the NSA is recording everything we all do. now let me know when there's a news story about what we can do about it.
Any privacy document or contract we sign has a couple of provisions for 1) Law Enforcement and 2) Medical reasons. Understand that this is monitoring without warrant, so anything obtained via this method would (theoretically) be inadmissable in court... Bill of Rights blah blah blah. However if someone were to text a serious threat to many lives, wouldn't it be in societies best interests to apprehend the individual before they do something?
If we did away with all government surveillance tomorrow, what would we gain? Peace of mind that some senator and/or some NSA goon somewhere didn't see your ascii boob text to your friend. What would we lose? Oversight on potential criminal activity.
I think the biggest hangups are that all of this was a secret that was kept from the public and that many people are probably only offended because they weren't given a choice and don't want "Big Brother" to keep on eye on them. If you're not engaged in any criminal activity and otherwise only send cat pictures to friends and family, why would you care if the Gov is keeping an eye? What about Google? Facebook? Comcast? Time Warner?
You mean this OpenJDK? The one on Oracle's java.net site?
Download and install the open-source JDK 7 for most popular Linux distributions. If you came here looking for Oracle JDK 7 product binaries for Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X or Windows, which are based largely on the same code, you can download them from java.oracle.com.
Oracle has a strangle-hold on the language, even on the front of OpenJDK's website it tells you to download binaries from Oracle.
Even worse is the fact that those searching through the patents are not experts in the field of the patent, nor can they get schooled up on it in a reasonable time. If you have thousands of patents coming in each day, you can't possibly reasonably compare them to the millions (assuming) that have been granted, at least not with any real detail or distinction. "Yea, but this rectangle has rounded corners!" must have been different enough than all the other electronic boxes they've seen before. What's obvious to a biologist isn't necessarily obvious to a mechanical engineer, after all.
There are a plethora of studies out there tying memory and cognitive function to various things, including diet, sleep, type of learning, etc... Being in my 30's I can empathise with the problem, I just don't seem to pick things up as quickly as I did in my teens and 20's. It's not drastic, but it is noticable.
Some foods have been tied to cognitive function. Read up a little bit here and here. Or do some googling for some more stuff. It's interesting that the traditional american diet of burger and fries is actually a hindrance to memory and brain function. Healthy eating is very important to every component of your life, I just wish I new that when I was in my early 20's.
Exercise is another thing that fuels the brain. I find that when I stop biking/running, my mood goes to crap and I have a harder time sleeping. As my exercise level goes up, everything else gets better. Plenty of research here to back it up.
Different people also learn things in different ways. Looking at learningstyles may help you figure out what works best for you. One thing I learned in undergrad is you don't really understand something until you can:
Define what it is
Defend it's strengths
Attack its flaws
In that same class, the professor told us that if we knew our stuff, there was no way he could trick us. I've applied that same test to those things I really want to remember, and I've found it works great. Repetition in Math never really stuck with me, but when I was finally able to reason about what the equation was actually doing, and understand the strengths and weaknesses (getting into applied math here), I found it was much easier to comprehend and work with.
You could spin your wheels for days trying to figure what works best for you, or to discover that there may be something else going on that needs treatment (i.e. ADD or something) before you're able to progress. It may be worth talking to your primary care and getting a referral to the appropriate specialist.
If proven true in court, this justifies a boycott of Oracle products.
It wasn't the public shaming and mudslinging between Oracle and Google, or the dozens of lawsuits Oracle has brought on with various companies, like those providing Solaris support "illegally", or even the controversies surrounding the company and it's business tactics. No, one racial comment and termination in an at-will state is what's going to cause the boycott.
I am puzzled by this common complaint, that the Mac is a "walled garden" (not talking about iOS). I can write any program (mostly I write posix code in fact), and download any app I like from the web. I am really not sure why the Mac is any more a "walled garden" than Windows is. Arguably less, since things like mail are kept in flat ascii files rather than some proprietary database as does Outlook. Mail speaks ordinary IMAP and POP (and has an adaptation for Gmail's aberrant implementation). The calendar can subscribe to various sources, and apple's in house service exports its data in a standard format. So where's the walled garden?
