The one that Slashdotters might remember is the Transmeta website.
The of course there is Ginger, which was the Segway, which is just an expensive scooter.
When I lived in Charlottesville, VA there was a several month campaign of "the connosiers are coming". When they came, it was a "club" where you paid a flat fee and got discounts at local restaurants.
The pattern with this kind of thing is that it's always anti-climactic. The same thing goes for song count-downs on the radio. Oh. Stairway to Heaven wins again. Even when that doesn't happen, whatever song does win is always a letdown. I think it's just human nature. It always seemed to me that David Letterman's 3 or 4 was funnier than the number 1 on his top ten. Was that on purpose, or is number 1 always a let down? I guess the way to test that would be to have Letterman tape several versions of his top 10, show them to different audiences and ask them if they thought number 1 really belonged. The problem with that is that "delivery" is an important part of comedy, and I suppose that "deliver" is an important part of other information too. In other words, "metadata" is "data" or as an earlier generation used to say, "the medium is the message". In this case, the guy just transmitted nothing but metadata, and I think the results were not too surprising. In the absence of data, people attach the metadata to the context, in this case, our current climate of paranoia and fear provided the context.
What makes an "up-front" cost so bad, is the opportunity cost of doing that. The money you don't spend burying the lines can be spent building out more, or it can be put to work on other projects or investments. You gamble that the lines won't get blown down, but if you spend the money to bury them, your odds of winning the wager are zero! At least with the cheaper above-groud solution, the odds are pretty good that the lines will stay up for years.
The other assumption people are making is that putting them under ground is really better. Yeah, they don't blow down, but wind isn't the only force of nature. Gas and water lines are underground, and they still have to be serviced. It's not like, "put the lines underground, forget about them". You've got water infiltration, frost heave, seismic shifts, etc.
Also, it's bad enough when water or gas come flying out of the ground. When electricity gets loose underground, it can do wierd things. I remember hearing about something where such "leaking current" was shocking cattle on a guy's farm, and IIRC it killed some.
While Warren may trust Bill and Melinda to use the money wisely (he is older and probably anticipates dying before them), what happens when Bill and Melinda are gone too? What do we end up with? Well, we could end up with another Ford Foundation. In other words, it could end up straying from some of the common-sense approaches applied now, such as distributing mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It could degenerate into an organization with a questionable agenda, or an organization that simply parcels out donations to other orgs, the primary results of which are (though probably not intentionally) to finance the lifestyles of the "chattering class" in Washington DC and various other world capitols. So, Bill and Melinda, while you still have time, you need to figure out a way to keep that from happening. Poor people can't eat UN studies, and no "blue ribbon commission" ever swatted a single mosquito. When the visionaries pass on, it's inevitable that the committees take over. Maybe that's why Carnegie built libraries in his own lifetime. Today, many are still in use, and there's only so much lunacy that can take place in a building, whereas a monied organization can create no end of politically-oriented drivel.
I already knew about the flash thing, because the other day I had to get the latest version to view some web art. I can't recall exactly what else tried to install Google toolbar, but I know I've seen others. I always say "NO" to Google's spyware. Yeah, yeah. Google is a bunch of intellectuals with high ideals and a philosophy. So was communism.
The only thing that pisses me off more is Quacktime installing iTunes. I've got Yahoo Music Unlimited, I was quite concerned that it would step on my player (fortunately it didn't). All I wanted to do was watch some video, and I had to download the whole stinkin' iTunes player I'm never going to use. Bite me! It was roughly 50 megs. Good thing I'm getting 4-6 Mbps with cable.
So. This isn't just a Google problem. It's an industry-wide problem. I'm not sure who to blame. Perhaps these people are putting download stats in quarterly reports, and I've just added one more iTunes download to that report. Well, Apple shareholders, not only is that report bogus, I am also that much more annoyed at Apple and that much less inclined ever to buy their over-priced overly-proprietary sweatshop labor crap. Put that in your quarterly report!
