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Comment Multi-Monitor Gaming Just Sucks (Score 4, Insightful) 148

The biggest problem with multi-monitor gaming is that it's just plain garbage in any kind of "surround" configuration. Apart from Fisheye-Quake and some fancy pants flight sims and racing games, arcing three or more monitors does nothing but waste power and processing capability to render a smeared-out mess on every monitor but the one in the center. Most games aren't even mathematically capable of producing a 180-degree FOV. I've never been quite sure who should get the ball rolling in that department, but I've just decided it should be Valve. I don't have a good reason. Get on it, guys! Ubiquitous support for rendering games to multiple-viewports.

Comment Why 5C? (Score 1) 348

Why write this article abut the 5C? It's literally last year's model.

When the 4s came out, it would have been stupid to complain that the 4 didn't break presale records. The 5C isn't meant to rock you like a hurricane. It's meant to make your consolation prize more palatable.

/. Obligatory Disclaimer: I won't be buying either of them.

Submission + - SkyOS now free (as in beer) (skyos.org)

Beardydog writes: SkyOS, the commercial, alternative OS created almost entirely by Robert Szeleney, became free (as in beer) sometime last month. Alternative OS enthusiasts can be forgiven for missing it, as the website has been largely derelict, and the forums overrun with spam, since the project was halted in 2009. It's not clear from the announcement whether the ISO available is the traditional build, or the version rebuilt around Linux. The post announcing the free version provides a license name ("public") and registration code that must be entered during setup. While it isn't quite the open-sourcing that most followers hoped for, it's heartening to know SkyOS won't be completely lost in the mists of time.

Submission + - Java: To Learn or Not to Learn? (acceptic.com)

acceptic writes: Autumn is the time when a lot of people are starting their studies at various educational institutions. A very frequent question for them is what to learn. For future programmers one of such subjects can be Java. However, is Java worth learning nowadays? The author has tried to analyze this question and collected some general information as well as opinions of actual programmers from Ukraine. But what is your answer?

Submission + - UK Cryptographers Call For UK, US Gov to Out Weakened Products

Trailrunner7 writes: A group of cryptographers in the UK has published a letter that calls on authorities in that country and the United States to conduct an investigation to determine which security products, protocols and standards have been deliberately weakened by the countries’ intelligence services. The letter, signed by a number of researchers from the University of Bristol and other universities, said that the NSA and British GCHQ “have been acting against the interests of the public that they are meant to serve.”

The appeal comes a couple of weeks after leaked documents from the NSA and its UK counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, showed that the two agencies have been collaborating on projects that give them the ability to subvert encryption protocols and also have been working with unnamed security vendors to insert backdoors into hardware and software products. Security experts have been debating in recent weeks which products, standards and protocols may have been deliberately weakened, but so far no information has been forthcoming.

“We call on the relevant parties to reveal what systems have been weakened so that they can be repaired, and to create a proper system of oversight with well-defined public rules that clearly forbid weakening the security of civilian systems and infrastructures," the letter says.

Comment Difference in complaints (Score 3, Interesting) 180

As noted in the comments the first time this was posted, this story doesn't mention the number of complaints received BEFORE the change, making the number 500,000, and the entire article, almost completely meaningless. Apple has millions of customers and, as with every company, a shocking percentage of them are either imbeciles or spend their days and nights pining for minor slights to write angry emails about. This could be perfectly average. The entirety of the information provided for the story comes from a party to the dispute.

Comment Re: Nope (Score 1) 340

Seriously... I wrote a few simple programs on my TI-83, and I was one of maybe three people in my year who did. The difficulty didn't make it more compelling, it made it a huge waste of time. Digging through multi-level menus to find a min function instead of typing the min function on a real keyboard is a waste of time. I made a cube rotate slowly, then went home to play with cellular automata in Metal Basic, where I could write ten lines of code in the amount of time it took me to find the 'for' function on my TI. I think it was like a three-key combination to type quotation marks. It's agonizing just to remember it.

You know what they SHOULD do to get kids into programming? Bring HyperCard the fuck back. It's a simple interface, intuitive structure, easy English-like syntax... My nephews are being taught with Scratch, and they find its limitations unbearable. HyperCard is a playground for the mind. We should launch a new petition now that Jobs is gone.

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