All you needed to do was a Google Search, and you'd have found things like this. While not being the "you can buy from any store as long as its ours" as you have with iOS, it is quickly going that way. What they are saying is Apple can remotely control which applications/developers are allowed on your Mac by updating a daily database. What's not clear is exactly how that is implemented, presumably it's a daily download on your part.
There's also this, which outlines the EFF perspective on Apples behavior. They are slowly getting more limiting in what they allow their users to do, all in the name of "Security", at the expense of end user freedom. There's also some arguments about the nature of the application development for Apple platforms, including sandboxing (which developers complain limits capability and forces rearchitecting their code), and the registration as a certified developer, for a fee and Apple gets a 30% cut of your sales. It's an evolution to make Mac like a game console, if the only approved source for PS4 games was the Sony Store, and Sony could decide on a whim, or errant bug in one game, to disable a developer and all their games.
I think the problem is the concept of building a really nice gaming rig and then locking it away to your home theater, where it becomes fairly useless as it becomes nothing but a game console and home theater box.
You're right, it does become a console and home theater box. Is that really a bad thing?
I'd like having a console that doesn't need physical media and can have many terabytes of information. I'd like a HTPC that I can use like a TiVo if I wanted (just slap in a TV Tuner card and you're set). Or a HTPC that I can store all my media on, so I can show my friends pictures of the latest vacation while playing whatever music I choose, and not having a dozen people huddle around a desk. I also like having a full-fledged PC that I can use to browse the web, in case I get stuck in a game or want to show some friends some movie I found somewhere, since not everything is on YouTube. Not to mention having it in your living room means those local Co-Op games are now accessible, and so is a more comfortable way of pass-the-controller.
Since a great deal of the console games get released on PC too, you're typically only missing the exclusives for the platform. By all means, get an XBone with Forza and Halo for $600. Then go and get the PS4 with GT and Resistance for $500. I'll spend my $600 on a custom PC and hit up a steam sale and get dozens of games with that last $400.
Remember, a "Gaming PC" here doesn't mean the 4K signal to 3+ monitors, with surround sound, and RAZR gaming peripherals. In the living room, you can get a good home-built steambox for around $600 and another $30 on each controller if you don't already have the wired XB360's, just google "gaming htpc".
And with bigger strides in robotization, this will be mandatory, or else we'll have revolts and heads will literally roll, which would be unpleasant.
I dunno, we could do without a few of the super-high earners. I don't give a crap about Miley, Trump, Turner, or even a few sitting in that great-white daycare on capital hill.
If China has a console then it will get cracked/jail-broke faster and i can get to my homebrew sooner.
I'm more interested in the Super Z-Station VII, the reverse-engineered XBone, PS4, and Wii U in one small box. We haven't had any good Retro-(X) consoles since the SNES/Genesis days. They've got some catching up to do with the N64, GameCube, Wii, XBox (original), XB360, PS1, PS2. Maybe we'll get the SUPER-MEGA POWER-GAME 2100, with all of the systems ever made in one small box for $100.
I agree that wars are horrible, but to say that none are justifiable I think is false. Diplomacy is not perfect and does fail from time to time. Then what are we left with? The advancement of drones and "lethal robots"? Do we have a race to create the best T-800? T-1000?
It's unfortunate that there can be such disagreement and both parties (read: leaders) feel so strongly and are incapable of compromise,that the only resolution is war. Even if both sides were to fight with only drones/robots and the winner being the one with more robots standing (i.e. bloodless), it wouldn't solve the initial disagreement, not when you have a national leader willing to kill his own people to satiate and reinforce his thirst for power. Do you honestly think that given enough political pressure or enough economic loss that Saddam would have stepped down? Ghaddafi? Hitler? Stalin?... We are seeing just how well that works with North Korea right now.
When a society is willing to die for their beleifs, and that beleif is that you are evil simply by your country of origin, how do you make and keep peace? What about a leader willing to kill his people just because they think differently or want more freedoms and opportunities thean the leader is willing to provide? How many bodies would it take before you intervene?
It's not even true "1Gb/s" as they would have you believe. It's notional 500Mb/s down, 500Mb/s up, only on the order of 100m. Considering AT&T says their nodes are more like 300m away, that's still a lot of infrastructure to build out.
