Good point.

A lot of the changes that people claim are "downgrades" are just aesthetic choices. The modded version is darker overall and colors are less vibrant. The mod increases the reflectiveness of wet surfaces (which I think makes it look way less realistic to the point that it looks goofy). As you mentioned, the DoF effect looks terrible and makes the game unplayable. The only real "upgrades" are basically the car headlights and rain particles. Everything else is basically an aesthetic choice.

Also the claims that there are no performance hits is a lie. Every video I've seen comparing the two, there is a noticeable (but minor) drop in framerate with the mod. Some people are claiming that the mod gets rid of "stuttering", but I haven't seen any hard (meaning video) evidence of that.

What "free market?" Cable companies are basically monopolies.

Technically, nowhere in the article did it say they consumed 500W. It said they were *rated* for 500W, which means the hardware within is capable of handling a 500W charge. I agree that even mentioning it in the article is just an attention grabbing tactic, but the point of that line is that the architect saw the very high rating which led them to investigate the actual usage, which turned out to be 35W (which is still high for something many people leave on 24/7 and are increasingly having multiple of in their home).

The seemingly innocuous appliances — all 224 million of them across the nation — together consume as much electricity as produced by four giant nuclear reactors, running around the clock.

But how much power is that in libraries of congress?

posting to undo accidental moderation

I feel like the requirements for the Turing test have been consistently lowered over the years to match what would be considered realistic to achieve rather than, as Alan Turing seemed to believe, demonstrate that a computer can be said to actually be "thinking."

People have been modifying the text on these signs for almost a decade. Most companies don't even bother to change the password from the default.

This is the most insane, paranoid thing I've ever seen posted on Slashdot. And that's saying a lot.

The average user doesn't know not to click pop-up ads for fake antivirus. That's why so many people feel comfortable with an "app store" experience like that of iOS or the game consoles, because it protects the average user from himself.

It's not relevant that those users are ignorant or don't make any effort to protect themselves. They're still users and they still deserve a positive user experience. Autosave helps them have that positive user experience. Antiviruses help them have that positive user experience. Windows features that help protect them from themselves (but annoy the hell out of informed power users) help them have that positive user experience. Using software should be as easy as using a microwave or driving a car. People don't have to know how those machines work, mechanically or theoretically, or how to fix them, in order to have positive user experiences with them and use them as tools to accomplish their goals. Software should be the same way.

Do you honestly believe the average user has a UPS? Or that they never try to use their laptop away from an outlet at very low battery life? These kinds of assumptions are what make for bad user experiences.

Perhaps you've heard of a thing called a power outage. I just had one last night. Or maybe you've had a cat step on your keyboard and somehow manage to close the window you were working in. There are enough acts of god and human error that still exist regardless of how flawless the program you're working in is to make autosave highly valuable. The 1000 times you don't need autosave are not nearly as critical as the 1 time you do.

That works for Descent. Now explain why the Doom guy does the same thing.

Specifically in Doom, there was an additional bug beyond the general sqrt(2) bug where if you were pressing up against an axial wall and facing either North or East, you could obtain a speed increase greater than 100%.

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Wal...
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Str...

This isn't really a surprise because an interstellar impact is probably what placed it into the path of our orbit to begin with. But hey, I'm no astronomer/astrophysicist/whatever.