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Comment Re: But how long for? (Score 1) 20

I don't think it's anything to get excited about just yet. All the major closed console digital stores still offer downloads for past purchases. Presumably when the Xbox Series store closes, Microsoft will continue to offer downloads for a long time to come. BTW, you can still buy a fair amount of digital games for your Xbox 360 on the new store. Purchases will appear at the top of your 360's "download history" and can be downloaded from there.

Comment Re: The real test (Score 1) 78

If you're interested, your Wii U and Xbox 360 digital purchases can still be downloaded to unlimited USB storage peripherals for backup and played offline forever. No proprietary hard drives necessary. Your only danger is your console dieing after Microsoft/ Nintendo terminate support for downloads in the hopefully far distant future. That's because all your backups are keyed to the dead console. If that bothers you, you can mod your console after Microsoft/ Nintendo terminates download support and make backups that can be run on any modded console.

Submission + - NLNet funds development of a Libre RISC-V 3D CPU (crowdsupply.com)

lkcl writes: The NLNet Foundation has approved funding for the Hybrid Libre RISC-V CPU/VPU/GPU under its Privacy and Enhanced Trust Programme. High security software is irrelevant if the hardware is fundamentally compromised, for example with the Intel spying backdoor co-processor known as the Management Engine. The Libre RISCV SoC was begun as a way for users to regain trust and ownership of the hardware that they legitimately purchase.

This processor will be the first of its kind, as the first commercial SoC designed to give users the hardware and software source code of the 3D GPU, Video Decoder, main processor, boot process and the OS.

Shockingly, in the year 2019, whilst there are dozens of SoCs with full source code that are missing either a VPU or a GPU (such as the TI OMAP Series and Xilinx ZYNQ7000s), there does not exist a single commercial embedded SoC which has full source code for the bootloader, CPU, VPU and GPU. The iMX6 for example has etnaviv support for its GPU however the VPU is proprietary, and all of Rockchip and Allwinner's offerings use either MALI or PowerVR yet their VPUs have full source (reverse engineered in the case of Allwinner).

This processor, which will be quad core dual issue 800mhz RV64GC and capable of running full GNU/Linux SMP OSes, with 720p video playback and embedded level 25fps 3D performance in around 2.5 watts at 28nm, is designed to address that imbalance. Links and details on the Libre RISC-V SoC wiki.

The real question is: why is this project the only one of its kind, and why has no well funded existing Fabless Semiconductor Company tried something like this before? The benefits to businesses of having full source code are already well-known.

Submission + - EOMA68 Earth-friendly Modular computing campaign hits $50k (crowdsupply.com) 9

lkcl writes: The EOMA68 Crowd-funding campaign launched last month and has just reached $50,000 and so far has 541 backers with 28 days still to go. EOMA68 and its creator have featured regularly on slashdot over the past five years: a live-streamed video from Hope2016 explains what it's about, and there is a huge range of discussions and articles online. The real burning question is: if a single Software Libre Engineer can teach themselves PCB design and bring modular computing to people on the budget available from a single company, why are there not already a huge number of companies doing modular upgradeable hardware?

Comment Re:Headline is misleading and inflammatory (Score 1) 1134

You can do important stuff from the command line on Windows - IIS log queries with LogParser and batch image editing with ImageMagick are some of the reasons I've used this in just the past couple of days. But the average Windows user never needs to see or touch it. This is why Windows is a mainstream desktop OS and Linux is not.

Could you explain why MSDOS triumphed over Mac OS in the personal computer marketplace for 11 years before finally being replaced by Win95?

Comment Re:human language (Score 1) 1134

None of this is the case with PC command lines. The syntax, spelling, and formatting has to be exact or else it won't work. There is very little wiggle room. If the average person had to write a perfectly spelled, perfectly grammatical sentence using only specific hand-picked words in order to be understood, then mass literacy would be impossible.

If you misspell something, the computer will say 'huh?' and throw syntax error. You'll go back to your history, find your typo and be on your way. This is really not beyond most people.

Anyways, with tab completion, people should hardly ever be making errors unless they already know the commands by heart.

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