Until that competition from Google or FiOS comes to town, you can bet that the local C-men will continue to have nicely padded wallets.
Yeah...the idea that companies make money off of software is absurd. Who cares that a company like Valve spends millions on developing games...they should be free.
You're such a genius!!!
Open source and making money are not mutually exclusive. Here's some proof. BringsApples is commenting on the successful transition away from proprietary file formats and vendor lock-in. MS is a cut-throat competitor and want as many people to buy into their ecosystem as possible, and they do their damnedest to keep them in that ecosystem... by releasing new "latest and greatest, you must have this for security blah blah". Then they limit what is available for that OS, "you can't have Office 2000 anymore!!! Buy 2010 for that Windows 8 machine!". Those prices keep going up. Munich decided enough was enough, and is now a success story in conversion to an open system.
If you want to support your local government spending money on unnecessary HW/SW upgrades, vote "yes" next to every tax increase. I'm sure they'll find a way to spend those dollars.
Considering the engine is open source, I bet you are right. I was looking at a 4-player one-screen setup for my arcade cabinet, similar to the split screen doom1 and doom2 on the doom3 xbox disk. I found dozens of ports and projects, including PrBoom, VanillaDoom, ChocolateDoom, ports to OpenGL, to SDL, ripping the Doom sprites out of the N64 Doom to make custom WAD's. Those are just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. I even played Doom on my old Sprint phone, from 2001. The levels looked like you were wandering through playing cards, but you could still find a caco-demon and 20 button presses later the thing exploded. I even have a port of DOOM on my Nintendo DS (R4 cart).
I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. While not quite a shining example, it's how the national labs are run. Every 5 years the contract is up for rebid, then it falls on that contractors lap to manage all the programs and development until it's time to re-up.
Your typical city doesn't have an army of low-voltage electricians to run it all themselves, so the laydown will be contracted work. All maintenance would be done for some contract term, and the ISP's would compete directly with each other to bring the best prices to consumers. Unfortunately most cities don't have the income to do such a thing, taxpayers don't appreciate tax increases, and the only ones with the money to build that backbone are the ISPs. We've also seen just how accepting of change those behemoth companies are...
The N64 was probably the last decently complete emulator, and you have to go all the way back to the SNES era to get one that is 100% working, every game works, launch and go.
It depends on what you mean by "decently complete emulator", since many of them contain hacks to function correctly on certain games. The n64 alone has at least 5 emulators come and gone, and pj64 I'd contend is roughly 70% complete in terms of the library it can play. The SNES is a different beast altogether and even it isn't 100%. The SuperFX chip really threw a wrench in the works and forced quite a few ugly hacks to just "make it work". That's the whole impetus behind the bsnes project, and even that isn't 100% complete, even though it aims at a complete emulation of every chip in the SNES.
If you want to define "complete emulator" by saying it emulates the underlying architecture, I'd say the only respectables emulators (as far as I know) are whatever "bsnes" turned into, maybe a couple NES emulators, and MAME. It may not be fair to say MAME since it's "Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator", but the whole intent of the project is to document the behavior of various arcade architectures, not to just play games.
Not if the publisher of a particular business-critical application refuses to make it work in Wine, or the manufacturer of a particular business-critical peripheral refuses to provide a Linux driver.
If that publisher sees incentive (i.e. money) or disincentive (i.e. loss of money), they'll play ball. There are Point of Sale systems that work on top of Linux, some medical systems work on Linux, even your cell phone is likely to be based on Linux (Android). I can all but guarantee that if a government body or a sufficiently large corporation say "we love this, but need it to work on that", you'll see motion in that direction. Look at Valve's push to Linux. It's not a blowaway success, but it's certainly stirring things up.
I'm not emulator writer, nor am I an x86 expert, but I'm pretty skeptical about this. If there are any experts out there, feel free to chime in.
The original XBox had a custom Pentium 3 processor clocked at 733Mhz, and to date there haven't been any reasonable emulators for it. There have been a few attempts, but no big successes have been made. Last I checked about 6 months ago, interest was also waning on the development of it.You would think a quad core i7 clocked at 3.2 GHz would run circles around that custom P3, at least fast enough to get the low-level system instructions handled.
