Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting 390

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 25, 2010 @12:26AM from the one-man's-readable dept.

An anonymous reader writes "For years, Microsoft has allowed Visual Studio users to define arbitrary tab widths, often to the dismay of those viewing the resultant code in other editors. With VS 2010, it appears that they have taken the next step of forcing tab width to be the same as the indent size in code. Two-space tabs anyone?"

Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 15, 2010 @07:18AM from the inspiring-internet-outrage-is-a-bad-business-model dept.

Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting: "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."

Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes 362

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 18, 2009 @08:20AM from the or-druid-as-the-case-may-be dept.

A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."

Dad Delivers Baby Using Wiki 249

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @05:29PM from the 9cm-edited dept.

sonamchauhan writes "A Londoner helped his wife deliver their baby by Googling 'how to deliver a baby' on his mobile phone. From the article: 'Today proud Mr Smith said: "The midwife had checked Emma earlier in the day but contractions started up again at about 8pm so we called the midwife to come back. But then everything happened so quickly I realized Emma was going to give birth. I wasn't sure what I was going to do so I just looked up the instructions on the internet using my BlackBerry."'"

Comment Slight dyslexia (Score 2, Funny) 958

by Wolf nipple chips on Wednesday October 07, 2009 @04:16AM (#29667337) Attached to: How many countries have you visited?

Am I the only one that read that first option the wrong way ?

"TV gives me all I need to know about strange porn farts"

*shudders*

The Mice That Didn't Make It 202

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 06, 2009 @04:09PM from the does-anything-beat-a-logitech-marble-mouse? dept.

Harry writes "For every blockbuster of the mouse world (such as Microsoft and Logitech's big sellers) there have been countless mice that flopped, or never made it to market. Mice shaped like pyramids; mice shaped like Mickey; mice that doubled as numeric keypads or phones. Even one that sat on your steering wheel. I've rounded up some evocative patent drawings on twenty notable examples."

Comment Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. (Score 1) 869

by Wolf nipple chips on Monday January 26, 2009 @04:10AM (#26605109) Attached to: Linus Switches From KDE To Gnome

just regard your window manager as a way to launch as many shells as you want.

Clearly you, sir, have not been introduced to the wonderfull world of "screen". Screen indeed does just that but further removes all need for an X window manager.

I especially recommend it when running things over an ssh connection :
- no shinies or flashies: no "-X" at all
- you can launch your commands in screen, "detach" from your session, even kill your ssh connection, then come back later and find your commands still running, with full scrollback history, logs, and whatnots

You'll love it, it's a way of life.