Right, because disk space is at a premium. Oh wait, a terabyte of disk costs as much as a case of good beer.

Also, in theory any x86 app should simply recompile as x32 with no trouble even if they're the kind that makes x64-incompatible assumptions, so unless you need to support closed binaries in x86 mode you can trade the x86 libraries for x32 and gain a bit of performance in certain tasks with no notable change in disk space.

For the average Linux user, the only closed binaries they're likely to run are Flash and possibly a GPU driver. Both have x64 builds, so I'd feel comfortable saying that the majority of users can entirely drop x86 support if their distro was to start offering x32 builds.

The question is why a "casual" appearance is seen as "not caring". To me, not caring about your appearance is what I did in college, showing up to class wearing whatever was convenient without having showered or only having done a quick shower without attention to hair and such.

If someone shows up to work clean and well kept, wearing clean clothes, why does something comfortable like a t-shirt and jeans strike so many as "unprofessional" compared to even khakis and a golf shirt? Why is it basically that the less comfortable the clothing, the more "professional" we consider the style?

Shouldn't people be encouraged to be comfortable while working, as that presumably will make them more effective at their actual job?

And to do so they need to get the permission of the contributors, because copyright still applies and that's how copyleft licenses work. Thus the answer to "what about the contributors?" is "whatever the contributors agreed to."

If they contributed code under an open source license that allows relicensing like BSD, that was their choice and it means that either they implicitly approved from day one or didn't bother to understand the license they chose and screwed themselves.

I'm a best-UI-for-the-job type who's at home in a CLI but doesn't turn down a good, functional GUI when one exists.

The Debian tool I'm a big fan of, aptitude, is a Ncurses based "TUI" package manager. (http://screenshots.debian.net/package/aptitude if you can't picture it) Synaptic is pretty much the same thing with a few more features in GTK form. These make it far easier to resolve package conflicts and such compared to the straight CLI tools.

It's not a major loss in a production system where the packages needed are known and mostly unchanging, but for personal machines where I install things I want to play with on a whim a good interface to actually browse the available packages is key.

This is me. I have tried numerous times to use FreeBSD as my home server OS and a few times as my desktop dual-boot, but always end up getting frustrated. Usually it's application management, as any of my home *nix boxes are used for experimentation with lots of stuff being installed and removed. I'm just so used to tools like aptitude and Synaptic that anything less pisses me off, and after a few days to weeks at most I end up reinstalling something from the Debian family tree. Same problem actually tends to happen with Red Hat style Linuxes, there doesn't seem to be an "aptitude" equal for the RPM world.

I use a FreeBSD-ish userland daily in the form of OS X, but don't usually have to deal with shitty management of *nix applications thanks to many having proper OS X .app packages available. Beyond that "homebrew" seems to be the current favorite analog to the "average" *nix packaging tools.

But my router/firewall has been FreeBSD for over a decade now, once m0n0wall but these days its more featureful derivative pfSense. pf is just superior to iptables. These things are rock solid and almost any change can be made online without affecting existing traffic, which is more than I can say for every Linux-based router/firewall I've used.

They're not always, but remember that many games don't have much of a story beyond a basic framework designed to push you through the various parts of the game. When a newer game comes along in the same genre, the old ones tend to be left behind unless they had something that made them important.

The original Wolfenstein, Doom, and Duke Nukem will probably be played forever since they were the defining titles of the FPS genre. The most recent releases in any of those lines, probably not. Need For Speed 3 showed the world that running from the cops was something we all secretly wanted to do in a no-consequences environment. Its official sequel in the twisty Need For Speed line, Hot Pursuit 2, is all but forgotten.

Multiplayer can play with this in both directions, lengthening the lives of some games while shortening others. A shitty game with fun multiplayer, particularly if its cheap/free/easy to pirate, can live on for years as long as the servers stay populated. A great game that's been abandoned by its players for something else, likewise, can die off rapidly. There's a critical mass required for multiplayer to keep the game healthy, and that's where a player who's just looking to play can find a game that roughly approximates what they wanted to play with enough other players to actually enjoy it. Fall below that level and you quickly enter a death spiral as those who are still playing find themselves more and more often without a game.

Basically in 10 years I still see myself firing up Halo or Borderlands if the hardware available to me allows it, as I liked the story. The existence of sequels or "better" titles in the genre doesn't matter, since they won't be the story I want. That's comparable to a movie.

I probably won't, however, be firing up Forza Motorsport 3. As a sim title with no real storyline beyond completing a set series of races for a "Career", FM4 improved upon it in all ways leaving no reason to back up.

Agreed and agreed, it is awesome and it is a better simulation.

Whether or not it's a better game however is debatable. Forza I think is a better *game* because they've managed to strike a balance where the game still strives for accurate simulation, but lets you use that simulation to do absurd things. You can go from a serious Le Mans-style race using some of the best real race cars of the past 60 years to a game of figure eight drift chicken on the Top Gear test track with fire-spitting 599XXes dodging 800 HP rotary Miatas without even leaving the lobby.

No other game offers the variety of customization while still remaining as realistic as possible. There's practically zero chance that iRacing, PCARS, or any of the other big names in PC racing will let me build a LS7 Fiero in-game any time soon. The GMC Vandura that "just happened" to offer a body kit to match the A-Team van. The ability to downgrade a Mustang Cobra R to look like a base V6 model. The fricking Ford Transit. The other games either take themselves too seriously or just go full arcade. Give me a good simulation engine, then give me game modes that encourage hooning when I'm in the mood rather than just striving for racing perfection.

