More bullshit FUD from a Fandroid. How the fuck do outright lies like this get modded up? Hate for Apple is like a fucking religion with you shitballs.
Not only do I not have a SmartPhone (le gasp!), but the only SmartPhone SDK I've used was Apple's XCode 3.6.x (not sure of the exact version as it was a while ago).
Interesting i would have thought that with the ! symbol meaning "NOT" the rest of th universe that it would display shopping results for every but amazon.
Just like a UNIX shell script should run using any interpreter but the one on the first line?
Granted, that starts with #! not !, but that's because # introduces a comment in shell script and the first line needs to be commented out so the interpreter doesn't try to run it.
And by 2019, all the browsers on the market may actually support it consistently, just like they did with HTML2, HTML3, HTML4! (that was sarcastic for the sarcasm challenged).
Are you making fun of the fact that Firefox still can't center the text in a table using the <col> element 14 years after HTML 4.0 came out?:|
The one unique thing they did is their backend Web stuff where individual computers, racks, or even entire datacenters could drop offline, but their stuff would stay up. They put redundancy at the top of the stack as opposed to the conventional way of having redundant, quality hardware and having the backend being fairly thin and simple.
How is that any different than what, say, Amazon is doing?
Hell, why not let me edit a text file to change adaptor settings if I want? Text files are easy to backup, easy to script against, easy to work with period. You could even use the silly wizards and dialog boxes while still just writing text files.
If you really want to do it from the command-line, Windows has had netsh for a decade now, which allows you to script and backup network settings.
Because the folks that know how to do that don't want wizards. This is a computer not a fucking magic kingdom. I would much rather edit the text file then guess what home network vs business network means in some wizard.
At the very bottom of that dialog, it tells you this: "if you aren't sure, select Public network."
What does selecting "Public" do? As far as I can tell, it does nothing. Home activates local network file and printer sharing for that adapter. Work asks you to connect to an Active Directory domain.
Windows configures your network device to use DHCP IPv4 and stateless address autoconfiguration IPv6 regardless of which you choose; if you want manual IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, you're going to have to go configure them manually anyway.
Oh, as for traps, I forgot to mention taunt kills.
Each class has a taunt kill on one or more of its weapons which will kill anyone standing in front of them when they use it.
Weapons that have taunt kills are:
The Scout's Sandman and Atomizer bats have the Bonk taunt, which makes the Scout imitate Babe Ruth's famous called shot. At 5 seconds, it's the longest taunt in the game, but it's also the only silent taunt kill in the game... and a hilarious way to kill Snipers that aren't paying attention.
The Soldier's Equalizer and Escape Plan picks both have the Soldier do his Kamikaze taunt, killing all nearby enemies and himself. It's the only taunt kill that can hit people behind the player, but also the only taunt kill that kills the player using it. If the soldier is wearing the Lumbricus Lid hat, this taunt will also make the "Hallelujah, Hallelujah!" sound from Worms.
The Pyro's secondary weapons (except the Scorch Shot) all have the Hadouken taunt, which is an imitation of Ken/Ryu from Street Fighter. It only hits people directly in front of him. At 2 seconds, it's one of the shortest taunt kills in the game.
The Pyro gained two more taunt kills when Meet the Pyro came out. One is for the Rainblower flamethrower. It's a reskin of the normal flamethrower, but it also has a 3-second long taunt kill. The taunt kill has a large rainbow over it only visible to people using a Pyroland item, but is otherwise unseen... although the music for it can still be heard. It hits anything within a small semi-circle in front of the Pyro.
The Pyro's other Meet the Pyro taunt is with the Scorch Shot. The Scorch Shot has the Pyro imitate his scene with it from the Meet the Pyro short. Anyone in close range in front of it will be instant-killed; it acts as a normal Scorch Shot projectile any farther away than that. Note: This is the only taunt kill in the game that uses ammo, which is bad when you consider that Flare Guns only have 16 ammo to start with.
The Demoman's swords (there are like 5 of them) all have the Decapitation taunt, which slices the head off of whomever they hit with it. Takes about 4 seconds, although the kill is at about 3 seconds in.
