Especially since day-one reviews are notoriously untrustworthy. The reviewers either play the game in haste to make the release date (sometimes not even finishing the game) or in some cases the games are played under ideal conditions (sometimes actually in the developer's studios) not is not representative of the customer's experience. In either case, the accuracy - if not honesty - of the review is in doubt.

I'm far more trusting of a review that comes out a week or two after the game's release than any review released simultaneously with the game; at least it gives the reviewer time to properly play the game. Day-one reviews have no real advantage to the consumer; they are all about increasing sales for the game's developer (by increasing market awareness of their product) and the website/magazine's publisher (by attaching themselves to a popular product). Any consumer who is that eager for a day-one review of a game is probably going to buy the game regardless of what the review says anyway.

So in addition to waiting a week or so before buying the game, wait a week before seeing what other people think as well. You'll get more honest opinions less manipulated by pre-release hype, and will be better able to judge whether or not to spend your money on the product.

XKCD did it first
(Seriously, is there a geek-topic that guy hasn't written a cartoon about?)

I like Palemoon too, but new users should be aware that the switch will probably cause problems because - despite some claims to the contrary - it isn't 100% compatible with Firefox add-ons. Admittedly, this is more often the fault of the add-on developers, but since the add-ons are usually the primary thing keeping people on Firefox, some extra consideration should be given before switching to its competitor. Especially since it has problems with so many big-name add-ons

Some examples: AdBlock Plus & AdBlock Edged (no menu or toolbar icon, so can't easily change options or disable), HTTPS Everywhere (does not function), Self-Destructing Cookies (does not function), Greasemonkey & Scriptish (do not function), Google Privacy (does not function), DOM Inspector (does not work), Privacy Badger (nope, not this one either), TabMixPlus (partly functional), AutoPager (nope) and dozens more.

(see Known Incompatible Add-Ons for the complete list).

I use Palemoon myself, but this lack of complete compatibility is actually making me reconsider going back to Firefox (at least with Firefox I can correct more egregious mistakes made by Mozilla through more add-ons). I hope that Palemoon figures out a way to improve compatibility but unfortunately the above list just seems to be getting longer and never shorter. New users should definitely look over the incompatibility list before they make the switch.

An access port? Perhaps an exhaust vent might be more believable. Stick it at the end of some sort of culvert or ravine, possibly with a few watch towers along side to make it appear a more likely target. You could even "lose" some blueprints showing this vulnerability that these rebellious terrorists could smuggle out to their hidden base. The only way to destroy the reactor would be to fly the drones down the gully and loose their payloads against the vent, setting up a chain-reaction that (they believe) would cause a cataclysmic explosion. But of course, it will all be a trap, the attempt would fail and the government would be able to successfully capture all the plotters without any real harm being done. It's a foolproof plan.

Unless, of course, the son of the guy who manages the reactor is involved in the attack. Then things might turn out differently. Gotta watch out for those familial relations.

Because most house cats are actually unable to live that well in the wild. Though they have the hunting instincts natural to their species, it actually requires some experience (usually learned during kittenhood and young adulthood) to put those instincts to best use; most cats cannot hunt well enough to sustain them long enough to gain the necessary skills.

Obviously cats which have lived outdoors - farmcats or free-roaming pets - have a better chance at survival than indoor-only house-cats, but even free-roaming pets fare poorly compared to feral animals that have lived their lives entirely on their own wits.

Cats also aren't safe from predation; owls and hawks won't pass them by when they are young and even after they achieve full size, coyotes and foxes are known to go after them. Housecats also have a poorer chance at finding good shelter in bad weather, and usually have to fight feral cats for territory, which further hampers their chances.

Putting a pampered house cat into the wild and expecting it to survive because "it's a cat" is thoughtless; it will likely live a very short life before dying miserably in a ditch somewhere.

Whether that option is better than euthanizing the animal is debatable and probably dependent on the beliefs of the owner. The proper option is to spend the time and money to get the animal properly placed, but dumping the feline is cruel and shouldn't even be a consideration.

Sad caveat: the ferals and strays in my town are very well cared for by well-meaning locals; many are fed daily, and have had their shots and been neutered. Unfortunately, this care just encourages more people to dump the animals in our neighborhood.

Here are the dead and dying languages

1) Perl - because it's a "piecemeal" language with features pile atop one another
2) Ruby - because its difficult to learn if you know C
3) Visual Basic.Net - because C#
4) Adobe Flash & AIR - because iPhone
5) Delphi Object Pascal - because it isn't well-supported

Now you don't need to read the article

If the goal were to simulate and test the feasibility of a long-term Martian outpost, that shouldn't be too hard to replicate. Mars has the necessary elements, just not as easily accessible as on Earth.

