, 14nm is shipping from some vendors, and the rest are gearing up for it.
Account for the fact that these chips most likely won't actually be delivered until 2016, and you'll see they're really 10 years behind, not 5. That will probably still be fine for desktops or industrial use, but mobile is out, and servers will be very inefficient compared to modern ones.
SpaceX is getting some of the benefits of skipping the LAS, by using the same system for at least two tasks.
The primary use is as a propulsive landing system. That's probably the main way they'll be used. There's a backup parachute system, but they want powered landings to be the norm.
The secondary use is as an abort engine. It'll probably be rarely used, and I think it uses up all the fuel so an aborted launch will have to use parachutes, which will make for rougher landings but still plenty survivable. This way, they won't be carrying fuel that isn't used in some way during the flight.
A third possible use is as an in-flight maneuvering system. This is mostly done using the smaller Draco engines, not the big SuperDracos, but they run off the same fuel supply and are mounted in the same pod. But if they ever need to do significant orbital maneuvers, I expect they'll light up the SuperDracos.
Because they're trying something new with it. They're using the same set of engines for emergency escape as they are for propulsive landing of the capsule. That's fairly innovative in and of itself, and the changes required for that (side rockets instead of a top-mounted tower) let it also be used for a longer period of the flight.
As always, the answer is "it depends on a lot of things":
1. Is the language little-used because it's a special-purpose language? UnrealScript probably doesn't crack the top twenty as far as general programming languages go, but in the game dev field it's probably one of the biggest. Using a specialized language for a specialized task is fine - usually even a good thing.
2. Is the language little-used, but library-compatible with a more common language? Clojure is a rare language, but it can call Java libraries and code, which is a massive boon. Actual programming languages don't matter so much as the libraries they allow you to use, and if you can piggyback on a bigger library of libraries, you can go far with a small, obscure language. This isn't sufficient to make the language OK to use, because:
3. Is the project going to be worked on by more than one person? Personal projects, sure, use whatever language you feel like. Small groups can decide what to use. But if it's a big project that's likely to cycle through developers, think about the impact using an uncommon language will have.
4. Is there something about your problem that makes common languages inefficient or ineffective? Is the uncommon language objectively better at the exact task you're solving? Or is it just "the syntax is slightly cleaner"? This isn't a full deciding factor, but unless the language shows promise as being useful in the future, I wouldn't use it on a personal project.
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.