But there's one big difference. Unlike new major versions of Windows, new versions of Linux, glibc, etc. are available without charge. I didn't have to pay a dime to upgrade Ubuntu from 8.04 through 12.04, apart from the Internet access that I was paying for anyway.

No, fuck Unity. After I failed to get the hang of the Un(usabil)ity that is 11.10's default GUI, I installed Xfce (sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop) and was able to make it mine again.

Even if Linux supports AMD CPUs better than Windows does, Windows might still support AMD GPUs better.

Once I get the job, I can program just fine. I just have a bit of trouble learning certain kinds of social skills, especially how not to make a bad first impression in an in-person interview. My disability sometimes keeps me from detecting when I have made or am about to make a faux pas until it is too late.

My two things are Asperger-type autism and having grown up in northeast Indiana. Does What Color is Your Parachute address how to succeed despite a learning disability or how much savings one should have before moving to another state to find a job? If so, I'll buy it tonight.

And this is the one skill that a lot of schools tend to fail at.

But there seems to be a mentality in certain circles that "if you don't already know how to find a job, you don't deserve to learn."

Sometimes device manufacturers work out a deal with component makers that the device manufacturer will get a discount on a particular component if certain features of the component are disabled. This is especially common with royalty-bearing technology such as circuits that perform MPEG video encoding and decoding.

I think it's more along the lines of "Who buys reference books when there are reference materials available without charge on the Internet?" nowadays.

Things you can get from a brick-and-mortar bookstore but not from Amazon include near-universal "Look Inside" and same day delivery.

Is LiQuiD (Lightweight Qt Desktop) taken?

Why can't Firefox's "Gecko" CSS engine draw menus and buttons?

I agree that a minimap is helpful in a driving game. But most of the examples you gave are of games that use the behind-the-car 3D viewpoint that AuMatar decried in this +5 comment. It appears AuMatar would want only a 2D minimap and a zoomed-in 2D overhead view, and very few driving games have been successful with that layout, other than driving games that are disguised shoot-em-ups such as Spy Hunter.

Yet copyright gives Disney the power to use exactly this criterion.

To me, it's like tennis or basketball. Imagine if James Naismith had started a Basketball Company that asserted copyright in the exact placement of the markings on the court, such as the width and length of the "key" and the diameter and height of the rim, and became known for a habit of suing cities that put a basketball court in a public park. In such a situation, I don't think basketball as we know it would have caught on the way it did. Or imagine if the governing body of tennis suddenly switched from older sport of indoor "real tennis" to the modern sport of lawn tennis and then sued anybody who put up a "real tennis" court.

The easy way out is to drop the pretense that a proprietary video game could become an enduring sport.

Good luck being able to steer a race car on a minimap. There's a reason that almost everything since Pole Position has used a third-person behind-the-car viewpoint with few exceptions (R/C Pro-Am, Micro Machines, and Rock n Roll Racing).