The Heavy's Fists and Holiday Punch melee weapons have him pull out his fingers like a gun, killing anyone a short range in front of him. The Holiday Punch also forces an enemy to laugh when hit from behind or with a critical hit, so it's common to finish them off with the taunt kill.
The Engineer has the Discord taunt with his Frontier Justice shotgun. He pulls out a guitar, plays a chord, then hits anyone in front of him with it, killing them.
The Engineer also has the Organ Grinder taunt on the Gunslinger melee weapon (which is the one that gives you mini-sentries). He pulls a cord on his robotic arm, which cause it to start spinning, dealing 1 damage per tick to anything in front of him, then instantly killing them at the end of the taunt. Takes about 4 seconds.
The Medic's Ubersaw melee weapon has the Spinal Tap taunt kill. He pulls back his Ubersaw, then after a second or two jabs it forward, killing anyone in front of him and giving him 50% Ubercharge if he hit someone with it.
The Sniper's Huntsman bow has the Skewer taunt kill. He pulls out an arrow and stabs it forward, stunning anyone he hits. This takes about a second. After another second, he pulls it back, killing anyone in front of him (even if they weren't hit by the initial stab). At 2 seconds, this is tied with Hadouken for shortest taunt kill.
The Spy's Knives (except for the Spy-cicle) all have the Fencing taunt kill. The Spy starts doing a fencing maneuver, dealing a small amount of damage for the first two hits, and killing anyone in front of him with the third. Takes about 3 seconds.
Note: These times are all from memory as I can't access the TF2 Wiki from here.
So for those that think TF2 is the same as TF Classic with better graphics I urge you to buy TF Classic on Steam, its cheap, the servers are full of people 24/7, and its a fricking blast and a half. Personally I don't care for TF2 at all, but TF Classic is just a hoot.
No, TF2 isn't TFC. It's a completely different game with a lot of differences in design style. After all, they had nine years to decide what they didn't like about QTF and TFC when designing TF2.
The "cartoonish" graphics and differently accented characters are there so that you can recognize a class by silhouette or sound (except disguised Spies).
Other major changes you're likely to notice sooner than later are: 1. The removal of grenades. 2. The fact that you can walk through teammates, but not enemies. 3. That allied Spies are shown as a Spy wearing a paper mask instead of the enemy they're disguised as.
A large part of the TF2 meta-game is changing your equipment to meet the team's current needs; you can change your loadout in any of your team's respawn rooms or while dead. Just be aware that it will move you to the currently active respawn room (or a random one on maps that have multiple active respawn rooms, such as ctf_2fort).
Also the different traps and grenades make it a VERY different experience, you can fly low but if you don't CYA all it takes is walking around the corner into a trap and BAM!
The removal of grenades from the game was for several reasons.
1. Grenades were very unfriendly to new players who would end up wondering how the heck they just got killed. This is mentioned in the Developer Commentary for TF2's tc_hydro. 2. To stop the "I'm going to die, time to spam grenades in hopes that I hit someone" behavior. This is mentioned in the Developer Commentary for TF2's tc_hydro. 3. To restrict jumping abilities to fewer classes in order to differentiate them from one another. At the current time, these classes have better than normal jumping: The Soldier can rocket jump up to high surfaces. The Demoman can sticky-bomb jump up to high surfaces. The Scout can double, triple (with Force-a-Nature gun or Atomizer bat), or quadruple jump (with Force-a-Nature and Atomizer). If a Medic with a Quick-Fix is healing a Soldier or Demoman, any rocket or sticky-jump forces will be duplicated by the Medic.
Since you mentioned traps... the Demoman can still set traps with his bombs... as an added bonus, his bombs now stick to surfaces so they can be stuck to ceilings and the sides of doors. They also no longer share a clip with the pipe bombs.
Pyros have alternate flamethrowers that encourage ambushing (see: Backburner, Phlogistinator).
The Heavy has the Tomislav minigun that doesn't make any noise when spun up, the Brass Beast minigun that deals a hell of a lot more damage than normal (at least at close range), and the Natascha minigun that slows down anyone it hits. Now, granted each of these has their own downsides over the standard Sasha minigun... Natascha and Tomislav both do less damage, while the Natascha and Brass Beast both take longer to spin up.
