The AMD 7000 series in the XBox One and PS4 is about the equivalent of a GeForce 580. There are some console based optimizations that may make it faster than an equivalent PC 580 though, which is why W3 requires a 660. The 660 and 660 Ti are close enough performance-wise that the game is fine on either. Also while the Ti is slower on total performance (by a tiny amount), it has quite a few more shaders and texure mapping units (about 30-33% faster). Incidentally, I'm playing Witcher 3 on a 660 Ti and with nVidia optimized settings have not seen any issues. Honestly, I'm guessing the game is actually playable on even lower end cards but you may have framerate drops below 30FPS and that wasn't acceptable to CD Projekt Red.

750s are often a bit slower than the 660s, however, due to lack of cores (especially on the low end), but I'm guessing the game would still be playable, as the AMD equivalent on the PS4 and XOne is 1152 cores and unless something has changed recently, one nVidia core generally performs about the same speed as 2 AMD cores (from what I recall, AMD's cores aren't fully general purpose for texture and pixel operations, but are for general purpose, which is why AMD is often preferred for stuff like bitcoin mining and password cracking).

Or you could rip them with "illegal" software, at least as far as the US government is concerned. Since you are entitled to one backup by copyright law into any format you choose, the DMCA vs copyright is kind of nebulous. You could probably legally ship it to some other country where it is legal to rip, have it ripped there, then have it and the copy shipped back and not break either law. Or you could rip your CDs/DVDs while on vacation to such a country, but you probably legally have to delete the ripping software before returning to the US.

Franken always votes with Obama, so how is that a surprise, lol. Don't know Klobuchar's excuse, probably Obama's bitch, too.

Not sure why the others opposed it, but I know why I oppose it - it allows bulk vacuuming calls made on non-phones, like Skype, VoIP, etc. and frees any company providing information to the NSA about these calls from liability. Also, extends section 215 by 4 years, has an added watchperson for FISA but any or all information can be redacted from that person, allows a nebulously defined "emergency powers provision," etc. The bill is highly flawed and ripe for the exact same type of NSA overextension as the Patriot Act gave them.

Not to mention the NSA scare tactic of saying if the dragnet goes down, people will die. The admitted ZERO terrorists caught by the dragnet proves this.

I use this argument a lot with anti-gun people. While I personally have actually shot animals with guns (rabbits at a farm that were out of control pests for 10 cents a kill), the vast majority of things I've shot are paper targets. I've also shot far more clay pigeons than rabbits (about 3 dozen to 2). I don't own any guns and don't plan to buy any soon, so I'm not some raging pistol shooting Yosemite Sam.

Incidentally, encryption was considered a munition until Clinton moved it (and increased the amount). Back then you could only export 40 bit encryption unless the code was published in a book and OCR scanned in (books were free speech), which is how PGP was exported.

Had to start doing this on my laptop. Was searching for gift ideas for her for Christmas and didn't use incognito mode, but her desktop computer started having problems (hard drive was failing) so she used my laptop and, while I'd cleared browser history (which I do religiously, anyway, mainly because some development work I do can pull in old pages if not cleared), ads for the things I looked at started appearing in her Facebook feed. Fortunately, she didn't notice, but I only shop Incognito now.

James Comey (head of the FBI) has pretty much said he wants all encryption outlawed. Having personally read a ton of emails that were not mine just for fun in college (via packet sniffer), including some very personal ones (though most not - I also scooped up numerous passwords but never used them... can't say that's true for the other kids that did the same, though), I'd say this is a terrible idea. Let's all go back to party lines, too, because you'll never know who's listening and therefore everyone is more secure.

  Incidentally, I learned never to send any private or personal information via email because I learned about and how to use packet sniffers. I would never sext or send personal info via text, either - only fools trust their phone company security (at least in America). Now that the America FREEDOM Act has passed, can't trust Skype or VoIP either, because those are all permitted to be dragnet vacuumed up now (FREEDOM for what? more government snooping it seems) and companies like Microsoft are protected from liability for letting the NSA scoop them up.

Lockheed starting with not using a tokamak is probably the best idea. ITER has sucked up 16 billion Euros and still is far from completion. When done, it will create only 500MW (goal is for 1000 seconds).