Didn't sound like something good anyway
on
WinFS Gets the Axe
·
· Score: 1
When I first heard about it, the idea of replacing the file system with a DB didn't really sound that cool. General-purpose DBs are just that... general purpose. A file system is a special purpose DB for files, and everybody has been working on them for years. At the end of the day, I still want to be able to open a file. I write C. If I couldn't use fopen() on the new OS I would have been pissed. So, somebody would have had to come up with a way to layer a traditional file system on the DB file system, or am I displaying ignorance here?
Maybe using a general purpose DB for the metadata tree would have made sense--if you already have a powerful general-purpose DB lying around and built into the OS. At the end of the day though, you still want your files--your JPEGs, your MP3s, whatever.
In other words, I just didn't see what all the fuss was when it was suggested, and now that this silly idea is out, it doesn't sound like something I'd miss. Oh, and I also seem to recall being concerned that it might make it impossible to write software for the OS without using proprietary APIs, or to transfer data out of a MS environment without turning the data into... ordinary files! The "file" paradigm is such an entrenched idea, replacing "file" with "data in a database" just makes no sense... especially with MS and their tendancy to muck up formats.
This is nothing. Just wait until companies start trying to squeeze the internet garden hose in ways that it wasn't meant to be squeezed. We'll get an object lesson in "the internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it". A network that doesn't route IP in a standard way will, justifiably, be perceived as damaged. Throw hackers/crackers, offshore proxies, ad-hoc wireless networks (in legal and illegal varieties) into the mix and it'll make the file-sharing wars look tame.
Gentleman, start your un-capped cable-modem MAC-spoofing wireless gateways!
If we're lucky, the suits will kill enough golden geese to spark the kind of real innovation that will drive the incumbent telcos almost totally out of business. Somebody still has to provide reliable E911, but if we could segment that off, then the rest could be done so cheaply there wouldn't be any need to meter it.
Allow me to introduce you to something called "marginal rate of return". As an employer hires each additional person, the rate of return from "investing" in a new hire decreases. At some point it reaches an equilibrium where hiring another person doesn't provide enough return to justify the cost. Apparently, CL reached that equilibrium at 21.
In more real terms: When they were burning midnight oil all the time with 10 people, hire number 11 was a godsend. Hires 19 and 20 might have made the difference between staying until 6 every night and going home at 5. Extra hires would probably spend too much time twiddling their thumbs, or advocating for a "more aggressive marketing strategy" so that they could hire more suits to decide what kind of banner ads to run. That's exactly what they don't want.
The 500-person organizations you see, how often are they profitable? If they aren't profitable, those 500 people are just contributing to the "burn rate" supplied by VCs or the Street. If they are profitable, I wager they hired more people because the ones they had were putting in too much overtime.
In rapidly developing Fairfax County, VA where I grew up, a two-lane road was widened to 4 lanes in both directions. The original traffic light system which allowed left turning traffic to yield to oncoming traffic was left in place. The road may also have been slightly regraded in the process so that left-turners sometimes had little time to react to speeders coming up a hill.
For several months, perhaps even a couple years, metal-crumpling accidents seemed like a weekly occurance. The signals were eventually changed so that left-turns could only be legally made with a green arrow. The intersection is stil dangerous, but not nearly as much.
I would be surprised if most Americans didn't have a similar story about some road or intersection that's well known to be accident prone and fixable with the proper lights or signage.
Because we've locked up so many of the wrong people, the deterrent has been diluted. Maybe someone would think twice about holding up a 7-11 at gunpoint if we had enough free cells to put then away for a good 10-20 years. Armed robbers, rapists, child molesters, murderers, etc. have been displaced by too many non-violent "offenders". The deterrent has been diluted.
This got me curious. It's not as bad as I thought it was, but it is getting worse: More than 50% of the people in prison are non-violent. It looks like we could double the time served by violent offenders then, just by de-criminalizing drugs.
