I don't actually agree with the premise of the article, but your premise is also fucked up. If you are doing iOS apps, you can certainly make your own start up. If you are in the semiconductor industry (as the guy in question is), you simply can't do a start up. To start up a software company you need a coffee machine, your personal PC, and a couple thousand dollars worth of software (if that). To start up a semiconductor fab doing something simple, boring, and low tech, you need a hundred million dollars. The guy in question can't "start his own thing".
Not to shit on iOS apps, but you are talking about the very last fluffy layer of tech. The meat and potatoes of tech is god awfully expensive and so far out of the range of most start ups that it isn't even funny. You could fund literally every single programmer in silicon valley on the capital it takes to make a single 300mm semiconductor fab.
I would really hate to see the American economy devolve to the point where the only thing we are able to grasp at is the fluffy at the top. I am all for entrepreneurship, but some stuff just doesn't lend itself to entrepreneurs. iOS apps are cute and the sort of stuff any idiot with a high school education and some interest and computers can do. The process to make the components that actually go into the hardware that run your cute little iOS app, that is the real engineering that you want to bring in someone with experience for.
You think it was "pretty much paid for"? Are you INSANE? If by "pretty much paid for" you utterly ignore the insane cost of transporting goods and supplies to Japan during war time conditions, the insane cost of the multi-year battle it would take capture the country, and the half a MILLION or so American lives that they expected to lose, to say nothing of the Japanese lives, then, um, yeah... pretty much already paid for.
Fighting for Iwo Jima, an island that was 8 square miles, cost 28,000 casualties (7,000 American and 21,000 Japanese) and took a month, Japan is 150,000 square miles. Seriously.
Further, if you want to talk about immorality, ignore the nukes. The nukes were pocket change. The allies did fire bombing runs that made the nuke attacks look like small potatoes. The only reason why those two cities were picked to be nuked was because the US had made the decision to not firebomb them like they did all the other cities so that they had something interesting to use the nukes on.
Nukes were not the worst atrocities of World War II by any stretch of the imagination. Getting hung up on them is stupid. They were unique in that it was the first time such weapons were used, and the results were far more immediate and dramatic than most atrocities. In terms of actual atrocity though, they don't even score in the top 10. The atrocities that both the US and Japan were willing to commit during a theoretical invasion of Japan would have made the nukes look like an after thought.
Somehow you have convinced yourself that you see hypocrisy. There isn't any. Google set down reasonable rules on how you can link. JC Penny, through another agency, violated those rules and got their rank hurt. Google, through another agency, violated those rules and go their rank hurt.
Google has responded consistently in both cases, even when it is responding to itself. Google isn't some monolith with perfect communication. The right hand did something stupid (hire a shady company and didn't oversee them) and the left hand smacked the right hand for it. This is a good thing.
The reason why people comment on it as being above and beyond kind of cool is that it is Google smacking themselves. It is one things for Google to smack JC Penny. Everyone expects that. It is another thing to smack themselves when one part of the company violates their own rules. This speaks of the quality of the firewall between the search folks and the rest of the company. If Google can confidently smack down its own internal divisions, it leaves you feeling confident that the results are truly as impartial as such a subjective thing can be. Can you honestly see Apple or Microsoft doing such a thing? They would just circle the wagons, justify their actions, and carry on. It is nice to see a touch of corporate integrity, even if it is for the obviously selfish reason of convincing people that Google's search is "fair".
Google considers its reputation to be an asset and guards it like one. It isn't infallible and its reasons for guarding their reputation are clearly selfish and profit motivated, but it is still a good thing. Doing good stuff for selfish reasons is better than acting like an asshole for selfish reasons.