Create an isolated, pressurized base where the only source of oxygen comes from internal systems, not outside. Place a "factory" by the outpost that pulls in water from the environment at the same rate as it would on Mars (obviously it would discard most of it); crack some of the water to get the necessary oxygen. You are now limited to surviving from canned air, just like Martian explorers.

The bonus is that if there is a catastrophic failure of the systems during the test, everyone doesn't immediately die; they can just open the windows.

Harder to test would be the problems caused by low gravity, lower atmospheric pressure and increased radiation. Well, for the latter I guess we could just open the ozone hole for them again ;-)

The humans are dumb nonsense comes from the fact that animals are smart enough to achieve equilibrium with their environment while humans pave a path of destruction anymore they go.

Says anyone who doesn't have beavers on their property.

Animals do not have any innate instinct towards living in equilibrium with their environment. If they did, imported species wouldn't overrun their new homes (ask Australians how well cane toads and rabbits are finding a "natural balance"). All animals will do what is necessary to breed to the maximum their environment will allow, even if it is catastrophic to that environment. Humanity is unusual only in the sense of our extreme adaptability to differing climatic regions and the fact that - with the use of tools - were have no natural predators to keep our numbers in check.

If anything, humanity is the most environmentally-friendly of creatures, because we alone consider (albeit not often enough) the consequences of our actions upon the rest of the world and sometimes work against our own immediate interests for the betterment of the world at large.

Which is not to excuse our rapine habits, of course; we as a species are a danger to the current natural balance. But let's not kid ourselves; no other animal would be any better.

I came to say exactly this.

A core precept of US law is that "all people" have certain unalienable rights, be they citizen or not, at home or abroad. The government does not bestow these rights upon us; the US Constitution merely lists the situation in which those rights may be abrogated for the good of a better society. This fundamental belief is also part of the reasoning for US interventionism abroad. While we cannot in all situations ensure those rights to all people, the reasoning (if not actual cause) is that the US should do what it can to prevent those unalienable rights from trampling regardless of whether or not they are US citizens.

However, this reasoning has an important caveat that is increasingly being ignored (though it's not new): the US must act as if those non-citizens have the same rights and protections as US citizens. While it may be impossible to ensure that every foreign national has free-speech, speedy trial or any of the other rights Americans take for granted, still the US government should not and cannot act against those rights. So the idea that foreigners should not be protected by the need for a warrant is blatantly opposed to the core concepts behind the founding of this country.

One of the reasons for this shift in policy is not some malign conspiracy of foreigner-hating tyrants but a critical misunderstanding of the relationship between people and the government by its own citizens (including those who work for the government). Too often that relationship is seen as patriarchal: the government dispenses the rights, and therefore it has the right to suspend them, either in whole or in part, affecting some or all of those under its influence, as per its own whim. This is incorrect; not only is it that "We-the-People" voluntarily allow ourselves to be restricted, but as a "people" those restrictions must apply fairly to everyone, not just citizens. Doing otherwise merely creates divisions that can be too easily exploited against ourselves later on.

It's worth reminding people of the difference.

The end goal is simple; they want to make things easier and safer for themselves.

Government is made up of people, and those people have the same wants and desires as ourselves. In particular, they want their jobs to be less difficult and they want security of employment. These laws help enable these desires. Catching criminals is tough work, but it is easier if you have the ability to watch everyone all the time. Certainly it would be better for them to have these powers written into law so they are all above-board; that way there is no risk to their jobs when they are caught spying.

But like any other person, they are too focused on the immediate goal, unaware of how the accumulating powers of government might be misused in the future (or downplaying the risk because the immediate advantages are so obvious). It is only when the power is misused that they may regret the decision. Unfortunately, history has shown that accumulated power will inevitably be used, which is why these mistakes are all the more tragic.

It's not a conspiracy of the powerful working against us; it's an accumulation of human short-sightedness that puts the wrong tools into the hands of the corrupt.

It's a false comparison anyway.

In these bargains we do not trade "freedom for security" against some threat; instead we trade away our freedoms for a different kind of threat. History has shown that governments can be as dangerous to their populace as the criminals against whom theysupposedly protect. By giving up our freedoms, we are merely trading the types of risk we face: criminals, terrorists, et al. are an extremely rare but potentially quite deadly threat, whereas governments are an all-pervasive threat (to life and property) but the effects are usually much more limited in scope (usually restrictions on how you act or spend your money at first, although governments also have the potential to be far more dangerous).