Engineers have mini-sentries that build in 4 seconds and repair themselves up to 100% of their health as they build. Meaning that if you can't destroy them in one hit, they will heal themselves. Moving them makes them redeploy in 2 seconds.
Scout and Sniper now both have melee weapons that do bleed damage. The Scout also has a secondary weapon that does bleed damage.
So no, traps aren't gone... but they do require you to change your character's loadout to use them (except for Demoman, which requires that you don't change your loadout).
In TF Classic for example the server host can set up his own MP3s for in game events which can be fricking hilarious. When I got hit 3 times in a row by a turrent gun I got to jear a clip from the AC/DC song "Big Gun" "Big Gun #1, Big Gun kick the hell o
I'm not sure how MS expects to compete here. Every competitor in this field charges $0 for the OS. MS is selling ONLY an OS. I guess they expect hardware manufacturers to eat the cost? It would be a little intriguing if RT and Windows 8 were binary level compatible, but they're not - they just look similar.
...except for Android, which requires you to be a member of the Open Handset Alliance in order to use Android in advertising and any Google-branded apps or GooglePlay app store. Oh, and Google just threatened to boot Acer out of the alliance if Acer continues plans on making a dual-boot device with Aliyun OS.
...except for Apple who prices iOS as part of the device since they're vertically integrated.
Nintendo has always been pretty good at pushing the envelope and being successful.
You mean the last console manufacturer to move to optical media in its consoles? Or are we intentionally forgetting that one?
Or how about the time Sony beat Nintendo to market with analog control sticks? The only problem was that their first analog controller was bulky... the second revision (Dual Analog) looked more like what we know today; it was the precursor to the original DualShock.
Seeing that TFC came out a little after the original Half-Life, I wonder whether there will be a Source port of TFC. Like Fortress Forever but without the bugs and the developers changing the gameplay every week and mistakenly make some classes MUCH stronger than others.
Why wouldn't they just port TF1 rather than TFC if they're going to redo everything anyway?
Then again, both a TF1 or TFC remake would have to compete against the juggernaut that is TF2.
Incidentally, TF2 has one of the problems that you complain about... constantly changing the gameplay. Yet that's what's kept it interesting over the last 5 years: TF2 currently has 10 game modes across 57 official maps (and all sorts of custom maps) and a wide variety of alternate play styles based on being able to swap out your weapons in the respawn room. The stock weapons are generally the most powerful with 4 major exceptions I can think of: Pyro's Flamethrower is inferior to the Rainblower or Degreaser; Pyro's Fire Ax is inferior to the Axtinguisher; Medic's Bonesaw is inferior to the Ubersaw, Amputator, or Solemn Vow; Soldier's Shovel is inferior to the Escape Plan, Equalizer, or Discliplinary Action.
Granted, the last major TF2 update basically added a Killing Floor mode to the game... but it needs special servers to run it since it's restricted to 6 players instead of the usual 24-32.
(Psst, TF2 is free btw if you haven't tried it... you just need a Steam account)
You can't go by just clock speed. A quad-core Core i7 is loads faster than a Phenom II x4, even at lower clock speeds. This is likely taking into account all of the speed improvements in the architecture.
While that is true, this is a newer processor by the same company as the previous processor Nintendo used, rather than by different companies (Intel and AMD in your example).
For that matter, IBM makes the chips in all 3 current generation video game consoles, and as I recall, all 3 are based on the PowerPC line of processors. Heck, the last time, the PS3 and Xbox 360 used different versions of what was essentially the same main processor... the PowerPC 970. The major difference was that the Xbox 360 used a standard triple-core processor while the PS3 used the 970 as a Cell PPE with 8 SPEs (1 unused, 1 for the OS, and 6 for the current game/dashboard).
I'm not exactly sure on what IBM has changed in the PowerPC architecture in the last 7 years... particularly since they've been concentrating on the POWER line instead.
If by "most of the world" you mean "Asia" then you're right.
