Probably a stupid question - but wouldn't the steam/plasma presumably have the same orbit as the original solid mass; similarly presumably wouldn't the solar wind blow the mass away fairly evenly - meaning in a long long time, it'll cool, condense and potentially (slowly) pull itself back together?

Unity3d may support NaCl; but it has a couple of glaring deficiencies - like a lack of network support (this is apparently a issue with the Pepper API not supporting it). The webplayer (NPAPI) version is unfortunately also a bit faster at runtime.

Background: I've got a Surface RT - picked it up about a week ago due to the 30% price drop on impulse to replace my iPad while on holiday.

The email app on the Surface is roughly about as functional as the iPad email app - the design is fairly close; although I find the Surface one has a slight edge since it uses screen space better, and doesn't become unusable when you switch to portrait mode.

The big killer for me though (and why I got it to replace my iPad) is the built-in kickstand and the snap on keyboard -- I didn't flick on my laptop once to respond to a work email while away; that's a big change compared to the iPad where the onscreen keyboard (and the variety of crap external ones) are unusable for anything more than a sentence or two long; and I'd end up having to log onto a laptop to respond.

Showing recent emails on the start screen is nice too -- I have a Win8 desktop and hate metro there; but on the Surface it actually feels appropriate and good design (although things like switching tabs in IE don't "feel" right given it involves swiping in entirely different direction to e.g. changing applications).

Anyone redistributing your code (e.g. Github, Sourceforge, etc.) would be in violation of the GPL.

You would only be able to redistribute your code under something more permissive - the LGPL would probably be OK, if you built a library-level barrier between them; but really for everyone's sake - just pick MIT/BSD/Apache.

--single-transaction is one of the 'tricks around this' - but it blows out the production databases memory use if the table is updated while the export is occurring. (e.g.someone does an update all for some insane reason)

mysqldump can and will lock tables during its backup - there's some tricks around this; but on a big production database, its really suboptimal.

The parent argued that commodities have intrinsic values. I am arguing by counter that there are commodities who have no real intrinsic value beyond the same intrinsic value of fiat currencies.

For example, Oil has value as a store of energy - its value is generally based around the value at which it is economically useful for a particular input. Gold on the other hand, has very few economic uses (rust proofing wiring, and a few other marginal uses) - and the majority of the value it is 'worth' in its commodity price is actually the same value stored in a currency like US dollars.

There are lots of commodities that trade so far above their intrinsic value that they are fiat.

E.g. Gold.

No, but the interface bindings are shipped.

MySQL proceeded to piss off a whole bunch of developers by changing their bindings to GPL a few years back.

It's a shame OpenGL is a broken API comparatively.

It's still based on a 1980's Finite State Machine / Stack based renderer - which has almost zero correlation with modern graphics hardware.

If you want a legitimate answer from someone who's in one of the larger local Gaymer communities here's a couple of reasons:

1- Multiplayer gaming is an endless tirade of gay-this, faggot-that. It's nice to play games and socialise with people who aren't jerks. (Yes yes, harden the fuck up, etc - but it is annoying.)

2- It's an excuse to go hang out at a bar with a group of people with something in common every couple of weeks.

3- While I know it's not applicable to me (LTR), but the group I'm in has at least partly become a dating pool - for gay guys and girls, that's actually sometimes a bit harder than you may be used to.

Actually it looks like it does from my own examination of a Surface - it's just locked so that only Microsoft can use it.

Apple's terms of service prohibit doing exactly this. There's a most-favourable-price clause.

Speaking as someone with actual experience in this - DirectX is a monumental improvement over OpenGL; there's more to it than just being able to look at the underlying code (and frankly, 90% of both are just shims to pump commands into the drivers which is where the real magic happens -- drivers which generally tend to be very closed.)

Start with;
- A (arguably) better shading language (HLSL vs GLSL - I tend to find HLSL is easier to work with)
- A scenegraph representation that is not built around a 1980's pre-acceleration stack based renderer. (e.g. Objects are represented as full OO objects - complete with materials, rather than a matrix pushed onto a stack followed by a few vertex buffer array calls)
- A suite of excellent debugging utilities - which give you useful feedback (looking at the code != the value of a good debugger suite)

Leaving the 'free software' arguments aside, DirectX is better - by virtue of the fact that it's kept up to date with modern programming techniques. OpenGL needs to be replaced or at least significantly overhauled -- something which Khronos has not in the past actually been willing to do. OpenGLES improves the spec marginally, but it really needs a replacement to be on par with the ease and power DirectX offers you with far less effort.

That said; if anyones doing things at the DX/OGL level, they probably need to be hit over the head - anyone serious is using one of the many decent engines out there.