I'm really not happy with Microsoft over the in-house push for some of the Xbone's less well received features seems to have impacted FM5, I was really hoping for another good game but I think I'm sitting this one out. With the moon lander stuff it seems like Polyphony may have developed a slight sense of humor so I'm considering dusting off the ol' PS3 for some GT6 action.

You are entirely correct, but you seem to have missed the point. FEC at layer 3 is intended to handle the fact that some layer 2 networks are broken or unreliable and neither we users nor Google or any other content provider have any control over that.

Sometimes you're on a 25,000' above-ground DSL line that stretches in the heat of the sun and sends the SNR to hell. Sometimes the WiFi AP is just a bit further away than you'd want. Sometimes you're on a cell phone or other mobile data connection traveling down the highway (as a passenger of course), all the while changing signal conditions force mode changes and sometimes radio changes, not to mention tower handoffs.

In any of those cases think of how frustrating it is when your signal fades and you're stuck waiting as the important document and/or cat video you were downloading gets tossed in to turtle mode by a few lost packets. You have no control over the layer 2 shittiness, be it provider profit calculations or physics getting in the way the choices are either suck it up or deal with it elsewhere. In this case they decided that the latter may be beneficial.

Just for the record, 200 MPH is not the unobtanium supercar-only barrier it once was. A base model last-generation Corvette is the standard set of bolt-ons (intake, headers, exhaust) away from 200 MPH. A current model Mustang GT500 will do it stock. No joke, a $55,000 Mustang today is fully capable of reaching speeds only the greatest Ferraris and Lamborghinis of the day could touch just a decade or two ago.

I can imagine plenty of GT500 owners who still certainly care about the cost of tires, and probably quite a few who are hurting over that as-is given the inevitable appetite for rear tires I can only imagine a nearly 700 horsepower Mustang would have.

What GP is describing isn't a plain bluetooth adapter, but a device that exposes itself on USB as a standard USB Audio headset device and then speaks Bluetooth HSP and/or A2DP on the air. I'm not sure if such a thing exists currently, but it would not be rocket science to create if Sony provides a market by not supporting Bluetooth natively.

You are correct that it's a 2.5mm jack, but it's not all that uncommon. It's also the standard headset connector on any cordless phone I've ever seen as well as a number of desktop phones. The Linksys/Cisco SPA series are the first ones off the top of my head. My FRS/GMRS radios also have the same connector.

Everyone's already jumped on you on this one, but I still have to chime in and say holy crap are you ever wrong if you think a SSD is not worth every dime right now.

You don't need *everything* to be on SSD, just the commonly-used data; your system, binaries, etc. I have a 120GB Intel 330 series SSD (though in hindsight I'd rather have gone with something ~250GB and 2TB of normal spinning disk, plus a 7TB server. The system, my home directory (minus downloads directory), and my main games are on the SSD, the rest of my games are on a 1.5TB 7200 RPM disk, and downloads get an old 500GB disk. My machine spends more time in POST than the entire rest of the boot process, browsers launch instantly, IDEs take half a second, games practically skip their own loading screens, etc.

Unless you place no value on your time, in any interactively-operated machine where you can have multiple storage drives a SSD is a no-brainer. Laptops where a second disk is challenging or impossible it entirely depends on your mobile storage needs, but the reduction of moving parts and performance/battery improvements are a strong argument in favor of them.

How in the hell are WiFi networks not "radio communications" which are "readily accessible"? What fucked up, distorted logic led to this?

I hope I don't have to explain how they are radio communications, if that's not obvious to anyone please go play with crayons in the corner.

As for readily accessible, when the vast majority of WiFi-equipped PCs and most mobile devices need nothing more than software which simply asks the wireless card to pass through what it sees, uh yes, it is readily accessible.

It's like arguing that since FRS radios typically default to channels 1 or 14 when turned on, channel 6 is not readily accessible. Sure you don't get it without asking, but its about as easy as it could possibly be.

What? Computers are made to automate things. That's their point, they can do repetitive things really fast and usually better than we meatbags can. Taking pride in "doing it the hard way" is just pure idiocy if the result is the same. Sometimes that's not the case, the hard way is actually better, but we're talking about URL autocomplete here. There's no fine art to domain names.

I wouldn't call it a "badge of pride" unless you were one of the people implementing the feature in the browser, but to act like not having to manually enter domain (which is very different from not being capable of doing so) is any knock against one's geekiness is just stupid.

I *can* read tcpdump verbose text output quite well and do so at least a few times a month when reasons come together to require it, but given the choice I'll always fire up Wireshark and let the computer do the work while I focus on what I'm actually trying to accomplish. Does that make me less suited for Slashdot in your opinion since I wouldn't pointlessly pick the hard way?

You are actually incorrect on that one.

Hiding the SSID for security is the bogus idea, but WPA and WPA2 use the SSID as a salt in the key exchange so using an unusual one is a legitimate security improvement. There are rainbow tables readily available for the most common few thousand SSIDs. The more obscure your SSID, the less likely it is that an attacker can piggyback off someone else's computing time.

That said, you don't need to go all out with Emoji or other odd characters, the approach often taken by ISP-provided routers these days of tagging the last four of the MAC on to the end of the default is just as effective.