Eh, I normally agree, but I think a smart phone can be different. My smart phone replaced a handful of devices. My Evo replaced my GPS, phone, MP3 player, the need to sync said MP3 player with my computer, the need for a laptop (desktop for power, phone for portability), a printer (no need to print pretty much anything), a notebook, a to-do list, books / squelching boredom of lines implements, uncoupled me from my computer for light computer stuff, and in general makes me a happier person. It isn't like a couch where once you slap down the money and get over the joy of having a shinny new couch you go back to baseline happiness as your brain realizes that it doesn't give a fuck about what the couch looks like it when its ass is planted in it. I think that a smart phone, at least for some people, is an actual permanent boost in your happiness.
Smart phones are one of the very few things that I let violate my "never upgrade rule" on the belief that it is an actual happiness boosting tool. It probably isn't a permanent happiness boost for everyone, but I think for a non-trivial portion of the population it is. Being weary of "upgrading" is a wise idea. Most "upgrades" give you a quick euphoric joy, and then you settle back down to baseline and become pissed if you ever have to downgrade. That is a loss. There do exist things though that make your permanently happier, and those things are worthy of snagging up. Generally things that make you permanently happier are related to human relationships, lifestyle, or health, but for some people there are "things" that can give you a permanent boost. If you are tech-centric, a smart phone might be one of those rare things.
Graphics are not the roadblock anymore. Or, at least, they won't be soon. It is true that we are maxing out the graphics, but to imply that gaming doesn't need MORE POWER!!111!! is simply wrong. We are so far below "maxing out" games that it isn't even funny.
Consider for a moment the much loved Skyrim. The graphics are pretty (especially on a computer). They are not exactly 'maxed out', but they are reasonably close enough where going the last mile or two is not much of a selling point. What does that game lack though? It lacks a world that acts like a world unless we suspend disbelief in a very serious way. When you fling a fireball into the side of a snow covered mountain, nothing happens. At best, it leaves a little burn mark texture. When you open the door to a house, the game has to load the house. Hit a tree with your two handed sword, and it clangs off like you hit a piece of metal. Ice won't melt. Water won't freeze. Weather means nothings. Hit one of your fellow humans and you get a little blood squirt effect and their armor remains shiny and without a dent. Hell, just jump in a fast moving stream and notice that it doesn't freaking move you. Your actions against the Empire or Stormcloacks has no impact outside of the quest line. NPCs behave stupidly and don't run for help when a destruction magic wielding war god tears through their ranks. The list is basically endless.
The world doesn't need to be "realistic", but it does need to follow rules and make sense before we have declared that we have maxed out. Skyrim is about as good as it gets today (and take this as no disrespect to Skyrim, that game is fantastic), but it is leagues away from REALLY being as good as it gets. Maxing out on graphics doesn't mean that we are done. Graphics were just the low hanging fruit. Now it is time to go after physics and AI behavior. What we need is clear, MORE POWER!
If there is anything that PC gamers should be cursing console gamers for, it is for the fact that PCs have the power to kick gaming to the next level and start working these challenges, while consoles are weak and worthless machines that front load what paltry power they have into graphics (which are still not as good as on a PC). PC gamers and console gamers should collectively strangle the shit out anyone who suggests that phones with their even more flimsily specs are the next big things.
There is a certain amount of irony in this though. As a PC gamer, I will get a little sadistic joy out of seeing console gamers cry that portable devices are under powered crap with poor controls...
Apple iDevice owners spend substantially more on data plans, bandwidth, and apps than Android's "wealthy" nerds.
If I said that only nerds have wealth and that all Android users are nerds, your statement might make sense. Somewhere in your head you seem to think that my statement was "Only nerds have money and there are lots of nerds, so if you don't give us your bootloaders, you will be POOOOOR because you can only get money from nerds!!1111! lolz!"
What I really said was:
Nerds are a niche, but a wealthy niche that is generally willing to spend more than the general population for their gadgets. Perhaps more importantly, they are also strong influencers in terms of high tech tastes. When the normalz slam into a wall of technology options, they turn to their nerd friends to make the decision for them. Bagging yourself one well connected nerd is likely to also score you a pile of the his or her "normal" friends and family.
