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Comment Re:I think our namespace is getting too crowded... (Score 5, Insightful) 153

IE has long supported a header:

X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge

This tells it that your website is compatible with the "edge" of technology... the latest stuff the browser supports. If you don't have it, IE might determine your site needs to be run in IE6 compatibility mode.

This idea of the "edge" has been around IE since I believe IE10. The concept has clearly stuck.

Comment Almost as stupid as those idiots rioting right now (Score 1, Insightful) 239

The amount of douchebaggery over this was incredible.

First, you had a number of people who've decided modders shouldn't get paid for their work. I know some modders/mappers and while you'd never hear them complain about their hobby, the amount of effort they put in to these things is astounding and it's always pained me to see the amount of entitlement people display towards it.

And finally you had Nexus Mods, who came out as the people's champion despite they themselves actually raking in tones of dough over the years without sharing more than a pittance with modders – all to maintain servers which are essentially on auto-pilot with downloads on off-site hosting they aren't paying for.

I can see why Bethesda would just say fuck it and pull the plug. What a horrible community.

The least vocal, and perhaps most sensible, were people who merely took issue with Zenimax/Valve taking a crazy high 75% cut of sales.

Comment Jack Horner's TEDx talk (Score 4, Interesting) 68

Jack Horner put on an TEDx talk a while back discussing research that asks an interesting question: where are the babies?

Jack's research indicates many of these similar species may in fact be the same, but merely at different levels of development -- an adolescent thought to be a difference species from one fully developed.

The crux of it is that in the early days of our rediscovering dinosaurs, these guys would find a visual few differences in the dinos and name it as a new species, turning a blind eye to many similarities that might suggest otherwise.

Comment Re:Good for them. (Score 1) 140

It depends on the games, but honestly I miss arcades. It was more than just playing games. It was a social experience. Very little in life do you get to be in a room full of people who're intensely passionate about the exact same thing as you.

You're thankful for not waiting in line, but some of my fondest memories are not of playing a game, but waiting in line for them. Cheering on an amazing Street Fighter match up with the 5+ other people who're in the queue watching with you, and the chaotic buzz of the arcade around you. You can't get that rush at home.

Comment Well, he's not wrong there (Score 2) 117

Universal believes that Spotify is directly hurting sales at stores like iTunes.

Universal's belief is most certainly correct to some extent, but is that a bad thing? True fans, I think, would find other ways of supporting the artists they love, and I'd guess the ones who do nothing but stream wouldn't have spent more money on it in the first place.

Comment Re:It's interesting, but... (Score 4, Insightful) 116

Streaming over the internet is okay, but it's SO dependent on your connection quality (and your bandwidth limits). It can work, though, obviously.

Maybe it'll work in the future, but it's a pretty poor experience right now.

I have the original NVIDIA Shield, the one that looks like a 360 controller with a screen strapped to the top. Late last year they announced a free trial for their GRID cloud gaming service. One caveat was that their servers were all in San Jose, and if you're too far it warns you. I tried it from my home in Illinois, and it was predictably horrible with just a ~70ms ping. I tried it again from California and it was only slightly less horrible with a ~20ms ping.

Driving games become drunk-driving games. Another driver comes in and hits you? Good luck recovering. Forget that there's a turn at some point in the track? You'll never react to it in time. Things that require constant micro-adjustments like drifting are virtually impossible.

Fighting games become button-mashers because you can't react fast enough to block or counter-attack.

Seriously, these were launch titles! I assume 99% of testing happened with local-network latency. If I were the guy at NVIDIA who okayed go-live, I'd be deeply embarrassed.

The only thing I'd use it for right now might be a turn-based strategy games, or other things where latency really has no effect on gameplay.

Comment Technology takes a long time to catch up. (Score 1) 257

I'm sure many devs have had jobs where they're working on some sort of killer automation. Something that makes them look out into a sea of office workers thinking "by end of year, we'll only need half of you..."

They're jobs that technology has long since claimed, yet they still exist. Nothing's perfect. It'll be a slow road.

Comment To be expected (Score 2) 677

This makes sense for a couple reasons.

First, abusing goto really serves noone. It doesn't make code quicker to write. It certainly doesn't make it easier to understand. There is no benefit to it.

Second, I'd argue that very few people want to write new code in C these days. Those who do have specific reasons for it and are probably a bit more experienced or passionate and thus aren't the kinds of people who'd readily abuse things. The ones who would are going to be mostly attracted to easier high-level languages that don't allow the abuse in the first place.

Networking

$10K Ethernet Cable Claims Audio Fidelity, If You're Stupid Enough To Buy It 418

MojoKid writes: There are few markets that are quite as loaded-up with "snake oil" products as the audio/video arena. You may have immediately thought of "Monster" cables as one of the most infamous offenders. But believe it or not, there are some vendors that push the envelope so far that Monster's $100 HDMI cables sound like a bargain by comparison. Take AudioQuest's high-end Ethernet cable, for example. Called "Diamond," AudioQuest is promising the world with this $10,500 Ethernet cable. If you, for some reason, believe that an Ethernet cable is completely irrelevant for audio, guess again. In addition to promises about the purity and smoothness of the silver conductors, and their custom "Noise-Dissipation System," they say," "Another upgrade with Diamond is a complete plug redesign, opting for an ultra-performance RJ45 connector made from silver with tabs that are virtually unbreakable. The plug comes with added strain relief and firmly lock into place ensuring no critical data is lost." Unfortunately, in this case, there's the issue of digital data being, well... digital. But hey, a 1 or a 0 could arrive at its destination so much cleaner, right?

Comment Re:Hmm... I thought it was *my* vehicle. (Score 1) 157

Do you happen to have any reference numbers or links so I can argue with the dealer mechanics about getting the update?

See these: page 1, page 2.

The easiest way to get the ECU update is the Idle dip TSB, which you're likely also experiencing. This'll update you to version B01, which includes all prior fixes. Print it out and bring it with you.

Comment Re:Hmm... I thought it was *my* vehicle. (Score 3, Insightful) 157

It does have some advantages. I got the Scion FR-S the day it came out. The original firmware had a number of small issues and one very serious one.

At a specific load and intake volume, the car wouldn't push enough fuel. It ended up being dangerously lean and it was found that those who stayed at that point for too long would have a catastrophic failure from their direct injector seals melting, necessitating a full block replacement.

An ECU update came out a while later that fixed it, but nobody was notified. Cars coming in for service don't get it automatically -- the techs aren't even told about it. 99% of those original cars remain unupdated. Anyone who chooses some "spirited" driving on a hot day is at risk.

An OTA update would solve issues like this really smoothly for a lot of people. I'm all for it.

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