The XBox 360 has a custom PowerPC Xenon, and the PS3 has the cell processor. Both are a PPC architecture, which given the clock speeds and variance in instruction set are probably pretty hard to emulate.
With the XB1 and PS4 both running on x86 hardware, we are now beyond the point of consoles being custom hardware (NES on up to Gamecube, PS1-PS3) with custom software, and that barrier for multi-platform release is really just down to contracting. I'd also be interested in seeing what can be done with the XB1 or PS4 software without the MS and Sony imposed restrictions, such as the XBLive profanity blocking. Hell, I may even buy one of my favorite games (Killer Instinct), as long as I'm not subjected to MS monitoring and policing my swearing at friends during our own tournament.
You're forgetting why bands sign to labels to begin with: Advertising.
The record labels are the ones that can (and do) do the legwork to set up and promote concerts, to help design and create the T-shirts, to get the bands name out there for the masses. When the labels die out, there will be a mess of indie and smaller players, and the signal to noise ratio will get worse and worse. Something similar is happening with the games industry right now, there's only a meager handful of AAA games released each year, and lots of indie games.
Of course, this could also be a great thing. I'd much rather get to the steam-sale level of purchases for albums. Dropping $3-5 on a band? why not, check them out. Spending $20 on someone you've never heard of? not likely
Who gives a flashlight app permissions to access location, internet, flash drive, etc?
Only some rooted android phones (or custom ROMs) allow fine-grained access to allow/deny explicit permissions for applications. Every 'droid I've had with T-Mobile and AT&T has not allowed such control by default. Only a select few actually look at the requested permissions before agreeing to install an app, even worse, the android permissions are incredibly vague. "Phone State" means idle/sleep/calling/etc..., but the wording sounds like any app can make calls on your behalf.
Slashdot Mirror
5 girlfriends went to bed alone.
Then we'll have to go out in Tauntauns
FTFY
the NSA is recording everything we all do. now let me know when there's a news story about what we can do about it.
Any privacy document or contract we sign has a couple of provisions for 1) Law Enforcement and 2) Medical reasons. Understand that this is monitoring without warrant, so anything obtained via this method would (theoretically) be inadmissable in court... Bill of Rights blah blah blah. However if someone were to text a serious threat to many lives, wouldn't it be in societies best interests to apprehend the individual before they do something?
If we did away with all government surveillance tomorrow, what would we gain?
Peace of mind that some senator and/or some NSA goon somewhere didn't see your ascii boob text to your friend.
What would we lose? Oversight on potential criminal activity.
I think the biggest hangups are that all of this was a secret that was kept from the public and that many people are probably only offended because they weren't given a choice and don't want "Big Brother" to keep on eye on them. If you're not engaged in any criminal activity and otherwise only send cat pictures to friends and family, why would you care if the Gov is keeping an eye? What about Google? Facebook? Comcast? Time Warner?
I'm pretty sure most employers would speak up if you started showing up to work with your underwear outside your pants/tights.
Download and install the open-source JDK 7 for most popular Linux distributions. If you came here looking for Oracle JDK 7 product binaries for Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X or Windows, which are based largely on the same code, you can download them from java.oracle.com.
Oracle has a strangle-hold on the language, even on the front of OpenJDK's website it tells you to download binaries from Oracle.
Even worse is the fact that those searching through the patents are not experts in the field of the patent, nor can they get schooled up on it in a reasonable time. If you have thousands of patents coming in each day, you can't possibly reasonably compare them to the millions (assuming) that have been granted, at least not with any real detail or distinction. "Yea, but this rectangle has rounded corners!" must have been different enough than all the other electronic boxes they've seen before. What's obvious to a biologist isn't necessarily obvious to a mechanical engineer, after all.
There are a plethora of studies out there tying memory and cognitive function to various things, including diet, sleep, type of learning, etc... Being in my 30's I can empathise with the problem, I just don't seem to pick things up as quickly as I did in my teens and 20's. It's not drastic, but it is noticable.
Some foods have been tied to cognitive function. Read up a little bit here and here. Or do some googling for some more stuff. It's interesting that the traditional american diet of burger and fries is actually a hindrance to memory and brain function. Healthy eating is very important to every component of your life, I just wish I new that when I was in my early 20's.