You said:
And I would love to see how many of those friends who got HTC phones on your say-so, end up cursing you because they can't get Siri or Facetime on their phones.
I am pretty sure that most of my friends recognize Facetime for exactly what it is... Skype. If they want to have phone sex or talk to their kids, the only two uses on this planet for Facetime, they will just use Skype. As for Siri, if they had bought an iPhone 4, they still wouldn't have Siri. While Siri is a spiffy feature in its own right, it is hardly the end all and be all. Dumping Android over Siri would be about as goofy as dumping iPhone because it doesn't have widgets or live wall paper. Either way, I apparently have better friends than you because I can safely say that none of them would curse me over those minor tech bullet points. Maybe you need better dude?
You are delusional if you think Android is marked for nerd by nerds. It is marketed like any other crap on the face of the planet, which is to say mindlessly to build name recognition. Nerds are not going to get their nerd specs from a fucking TV commercial. Ads more or less just scream over and over the name of the product and try and lodge some sort of image in your head. It doesn't matter if it is big green robots or dancing shadow people, they just want to lodge something in your head, not actually convince you the product is worthwhile.
Hell, the commercials that started Android's rise to crushing iPhone in terms of the raw units solid numbers game were the "Droid" commercials. The commercials were as devoid of information as most commercials are, but they hammer something iconic in your head so that you remember it. It is just a bonus if at the end you go "oh, that looks cool."
Finally, this contempt for nerds whenever Android is brought up is getting dull. What are you, in high school? Android isn't out pacing the alternative OSes because an army of nerds has arisen and are buying hundreds of millions of phones. Android is outpacing the competition because it has broad general acceptance across the entire population. The normals have smart phones of both the iOS and Android flavor. In fact, they make up the super majority of all users for all OS choices. Get over it.
Android does have its nerd following to be sure, and it is, generally (though certainly not completely), the nerd phone of choice because you can get a phone in whatever flavor you want, with whatever specs you want, tear apart the OS, and there is a large community to draw resources from to do it. Just because a small number of nerds are tearing into the internals of the phone doesn't mean that OMG ANDROID IS ONLY FOR NERDS!!111!!!! It just means that some Android phones are particularly nerd accessible, in addition to being a normal old smart phone.
Now, is the nerd crowd worth capturing? Eh, your millage my vary, but you need to remember that your elite nerds are the trail blazers in technology. The "nerd accessible" features of the Evo got me to get one. When my friends (who are not nerds) turned to me for advice on what phone to buy, they all ended up with Android phones, most of them from HTC. HTC bagging me by simply making the bootloader easy to unlock, handing out the phone's drivers, and offering up some appealing specs, directly resulted in over half a dozen of my friends and family also getting Android phones, many of them from HTC, and none of them from Motorola who earned my "nerd rage" with their militant efforts to lock down the phone.
Nerds are a niche, but a wealthy niche that is generally willing to spend more than the general population for their gadgets. Perhaps more importantly, they are also strong influencers in terms of high tech tastes. When the normalz slam into a wall of technology options, they turn to their nerd friends to make the decision for them. Bagging yourself one well connected nerd is likely to also score you a pile of the his or her "normal" friends and family. There isn't a damn thing wrong with leveraging that a little and getting products that are, perhaps not tailor made for nerds, but at least accessible. Whine all you want about how the mean nerds keep trashing on people who sell locked down phones, but most of the Android companies, and most famously, Samsung, capitulated before vocal nerd rage and stopped locking their bootloaders and now actively support the modding community.
One reinforced cockpit door and one group of pissed passengers has proven to be 100% effective. As a bonus, because the cowards will be getting their TSA mandate freedom fondle, the non-cowards planes will be filled with, well, non-cowards. A couple hundred non-cowards are by far the best weapon against anyone dumb enough to try and hijack a plan post 9/11. Personally, I would feel vastly safer on a plan where I know everyone around me is not coward enough to go pay extra for a government designed freedom fondle.
