I probably don't mention GOG.com enough but... Free Game Today.

Go get yours. GOG.com's summer sale has Torchlight for free today (6/18/2013) and a lot of other classic goodies.

You know, Sony made some mistakes in the past. But on this one thing they've got it right:

Really no other way to explain this...

“With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies."

...

Microsoft added "because every Xbox One owner has a broadband connection, developers can create massive, persistent worlds that evolve even when you’re not playing."

Mistake #1: assuming every customer has a broadband connection. Mistake #2: pretty much everything else. I predict brand suicide for the Xbox at this point.

Not unique to Microsoft, BUT... this is kind of a big deal.

It impacts gaming history, it impacts computer history. A lot of history going down the drain because the data can't be read and the platforms to run the code are gone.

This is both intriguing and disturbing... Wi-Fi used as a motion detection device, good enough to catch and analyze individual arm or hand motions.

Microsoft - perhaps happy with the status-quo that left open source groups or software like Start8 filling the void - have let slip that Windows 8.1, aka "blue", doesn't fix the glaring flaws in Windows 8.

But no reason to worry: Infoworld has their back with an ambitious proposal that every Microsoft designer and executive ought to be forced to read.

Lots of reading to do there, but it's well worth it.

Over at PA, Ben Kuchera cheers the death of the used games market.

Ben Kuchera is an idiot, of course. Beyond the fact that pricing dynamics won't work the way he claims, the used market is already a pricing factor for most buyers and tying these games to an Xbox Live account means when MS inevitably shuts down the Xbox Live servers for that generation (just as they did for the original Xbox, just as they will do in 3-4 years for the Xbox 360) all of those games become inoperable. Dead. You didn't purchase at all, all you did was rent and the entire generation of those games will be dead and unplayable to history.

So... quick miniature movie review. I may sit down to do a longer one soon but for now this is where it's at.

Star Trek Into Darkness.

So... first thing. We already know this is a reboot. This is not your mother and father's Star Trek. This is not a TV series, this is not shiny happy utopian-future. Things in the background are different, character motivations are different, some characters actually GET to have motivations now instead of being setpieces. Go with it.

Second thing. Yes, they brought back a villain. Yes, it's exactly who you think it is. Yes, the reveal happens pretty early and no, you won't care. Again: things are different. The federation has gone in a different direction because they got the #$%#$ scared out of them twice and pulled a Brave Sir Robin when Kirk was still in diapers, and have proceeded to go all Sir Lancelot The Homicidally Brave since the destruction of Vulcan.

The Klingon scene is brief but it's good to see them get screen time and it's good to realize they can be a creditable villain again.

Yes, there are shout-outs to fans in this movie. Nods to what has gone before and nods to what is different. You know what? I don't really care. This was a GREAT movie. I enjoyed the heck out of every minute of it. I enjoyed the realization that this isn't going to be the same Trek we've seen before, and I enjoyed the idea that this might, actually, have some chance to start the series getting back to TV where it really belongs.

Go see the movie. Set aside the worries, set aside the "but that's not canon", set aside the differences. Enjoy it for what it is.

Second star to the right, straight on til morning.

Here's an interesting theory on why Microsoft's kernel isn't updated as often as the Linux kernel family is:

See, component owners are generally openly hostile to outside patches: if you're a dev, accepting an outside patch makes your lead angry (due to the need to maintain this patch and to justify in in shiproom the unplanned design change), makes test angry (because test is on the hook for making sure the change doesn't break anything, and you just made work for them), and PM is angry (due to the schedule implications of code churn). There's just no incentive to accept changes from outside your own team. You can always find a reason to say "no", and you have very little incentive to say "yes".

There's also little incentive to create changes in the first place. On linux-kernel, if you improve the performance of directory traversal by a consistent 5%, you're praised and thanked. Here, if you do that and you're not on the object manager team, then even if you do get your code past the Ob owners and into the tree, your own management doesn't care.

Now, this might be inherent to business - after all, Linux doesn't have companies demanding that patches don't break their entire business model.

Story submitted by user Laromicas:

A new version of this glide wrapper is out.
nGlide is a freeware Glide wrapper for Windows and DOS games. It allows you to play 3Dfx games on modern GeForce/Radeon graphics cards. Some of them are Diablo 2, Need for Speed 2-5, Carmageddon 2, Tomb Raider, Turok. All three API versions are supported, Glide 2.1 (glide.dll), Glide 2.4 (glide2x.dll) and Glide 3.0 (glide3x.dll). Glide wrapper also supports high resolution modes.
More information in its web. Link