Exercise is another thing that fuels the brain. I find that when I stop biking/running, my mood goes to crap and I have a harder time sleeping. As my exercise level goes up, everything else gets better. Plenty of research here to back it up.
Different people also learn things in different ways. Looking at learning styles may help you figure out what works best for you. One thing I learned in undergrad is you don't really understand something until you can:
In that same class, the professor told us that if we knew our stuff, there was no way he could trick us. I've applied that same test to those things I really want to remember, and I've found it works great. Repetition in Math never really stuck with me, but when I was finally able to reason about what the equation was actually doing, and understand the strengths and weaknesses (getting into applied math here), I found it was much easier to comprehend and work with.
You could spin your wheels for days trying to figure what works best for you, or to discover that there may be something else going on that needs treatment (i.e. ADD or something) before you're able to progress. It may be worth talking to your primary care and getting a referral to the appropriate specialist.
If proven true in court, this justifies a boycott of Oracle products.
It wasn't the public shaming and mudslinging between Oracle and Google, or the dozens of lawsuits Oracle has brought on with various companies, like those providing Solaris support "illegally", or even the controversies surrounding the company and it's business tactics. No, one racial comment and termination in an at-will state is what's going to cause the boycott.
...attempts to mimic apple's walled garden...
I am puzzled by this common complaint, that the Mac is a "walled garden" (not talking about iOS). I can write any program (mostly I write posix code in fact), and download any app I like from the web. I am really not sure why the Mac is any more a "walled garden" than Windows is. Arguably less, since things like mail are kept in flat ascii files rather than some proprietary database as does Outlook. Mail speaks ordinary IMAP and POP (and has an adaptation for Gmail's aberrant implementation). The calendar can subscribe to various sources, and apple's in house service exports its data in a standard format. So where's the walled garden?
All you needed to do was a Google Search, and you'd have found things like this. While not being the "you can buy from any store as long as its ours" as you have with iOS, it is quickly going that way. What they are saying is Apple can remotely control which applications/developers are allowed on your Mac by updating a daily database. What's not clear is exactly how that is implemented, presumably it's a daily download on your part.
There's also this, which outlines the EFF perspective on Apples behavior. They are slowly getting more limiting in what they allow their users to do, all in the name of "Security", at the expense of end user freedom. There's also some arguments about the nature of the application development for Apple platforms, including sandboxing (which developers complain limits capability and forces rearchitecting their code), and the registration as a certified developer, for a fee and Apple gets a 30% cut of your sales. It's an evolution to make Mac like a game console, if the only approved source for PS4 games was the Sony Store, and Sony could decide on a whim, or errant bug in one game, to disable a developer and all their games.
You're thinking about writing a letter. Would you like help?
You're thinking about writing a letter. Would you like help?
You're thinking about taking a sledgehammer to your computer. Would you like to know where the nearest hardware store is?
I think the problem is the concept of building a really nice gaming rig and then locking it away to your home theater, where it becomes fairly useless as it becomes nothing but a game console and home theater box.
You're right, it does become a console and home theater box. Is that really a bad thing?
I'd like having a console that doesn't need physical media and can have many terabytes of information. I'd like a HTPC that I can use like a TiVo if I wanted (just slap in a TV Tuner card and you're set). Or a HTPC that I can store all my media on, so I can show my friends pictures of the latest vacation while playing whatever music I choose, and not having a dozen people huddle around a desk. I also like having a full-fledged PC that I can use to browse the web, in case I get stuck in a game or want to show some friends some movie I found somewhere, since not everything is on YouTube. Not to mention having it in your living room means those local Co-Op games are now accessible, and so is a more comfortable way of pass-the-controller.
Since a great deal of the console games get released on PC too, you're typically only missing the exclusives for the platform. By all means, get an XBone with Forza and Halo for $600. Then go and get the PS4 with GT and Resistance for $500. I'll spend my $600 on a custom PC and hit up a steam sale and get dozens of games with that last $400.
Remember, a "Gaming PC" here doesn't mean the 4K signal to 3+ monitors, with surround sound, and RAZR gaming peripherals. In the living room, you can get a good home-built steambox for around $600 and another $30 on each controller if you don't already have the wired XB360's, just google "gaming htpc".
