You can't just copy your competitor and expect their userbase to come back to you, and why would they when they already have what they want with Snapchat? You need new ideas, and I don't think Facebook is capable of that if all they can do to fight back is steal other peoples' ideas.

Rewriting the code in another language is a costly endeavor, especially since the existing COBOL is being used in mission-critical environments. Introducing a port in a completely different language throws away 30 years or more of bug fixes that have gone toward making the existing systems extremely robust. The replacement software needs to be bulletproof before deployment, and the costs of creating software that solid can be downright absurd.

COBOL programming knowledge is going to be a very profitable niche for some time to come, especially if you have solid experience in other suitable languages if and when those systems are rewritten. I've considered learning it myself.

It makes the scale of the game space look more impressive to people that don't understand scientific notation. That's a *lot* of zeroes.

Someone over at Google needs to port AlphaGo to Go so someone can play a Go-based version of Go while they go.

Wow, I bet your parents are proud of you.

A company wants to try to make their product work better on your OS, and you tell them to fuck off? Why am I not surprised?

Enjoy your ideological win. Likewise, enjoy your permanent relegation to second class status in the desktop OS world. Nvidia certainly won't cry themselves to sleep if their drivers don't work as well under Linux as they'd like. It's not as if losing the few thousand video card sales (integrated and discrete) that are made to desktop Linux users would affect their bottom line much.

Yeah, it would probably end up being something that's better and more usable than Linux.

My guess is they'll eventually give up and stop giving the Linux community drivers at all. Considering how small the market is, and how ungrateful the recipients are, I doubt they'll worry too much about any drop in hardware sales.

What it will lead to is *zero* vendor GPU drivers being developed in the open. Who the hell would expose their proprietary code to placate less than one percent of the desktop market share?

GPL zealots are both stupid and clueless. Keep your actions up and you'll be lucky if you have access to accelerated 3D drivers -- even closed-source ones -- five years from now.

Doesn't change the fact that the hard line stance that Linux kernel developers take will relegate your OS of choice to second class citizenship. Enjoy your sub-1% desktop market share - it's not going to get any better than that.

Enjoy your shitty, non-accelerated drivers then. Us Windows users will continue to use *all* the hardware we've paid for.

That's what I'd do. What kind of 'damages' would Alan Cox sue for? It's not like this would lead to any loss in revenue.

Even if Diablo 3 had better art design compared to Torchlight 2 (and I actually think it does, slightly), the very polished, fast paced gameplay of Torchlight 2 makes it the better game overall. By the time I stopped playing D3, it felt like work - I had to grind Inferno to get a chance at decent gear, but my existing gear wasn't good enough to make surviving in Inferno possible. Even when I found gear, the stuff on the auction house was significantly better anyway. Playing Torchlight 2 doesn't feel like work, and the gear drops frequently enough that every kill, and even every broken urn, feels important.

What's with all the Path of Exile shills these days? It's just another shitty free-to-play game that will eventually be forced to switch to the same 'pay to win' model that nearly every other F2P game already has.

With few exceptions, I want to know what a game is going to cost me to play *before* I start playing. Charge me up front - don't make me piss away a few bucks here or a few bucks there to get full enjoyment out of the experience.

Graphics are not my main consideration when looking for a good game to play, and I question the intelligence of anyone who considers the quality of the graphics above anything else.

Good graphics can make a game with solid gameplay even better. However, no amount of graphical polish is going to make up for shitty gameplay. I'll take a good roguelike over a game like Final Fantasy XIII any day.