I don't know about now, but the last time I checked the sales by region, both the United States and Europe had the Xbox 360 as the best selling game console.
I've never heard of VB Studio 97. Visual Studio went from 1-6, then to.NET (2003 is an abberation; it was released to make people forget there was ever a.NET release in 2002), then to year versions from there.
$26.23 for the Kindle eBook, $27.61 for the eBook, and $27.60 used including shipping.
The eBook is priced $1.48 lower than the paper book, but since I don't have a $300 Kindle DX with a large screen (so I can see diagrams, code samples, etc), the eBook is much less useful to me than the paper book.
Does it really cost only $1.48 to print a 700 page paperback book, warehouse it, and ship it?
I bolded and italicized the relevant word in your first paragraph that negates the entire point of your third paragraph.
...and probably some exception handling. It's been a while since I've had to write Swing code in Java.
However, despite looking like native widgets, they really aren't and they behave differently in non-subtle ways (you mean my IME settings don't work in Swing?!). You need SWT for that.
Slashdot Mirror
More bullshit FUD from a Fandroid. How the fuck do outright lies like this get modded up? Hate for Apple is like a fucking religion with you shitballs.
Not only do I not have a SmartPhone (le gasp!), but the only SmartPhone SDK I've used was Apple's XCode 3.6.x (not sure of the exact version as it was a while ago).
Eventually, iOS users who don't want to wait for Apple-Google parity will be able to download native a native version of Google's maps
You mean an application that duplicates the functionality of a built-in app?
You really think Apple is going to allow this in the iOS store?
Always wanted to do a 6 of 9 with her.
That's because she's such a clock tease.
Interesting i would have thought that with the ! symbol meaning "NOT" the rest of th universe that it would display shopping results for every but amazon.
Just like a UNIX shell script should run using any interpreter but the one on the first line?
Granted, that starts with #! not !, but that's because # introduces a comment in shell script and the first line needs to be commented out so the interpreter doesn't try to run it.
Microsoft is urging... users to switch to Bing
In other news, water is wet!
And by 2019, all the browsers on the market may actually support it consistently, just like they did with HTML2, HTML3, HTML4! (that was sarcastic for the sarcasm challenged).
Are you making fun of the fact that Firefox still can't center the text in a table using the <col> element 14 years after HTML 4.0 came out? :|
The one unique thing they did is their backend Web stuff where individual computers, racks, or even entire datacenters could drop offline, but their stuff would stay up. They put redundancy at the top of the stack as opposed to the conventional way of having redundant, quality hardware and having the backend being fairly thin and simple.
How is that any different than what, say, Amazon is doing?
Hell, why not let me edit a text file to change adaptor settings if I want? Text files are easy to backup, easy to script against, easy to work with period. You could even use the silly wizards and dialog boxes while still just writing text files.
If you really want to do it from the command-line, Windows has had netsh for a decade now, which allows you to script and backup network settings.
Just so the GP doesn't have to say it:
*whoosh*
Because the folks that know how to do that don't want wizards. This is a computer not a fucking magic kingdom. I would much rather edit the text file then guess what home network vs business network means in some wizard.
At the very bottom of that dialog, it tells you this:
"if you aren't sure, select Public network."
What does selecting "Public" do? As far as I can tell, it does nothing. Home activates local network file and printer sharing for that adapter. Work asks you to connect to an Active Directory domain.
Windows configures your network device to use DHCP IPv4 and stateless address autoconfiguration IPv6 regardless of which you choose; if you want manual IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, you're going to have to go configure them manually anyway.
Oh, as for traps, I forgot to mention taunt kills.
Each class has a taunt kill on one or more of its weapons which will kill anyone standing in front of them when they use it.
Weapons that have taunt kills are:
The Scout's Sandman and Atomizer bats have the Bonk taunt, which makes the Scout imitate Babe Ruth's famous called shot. At 5 seconds, it's the longest taunt in the game, but it's also the only silent taunt kill in the game... and a hilarious way to kill Snipers that aren't paying attention.