The idea of being on an airplane filled with mewling cowards when 5 terrorist pull sheathed ceramic blades literally out of their ass is by far the scarier situation, because I know all of the people around me are chicken shit wastes of humans, and if they can't feel safe enter an airplane with a good solid molesting from a government bureaucrat, they sure as shit are not going to join a charge to kick the shit out of some hijackers.
I have a better idea. Let's segregate security. Split it up so that there are two types of airplanes and terminals you can enter. You can enter the terminal where you get a government sponsored freedom fondle and/or pr0n scan, or you can go into the one that has whatever security the airport feels is actually needed (probably a basic bag x-ray and metal scan). The only stipulation is that you must pay, out of pocket, at the security, the cost of the security. So, if you are getting a pr0n scan in the TSA run line, you see the price, swipe your credit card, and than get molested for freedom. No tax subsidies, you must collect the fee in a clear and unambiguous way, and only collect it from people who are actually using the security.
Let market competition sort it out.
Are people fucking cowards who piss themselves over a one in a few million chance of a terrorist blowing up their airplane and so are happy to pay for security theater? Or, once people see the price, can they control their coward's bladder and save a few bucks for the privilege of not being molested.
I think what pisses me off about this entire thing is the cowardly way that Americans have responded to the "threat" of airline terrorism. Here is a threat of death that ranks well below slipping and dying by falling in the shower, and several orders of magnitude below eating yourself to death. Apparently, Americans being complete fucking cowards, decided to throw a few hundred billion dollars at this absurdly small threat, burned the fourth and fifth amendments, and voted in politicians who sooth their cowards fears with empty security theater.
It pisses me off that I have to watch my tax money burned so that I can be molested to sooth fears of mewling un-American cowards. If you are a coward, do rest of the country a favor and stop voting, stop traveling, and be a coward quietly and privately. Far braver people than you have gotten their faces smashed in during civil rights protests by cops or gunned down for storming beachheads defending your liberty. The least you can do for these brave people that were not total fucking cowards is to either fuck off and stop traveling, or get a handle on your cowards bladder long enough accept the paltry and trivial risk that a terrorist might blow up the airplane instead of blowing their own dick off like the last one did.
Habitats fabricated in free space can provide thousands of times more habitable surface area than Earth.
You are a moron.
Who gives a fly fuck about 'surface area' to live on. Does the earth look full to you? Have you been to Canada, anywhere in the US that isn't a coast, most of Russia, or the fucking endless oceans that cover 2/3 the surface of the fucking planet? Do you know what all of those places have in common? They are all empty, and they all make vastly easier and better places to colonize than space. No one is lacking for "space" to toss more humans. What we lack is resources. Places to toss more humans are plentiful and cheap. Building a city on Canada, middle America, or even the ocean is a thousands times cheaper than trying to lug people into space. As a bonus, if you have a merry old ocean colony, you also get to score resources, the capacity to trade easily and very cheaply, and the air is free. How exciting.
Lets pretend for a moment that space isn't an empty vacuum, and lets ignore for a moment that even the shittiest sea colony has a thousand times more resources than any space colony in the form of air, water, and trade. Let's ignore all of that... If you want to reduce earth to zero population growth, you would need to toss 300 THOUSAND people into to space a DAY. Good luck with that.
Ehm No. It was never supposed to protect the average citizen, it is to protect the ones who innovate against the ones who copy. Android isn't about innovation at all, it's about putting things that are already there together and not in an entirely new way, but in a way that it would match the features of modern proprietary OS but using free software. Thus patent system is not supposed to protect Android. And it's plain hipocrisy that Google claims Apple is attacking Android with bogus patents, which is entirely not true, Apple at least uses their own patents, while most Google patents are bought pieces of IP of other companies, which makes them a lot more bogus to me.