Governments claim we must give up freedom for security, but we get no security out of the trade; we merely exchange an immediate (if unlikely) danger for a certain one down the road. Unfortunately, evolution has left our species with a poor ability to assess danger beyond the immediate future, a fact of which governments take advantage when they trot out their "facts" and "statistics" about how horrible is terrorism. Scared by the loud noise, we dart for any apparent shelter, often mistaking an alligator's jaws for a sheltering cave.

Let's not all be scared apes; let us look before we leap. The threat from which we need "protecting" is largely bluster and the security we are being promised is an illusion. Neither are worth sacrificing our freedoms.

While I agree with the above, I think that Poettering is incorrect in his assessment that the "Open Source Community" is a sick place to be. This problem is not just limited to that particular group; it is endemic on the Internet. But its not really limited to that either, because people have been making those sorts of comments (e.g., "Man, some days I'd really like to kill my boss") throughout history; they aren't meant seriously and are just a method of expressing spleen. The Internet just provides a larger audience. Open Source advocates, by nature of their dealing with digital products, just happen to be more common and comfortable with the digital medium of the Internet.

So I I think it would be more accurate to say that it is the Human Race that is a sick place to be in.

Of course, I personally think the bigger problem is taking these comments so seriously. It's just "feeding the trolls" by giving them the audience they desire, providing the sort of feedback that only provokes them - and others - into worse and worse behavior in order to get attention. After all, if everybody is already screaming at the top of their lungs, even a "normal person" (is there such a thing?) might feel obligated to use a bullhorn to get his message out.

I disagree; it wasn't the quality (or lack thereof) of the cartoons that killed the Saturday Morning block, or at least not directly. It was dedicated children's-TV channels available on cable. TV studios - and advertisers - no longer found it profitable to spend so much time and money when that market was already captured by channels that were focused entirely on their wants. NBC, CBS and ABC just couldn't compete with Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and the Disney channels.

If it was a lack of quality that killed Saturday Morning Cartoons then that block should have died in the 70s and 80s. Though we may look upon them now with nostalgia, shows like the Snorks, Pound Puppies (and pretty much anything made by Hanna Barbera) were terrible in every aspect, from their animation, to their characters, to the story and pacing. But as kids, we didn't care because a) we were too young to discern, and b) where else were we going to get four straight hours of cartoons? If we even noticed how bad the shows were, still it wasn't going to keep us from watching. Quality was not the decisive factor in our viewship.

Nowadays, kids /do/ have another option and, unwilling to pay the cost for better shows, the competition drove the broadcast channels out of the market. But had that option not existed, even were the OTA networks still showing crap like "Penelopy Pitstop" or the "PacMan Power Hour" we still probably would have Saturday Morning cartoons today.

And also don't forget:

No person [...] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

Which means - and has been tested in court - that not only are we within our rights to secure in our papers, etc. with encryption but We-The-People also cannot be legally compelled to give up the password to said encryption.

"Beyond the law," Director Comey? We are provably /within/ the law. It is your organization which is pushing the limits of legality, not the citizens it is nominally there to serve.

As important as the rendering engine may be, the major hold-up on making worlds "photorealistic" is that it takes a lot of work on the part of the artists and level designers to create those worlds. While the video harped on how current-generation engines have lots of repeating textures and models, voxel-based engines aren't going to magically solve that problem. Be they polygon- or voxel-based, the worlds will still have to be put together by artists. Even with voxels, the level designers will still reuse trees, boulders, cars and various other assets because it is too expensive (in time, if not money) to create unique items all the time, especially since the reward is so minimal. Game-design - often requiring three or four years of work with hundreds of artists and modelers - is already expensive enough; adding more polygons or voxels will just add to the time and cost.

The next major graphics revolution will not be from some new engine that produces images through voxels, polygons or ray-casting; it will be with the development of ever-more sophisticated procedural engines which take the workload off the artists, allowing them to create ever more varied and detailed worlds without requiring all the extra effort (and expense). Procedural engines are in their infancy, but in time they can be "trained" to create ever more sophisticated locales without requiring hundreds of man-years of work. Instead, those artists will instead be tasked to add unique flourishes to the generic algorithmically created worlds.

So I look at TFV and say, "well that's nice for specially built static images" (although honestly, I didn't find the rendered scenes all that convincing, especially when compared to some high-end polygon-based engines) but in the end it isn't going to make that much more of a difference since they are trying to solve the wrong problem facing the industry.