The Soldier's Equalizer and Escape Plan picks both have the Soldier do his Kamikaze taunt, killing all nearby enemies and himself. It's the only taunt kill that can hit people behind the player, but also the only taunt kill that kills the player using it. If the soldier is wearing the Lumbricus Lid hat, this taunt will also make the "Hallelujah, Hallelujah!" sound from Worms.
The Pyro's secondary weapons (except the Scorch Shot) all have the Hadouken taunt, which is an imitation of Ken/Ryu from Street Fighter. It only hits people directly in front of him. At 2 seconds, it's one of the shortest taunt kills in the game.
The Pyro gained two more taunt kills when Meet the Pyro came out. One is for the Rainblower flamethrower. It's a reskin of the normal flamethrower, but it also has a 3-second long taunt kill. The taunt kill has a large rainbow over it only visible to people using a Pyroland item, but is otherwise unseen... although the music for it can still be heard. It hits anything within a small semi-circle in front of the Pyro.
The Pyro's other Meet the Pyro taunt is with the Scorch Shot. The Scorch Shot has the Pyro imitate his scene with it from the Meet the Pyro short. Anyone in close range in front of it will be instant-killed; it acts as a normal Scorch Shot projectile any farther away than that. Note: This is the only taunt kill in the game that uses ammo, which is bad when you consider that Flare Guns only have 16 ammo to start with.
The Demoman's swords (there are like 5 of them) all have the Decapitation taunt, which slices the head off of whomever they hit with it. Takes about 4 seconds, although the kill is at about 3 seconds in.
The Heavy's Fists and Holiday Punch melee weapons have him pull out his fingers like a gun, killing anyone a short range in front of him. The Holiday Punch also forces an enemy to laugh when hit from behind or with a critical hit, so it's common to finish them off with the taunt kill.
The Engineer has the Discord taunt with his Frontier Justice shotgun. He pulls out a guitar, plays a chord, then hits anyone in front of him with it, killing them.
The Engineer also has the Organ Grinder taunt on the Gunslinger melee weapon (which is the one that gives you mini-sentries). He pulls a cord on his robotic arm, which cause it to start spinning, dealing 1 damage per tick to anything in front of him, then instantly killing them at the end of the taunt. Takes about 4 seconds.
The Medic's Ubersaw melee weapon has the Spinal Tap taunt kill. He pulls back his Ubersaw, then after a second or two jabs it forward, killing anyone in front of him and giving him 50% Ubercharge if he hit someone with it.
The Sniper's Huntsman bow has the Skewer taunt kill. He pulls out an arrow and stabs it forward, stunning anyone he hits. This takes about a second. After another second, he pulls it back, killing anyone in front of him (even if they weren't hit by the initial stab). At 2 seconds, this is tied with Hadouken for shortest taunt kill.
The Spy's Knives (except for the Spy-cicle) all have the Fencing taunt kill. The Spy starts doing a fencing maneuver, dealing a small amount of damage for the first two hits, and killing anyone in front of him with the third. Takes about 3 seconds.
Note: These times are all from memory as I can't access the TF2 Wiki from here.
So for those that think TF2 is the same as TF Classic with better graphics I urge you to buy TF Classic on Steam, its cheap, the servers are full of people 24/7, and its a fricking blast and a half. Personally I don't care for TF2 at all, but TF Classic is just a hoot.
No, TF2 isn't TFC. It's a completely different game with a lot of differences in design style. After all, they had nine years to decide what they didn't like about QTF and TFC when designing TF2.
The "cartoonish" graphics and differently accented characters are there so that you can recognize a class by silhouette or sound (except disguised Spies).
Other major changes you're likely to notice sooner than later are:
1. The removal of grenades.
2. The fact that you can walk through teammates, but not enemies.
3. That allied Spies are shown as a Spy wearing a paper mask instead of the enemy they're disguised as.
A large part of the TF2 meta-game is changing your equipment to meet the team's current needs; you can change your loadout in any of your team's respawn rooms or while dead. Just be aware that it will move you to the currently active respawn room (or a random one on maps that have multiple active respawn rooms, such as ctf_2fort).
Also the different traps and grenades make it a VERY different experience, you can fly low but if you don't CYA all it takes is walking around the corner into a trap and BAM!
