For action oriented games on a console, a locked 60 fps rate is the "gold standard" and is becoming almost mandatory for twitch-shooters, precision driving games and other genres that rely on rapid response times.

This might explain their recent comments:

Guérin had backup from the 30FPS camp, with Assassin's Creed Unity's Creative Director, Alex Amancio chiming in, saying: "30 was our goal, it feels more cinematic. 60 is really good for a shooter, action adventure not so much. It actually feels better for people when it's at that 30fps. It also lets us push the limits of everything to the maximum. It's like when people start asking about resolution. Is it the number of the quality of the pixels that you want? If the game looks gorgeous, who cares about the number?".

Of course, then they have trouble even hitting that 30fps, even after trying to lower people's expectations...

Huh, neat. According to this, the building was completed in 1955. A comment further down says the windows were switched out because the inflatable rubber molding that held them in place eventually deteriorated and they were replaced in '97-98.

With half a century of materials and engineering improvements since then, I should think that that kind of problem could be fixed or an alternative created. My thought when making my post was clamps that would either pull back or swing away.

Could the window's frame just rotate on its axis (probably y)? This comes with its own problems, of course, but over time might be for the best. I'm thinking a system where the frame will lock in place, perhaps using pressure in order to avoid a hit in heating or A/C efficiency.

Advantages:
- # of injuries/deaths from washing windows drops to 0 (= cheaper insurance)
- Cheaper workers because they don't need specialized knowledge/training
- Window can be automatic so they rotate at night on a schedule, one at a time
- Replacing a window should be easier (rotate frame half way, take off a side, slide existing pane out and new one in)

Disadvantages:
- Making sure there's clearance for the window to rotate
- If one gets stuck it can be a hazard as well as letting air through
- Have to retrofit existing windows

Up front cost would be more, but over time the savings in pay would probably make such a system pay for itself.

Instead, why not continue to give this employee raises?

There seems to be a rough idea, at least in America, that the higher you are on the org chart the greater your income should be; not just greater in general, but it also has to be greater than anyone who is below you on the chart. The only regular exceptions seem to be AAA rockstars of whatever it is they do (Hollywood being an example of this, where actors seem to make more money than producers or studio execs) or contract positions.

I'm with you on this: Someone's income should be related to the relative value they bring to the company, not the position they hold. A good manager is a good thing, but it's the manager's team that actually creates the product/value and there should be nothing wrong with any number of them making more money than the manager. The manager may be a guiding and protective force, but he can't replace his team (and may not even be able to replace a single person on his team, which isn't a problem IMO), and so they should

But, if this were taken up by the general public, the income of CEOs would plummet, so that won't happen. For some reason our capitalistic society says that money must flow to the top. It's odd, like having a maintenance team for a large suspension bridge who spends the vast majority of their time maintaining the warning lights at the top. Yes, those are certainly important, but while you're polishing those light fixtures the bridge will crumble from the bottom up.

[tinfoil]Bennett Hassleton is a Dice plant with the goal of driving away old/serious users, leaving only those who post dreck, are easily trolled, like to troll, or astroturfers. These kind of people care far, far less about user interface, moderation, and layout changes than your typical /. user from a decade ago.

Once they see enough accounts become inactive for more than a month they'll just force Beta into place, and the culled community will make very little noise about it (they might even get compliments!) It will then be filled with ads, and the acquisition will be complete.[/tinfoil]

So he should start a blog, post his results to that blog, then submit a synopsis and link for Slashdot editors to consider/users to firehose. Just like everyone else.

At this point it doesn't matter if he actually posts good content or not, he's been using /. as his personal blog for months (which timothy is happy to oblige, apparently) and it's completely grated the community because all of his stuff has been crap. Maybe if he could actually started his own blog, or even used the blog he gets with his Slashdot account, and give a summary up front with a link people might give him a chance despite his reputation.

Personally, I think he's just clickbait, one that I indulge in because I get an odd sense of amusement from seeing all the +5s complaining about him and his posts.

SEGA did something similar with Sonic Boom: Rise of the Lyric for Wii U, except that they just plain didn't send out preview copies at all:

IGN, for example, says that SEGA opted not to provide the gaming website with a review copy for either version of the game. And they’re not alone, with reviews missing from every notable site—even though both games launched today.

...and they did so for pretty much the same reason:

This is backed up by a number of game-breaking bugs discovered in the Wii U version so far. One bug sends Sonic falling through a level, forcing players to reset the game. Another bug respawns players outside an enclosed battle area, preventing Sonic and his team from returning to the fight. These both seem to be bugs that would have been found in simple gameplay testing.

I've seen just as many videos in the past three days of game-breaking, horrible bugs in Assassin's Creed Unity as I have Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

Both games were hyped a lot by their respective companies, both games had no reviews available before they were released. I'm not trying to say that Ubisoft is somehow off the hook for Unity or diminish how bad the game's quality is, just that their game is not alone in these kind of shenanigans.

