Notepad++ on Windows, Geany on Linux.

Vi vs Emacs is an outdated battle, a relic of a time where Vi and Emacs were the only real options for quality editors. Nowadays there's a heck of a lot more quality editors to choose from, and overtake Vi/Emacs in terms of usability, discoverability and power. Not to take away from the power of Vi/Emacs - they're just used due to people having learnt them in the past and finding no reason to change. Which is great if you're a power user who knows how to make magic, but there's no real reason for an aspiring programmer to use either.

If people use something in sufficient numbers, it's not losing relevancy. I use gcc because it's extremely well supported, well known, well understood and compiles well. All the software and toolkits which rely on gcc aren't going to just change over to the current "in" thing just because Apple/Google/whoever are pushing LLVM like crazy with their cash and influence to make people believe that gcc isn't relevant anymore.

Fuck I hate the tech world sometimes, particularly since people get swept up in (paid) hype so damn easily when they should know better.

And that's great! I'm not a hater or want to prevent people have fun just because I'm not a fan of something.

(assuming the idea hasn't been worn to death like WW2 shooters)

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't mind some new WW2 shooters. Yes they were over-saturating the gaming market a while back, so developers moved to making modern combat games like CoD 4 and Battlefield 2/3/4. Now the modern combat scene is flooded - everyone's seen one to many M4s by now and it's getting boring. A decent WW2 game would at least be... different? What's old is new I guess.

I have no nostalgia. The most I ever played of the actual Thief games was a demo of Thief 2 back in the day and a little bit of Thief 3. But I've been playing The Dark Mod to death because of the incredible detail and the fan missions made by people who clearly love the old-school style of the games. New games are more obsessed with catering to all audiences, which makes them dilute the more interesting aspects of suck genres.

From most accounts (reviewers as well as users) this new Thief game is incompetent. Heck, one guy even made the observation that at no point does Garrett sneak into a building, steal an object, and then leave the way he same, since the game forces a linear path through an environment to be suddenly spat out at the other end. One of the great things about the Dark Mod is that once you've achieved your objectives, most missions will make you return to where you started to complete the mission. Hence you'll to deal with the remaining guards, environment, and potentially consequences for whatever actions you took during the mission.

But go ahead and assume I'm just hating because of "nostalgia". I'm not going to pay money to be disappointed in Thief when there's enough evidence that this will happen.

So, we pay extra... to play less? Brilliant!

Go play The Dark Mod instead: http://www.thedarkmod.com/main...

Free, now standalone so despite the name you don't need Doom 3 to play it, plus it's cross-platform. You basically download missions through the in-game downloader, most of them really, really good, and get your proper Thief experience instead of the watered-down bullshit that this new Thief game provides.

Indeed. He makes the mistake of assuming that the utility of any computing device is defined by its raw power and finesse. I like desktop PCs specifically because of what I can do with them, but I also enjoy the portability and immediacy of what smartphones provide that a regular computer cannot. They complement one another, and to raise one's blood pressure and go off on a rant like this completely misses the point. It's a sign of someone who thinks the world's out to get him, and also is a loser.

If you're gonna get an Android phone and care at all about updates, before you spend ANY money make sure you can find instructions on how to unlock/root your phone as well as check the level of development of ROMs available for the phone. If the phone of interest is sufficiently popular that there's good instructions on how to unlock and root it and there's a reasonably healthy community involved in developing ROMs for it (and hence updates), then it's probably a good phone to get. Short of buying a Nexus, this is really the only way to guarantee that you'll be able to keep updating your phone as time goes on.

I bought my Samsung Galaxy S2 in February of 2012. My carrier (Telstra) has long forgotten about supporting my particular phone (I think the last official Telstra supported update was 4.1.2). However, I'm running 4.4.2 and can only run that due to the wonderful community that's still developing ROMs for this thing, long after corporate interest has dried up. I have absolutely no intention of replacing it until it breaks, since it's still quite fast and capable.

According to Wikipedia the last episode of Pioneer One came out on December 13, 2011. I appreciated the first season for what it was, but it's hard to keep interest in a TV series if it takes more than 2 years between seasons.

I don't know if they'll be able to continue the series. I hope do since it's got a lot of promise, but it needs a higher profile if they want to secure better financing.

OK, thanks for that. I admit my knowledge of the case is a little lacking so I like reading up when people want to make a point.

OT: Why should Amanda Knox be freed? She's been found guilty (again) and there doesn't appear to be any real accusations of any level of incompetence or corruption on the part of the Italian courts. Just curious is all.

Thing is, from the law's point of view, games that you get in a box, or a DRM-free download from GOG or whatever, are still only licensed to you and require you to conform to the requirements of the license.

The thing that Steam can do, which traditionally boxed or DRM-free software cannot, is to actively RESTRICT access to the software you purchased, on account of the authentication features built into the client. Put another way - if I have a game in a box that doesn't need Steam, so long as I take care of the media (particularly if I make a backup copy, or create an ISO or whatever), it can last for however long I want to because I'm the one in control over the software. Steam remove the user's control and places it squarely in hands of Valve and the publishers. If the Steam client fucks up, or your net connection goes down and Offline mode decides to not work, or a publisher/Valve changes the terms of service/agreement to an unfavorable state, you might find yourself unable to play the games you bought.

Boxed/DRM-free software and Steam software both share the same result - a license to use the software. But Steam is the only one which can actively police things on that front. Unfortunately it also makes things vulnerable to actions that aren't the user's fault.

Shit, you're right. There's no way the entire Slashdot community has immediately decided to down-mod fuck beta posts so quickly after the official discussion topic.

It's amazing DICE and associated fuckers honestly think we wouldn't notice this. They REALLY think we're dumb fucks.

Oh, no room for classic Slasdhot, huh? Fine! I'll go build my own Slashdot knockoff, with blackjack, and hookers. In fact, forget the Slashdot knock and the blackjack. Ahh, screw the whole thing!