The removal of grenades from the game was for several reasons.
1. Grenades were very unfriendly to new players who would end up wondering how the heck they just got killed. This is mentioned in the Developer Commentary for TF2's tc_hydro.
2. To stop the "I'm going to die, time to spam grenades in hopes that I hit someone" behavior. This is mentioned in the Developer Commentary for TF2's tc_hydro.
3. To restrict jumping abilities to fewer classes in order to differentiate them from one another. At the current time, these classes have better than normal jumping: The Soldier can rocket jump up to high surfaces. The Demoman can sticky-bomb jump up to high surfaces. The Scout can double, triple (with Force-a-Nature gun or Atomizer bat), or quadruple jump (with Force-a-Nature and Atomizer). If a Medic with a Quick-Fix is healing a Soldier or Demoman, any rocket or sticky-jump forces will be duplicated by the Medic.
Since you mentioned traps... the Demoman can still set traps with his bombs... as an added bonus, his bombs now stick to surfaces so they can be stuck to ceilings and the sides of doors. They also no longer share a clip with the pipe bombs.
Pyros have alternate flamethrowers that encourage ambushing (see: Backburner, Phlogistinator).
The Heavy has the Tomislav minigun that doesn't make any noise when spun up, the Brass Beast minigun that deals a hell of a lot more damage than normal (at least at close range), and the Natascha minigun that slows down anyone it hits. Now, granted each of these has their own downsides over the standard Sasha minigun... Natascha and Tomislav both do less damage, while the Natascha and Brass Beast both take longer to spin up.
Engineers have mini-sentries that build in 4 seconds and repair themselves up to 100% of their health as they build. Meaning that if you can't destroy them in one hit, they will heal themselves. Moving them makes them redeploy in 2 seconds.
Scout and Sniper now both have melee weapons that do bleed damage. The Scout also has a secondary weapon that does bleed damage.
So no, traps aren't gone... but they do require you to change your character's loadout to use them (except for Demoman, which requires that you don't change your loadout).
In TF Classic for example the server host can set up his own MP3s for in game events which can be fricking hilarious. When I got hit 3 times in a row by a turrent gun I got to jear a clip from the AC/DC song "Big Gun" "Big Gun #1, Big Gun kick the hell o
I'm not sure how MS expects to compete here. Every competitor in this field charges $0 for the OS. MS is selling ONLY an OS. I guess they expect hardware manufacturers to eat the cost? It would be a little intriguing if RT and Windows 8 were binary level compatible, but they're not - they just look similar.
...except for Android, which requires you to be a member of the Open Handset Alliance in order to use Android in advertising and any Google-branded apps or GooglePlay app store. Oh, and Google just threatened to boot Acer out of the alliance if Acer continues plans on making a dual-boot device with Aliyun OS.
Eh? This was in dialog, in the middle somewhere. Not in the credits.
No, it's in the Portal 1 end credits song Still Alive, and it's the only place in the game Black Mesa is mentioned by GLaDOS.
Nintendo has always been pretty good at pushing the envelope and being successful.
You mean the last console manufacturer to move to optical media in its consoles? Or are we intentionally forgetting that one?
Or how about the time Sony beat Nintendo to market with analog control sticks? The only problem was that their first analog controller was bulky... the second revision (Dual Analog) looked more like what we know today; it was the precursor to the original DualShock.
Source is the game engine Steam is integrated with. Why does it surprise you that a game (or mod) made in it requires Steam?
Besides which, Steam has been running for 9 years and is making money hand over fist, I doubt it's going to disappear anytime soon.
Seeing that TFC came out a little after the original Half-Life, I wonder whether there will be a Source port of TFC. Like Fortress Forever but without the bugs and the developers changing the gameplay every week and mistakenly make some classes MUCH stronger than others.
Why wouldn't they just port TF1 rather than TFC if they're going to redo everything anyway?
Then again, both a TF1 or TFC remake would have to compete against the juggernaut that is TF2.
