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Comment Re:Who says it succeeded? (Score 1, Insightful) 469

Overallocations, OoM Killer, hangs and freezes all because the kernel can't be bothered to keep track of every last bit of it's memory make the Linux kernel a piss-poor substitute for a real UNIX kernel.

There are other problems in the memory subsystem as well. For example, if you are not using swap and the system begins to run out of memory, it starts throwing out pages of active programs from memory. Very soon they are loaded again from disk when those parts are needed. This causes a disk-grinding circus that feels like swapping.

Comment Lesson learned (Score 1) 84

Do not talk about unfinished stuff that is still in planning or development. Developing modern things is complex, and that's fine, but it's hard to keep the excitement alive for 5 years. Same goes for SteamBoxes. Same goes for Peter Molyneux's new game Godus, of which people got incredibly angry because it could not deliver this or that thing that was hyped earlier. The trendy "open development" strategy does not come without problems.

Submission + - Hostage Saves Herself Via Pizza Hut App (arstechnica.com)

jones_supa writes: A Florida woman had been arguing most of the day with her boyfriend, who carried "a large knife". When she attempted to leave the residence to pick up the children from school, the boyfriend grabbed her and took her cell phone. He then accompanied her to pick up the children. Upon returning home, the boyfriend held the rest of the family as hostages. She eventually convinced him to let her use the cell phone to order a pizza which is when she sent the message to Pizza Hut. Being clever, she exploited the comment feature of the app to alert the authorities that she was in trouble. Officers were dispatched both to the Pizza Hut location and to the woman's home, where she and her children were quickly released, unharmed, and the kidnapper was arrested.

Comment Re:The appeal of GoG for me (Score 1) 104

There are some serious stinkers on GOG.

Daikatana, for instance.

Daikatana seems to be the "Ribbon interface" of games. It's the game everyone has learned to whine about, but in reality there is not anything terribly bad about it.

Daikatana has overly bad reputation. SiN has overly good reputation. They both are on the same line. Not best shooters on the planet, but still quite nice snacks. There are waaay worse games than those.

Submission + - Why Was Linux The Kernel That Succeeded? (thevarguy.com) 2

jones_supa writes: One of the most puzzling questions about the history of free and open source software is this: Why did Linux succeed so spectacularly, whereas similar attempts to build a free or open source, Unix-like operating system kernel met with considerably less success? Christopher Tozzi has rounded up some theories, focusing specifically on kernels, not complete operating systems. These theories take a detailed look at the decentralized development structure, pragmatic approach to things, and the rich developer community, all of which worked in favor of Linux.

Submission + - GOG Announces Open Beta For New Game Platform (gog.com)

Donaithnen writes: Like many geeks I'm against the idea of DRM in general and have championed GOG.com's DRM-free approach to selling games online. Yet like many geeks I've also often succumbed to the temptation of Steam because of the convenience of tracking, installing, and playing my PC game purchases through the launcher, the compulsion of collecting achievements, and the OCD-ness of (and occasional dismay from) tracking the total playtime for my favorite games. Now GOG has announced the open beta for GOG Galaxy, an entirely optional launcher to allow those who want (and only those who want) to have all the same features when playing GOG games.

Comment Re:Single shop most likely (Score 1) 323

Daz loader. All anyone ever needs. I've slic modded my share of BIOSes too, but ever since EFI it's just less hassle to use the loader, and it works 100% of the time.

Daz Loader is good, but it does not support UEFI installations, because of the GPT partition format.

What comes to OEM installations, with some trickery there is also a possibility to feed the BIOS SLIC key to Windows Software Licensing Management Tool. This allows to install without an OEM-specific installation media, and it's also legal as you're using the legitimate key from the sticker.

Submission + - Twitter Puts Stop To Playing DOS Games Inside Tweets 1

jones_supa writes: Twitter has killed off an interesting trend of playing DOS games in tweets. Just last week, users discovered they could take advantage of the new "Twitter Cards" embedding feature to bundle full DOS games within tweets. Running DOSBox inside the web browser is possible thanks to an Emscripten port of DOSBox called Em-DOSBox. The games were pulled from Internet Archive's collection of 2,600 classic titles, many of which still lack proper republishing agreements with the copyright holder. So is embedding interactive media, and specifically games, within Twitter Cards, against the social network's terms of service. Twitter has now blocked such activity, likely after seeing the various news reports and a stream of Street Fighter II, Wolfenstein 3D and Zool cheering up people's timelines.

Submission + - Spurious IP Address Used To Continuously Activate Windows 7 (torrentfreak.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: A presumed pirate with an unusually large appetite for activating Windows 7 has incurred the wrath of Microsoft. In a lawsuit filed at a Washington court, Microsoft said that it logged hundreds of suspicious product activations from a single Verizon IP address and is now seeking damages. Who he, she or they are behind address 74.111.202.30 is unknown at this point, but according to Microsoft they're responsible for some serious Windows pirating. "As part of its cyberforensic methods, Microsoft analyzes product key activation data voluntarily provided by users when they activate Microsoft software, including the IP address from which a given product key is activated," the lawsuit reads. The company says that its forensic tools allow the company to analyze billions of activations of software and identify patterns "that make it more likely than not" that an IP address associated with activations is one through which pirated software is being activated.

Submission + - Microsoft Office 2016 Public Preview Released

jones_supa writes: Back in March, Microsoft made Office 2016, the next release of the company's leading office suite, available to IT professionals to test and submit feedback on. At Microsoft's Ignite conference, CEO Satya Nadella announced that the public preview of Office 2016 has now been released as well. Office 2016 comes with a range of new features that build upon Office 2013. There is far more integration with cloud, allowing a user to access documents anywhere, and Outlook now syncs with OneDrive when sending large files. So called Smart Applications extend the functionality of Office, including Tell Me, a new search tool, and Clutter, which unclutters your inbox based on machine learning. Anyone can start testing the free Office 2016 Preview right now. Just as they have done with Windows 10, Microsoft is receiving open feedback on the product.

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