Do you know how many patents an iPhone violates? The innovative parts of the iPhone are just a few thin layers on top of boring mundane components. The only reason why the iPhone was allowed to come into existence was because Apple came into the market with a pile of money. They waded in, bought a pile of patents... not useful patents, but basically just any old patent they could swing at someone, and made their phone. The reason why Apple did this is because Nokia and the other makers in the field would have bludgeoned them to death with patent law if they hadn't.
The team that made the iPhone was originally pretty small. The iPhone could easily have been as a silicon valley start up. If Steve Jobs had been in a start up with the same people and some VC money, the iPhone would never have existed. He could have made the exact same product, and then when he put a toe into the market, Nokia would have beaten him to death with lawyers.
That is the problem with IP law. Apple was able to make the iPhone because it had more money than god and could buy its way in. I'm glad they did, but how many other Steve Jobs are out there NOT making innovative new products because they don't have a few billion dollars on hand to buy up useless patents to ward of the entrenched players with?
No I completely disagree with this in every way. You could spend millions on developing something, come up with an idea, and just as you go to capitalise it pretty much every man and his goat could produce the same thing. They being the entrenched producer will often be able to produce cheaper and with more marketing.
That is non-sense. Patent law has nothing to do with innovation. The cell phone industry is an excellent example of this. Apple, Google, and Samsung wouldn't suddenly give up if they couldn't patent things. They would still be in a bloody knife fight to the death where each tries to out do the other by innovating faster. The first one to stop would be dead.
The only REAL difference is that it wouldn't just be the big manufacturers.
Right now, if you wanted to build a start up that takes off the shelf components to make a custom phone, you couldn't. It isn't because cell phones are too hard. The components are off the shelf, and with Android and some other Linux alternatives, you don't even need to bother developing your own OS. The manufacturing is trivial and can be easily outsourced. Sure, your costs will be higher than Apple or Samsung who can order a few billion parts at a time, but you could stay within a reasonable distance and compete for the high end market. I know I sure as hell would happy pay a heft amount for a custom pimped out phone with personalized extras for me. The only reason why there are not a thousand and one silicon valley start ups offering custom phones is because......they would be sued into utter fucking oblivion...
Patent law has created a cartel. Everyone is violating everyone else's patents right now. You physically can not make a phone without violating dozens or hundreds of patents owned by dozens of different people. The way everyone gets around this is by building up a war chest of patents, and engaging in some MAD economics. Samsung can sue HTC, but HTC will turn around and sue Samsung back. Both are technically in the wrong. Instead, they come to an accommodation where they won't sue each other. Sure, it prevents one side from taking out the other, but it also has the happy side effect (happy for them, very unhappy for the consumer) where no one else can enter the market.
If Steve jobs and the iPhone team, a relatively small group of people in the grand scheme of things, had tried to enter the cell phone market as a start up, they would have been killed on sight. They wouldn't have gotten anywhere near to sell their product before being sued into oblivion. The only way they were able to make a product was because Apple was sitting on a few billion dollars and was able to buy their own patent arsenal. Think about that for a moment. The iPhone, the phone that ushered in a new wave of smart phones, would have been murdered on arrival if it wasn't for the fact that Apple had a pile of money and could buy its way into the cell phone patent cartel.
How many innovations have we NOT seen because some young designers and engineers have been shut out of the cartel created by patent law?
That isn't "innovation". This is a bunch of very large corporations screwing consumers, wasting money (your money) suing each other, and creating a cartel to ensure that they never have to face too much competition. Small businesses and innovative movers and shakers are getting fucked. As awesome and as advanced as cell phones are these days, they are echos of what could have been if that entire market wasn't locked up into a big patent cartel.
It doesn't matter if they lose a few bucks on each tablet sold. Amazon REALLY doesn't care. They can happily eat a loss on each tablet because they are not selling tablets. They are selling Amazon content delivery devices. The purpose of an Amazon content delivery device is to get you to buy content. If it takes a net cost of $10 to get one in your hands, they will happily pay. In fact, on the initial run, they will happily pay far more than $10 net dollars to get their Amazon content tube plugged into your face. They will eat a hefty loss just to build the market and work the margins down better.