And with bigger strides in robotization, this will be mandatory, or else we'll have revolts and heads will literally roll, which would be unpleasant.
I dunno, we could do without a few of the super-high earners. I don't give a crap about Miley, Trump, Turner, or even a few sitting in that great-white daycare on capital hill.
If China has a console then it will get cracked/jail-broke faster and i can get to my homebrew sooner.
I'm more interested in the Super Z-Station VII, the reverse-engineered XBone, PS4, and Wii U in one small box. We haven't had any good Retro-(X) consoles since the SNES/Genesis days. They've got some catching up to do with the N64, GameCube, Wii, XBox (original), XB360, PS1, PS2. Maybe we'll get the SUPER-MEGA POWER-GAME 2100, with all of the systems ever made in one small box for $100.
There are no justifiable wars.
I agree that wars are horrible, but to say that none are justifiable I think is false. Diplomacy is not perfect and does fail from time to time. Then what are we left with? The advancement of drones and "lethal robots"? Do we have a race to create the best T-800? T-1000?
It's unfortunate that there can be such disagreement and both parties (read: leaders) feel so strongly and are incapable of compromise,that the only resolution is war. Even if both sides were to fight with only drones/robots and the winner being the one with more robots standing (i.e. bloodless), it wouldn't solve the initial disagreement, not when you have a national leader willing to kill his own people to satiate and reinforce his thirst for power. Do you honestly think that given enough political pressure or enough economic loss that Saddam would have stepped down? Ghaddafi? Hitler? Stalin?... We are seeing just how well that works with North Korea right now.
When a society is willing to die for their beleifs, and that beleif is that you are evil simply by your country of origin, how do you make and keep peace? What about a leader willing to kill his people just because they think differently or want more freedoms and opportunities thean the leader is willing to provide? How many bodies would it take before you intervene?
It's not even true "1Gb/s" as they would have you believe. It's notional 500Mb/s down, 500Mb/s up, only on the order of 100m. Considering AT&T says their nodes are more like 300m away, that's still a lot of infrastructure to build out.
Until that competition from Google or FiOS comes to town, you can bet that the local C-men will continue to have nicely padded wallets.
Yeah...the idea that companies make money off of software is absurd. Who cares that a company like Valve spends millions on developing games...they should be free.
You're such a genius!!!
Open source and making money are not mutually exclusive. Here's some proof. BringsApples is commenting on the successful transition away from proprietary file formats and vendor lock-in. MS is a cut-throat competitor and want as many people to buy into their ecosystem as possible, and they do their damnedest to keep them in that ecosystem... by releasing new "latest and greatest, you must have this for security blah blah". Then they limit what is available for that OS, "you can't have Office 2000 anymore!!! Buy 2010 for that Windows 8 machine!". Those prices keep going up. Munich decided enough was enough, and is now a success story in conversion to an open system.
If you want to support your local government spending money on unnecessary HW/SW upgrades, vote "yes" next to every tax increase. I'm sure they'll find a way to spend those dollars.
This kind of thing is outright theft so let's hope others start to think twice before outsourcing to India.
But then who will answer all my technical support questions?
If your dad was a hobo or only ate bratwurst, I might worry, but otherwise you're getting in a panic for no reason.
This explains Packers and Bears fans.
Considering the engine is open source, I bet you are right. I was looking at a 4-player one-screen setup for my arcade cabinet, similar to the split screen doom1 and doom2 on the doom3 xbox disk. I found dozens of ports and projects, including PrBoom, VanillaDoom, ChocolateDoom, ports to OpenGL, to SDL, ripping the Doom sprites out of the N64 Doom to make custom WAD's. Those are just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. I even played Doom on my old Sprint phone, from 2001. The levels looked like you were wandering through playing cards, but you could still find a caco-demon and 20 button presses later the thing exploded. I even have a port of DOOM on my Nintendo DS (R4 cart).
I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. While not quite a shining example, it's how the national labs are run. Every 5 years the contract is up for rebid, then it falls on that contractors lap to manage all the programs and development until it's time to re-up.
