Wow, you are so lucky to be able to receive such a treatment! Congratulations and may your recovery be speedy!

What got me interested in even wanting to program in the first place though was the NES. Because of the tile-based nature of the graphics you could kind of pick the game apart with your eyes, and see how things like collision detection could work, or triggers, simple animations, etc.

I borrowed a book from the library that had simple BASIC programs, and I learned by modifying parts of the program, which was already simple to understand since it could be typed out as one routine that ran from A to Z with simple GOTO statements and IF THEN logic. I figured out that in QBASIC, you could press F1 on any keyword and it would tell you about the syntax, and would give you an example routine. This was invaluable. Coupled with the Find function in QBASIC, I could type in something that had to do with the functionality I wanted, and the Help system would show me the commands that would let me accomplish this.

After a few years of doing this, I started Visual Basic, then Delphi, which was great for my job, but I wanted to do more... I was able to download a tutorial by VLA off a BBS that taught me x86 Assembly, and when SDL came out, there were many great tutorials and I started learning that with C/C++.

It's a voluntary process, why would they need to restrict it? It's not like it's forced child labor. If anything, it's a learning experience.

Do they have any rights to any copyrighted content that has been misappropriated for use in this film? The article does not clarify how the DMCA is being used and what "Hollywood" is claiming as a violation.

The reason the online pass existed was to get $10 out of people that would buy games used. If they can't buy used games anymore, what's the point of the online pass? So yeah, they'll drop it, AND you won't be able to buy games used. The headline is stupid.

Personally I don't play online, so I was happy to pick up games for a deeper discount when I bought them used. Since they didn't include online anymore, used stores had to price them lower, so that was great.

More often though, I buy my games new, so I wish EA had actually taken this even further. They could have just priced the games at $50 and asked for an extra $10 if you wanted the online, instead of charging $60 for everything bundled together. That way I wouldn't have to foot the bill for the development of something I didn't want anyway. I think gamers would have been overall happier, and EA could have still charged for the online component separately like they wanted to.

Definitely a good move. Charging the users to get back their start button wouldn't have eased any of the tension over Windows 8.

Wouldn't it damage your hearing?

I don't want binary blobs* to be included in a document for what is supposed to be read on a cross-platform interpreter. The binary blob will not work in this situation anyway (different CPU/OS APIs/etc), so why include it as part of the standard? It might as well be an external app or plugin.

* The Content Decryption Module (CDM) required to interpret/implement the DRM

But I just set up my family with Ubuntu, installed their favorite apps, and now the only thing I have to do is remote in for updates after I've verified nothing's broken. It's been about 8 years since switching them over. I haven't had to update their hardware either. I'm thinking about putting a solid state drive in one of the older machines but that's about it. The only weird thing that happened is I had to re-seat some RAM because a machine wouldn't turn on but that's it.

Now the only questions I get are about when web sites are updated and there's a layout change, or when Google updated gmail and it warned you that it was going to switch you to a new interface, and they want me to click OK because they're not sure if it'll break something :P

Started in DOS, went to Windows (futzed with OS/2), and I loved Windows 2000. Around that time, spyware/malware was a big deal, and commercial apps began shipping with such apps bundled in. As much as I tried maintaining my Windows install, I would eventually have to reinstall, hunt for drivers (big pain getting SBLive! and ATI TV Tuner @ 640x480 to work properly, had to patch registers to stop audio popping), dig out serial numbers, dig out old setup.exe of the software versions I liked before they changed something I didn't like, it was a pain in the ass.

I didn't want to move to XP and get more of this. I stayed on 2000 as long as possible. Most apps I was using were open source, because I started moving away from commercial apps which were becoming increasingly annoying to deal with because of serial numbers, updates, adware, and around that time it was a fad to create Windows software that didn't use standard GUI elements, and I like using the keyboard to navigate.

Eventually the only thing I was using commercial software for was just the OS, so I moved to Linux. I wasn't too worried about games because I found those annoying even in Windows, having to download updates and patches just to get games to work properly, having to have specific driver versions and setting up my gamepad and using joy2key etc was annoying to me. Having to hunt down my save files when I reinstalled was a pain too, this was before they decided to put them in My Documents. I prefer consoles for gaming and I'm happy to have them just work when I pop in a disc.

Eventually I was in the market for a laptop so I bought Apple for the battery life, features, and durability. I liked OS X and used it for a while, but as OS updates would change the behavior of Finder or other things like that, it would annoy me. I also don't like the way certain apps need to launch X11 and can't use OS X's native GUI as well, and I was already happy with Linux so I just put that on.

Is a smartphone with GPS not able to do any of this? How would Google Glass be anymore accurate than a GPS to be able to overlay the information properly as opposed to an "AR" app on a phone?

Maybe it could be useful for some things, especially games, but even in that situation, not having a HUD or anything distracting on the screen is seen as a benefit, so why would you want it IRL? Maybe it could be arranged into something more useful to you personally such as widgets on a desktop, but I can whip out my phone and check a few quick things already.

I just don't know if I want to always be seeing data. So it'd be easier and cheaper to whip out a smartphone instead of taking out my smartglasses and putting them on.

My lunch/breaks are unpaid anyway... so what are they stripping away here? But yeah, this amount of micro-managing and bean counting is counterproductive, and just adds a lot of stress and pressure. When they're able to detect it, maybe they'll streamline it further and pay you only for the time that your brain is focused on your work, and pay you based on the percentage of the focus as well.

By releasing polished products that work well. Then the consumer incidentally finds out it runs on Linux and their opinion of it builds from there.

Now identity theft will become so much easier, trojans will be able to steal all that information too and spoofing access will be that much simpler.