One way I've heard suggested to store both clean and non-clean energy is Flywheel Kinetic storage with magnetic bearings and in a vacuum to reduce friction. I don't remember a lot about it (saw an online video or a TED conference or something on it), but I recall a company buying off-peak hour electricity and then selling it at peak hours, so it may be the Beacon Power listed in the wiki article.

Except Taylor Swift failed to curry favor from any studio and her dad bought a studio to get her signed and recorded, so that is probably a bad example. That kind of got her a leg up, but aside from that she has earned her own success. I still say she always has been a pop artist though - if your hits are mostly I-V-vi-IV progressions (four times on this list), you are as pop as P!nk or Nickelback (she has gone full pop now, but was originally marketed as country).

Except that isn't true for over-the-air broadcast radio. The musicians and the studio don't actually get a penny from radio play, even sometimes the singer - that is considered promotional. Only the songwriter (they guy or gal that writes the lyrics, if any) gets paid. For many years the studios would be forced to pay money to get airplay, as well (payola).

Furthermore, musicians get screwed by the recording studios, as well. Usually the contract requires ownership rights of a recording to be owned by the studio and not the musician. Even worse, some studios make this a "work for hire,' meaning the rights never transfer back to the original artist (it is corporate owned with a longer copyright). EMI retroactively made their entire catalog works for hire, meaning bands like Pink Floyd are perpetually corporate owned. If you think that is the end of the screwing, nope - all production costs come out of the musician's cut - recording, promotion, packaging, etc. As a musician, you can sell 20000 albums and still owe money, especially if you got an advance. The studio can then go after your gear if you didn't pay back your advance (very easy to do if your band is a business, not so easy if it isn't).

I got out of the business precisely because it is unfair and leeching. I did try my hand at songwriting for a bit, but I got a Software Engineering degree and it was far easier to do that than try to peddle songs.

Um, someone WAS trying to do something about it - Congress actually tried to sneak in an extension - there was a provision in the USA FREEDOM Act that extended section 215 until 2019 (originally it was 2017, and Rand Paul especially objected to tacking on another 2 years). That was passed by the House but defeated in the Senate. Incidentally, Obama was pro USA FREEDOM Act as well (and yes, all those caps are necessary - FREEDOM is a backronym, though I don't remember what it means).

It actually has more to do with export law - in fact, Clinton's Executive Order transferred control of encryption from the Munition List to the Commerce Control List. Prior to the Clinton updates, the maximum exportable encryption was 40 bits. Part of the reason the change got Clinton's attention is the PGP investigation, where the creator of PGP exported the computer code in a hardback book (free speech) as opposed to in a computer (munitions), allowing it to be scanned and compiled outside of the US. Also the weak foreign encryption export limits were starting to hurt US businesses (mine included at the time - we outsourced all encryption work and worldwide distribution to England, leading to about 20 US workers losing their jobs).

Also section 215 is not even dead - if you look at section 705 of the USA Freedom Act:

705.Sunsets
(a)USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005
Section 102(b)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 (50 U.S.C. 1805 note) is amended by striking June 1, 2015 and inserting December 15, 2019.

(b)Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004
Section 6001(b)(1) of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (50 U.S.C. 1801 note) is amended by striking June 1, 2015 and inserting December 15, 2019.

So they just voted to extend the Patriot Act provision for domestic spying instead of letting it die June 1.

I agree - it seems to actually allow more data to be sucked up, too (like VoIP calls) and removes legal responsibility from corporations that give this data to the government.

We had this problem handing off code to a traditionally waterfall team. I work in an R&D team, so we get tossed onto new projects every couple of years and have to hand off the code eventually to the core developers and testers that are still organized as waterfall. The transition was not smooth - they basically just crammed waterfall stories into multi-sprint epic stories instead of breaking them down (which is why we're still helping on the project and the release date slipped).

We have a continuous integration testing team; I don't know how a large Agile project can survive without one. So far our Agile client has far less customer bugs than our main client over the same period of time (their first two years vs ours). Ours doesn't have as much functionality yet, however, as we're releasing it in an Agile way (as it is developed).

Yep - the story should document the feature. If it doesn't, the story isn't complete. We ship our stories straight to our pubs group for documentation if the feature needs documentation, and the story is flagged with "requires documentation" when put on the task stack. If another story adds on to that feature, that goes to pubs to update that feature. If anything, our documentation is better now than it was before, where the developer had to submit a documentation request (which resulted in lots of undocumented features because everyone thought someone else submitted it).