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Comment Yes, but impractical for humans to enforce ... (Score 1) 430

by JSkills (#42362877) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Do Coding Standards Make a Difference?
Rather than attempt to get various teams of developers to code in one exact style, we decided on implementing a single standard for coding but to automatically enforce it via a pre-commit hook when someone checks in their code into our repository. That way, managers don't have to waste their breath attempting to micromanage the minutia of where the semi-colons go, developers can be free to work how they're most comfortable, and when you check code out you can always expect it to be in the exact same familiar form.

This seems to have given us the ability to benefit from a single coding standard for what's in our code base, while *not* spending any developer or manager time to have to worry about it getting/keeping it that way ...

Comment my dictionary app ... (Score 1) 231

by JSkills (#41980181) Attached to: App Auto-Tweets False Piracy Accusations
... is Google.

If I am unsure of the spelling of a word or not entirely sure of the meaning I just type it into the Chrome URL box and I end up with a Google search with corrected spelling and links to the definition by default.

Probably not as easy on an iPad of course ... but $50 for any iPad app seems exorbitant. Unless I am missing something, if the point of the app is to be a dictionary, you really don't need an app (rig up a web service or something?). Ok this app has sound bytes for pronunciation, but Dictionary.com app is $4.99 (does the same as well as voice recognition of words) and this Oxford Deluxe is $50? I am probably missing something ...

Also any app that asks for my credentials to any other app or account would not get installed to begin with. Seriously, who would give a dictionary app access to their twitter account? Who says I even have a twitter account?
Classic Games (Games)

The Best Video Games On Awful Systems 272

Posted by Soulskill from the diamond-in-the-rough dept.
Buffalo55 writes "For the most part, classic games manage to reappear on different systems. Just look at Nintendo. The publisher has done an excellent job bringing NES, SNES, Genesis and even old school Neo Geo titles to the Wii's Virtual Console, while Microsoft's Game Room brings the best of Atari's 2600 into the living room. Of course, not every console was a success. The '90s, in particular, saw quite a few flops from companies like Panasonic, Sega and Atari. Just because a system is a failure, though, doesn't mean all of its games suck. On the contrary, most of these machines have a few gems that fell between the cracks once the console croaked." What overlooked game on a failed platform would you like to see revived?
The Courts

Lineage II Addiction Lawsuit Makes It Past the EULA 267

Posted by Soulskill from the four-little-letters dept.
We recently discussed a man who sued NCsoft for making Lineage II "too addictive" after he spent 20,000 hours over five years playing it. Now, several readers have pointed out that the lawsuit has progressed past its first major hurdle: the EULA. Quoting: "NC Interactive has responded the way most software companies and online services have for more than a decade: it argued that the claims are barred by its end-user license agreement, which in this case capped the company's liability to the amount Smallwood paid in fees over six months prior to his filing his complaint (or thereabouts). One portion of the EULA specifically stated that lawsuits could only be brought in Texas state court in Travis County, where NC Interactive is located. ... But the judge in this case, US District Judge Alan C. Kay, noted that both Texas and Hawaii law bar contract provisions that waive in advance the ability to make gross-negligence claims. He also declined to dismiss Smallwood's claims for negligence, defamation, and negligent infliction of emotional distress."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Quake 3 For Android 137

Posted by Soulskill from the can-i-get-a-hell-yeah dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Over the last two months I ported Quake 3 to Android as a hobby project. It only took a few days to get the game working. More time was spent on tweaking the game experience. Right now the game runs at 25fps on a Motorola Milestone/Droid. 'Normally when you compile C/C++ code using the Android NDK, the compiler targets a generic ARMv5 CPU which uses software floating-point. Without any optimizations and audio Quake 3 runs at 22fps. Since Quake 3 uses a lot of floating-point calculations, I tried a better C-compiler (GCC 4.4.0 from Android GIT) which supports modern CPUs and Neon SIMD instructions. Quake 3 optimized for Cortex-A8 with Neon is about 15% faster without audio and 35% with audio compared to the generic ARMv5 build. Most likely the performance improvement compared to the ARMv5 build is not that big because the system libraries of the Milestone have been compiled with FPU support, so sin/cos/log/.. take advantage of the FPU.''

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