German children probably listen to Kraftwerk to learn all about radioactivity, vitamins, telephones, computers, autobahn, neon lights and such. In fact, in the summary's picture I believe they are dancing to The Robots. Seems fair for the band to receive some kind of royalties.

I was about to reply some pros&cons and that in the end all frameworks have their limits and how if you try something else than asking for a birthdate in a textbox and outputing the age in another when the user hits a button you'll spend hours and hours tweaking little details (why won't it let me put an icon here! Why won't it align correctly!)

But I re-read you question and you talk about re-writing all the GUI yourself, so I don't really understand why you need a UI toolkit to start with. But you probably have not phrased your needs completely.

Anyway, the obvious answer is to try WPF for Windows if your app is for Windows.

Up to 7Mbps! Improved flavor, now without trans fat!

Based on Wikipedia, only G, H, N, O, P, U, V, W one-letter programming language names are left! Time to invent a new language :)

I've come across a hammer in my toolbox. Any idea what I could do with it? Is it worth any time putting it to use, or should I just leave it in my toolbox?

(PS: aside from being cynical, this post also answers the OP question - using 802.11b equipment along with a hammer can be a whole-lotta fun ;)

Do you prefer paying 29.99$ without ads?

I also think that it is a good thing to prevent minors to do online transactions, particularly of "virtual currency" stuff, without some kind of monitoring or parental consent etc. This sounds perfectly reasonable.

And to put the "unwholesome" comment into context which seems to annoy everyone, imagine a US politician saying vague words like "it is morally irresponsible to do X" or "it is to protect the rights our fathers gave us" etc. I mean, it's a speech.

So China makes what seem a sensible law ... can someone explain to me why it is that bad?

My guess about this one is that they don't want you to notice that you are almost always "logged in" into Google search if, for instance, you have a Youtube or Gmail account. With the fade-in, you don't really notice the "log out" option in the top-right corner.

I remember being very surprised to see that I was always searching in "authenticated" mode because I told Gmail to keep me logged in (btw, the option is checked by default so probably most users are).

I find it very frustrating that they decided to link all the accounts like this. I want to keep my search separated from my Youtube views/comments separated from my mail.

(of course: they can still deduce who you are without being officially authenticated, but that's another story)

West coast? Which one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast

Imagine 8 and 20 years... it would have been.. like... 3000$!!

Did the FCC at least force ISP to give the users the exact throttling rules like Canada CRTC ruled last autumn?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/21/2223229/

I would have loved to see slashdotters' reaction to the CRTC announcement after this news came it, would have put things in perspective. It's good to be pro-net-neutrality (CRTC also is pro-net-neutrality), but even with limited power it tried and succeeded to at least get some basic ruling done so we are not (the users) completely screwed.

In the end though, I guess both organizations will reach the same kind of decision (Canadian politicians being what they are) and Big Industry will flourish.

Yeah, I totally agree. Big Game Industry is making experiments these days with all sorts of DRM and DLC schemes. Even some titles shipped without any kind of DRM or even a basic form of CD-Key to see if it would change a thing.

My guess is that the effect of such schemes are minimal. I think good PC-only title can still make good money, but for all console ports the PC version is pretty much dead.

Currently Big Game Industry still allocates some resources in the last mile-stone to make a shippable PC version. Shippable meaning buggy, hungry on resources, needing the latest video card and often still with console artifacts in them (like you are asked to press "O" and "X" buttons instead of key names). They also "consolize" most game genres and now you cannot do without dumbed-down interfaces, targetting aids, etc.

At some point, my guess is that they will stop to bother.

Who I really blame for this are the gamers themselves. They don't realize their consoles are just a DRM-packed, slow PC, and proudly decide to chose for a DRM, costly solution to gaming, instead of refusing to buy consoles and stick to PC.

As far as I can tell, the article you are pointing to refers to Silent Hunter 5, and both Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers 7 remain uncracked.

Also note that the solidity of DRM techniques like these depend at how much time the developers spend to "secure" their product. My guess is that for Silent Hunter 5, a very niche product, they only did the minimum. But for their big titles they probably have hordes of programmers messing the game pretty much beyond recognition without the connection to the server. Oh, that never makes it impossible to crack, but it's no longer a simple matter of by-passing some CD key checks by inserting NOPs, you really have to build a set of tools around a particular title and it can take weeks to do so ...

And that's really their goal. Most of the sales of a game are done during the first few days / weeks. If it takes a month to crack the damn thing, they have reached their goal.

If they sell 10'000 more titles because frustrated kids can't find their free crack and must beg their parents to go to the store, they have reached their goal. I'm eager to see their financial numbers about this - I'm still skeptical it will change anything, but we'll see.

Now to answer your question: you are supposed to pay because 1) it is illegal to do otherwise 2) you support the developers of the games you love.

Wiseass like you wonder why all PC games are crap and developers focus on console gaming since the Internet got popularized ...

(PS: that is not to say I'm all for these draconian DRM practices. I don't really care about the "always connected" feature as long as the requirements are clearly visible when you buy the game, but I don't like the fact that it prevents resale).