Incidentally, TF2 has one of the problems that you complain about... constantly changing the gameplay. Yet that's what's kept it interesting over the last 5 years: TF2 currently has 10 game modes across 57 official maps (and all sorts of custom maps) and a wide variety of alternate play styles based on being able to swap out your weapons in the respawn room. The stock weapons are generally the most powerful with 4 major exceptions I can think of: Pyro's Flamethrower is inferior to the Rainblower or Degreaser; Pyro's Fire Ax is inferior to the Axtinguisher; Medic's Bonesaw is inferior to the Ubersaw, Amputator, or Solemn Vow; Soldier's Shovel is inferior to the Escape Plan, Equalizer, or Discliplinary Action.
Granted, the last major TF2 update basically added a Killing Floor mode to the game... but it needs special servers to run it since it's restricted to 6 players instead of the usual 24-32.
(Psst, TF2 is free btw if you haven't tried it... you just need a Steam account)
You can't go by just clock speed. A quad-core Core i7 is loads faster than a Phenom II x4, even at lower clock speeds. This is likely taking into account all of the speed improvements in the architecture.
While that is true, this is a newer processor by the same company as the previous processor Nintendo used, rather than by different companies (Intel and AMD in your example).
For that matter, IBM makes the chips in all 3 current generation video game consoles, and as I recall, all 3 are based on the PowerPC line of processors. Heck, the last time, the PS3 and Xbox 360 used different versions of what was essentially the same main processor... the PowerPC 970. The major difference was that the Xbox 360 used a standard triple-core processor while the PS3 used the 970 as a Cell PPE with 8 SPEs (1 unused, 1 for the OS, and 6 for the current game/dashboard).
I'm not exactly sure on what IBM has changed in the PowerPC architecture in the last 7 years... particularly since they've been concentrating on the POWER line instead.
If by "most of the world" you mean "Asia" then you're right.
I don't know about now, but the last time I checked the sales by region, both the United States and Europe had the Xbox 360 as the best selling game console.
All that CPU power is almost irrelevant. 2x would be enough. 10x is not different from a 2x from the user perspective.
Considering that the Wii was a single-core 729MHz machine, 20x the power would still only be the equivalent of a 3.6GHz quad-core processor.
That's if 20x wasn't an exaggeration.
Also, consider that the Xbox 360 is a triple-core 3.2Ghz machine that was made 7 years ago and that 3.6GHz quad is only 1.5 times its power.
So, no, 20x faster than the Wii isn't exactly a stellar achievement. That and they've coupled it with 2GB of RAM.
Granted, the RAM is 4x the amount the PS3 and Xbox 360 have, and the PS3 is further crippled by splitting it exactly in half between video and CPU.
VB Studio went 97
I've never heard of VB Studio 97. Visual Studio went from 1-6, then to .NET (2003 is an abberation; it was released to make people forget there was ever a .NET release in 2002), then to year versions from there.
The version checking that was taking place was actually this type:
Which fails on 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0, but not on 5.1 or 6.1.
It was used for applications that would run on Windows XP but not Windows 2000.
$26.23 for the Kindle eBook, $27.61 for the eBook, and $27.60 used including shipping.
The eBook is priced $1.48 lower than the paper book, but since I don't have a $300 Kindle DX with a large screen (so I can see diagrams, code samples, etc), the eBook is much less useful to me than the paper book.
Does it really cost only $1.48 to print a 700 page paperback book, warehouse it, and ship it?
I bolded and italicized the relevant word in your first paragraph that negates the entire point of your third paragraph.
Stores sell milk at a HUGE loss (about $2 a bag here in Canada)
I knew Canada was weird, but you sell milk in a bag?
The bag fits into a plastic container (like this), and then you cut off one of the bag's corners (opposite the container's handle) so you can pour it.
Quality Dairy used to sell milk like this in Michigan until the FDA told them they couldn't do that any more.
It's literally a one-line block of code to make Swing use (what it thinks is) the native GUI look.
...and probably some exception handling. It's been a while since I've had to write Swing code in Java.
However, despite looking like native widgets, they really aren't and they behave differently in non-subtle ways (you mean my IME settings don't work in Swing?!). You need SWT for that.