That's more Youtubes' fault than JoCos.

Youtube's contentID system is crazy these days. It's only a matter of time before someone invites something better than youtube at this rate.

Aye. It could be:

.FFF.
.343.
.1F1.

But it could also be:

.FFF.
.3F3.
.111.

Both choices are equally valid.

Propery formatted board:

.FFF.
.3[]3.
.1[]1.

Problem with Minesweeper though is when you end up with problems like these (5x3 board with 4 mines) - then it's a 50-50 chance of the mine being the lower cell or upper cell, and no way of knowing which one. .FFF. .3[]3. .1[]1.

F - Flagged mine
[] - unopened square
. - Open, empty space

The Bucaneer had this same concept for over a year ago...

Russia may have a strong military, but is it strong enough to take on the entirety of western civilization?

I agree that US has a vested interest - but it's not strong enough to warrant an intervention in a country literally on the other side of the world. Not yet, anyhow.

Bad idea.

This isn't a problem of the U.S. since Ukraine isn't in any way, shape or form affiliated with NATO.

The EU on the other hand might be interested... But intervening with Ukraine at this stage would be enough to provoke Putin and the rest of Russia into World War 3 mode.

That would be a mistake on Putin's part, since barring a full nuclear war, he cannot realisticly win, and even with nukes he can only drag the rest of the world to the dark ages. EU + USA has enough troops to repel all of Russias advances, and then some.

The only thing Russia will accomplish with it's bullying is to make it's neighbours more determined to seek strong alliances; NATO in the west, and probably China/India will create a strong asian alliance in the east. I do not understand why Putin is that stupid.

Hi Jonathan!

These days it's quite popular to both bash the copyright system and sue those thieving filesharers to oblivion. I'd like to ask you what you, as an independant musician, think would be a good balance between the creator rights and the public interests? Would it be a RIAA wet dream where all the content is locked up behind paywalls and getting a copy from an unauthorized source, like say a library, would constitute a crime with a minimum of 6 months in jail? Do you believe more in the Pirate Parties vision of abolishing the monopoly on creating copies, but retaining the protection against economic abuse? Or are you more in favor of going full nuclear by abolishing the entire copyright system alltogether? Thank you for all the great songs you have produced over the years!

DirectCompute isn't widely used last time I checked, CUDA and OpenCL has far greater mindshare. It's also more or less equivalent to those two technologies. Though granted you must use it for XBox...

DirectSetup is only a minor utility library that only makes sense if you're already using DirectX.

DirectXMath is, likewise, more of a utility library. I consider it a part of D3D, since 90% of the functions only make sense with D3D (and maybe DirectCompute).

So, yeah, revising that list, Direct3D, Direct2D, DirectCompute and DirectWrite.

Sometimes you need more fine-grained control than Apache gives you though.

Like, consider an Apache system running three domains at foo.example.com, bar.example.com and baz.example.com. Baz needs CGI scripts, Foo and Bar doesn't.

These days this scenario will probably be solved with three separate virtual machines running from the same master copy (i.e. RO mounted filesystem over local netboot with separate storage partitions), but, yeah...

If you're going to be nitpicky, then yes, it's SDL+OpenGL.

However, the only DirectX system still relevant in Win8.1 is Direct3D. Everything else has been removed;

DirectDraw - Repaced by Direct2D
DirectInput - Replaced by XInput
DirectSound - Replaced by XAudio2
DirectMusic - Legacy MIDI format - also replaced by XAudio2
DirectPlay - A complete joke, replaced by Games for Windows Live and XB Live.
DirectX Media/Media Objects: Deprecated and replaced/removed by all of above

That leaves DirectWrite and Direct2D as the only relevant (and minor) DIrectX components left. So yes, DX is more than a graphics API; these days and for gaming though, the only thing being used is D3D in DX.

No, the extensions aren't standard, that's true. It's not a perfect solution. But if you want to use a new nifty feature not yet standardised by OpenGL, you do not have to wait for the ARB to get their shit together. You as a developer can use it and then with minimal fuss port your non-standard extension to the standard when it becomes available. DirectX does not have that advantage.

This is a major advantage if some new technology shows up, like say geometry shaders. OpenGL supported geometry shaders from day one - but through proprietary extensions. These then trickled down to the specification. Even if it's invented elsewhere OpenGL can take advantage of it basicly instantly. It's not standard - true - but it's there and if it's a good idea it will most probably become standard.

Similarly, I have no doubt extensions will show up that will implement these new DX inventions, should they prove to be helpful.

XBOne can't use DX12. Reason being, the hardware in XBOne is not DX12 compatible. I can't see how a GPU manufactured atleast 9 months earlier than DX12 release will ever be compatible with DX12.

Oh, yes, one more point to note;

OpenGL is now the dominant API on around 80% of all computing devices (Smartphone+Tablet+PC).

While this was sorta-kinda true five years ago, a *lot* has changed since then.

The OpenGL specification has one big fundamental advantage over Direct X, namely, extensions. While extensions certainly aren't perfect, they do allow you to include new functionality in OpenGL - in DirectX, if you got a new technology, you have to wait for Microsoft to implement this.

Furthermore, OpenGL 4.4 has all features of DirectX 11 has and then some. It is about as easy if not easier to develop for, and is even faster[1] than DX11. DX11 is a good API, but it's getting outdated.

Shame that the XB One won't be able to utilize DX12...

Further reading: http://wccftech.com/open-gl-di...

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/gam...