You and the other poster both make a valid point. I suppose it's a judgement call. If somebody walks out on a check at a restaurant once, there's a good chance they can pay that back. Obviously spending $40,000 to keep such a person incarcerated for a year is ludicrous. OTOH, if somebody steals at the rate of $10,000/month and isn't expected to earn more than $20,000/yr at honest work, then the Public saves money spending $40,000/yr incarcerating them. Then it makes sense.
IMHO, the purpose of the criminal justice system is not to punish. Let that sink in. I don't want to punish criminals. It's stupid. It's vindictive. It's emotional and it isn't constructive.
What SHOULD be the purpose of the justice system? One thing, and one thing only:
To separate dangerous individuals from society, and keep them separated.
Note, by "dangerous" I mean physicly harmful only. I don't mean, "they don't live like we think they should". I don't mean "they stole a lot of money". Yes. That's right. Thieves don't belong in jail unless they hurt people physicly. If the crime is monetary, there is an excellent argument for RESTITUTION in the form of fines and wage garnishment. There is no good argument for SEPARATION unless the guy waved a gun in somebody's face to get the money.
I may not *like* the Enron criminals, but wouldn't mind living next door to them. These guys are not going to stick a gun in my face and BLOW MY HEAD OFF. They are (probably) not going to rape my children.
Get it, government idiots?
Some guy who plays online poker and smokes weed on the weekends does not belong in jail. If you want to tax the weed and the poker, fine but I am SICK AND TIRED of my government setting child rapists and armed thugs free so they can put functional members of society behind bars because of their particular notions regarding crime and punishment. Frankly, that kid of life sounds like enough punishment.
They should have blasted IE4 -- the first IE that really muckled itself into the OS. Install IE-4 on the user's machine, and run the risk of trashing their whole OS. I saw it happen in tech support, and it led to the whole mishmash of exploits that allowed IE to get into Windows and mess up your box. The integration is better now, but the idea remains suspect.
The whole list looks whacked. AOL may not be something I would ever use, but "worst tech product???". It's an intro to the web for newbies. That doesn't make it "bad tech".
Navy Federal Credit Union, but don't despair. Bankrate.com lists several that pay higher rates. Bankrate is pretty good at weeding out the intro rates from the ones that pay high rates more consistantly. Of course, all of them are adjustable. I'm also getting 4.5% from Emigrant Direct. No minimum deposit, open to everybody. IIRC, I deposited there when they were at 3.5, and they've been keeping up with the Fed pretty well.
I have a credit union where I can deposit into an FDIC insured money market at 4.32%. If I like, I can purchase CDs for upwards of 5% if I'm willing to lock in (which I'm not given the historicly low rates, but that's beside the point). If I'm willing to undertake more risk, I know some funds that deal in mortgage-backed securities. No FDIC insurance, but returns more than 6%. Nevermind those, though. Let's just think about how the credit union works.
The CU borrows money from me at 4.32% and loans it out at high 5s to low 6 percent, depending on the type of loan. They make money on the spread. Until the P2P plan can provide me with a comparable rate of return, and loan people money at comparable rates, they ain't gettin deposits from me, and I'm not borrowing from them. Worse yet, for consumer devices like an iPod, retailers often provide the loans as loss-leaders at 0%. There doesn't seem to be much room for an upstart here, but I'm willing to be persuaded, if you've got hard figures.
It's bad enough that a component of the "revenge" of the nerds was to demonstrate that they could do as many substances and be as callously promiscuous as the "jocks", but now they have to do a remake of it? The original had enough else going for it that I could look past that negative dimension, which was not the main idea.
Meh. The best revenge is living well, and I'm doing that now. This flick sounds like a "must miss". Isn't anybody coming up with an original idea in Hollywood these days? They just remade The Poseiden Adventure for cyrin' out loud. If they are going to remake something, how about remaking something they screwed up really badly the first time?