I've started following this advice (not that I was buying a whole lot of games on release day in the first place), but I do make an exception for Nintendo first-/second-party games. While they're not completely free of problems, the bugs are far more rare and (usually) have far less impact on gameplay than, say, falling through the ground.

Its astonishing to me that anyone agreed to operate under such an NDA anyway. 17 hours is sufficiently long that you could aquire the game, play it for 2 hours to get a feel for it, 1 hour to record a video, edit for another 2 hours, and then post it with 10 hours left on the embargo.

There was probably an understanding, whether explicit or implicit, that if the game reviewers didn't accept the pre-release copy and 17-hour embargo that they were at risk to be passed over for both future pre-release copies (I bet Far Cry 4 was the game they were baited with) and advertising opportunities.

Which is the big crock when it comes to ethics in gaming journalism: Gaming magazines and websites rely on advertising that is primarily from the very companies people expect them to critique and investigate. Yet many gamers that read reviews are somehow blind to this, despite explicit events. (That is certainly not the only instance of editorial misconduct, just the most obvious and high profile one I can think of.)

These sites rely so much on having access to the game companies that they dare not speak ill of them, whether in reviews, unflattering news, or editorials. Many will post negative news only for games/companies they don't have advertising with or after many other sites (usually non-gaming) have posted it so it's like taking news from the AP. The ability to release a review just ten seconds before another site seems to be taken as some all-powerful thing in gaming journalism, though I doubt it matters much.

I don't blame gaming journalism. Well, not specifically. This is just a specific sub-industry having the same problem as journalism at large: unwillingness to investigate and ask hard questions. Most papers and news stations are controlled by powerful interests who steer their coverage, and they lob soft-balls at CEOs and the President or risk losing the ability to continue asking irrelevant questions. Gaming journalism and journalism at large do not report the truth, only truthiness.

I think it's an interesting counter-intuitive scenario. Consider:

Crime goes up:
1) Society expects bad things
2) Society learns to deal with them, both directly and with the aftermath in general
3) Something bad happens
4) Good forces help those they can
5) Society marches on
6) GOTO 1

Crime goes down:
1) Society gets comfortable
2) Society rests on its laurels, not planning for anything bad to happen because they neither want nor expect it to happen
3) Something bad happens
4) Society completely freaks out, over-reacts with entrenching laws and requirements, but doesn't investigate or look into underlying causes
5) Society feels good that it has done something
6) GOTO 1

One might expect a logical society to operate in the opposite: systemic problems beget severe response to fix them, while a stable and peaceful society is able to spare resources to consider potentially bad situations and how to cut them off or react to them.

Quality post. If I made add: If someone has a psychological issue troubling enough to make them go on a shooting rampage, I would think that the lack of a firearm will not stop them. At best, not having access would decrease the amount of damage they do. Maybe we'd get lucky and they'd just try to punch everyone to death, with little results before they are stopped. At worst they go suicide bomber (though if their personal goal is kill count and/or mayhem, they would go bomber anyway, so this isn't a valid argument against gun control.)

Though its step is massive, a giant moves slowly.

Microsoft may well be mending their ways under new leadership. I don't expect it, of course, but if they were it would be slow change as new patterns of thought work their way through the company, they play out existing partnerships/contracts, and make some moves to see how the public/partners act (and/or revenue changes) and use that feedback to guide them on future changes.

All of which takes some time to play out, in spans of years and not months. Microsoft in 2015 won't look much different than 2014, but in 2020 it could.

These articles are getting so tiresome it almost feels like we're getting deliberately trolled.

Probably:
1) Discrimination (race or gender) is a hot button issue for a lot of people. As you'll find in the comments for these kind of stories, you'll even get a lot of people who claim they don't care yet feel the need to inform everyone else they don't care.
2) More comments = more views = more ad impressions
3) It helps Slashdot/Dice appear to be aligned with the "caring" or "equality" side (which can spur on more commenters)

See, the government can do just as good a job as private corporations like Home Depot or Target when it comes to storing sensitive data!

It sounds puritanical at first, but from a liability limitation perspective I think it is very defensible.

Why does this require a license, though? Why can't the club go "Hey Uncle Sam, this lady claims to be 18, here's her photo and the ID she gave us. Is it cool?" And then the government says "Yeah, she's 18, let her take her clothes off" or "Nah brah, that's a fake ID, tell her to scram." At best the government stores the request from the club and shreds all personal details of the stripper except the name. Club also has a copy of the request. If there are problems, take them out and compare the two.

Do waiters need to maintain a license to serve alcohol? The restaurant does, but the individual waiters don't (AFAIK). State laws dictate that they have to be X years old to serve patrons, and it's up to the restaurant to make sure it's kosher.

Anything more is just nosy busy-bodies trying to make it hard for someone to use their body to make a living (only when sex is involved, of course; we don't want to inhibit construction workers, or football players, or clothing models, or...)