Your typical city doesn't have an army of low-voltage electricians to run it all themselves, so the laydown will be contracted work. All maintenance would be done for some contract term, and the ISP's would compete directly with each other to bring the best prices to consumers. Unfortunately most cities don't have the income to do such a thing, taxpayers don't appreciate tax increases, and the only ones with the money to build that backbone are the ISPs. We've also seen just how accepting of change those behemoth companies are...
The N64 was probably the last decently complete emulator, and you have to go all the way back to the SNES era to get one that is 100% working, every game works, launch and go.
It depends on what you mean by "decently complete emulator", since many of them contain hacks to function correctly on certain games. The n64 alone has at least 5 emulators come and gone, and pj64 I'd contend is roughly 70% complete in terms of the library it can play. The SNES is a different beast altogether and even it isn't 100%. The SuperFX chip really threw a wrench in the works and forced quite a few ugly hacks to just "make it work". That's the whole impetus behind the bsnes project, and even that isn't 100% complete, even though it aims at a complete emulation of every chip in the SNES.
If you want to define "complete emulator" by saying it emulates the underlying architecture, I'd say the only respectables emulators (as far as I know) are whatever "bsnes" turned into, maybe a couple NES emulators, and MAME. It may not be fair to say MAME since it's "Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator", but the whole intent of the project is to document the behavior of various arcade architectures, not to just play games.
Linux is always an alternative.
Not if the publisher of a particular business-critical application refuses to make it work in Wine, or the manufacturer of a particular business-critical peripheral refuses to provide a Linux driver.
If that publisher sees incentive (i.e. money) or disincentive (i.e. loss of money), they'll play ball. There are Point of Sale systems that work on top of Linux, some medical systems work on Linux, even your cell phone is likely to be based on Linux (Android). I can all but guarantee that if a government body or a sufficiently large corporation say "we love this, but need it to work on that", you'll see motion in that direction. Look at Valve's push to Linux. It's not a blowaway success, but it's certainly stirring things up.
I'm not emulator writer, nor am I an x86 expert, but I'm pretty skeptical about this. If there are any experts out there, feel free to chime in.
The original XBox had a custom Pentium 3 processor clocked at 733Mhz, and to date there haven't been any reasonable emulators for it. There have been a few attempts, but no big successes have been made. Last I checked about 6 months ago, interest was also waning on the development of it.You would think a quad core i7 clocked at 3.2 GHz would run circles around that custom P3, at least fast enough to get the low-level system instructions handled.
The XBox 360 has a custom PowerPC Xenon, and the PS3 has the cell processor. Both are a PPC architecture, which given the clock speeds and variance in instruction set are probably pretty hard to emulate.
With the XB1 and PS4 both running on x86 hardware, we are now beyond the point of consoles being custom hardware (NES on up to Gamecube, PS1-PS3) with custom software, and that barrier for multi-platform release is really just down to contracting. I'd also be interested in seeing what can be done with the XB1 or PS4 software without the MS and Sony imposed restrictions, such as the XBLive profanity blocking. Hell, I may even buy one of my favorite games (Killer Instinct), as long as I'm not subjected to MS monitoring and policing my swearing at friends during our own tournament.
You're forgetting why bands sign to labels to begin with: Advertising.
The record labels are the ones that can (and do) do the legwork to set up and promote concerts, to help design and create the T-shirts, to get the bands name out there for the masses. When the labels die out, there will be a mess of indie and smaller players, and the signal to noise ratio will get worse and worse. Something similar is happening with the games industry right now, there's only a meager handful of AAA games released each year, and lots of indie games.
Of course, this could also be a great thing. I'd much rather get to the steam-sale level of purchases for albums. Dropping $3-5 on a band? why not, check them out. Spending $20 on someone you've never heard of? not likely
Who gives a flashlight app permissions to access location, internet, flash drive, etc?
Only some rooted android phones (or custom ROMs) allow fine-grained access to allow/deny explicit permissions for applications. Every 'droid I've had with T-Mobile and AT&T has not allowed such control by default. Only a select few actually look at the requested permissions before agreeing to install an app, even worse, the android permissions are incredibly vague. "Phone State" means idle/sleep/calling/etc..., but the wording sounds like any app can make calls on your behalf.