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Comment Re:Yeah right (Score 1) 413

With Opera I can right-click on a page say "edit site preferences" go to the scripting tab, and set a javascript folder. It will then load the javascript in that folder followed by the scripting on the page. However, in the javascript in the specified folder that you load, you can use opera-specific extensions to modify/overwrite the subsequently loaded javascript from the site. I'm probably doing a horrible job of explaining as I don't really do web-development stuff. So...

http://www.opera.com/docs/userjs/

Submission + - Federal Prosecutors tempt the Streisand Effect (fas.org)

decora writes: "As the case of NSA IT guru Thomas Andrews Drake nears trial, the fur has been flying between the defense and prosecution lawyers. Earlier this week the judge ordered the sealing of a defense motion because the government claimed it contained classified information. The problem? The document had been sitting on the Federation of American Scientists website for several days. Another problem: the document is marked "Unclassified" in big bold letters at the top of the page."

Comment Re:Bargain? $200? (Score 1) 197

It's a bargin priced performance video card not a bargin priced video card. Interestingly enough, "bargin performance" is the phrase used in the summary.

You're not going to get solid performance at a respectable resolution in modern video games for below $150-200 or so. If you spend below that you're either having to drastically cut resolution or you're cutting way back on the settings. The $200ish range of cards will let you run with most all of the pretty stuff turned on at approximately 1080p resolution with a solid framerate that's not being killed by stuttering or slowdowns. (i.e., acceptable mins)

The mid-range and high-end cards allow you to run at yet higher resolutions and/or with lots of AA. And yes, there are people that play modern FPSers at 2560x1600 with AA. I'm not one of them. I tend to go the budget performance card route and game at 1600x1200 with low or no AA but with high settings and a good frame rate. I'll likely need to upgrade come this fall though, and this card is definately on my radar.

Comment Re:HDLs (Score 1) 250

Most modern CPUs and the compilers for them are simply not designed for multiple threads/processes to interact with the same data. As an excersize, try writing a lockless single-producer single-consumer queue in C or C++. If you could make the same assumption in this two-thread example that you can make in a single-thread problem, namely that the perceived order of operations is the order that they're coded, then it'd be a snap.

But you see, once you start playing with more than one thread of execution, you gain visibility into both CPU reordering and compiler reordering. You also gain visibility into optimizations made (such as maintaining values in a register and not moving to cache or invented predictive stores and the like). If you research enough you'll find that while the volatile keyword will solve some of the problems, it doesn't solve them all, and it introduces others (it works well for what it's designed for, which is interfacing with hardware, if it's being used for intra-thread comms it's being misused). You wind up needing to use architecture-specific memory barriers/fences to instruct the CPU about reordering and when to flush store buffers to cache and so on. You wind up needing to use compiler-specific constructs to prevent it from reordering or maintaining things in registers that you're not wanting. (volatile is often used for the later, and note while volatile variables won't be reordered around each other, the standard says nothing about reordering non-volatile around the volatile. Also, it bypasses the cache, which in x86-land introduces CPU-reordering that otherwise isn't there (as I think volatile winds up being implemented using CLFLUSH?) as well as unnecessary performance hits (which perfomance is evidently important if you're trying to avoid locks...)

Atomicity is a whole different level of fun as well. I was lucky, at the boundary I was dealing with inherently atomic operations (well, so-long as I have my alignment correct, (not guaranteed by new)), but if you're not... it's yet more architecture-specific code.

Comment Re:and...? (Score 1) 664

In classes which are primarily discussion based (i.e., a nice high level philosophy course) I agree, a laptop has no place.

However, for me, having a laptop to distract myself with is creating "an environment conducive to learning." I didn't use it in a way that was disruptive to others (browse slashdot, play solitare, etc), but it's ability to keep me entertained had me attending a lot of lectures that I otherwise would have skipped. My distractionary use of the laptop was inversely related to the quality of the instructor.

Personally I'd lose all respect for an instructor that banned laptops. Students alternatively occupying themselves with their laptop is in most cases a sign that you're doing a poor job as an instructor. Attempting to remove the indicator that you suck rather than fix the problem... well... hardly seems ethical to me.

Comment DRM? (Score 0) 331

I refused to buy or play the first one because of their DRM. Essentially it turned your purchase into a lease... of unknown duration.

I'd be interested in this one, however, despite the lengthy review, I didn't see any mention of DRM. Given that this is slashdot, I'm kind of surprised and dissapointed. Why bother hosting reviews here if they're not going to focus on the geeky side of things?

Games

Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes 362

A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."

Comment Re:PC World Has it out for the Droid (Score 1) 555

As of last thursday when I was looking at thier plans in preperation for the droid launch, the 5GB limit was definately there. Looking today it seems to have been removed. Now I'm just seeing some conditions that if you use more than 5 gigs a month they can use that as grounds for cancelling your contract (or at least that's all I found with 2-3 minutes of digging)

Comment Re:Steam (Score 1) 731

Thanks. It'll probably be a few weeks before I can give it a go as I have my spare machine at a friends place. I'll create everything on this machine, and then attempt to on a seperate machine with no internet access (simulating the loss of steam) get an installation to work. I'm thinking that somewhere in the process that steam servers will be needed (likely during the installation of steam if nothing else), but we'll see. I'll hunt around for the directions and such.

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