The US has held itself back over its continuing collective guilt over ending WWII by using nuclear weapons on Japan
That's way off base. If the US was holding it self back, how do you explain the massive nuclear arsenal we built to counter the Soviet threat during the Cold War? I can tell you what holds back civilian nuclear construction by the US in three words: Three Mile Island.
I was a kid when that happened, but old enough to remember them showing fallout radii on the 6 o'clock news. It was nothing compared to Chernobyl, but the media feeding frenzy that followed firmly etched nuclear power as unsafe in the American mind. The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on The Simpsons isn't something Groening et. al. invented--it's just an exagerated look at the way many Americans feel about nuclear.
Until attitudes change and something is done to reassure the public that new plants can be run safely, we will build no new plants.
Just like a regular book, but harder on the eyes. Possibly unreadable for your children due to obselesence. Can't be read if the batteries fail. If a publisher tried to build these "features" into a regular paperback, and charge more for it, they would be laughed out of the market.
In other words, just because you can apply a technology to something, doesn't mean you should.
It never ceases to amaze me that in relatively simple systems designed by man, people recognize that different inputs will have different results for different systems. Yet, in a far more complicated system designed by Who Knows What or what knows what (depending on your beliefs) people are foolish enough to think they can reduce the determination of optimal input to a simple equation that applies to all the systems. Bolix! Until we actually understand the variations in "hardware" and "software" running on the human systems, and are able to determine the "versions" and "models" in the biological sense, 99% of all medical recommendations like this are just absolute BS. One fo the articles I read on this very study mentioned this, and I thought "well, it's about time the medical community started waking up to this issue.". To be fair, they've recognized many genetic issues for quite some time, but releasing studies with the implicit assumption that everybody can use the results is still all too common.
Slashdot Mirror
The one that Slashdotters might remember is the Transmeta website.
The of course there is Ginger, which was the Segway, which is just an expensive scooter.
When I lived in Charlottesville, VA there was a several month campaign of "the connosiers are coming". When they came, it was a "club" where you paid a flat fee and got discounts at local restaurants.
The pattern with this kind of thing is that it's always anti-climactic. The same thing goes for song count-downs on the radio. Oh. Stairway to Heaven wins again. Even when that doesn't happen, whatever song does win is always a letdown. I think it's just human nature. It always seemed to me that David Letterman's 3 or 4 was funnier than the number 1 on his top ten. Was that on purpose, or is number 1 always a let down? I guess the way to test that would be to have Letterman tape several versions of his top 10, show them to different audiences and ask them if they thought number 1 really belonged. The problem with that is that "delivery" is an important part of comedy, and I suppose that "deliver" is an important part of other information too. In other words, "metadata" is "data" or as an earlier generation used to say, "the medium is the message". In this case, the guy just transmitted nothing but metadata, and I think the results were not too surprising. In the absence of data, people attach the metadata to the context, in this case, our current climate of paranoia and fear provided the context.
What makes an "up-front" cost so bad, is the opportunity cost of doing that. The money you don't spend burying the lines can be spent building out more, or it can be put to work on other projects or investments. You gamble that the lines won't get blown down, but if you spend the money to bury them, your odds of winning the wager are zero! At least with the cheaper above-groud solution, the odds are pretty good that the lines will stay up for years.
The other assumption people are making is that putting them under ground is really better. Yeah, they don't blow down, but wind isn't the only force of nature. Gas and water lines are underground, and they still have to be serviced. It's not like, "put the lines underground, forget about them". You've got water infiltration, frost heave, seismic shifts, etc.
Also, it's bad enough when water or gas come flying out of the ground. When electricity gets loose underground, it can do wierd things. I remember hearing about something where such "leaking current" was shocking cattle on a guy's farm, and IIRC it killed some.