This is exactly what they did with the Kindle. The first Kindle was subsidized in terms cost. They were happy to do this to build a market. They recouped everything they threw down by selling books, and then made a pile more once they created and dominated the e-book market. Amazon is just turning around and looking to do the same thing with tablets. Step one is to build a credible market and take a loss doing it if they have to. Step two is profit.
1.Sell discounted media consumption device 2.Build market for the new device 3.??? 4.Profit
The cost isn't what you are paying the IT folks per hour. The cost is how much you shell out in your overall IT budget. I work in the private sector and occasionally outsource various jobs. Might the per hour cost of an in house programmer be cheaper? Maybe, but I don't care about the per hour cost. Out sourcing is without a doubt cheaper. The reason is simple. I don't need a programmer 40 hours a week, every week of the year. I need a programmer in bits and bursts. I can't get the money to hire a programmer and then find the management to put them under, especially when market conditions are uncertain.
The cost of hiring someone is pretty brutal. It isn't just what you pay them and the benefits, but it is also what you have to pay them should you lay them off, and the blow to moral if you keep hiring and firing people as needed. Getting a few thousand to contract for a narrowly defined project is comparably easier and cheaper.
So, seeing that the government more or less does exactly what I do doesn't get my blood in a boil, especially considering that with government unions it makes it even harder and more expensive for the government to downsize should the need arise or the work dry up. If you are going to need programmers to continuously work on or support something, in house is certainly the way to go. If you don't need someone for 40 hours a week from now until the end of time, outsourcing to a contractor is a solid way to keep costs down and let you remain flexible on your IT spending , especially in uncertain market conditions.
Publishers really are not the problem. Publishers have more to fear handing money over for a knock off FPS than this. Your COD low budget rip off isn't going to make any money. What publishers do have to fear for is game play. If the game play is solid, they are going to have absolutely no problem gathering up the cash. In fact, if there is good game play here, I think publishers will be clawing their eyes out to get their hands on this. Everyone wants a Portal or Minecraft.
If this game doesn't get picked up, it is because it is not fun. You are free to wrap up a moral lesson on the value of journalism, war, or whatever, but if it is just a moral lesson wrapped with empty and dull game play, no one is going to play it.
You can color me mildly skeptical of this game. They have spent a lot of time talking about the neat gimmick that is the setting and the protagonist's job. Nearly everyone agrees that the setting sounds interesting and unique. What I have not heard them say much about is how they are going to make the game fun. Am I going to be an idiot with a health bar chasing the Call of Duty guys as they tear up the street and mow down civilians? Is this going to look more like an on open world FPS RPG than a shooter on rails? Am I going to be scoring points for getting action shots of civilians getting shot and terrorist getting blown away, or am I sleuthing around and talking to people trying to find a story?
Fun game play doesn't have to involve putting a bullet between someone's eyes, but I am pretty sure it has to involve more than chasing around the Call of Duty guys with a camera as they run through scripted battles. I'm not saying that this game isn't going to be fun, just that they have not shown what neat game play gimmick is going to go along with what everyone agrees is an interesting concept and setting.
The US doesn't need autonomous killing machines. Sure, the US will develop them, but so long as the Americans are busy busting on sheep herders armed with AK47s, they wont use them. You might get to the point where drones are doing everything but pull the trigger, but having a human in the loop approving all death and destruction is cheap and easy. You don't gain anything when you are fighting peasants with shitty guns by having a fully autonomous killing machines.
The US will develop the technology though. It does make sense to have this technology in certain cases. The most obvious case would be in a theoretical war with China. Drones might work all well and good when killing goat herders, but against another super power that has the capacity to jam, you might need autonomous killing machines. I could easily see the US developing a drone that, once given the outline of a type of an obvious targets (like a tanks, transport ship, and AAA instillation) can be fired in the general direction of a concentration of military units and carry out its mission, even if it gets jammed and the target moves.
