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Comment not quite like Blizzard (Score 3, Informative) 182

I figured Apple's intention is to thwart spammers; if you were able to recognize the real name of your buddy you were more likely accept the invitation rather than someone with a username like "THISISNOTVIAGRASPAM." Playing the whole social angle.

What Blizzard was intending was different. They wanted to put paper trail on all users on a publicly viewable form, in the interest of minimizing trolls and thus improving the quality of posts on their forums - to 'shame' the trolls from posting mindless drivel. Yeah, that didn't work out too well.

Education

Quantum Physics For Everybody 145

fiziko writes in with a self-described "blatant self-promotion" of a worthwhile service for those wishing to go beyond Khan Academy physics: namely Bureau 42's Summer School. "As those who subscribe to the 'Sci-Fi News' slashbox may know, Bureau 42 has launched its first Summer School. This year we're doing a nine-part series (every Monday in July and August) taking readers from high school physics to graduate level physics, with no particular mathematical background required. Follow the link for part 1."

Comment Re:IE8 performs awesome, as usual (Score 2, Interesting) 246

Man, I should have read the article. FTFA:

Note that the implementation for Internet Explorer 8 does not use the HTML5 canvas element, because this isn't supported. Freeciv.net implements a canvas-replacement using DHTML and divs with clipped background-images. Therefore the test results are not directly comparable with the other web browsers.

That's what I get for not reading the article :-(

Comment Re:IE8 performs awesome, as usual (Score 1) 246

IE should not have even been tested - it does not support HTML5 canvas elements!

Indeed it doesn't. A lot of the hacks involved to get IE to support canvas is merely an emulation of canvas using VML.

I've experimented with a bunch of sprite based animation stuff on canvas, and have seen similarly terribly poor results on a bunch of versions of IE using the code google wrote. (I'm assuming their benchmark is regarding the rendering sequence) Might as well create <image> tags, and animate the image tags with some style manipulation using js, because functionally what the hacks are doing to make canvas work on IE. (This is not regarding tricks to speed up the rendering, such as recycling DOM elements, which is cheaper than creating new DOM elements *shrug*)

Comment Re:Wash your hands! (Score 1) 374

This is good advice, and gives me an opportunity to speak to the community at large: some of us who go to cons and are in a position to shake tons of hands politely decline. It's not because we're being dicks, it's because we know it's a good way to substantially decrease our chances of catching and spreading any germs.

Comment Oh, cruel irony (Score 2, Interesting) 374

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.

Comment The problem with vista (Score 1, Informative) 374

It is impossible to do the most basic operations like:
  • Move a file over from one folder to another
  • Copy a file from one computer to another over the network
  • Cancel a file operation

I had an install of World of Warcraft on my desktop computer. I pick up a new laptop, I figure it would be faster to copy the WoW install I have on my desktop to over to the laptop over the network. After about an hour of "calculating time" - I tried to cancel the operation. Frustrated at the length of time it took to simply cancel a file, I literally pulled the plug on both machines and powered them back up.

After that I went to the Blizzard website on my laptop to download the client from there. And as for the add-ons, I zipped them up and mailed them to myself as an attachment, in order to save time.

Both the laptop and desktop have Vista on it (came with the computer).

Considering that companies usually have a central file server somewhere, imagine business workers trying to do basic file IO stuff, like copy word docs, spreadsheet files, or large .psd files from the Design Department.

As long as you never have to manage files on your computer, and you have gobs of ram, Vista is a nice OS. If not, it's better to wait for an alternative. I've preordered my copies of 7 a few months back, and I can't wait for the goddamn day I get rid of this POS operation system.

Then I can start streaming my music over the network to any machine in the house, once again.

Comment Re:Are there any plans to revamp Parental Controls (Score 1) 520

It's a rare drop, sure. The catch is that you have to have your profession skill up a certain level before it's even visible. My engineering is at 450 and I saw it drop once, but I lost the roll to my guildmate, who chose Herbalism and has skill level of 450 for picking flowers. :-(

Comment Re:Exploits for the future (Score 2, Funny) 239

Yeah... it would be real nice if the general public had access to the source code in some kind of Open fashion regards to browsers such as Firefox or Webkit/Safari/Chrome so that stuff like exploits can be patched, making it would be possible to have tons of eyeballs pore over the code and be able to submit fixes on behalf of the community, or point out bad stuff that perhaps some other developers may have missed.

That would be cool.

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