While Warren may trust Bill and Melinda to use the money wisely (he is older and probably anticipates dying before them), what happens when Bill and Melinda are gone too? What do we end up with? Well, we could end up with another Ford Foundation. In other words, it could end up straying from some of the common-sense approaches applied now, such as distributing mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It could degenerate into an organization with a questionable agenda, or an organization that simply parcels out donations to other orgs, the primary results of which are (though probably not intentionally) to finance the lifestyles of the "chattering class" in Washington DC and various other world capitols. So, Bill and Melinda, while you still have time, you need to figure out a way to keep that from happening. Poor people can't eat UN studies, and no "blue ribbon commission" ever swatted a single mosquito. When the visionaries pass on, it's inevitable that the committees take over. Maybe that's why Carnegie built libraries in his own lifetime. Today, many are still in use, and there's only so much lunacy that can take place in a building, whereas a monied organization can create no end of politically-oriented drivel.
I already knew about the flash thing, because the other day I had to get the latest version to view some web art. I can't recall exactly what else tried to install Google toolbar, but I know I've seen others. I always say "NO" to Google's spyware. Yeah, yeah. Google is a bunch of intellectuals with high ideals and a philosophy. So was communism.
The only thing that pisses me off more is Quacktime installing iTunes. I've got Yahoo Music Unlimited, I was quite concerned that it would step on my player (fortunately it didn't). All I wanted to do was watch some video, and I had to download the whole stinkin' iTunes player I'm never going to use. Bite me! It was roughly 50 megs. Good thing I'm getting 4-6 Mbps with cable.
So. This isn't just a Google problem. It's an industry-wide problem. I'm not sure who to blame. Perhaps these people are putting download stats in quarterly reports, and I've just added one more iTunes download to that report. Well, Apple shareholders, not only is that report bogus, I am also that much more annoyed at Apple and that much less inclined ever to buy their over-priced overly-proprietary sweatshop labor crap. Put that in your quarterly report!
When I first heard about it, the idea of replacing the file system with a DB didn't really sound that cool. General-purpose DBs are just that... general purpose. A file system is a special purpose DB for files, and everybody has been working on them for years. At the end of the day, I still want to be able to open a file. I write C. If I couldn't use fopen() on the new OS I would have been pissed. So, somebody would have had to come up with a way to layer a traditional file system on the DB file system, or am I displaying ignorance here?
Maybe using a general purpose DB for the metadata tree would have made sense--if you already have a powerful general-purpose DB lying around and built into the OS. At the end of the day though, you still want your files--your JPEGs, your MP3s, whatever.
In other words, I just didn't see what all the fuss was when it was suggested, and now that this silly idea is out, it doesn't sound like something I'd miss. Oh, and I also seem to recall being concerned that it might make it impossible to write software for the OS without using proprietary APIs, or to transfer data out of a MS environment without turning the data into... ordinary files! The "file" paradigm is such an entrenched idea, replacing "file" with "data in a database" just makes no sense... especially with MS and their tendancy to muck up formats.
This is nothing. Just wait until companies start trying to squeeze the internet garden hose in ways that it wasn't meant to be squeezed. We'll get an object lesson in "the internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it". A network that doesn't route IP in a standard way will, justifiably, be perceived as damaged. Throw hackers/crackers, offshore proxies, ad-hoc wireless networks (in legal and illegal varieties) into the mix and it'll make the file-sharing wars look tame.
Gentleman, start your un-capped cable-modem MAC-spoofing wireless gateways!
If we're lucky, the suits will kill enough golden geese to spark the kind of real innovation that will drive the incumbent telcos almost totally out of business. Somebody still has to provide reliable E911, but if we could segment that off, then the rest could be done so cheaply there wouldn't be any need to meter it.
Enough said.
Allow me to introduce you to something called "marginal rate of return". As an employer hires each additional person, the rate of return from "investing" in a new hire decreases. At some point it reaches an equilibrium where hiring another person doesn't provide enough return to justify the cost. Apparently, CL reached that equilibrium at 21.