Of course, in the only instances where the US would actually have need of fully autonomous drones like that, a few civilian casualties are the absolute least of your concerns. If US is fighting an enemy that can put up an effective ECM defense for more than the 3 hours it normally takes the US to level such defenses, the US is fighting someone who has the capacity to turn the US (and a goodly portion of the rest of the world) into a radioactive waste pit.
I don't recall that Union Carbide were operating a nuclear power plant in Bhopal.
What part of "one of" do you not understand?
Yet just over 10 years ago Indian Point Energy Center did not have any planes crashed into it. Somehow WTC 1&2 were more attractive to terrorists than IP 2&3...
Yup, they sure are dumb. In one of their last attempts of an attack on the US they managed to blow their junk off and then get the shit kicked out of them by civilians.
Slamming a 747 into Indian Point would have been tens of thousands of times worse than knocking down two measly buildings. You don't need to crack the reactor core, just kick up radioactive junk by lighting a few fires and burning some stored waste. Cracking the reactor core or some how causing a melt down by destroying secondary systems is just gravy. Blanketing NYC with even low levels of radiation would cause the city to evacuate and collapse. That would be 17 million people or roughly 5% of the entire US population. The abandonment of NYC would lead to a world wide financial collapse the likes of which this world has never seen. It would make the financial hardships we have seen recently look like a little economic hiccup. It would utterly destroy the American economy and maul the rest of the world economy... and for what? To save a few cents on electricity if you close your eyes and ignore the massive costs inflicted on the tax payer when you include the cost of regulation and waste storage? Thanks, but fuck that. Indian Point sitting 40 miles from NYC is possibly the the stupidest fucking idea in the history of the US.
OBL is a fucking idiot. He could have actually achieved his goals if he had hit Indian Point with a couple of 747s. Knocking down the WTCs was just annoying. Blanketing NYC in radiation, even low levels, could have very well collapsed the west's ability to project its power due to the brutal economic hardship the the abandonment of NYC would have caused.
The reason why the regulations are "expensive" is because when a nuke plant fails, it kills thousands and/or leaves huge swaths of nations uninhabitable. Regulation IS a part of the cost of running a nuclear power plant.
The problem with a nuclear power plant is that while its failure mode is relatively rare, it fails in such a way that it becomes one of the worst flavors of industrial accident in existence. So, you are sitting there struggling to prevent an extremely rare failure that pretty much always happens in a way you didn't previously predict. You need to run around nailing down every one in a billion chance or coincidence that could possibly lead to failure. Your task is basically impossible, but you need to do your best anyways. So, you need regulate the hell out of that process. Not only that, but you need to police it like a Nazi or else all your regulations are for naught when some asshole decides to try and save a few bucks or gets lazy. Even then, there is not such thing as fool proof. Ram a 747 into a nuclear reactor, blow up a bomb, get whacked by an act of god, or suffer a series of highly improbably coincidences that result in a failure no one could have seen coming, it all comes down to the same thing. If you have a world covered in nuclear reactors, sometimes they are going to blow. Humans just can't make unsinkable anything.
Personally, I don't think that nukes can survive. The problem is pretty basic. The cost of running a nuclear reactor is the cost of building it, running it in a highly regulated manner, disposing of waste, shutting the thing down and cleaning it up, and finally providing insurance against the rare possibility that it blows and renders a few hundred miles of land the nuclear power plant company doesn't own uninhabitable. My tax money shouldn't be underwriting all of the above because it is the cost of doing business. If it doesn't make any financial sense, it shouldn't get built. No nuclear power plant should EVER be built within spitting distance of New York City, because anyone who claims to have bought the insurance against NYC landing in a fallout zone is full of shit.