In more real terms: When they were burning midnight oil all the time with 10 people, hire number 11 was a godsend. Hires 19 and 20 might have made the difference between staying until 6 every night and going home at 5. Extra hires would probably spend too much time twiddling their thumbs, or advocating for a "more aggressive marketing strategy" so that they could hire more suits to decide what kind of banner ads to run. That's exactly what they don't want.
The 500-person organizations you see, how often are they profitable? If they aren't profitable, those 500 people are just contributing to the "burn rate" supplied by VCs or the Street. If they are profitable, I wager they hired more people because the ones they had were putting in too much overtime.
Yes. But that's OK because Slashdot looks like crap now and nobody is going to use it. It should all balance out.
In rapidly developing Fairfax County, VA where I grew up, a two-lane road was widened to 4 lanes in both directions. The original traffic light system which allowed left turning traffic to yield to oncoming traffic was left in place. The road may also have been slightly regraded in the process so that left-turners sometimes had little time to react to speeders coming up a hill.
For several months, perhaps even a couple years, metal-crumpling accidents seemed like a weekly occurance. The signals were eventually changed so that left-turns could only be legally made with a green arrow. The intersection is stil dangerous, but not nearly as much.
I would be surprised if most Americans didn't have a similar story about some road or intersection that's well known to be accident prone and fixable with the proper lights or signage.
I meant kind of life. Then again, a "kid" you didn't mean to have is punishment too.
Because we've locked up so many of the wrong people, the deterrent has been diluted. Maybe someone would think twice about holding up a 7-11 at gunpoint if we had enough free cells to put then away for a good 10-20 years. Armed robbers, rapists, child molesters, murderers, etc. have been displaced by too many non-violent "offenders". The deterrent has been diluted.
This got me curious. It's not as bad as I thought it was, but it is getting worse: More than 50% of the people in prison are non-violent. It looks like we could double the time served by violent offenders then, just by de-criminalizing drugs.
You and the other poster both make a valid point. I suppose it's a judgement call. If somebody walks out on a check at a restaurant once, there's a good chance they can pay that back. Obviously spending $40,000 to keep such a person incarcerated for a year is ludicrous. OTOH, if somebody steals at the rate of $10,000/month and isn't expected to earn more than $20,000/yr at honest work, then the Public saves money spending $40,000/yr incarcerating them. Then it makes sense.
IMHO, the purpose of the criminal justice system is not to punish. Let that sink in. I don't want to punish criminals. It's stupid. It's vindictive. It's emotional and it isn't constructive.
What SHOULD be the purpose of the justice system? One thing, and one thing only:
To separate dangerous individuals from society, and keep them separated.
Note, by "dangerous" I mean physicly harmful only. I don't mean, "they don't live like we think they should". I don't mean "they stole a lot of money". Yes. That's right. Thieves don't belong in jail unless they hurt people physicly. If the crime is monetary, there is an excellent argument for RESTITUTION in the form of fines and wage garnishment. There is no good argument for SEPARATION unless the guy waved a gun in somebody's face to get the money.
I may not *like* the Enron criminals, but wouldn't mind living next door to them. These guys are not going to stick a gun in my face and BLOW MY HEAD OFF. They are (probably) not going to rape my children.
Get it, government idiots?
Some guy who plays online poker and smokes weed on the weekends does not belong in jail. If you want to tax the weed and the poker, fine but I am SICK AND TIRED of my government setting child rapists and armed thugs free so they can put functional members of society behind bars because of their particular notions regarding crime and punishment. Frankly, that kid of life sounds like enough punishment.
They should have blasted IE4 -- the first IE that really muckled itself into the OS. Install IE-4 on the user's machine, and run the risk of trashing their whole OS. I saw it happen in tech support, and it led to the whole mishmash of exploits that allowed IE to get into Windows and mess up your box. The integration is better now, but the idea remains suspect.
The whole list looks whacked. AOL may not be something I would ever use, but "worst tech product???". It's an intro to the web for newbies. That doesn't make it "bad tech".
What if something that was almost a chicken gave live-birth to something that was a chicken, which laid an egg?
Navy Federal Credit Union, but don't despair. Bankrate.com lists several that pay higher rates. Bankrate is pretty good at weeding out the intro rates from the ones that pay high rates more consistantly. Of course, all of them are adjustable. I'm also getting 4.5% from Emigrant Direct. No minimum deposit, open to everybody. IIRC, I deposited there when they were at 3.5, and they've been keeping up with the Fed pretty well.
I have a credit union where I can deposit into an FDIC insured money market at 4.32%. If I like, I can purchase CDs for upwards of 5% if I'm willing to lock in (which I'm not given the historicly low rates, but that's beside the point). If I'm willing to undertake more risk, I know some funds that deal in mortgage-backed securities. No FDIC insurance, but returns more than 6%. Nevermind those, though. Let's just think about how the credit union works.
The CU borrows money from me at 4.32% and loans it out at high 5s to low 6 percent, depending on the type of loan. They make money on the spread. Until the P2P plan can provide me with a comparable rate of return, and loan people money at comparable rates, they ain't gettin deposits from me, and I'm not borrowing from them. Worse yet, for consumer devices like an iPod, retailers often provide the loans as loss-leaders at 0%. There doesn't seem to be much room for an upstart here, but I'm willing to be persuaded, if you've got hard figures.
So. Sell me.
To be fair, I didn't have the quote down quite right. It took me a while to find it
Get a grip. There is no two.
How many gallons to the mile does this get? No, that's not a typo.
It's bad enough that a component of the "revenge" of the nerds was to demonstrate that they could do as many substances and be as callously promiscuous as the "jocks", but now they have to do a remake of it? The original had enough else going for it that I could look past that negative dimension, which was not the main idea.
Meh. The best revenge is living well, and I'm doing that now. This flick sounds like a "must miss". Isn't anybody coming up with an original idea in Hollywood these days? They just remade The Poseiden Adventure for cyrin' out loud. If they are going to remake something, how about remaking something they screwed up really badly the first time?
The US has held itself back over its continuing collective guilt over ending WWII by using nuclear weapons on Japan
That's way off base. If the US was holding it self back, how do you explain the massive nuclear arsenal we built to counter the Soviet threat during the Cold War? I can tell you what holds back civilian nuclear construction by the US in three words: Three Mile Island.
I was a kid when that happened, but old enough to remember them showing fallout radii on the 6 o'clock news. It was nothing compared to Chernobyl, but the media feeding frenzy that followed firmly etched nuclear power as unsafe in the American mind. The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on The Simpsons isn't something Groening et. al. invented--it's just an exagerated look at the way many Americans feel about nuclear.
Until attitudes change and something is done to reassure the public that new plants can be run safely, we will build no new plants.
Just like a regular book, but harder on the eyes. Possibly unreadable for your children due to obselesence. Can't be read if the batteries fail. If a publisher tried to build these "features" into a regular paperback, and charge more for it, they would be laughed out of the market.
In other words, just because you can apply a technology to something, doesn't mean you should.
It never ceases to amaze me that in relatively simple systems designed by man, people recognize that different inputs will have different results for different systems. Yet, in a far more complicated system designed by Who Knows What or what knows what (depending on your beliefs) people are foolish enough to think they can reduce the determination of optimal input to a simple equation that applies to all the systems. Bolix! Until we actually understand the variations in "hardware" and "software" running on the human systems, and are able to determine the "versions" and "models" in the biological sense, 99% of all medical recommendations like this are just absolute BS. One fo the articles I read on this very study mentioned this, and I thought "well, it's about time the medical community started waking up to this issue.". To be fair, they've recognized many genetic issues for quite some time, but releasing studies with the implicit assumption that everybody can use the results is still all too common.