I'm not completely against nuclear power plants, but I am utterly against using tax money to pay for running those things safely, disposing of the waste, and insuring against their failure. Frankly, I don't think that nuclear power plants can exist in a world where they actually have to pay the cost of all of their externalities.
Personally, I would eat a couple of years in jail at a low security prison than a $600,000+ fine. Low security prison, frankly, isn't that bad. You piss away a couple of a years reading books, and then you are done. Whenever you go into a job interview, when you get to the point where you need to disclose a prison record, you just explain that you were in because you shared 30 music files on your computer. As an employer, I wouldn't balk for a second. If anything, I would be more inclined to hire in a tie as a small attempt to outweigh a brutal injustice. Being two years behind in your job growth/promotion path is annoying, but trivial.
A $600,000 fine is brutal. It means that you will never be able to save enough to retire. You will absolutely end up becoming a dependent on the state and have to rely entirely on social security when you retire. You are have been fucked for the rest of your life. You will never have enough money to do anything more than scrape by. You will never be able to take out a loan for basically anything. Unlike being stuck with a mortgage of that amount, you can never declare bankruptcy. You are in financial servitude to the state for the rest of your entire life.
Better for the State to outright steal a few years of your life than to be enslaved for the next 60+ years that this poor kid is going to be alive for.
Constitutional reading fail. The 8th amendment is about as clear as you can make it.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
If $150,000 for copying a song is a 'reasonable fine' than the 8th amendment literally has no meaning. We might as well recycle it into toilet paper, because at least if someone was using it to be wiping their ass, it would doing at some good to someone, somewhere.
No, I love my country. I just hate cowards. Anyone who would despoil the constitution because of a bunch of sheep herders occasionally murder a few people is a fucking coward. Are you a coward? If you are, I would like to encourage you to either remove your cowardly ass from my country, or at least refrain from giving voice to your pathetic craven fears and stay the fuck out of a voting booth. I'm not asking you to storm a beachhead, just try and keep from shitting yourself over a one in a few hundred thousand chance of a terrorist killing you. Be a god damn coward if that pleases you, but don't try and give away my liberties to sooth you sad and pathetic fears.
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I don't actually agree with the premise of the article, but your premise is also fucked up. If you are doing iOS apps, you can certainly make your own start up. If you are in the semiconductor industry (as the guy in question is), you simply can't do a start up. To start up a software company you need a coffee machine, your personal PC, and a couple thousand dollars worth of software (if that). To start up a semiconductor fab doing something simple, boring, and low tech, you need a hundred million dollars. The guy in question can't "start his own thing".
Not to shit on iOS apps, but you are talking about the very last fluffy layer of tech. The meat and potatoes of tech is god awfully expensive and so far out of the range of most start ups that it isn't even funny. You could fund literally every single programmer in silicon valley on the capital it takes to make a single 300mm semiconductor fab.
I would really hate to see the American economy devolve to the point where the only thing we are able to grasp at is the fluffy at the top. I am all for entrepreneurship, but some stuff just doesn't lend itself to entrepreneurs. iOS apps are cute and the sort of stuff any idiot with a high school education and some interest and computers can do. The process to make the components that actually go into the hardware that run your cute little iOS app, that is the real engineering that you want to bring in someone with experience for.
You think it was "pretty much paid for"? Are you INSANE? If by "pretty much paid for" you utterly ignore the insane cost of transporting goods and supplies to Japan during war time conditions, the insane cost of the multi-year battle it would take capture the country, and the half a MILLION or so American lives that they expected to lose, to say nothing of the Japanese lives, then, um, yeah... pretty much already paid for.
Fighting for Iwo Jima, an island that was 8 square miles, cost 28,000 casualties (7,000 American and 21,000 Japanese) and took a month, Japan is 150,000 square miles. Seriously.
Further, if you want to talk about immorality, ignore the nukes. The nukes were pocket change. The allies did fire bombing runs that made the nuke attacks look like small potatoes. The only reason why those two cities were picked to be nuked was because the US had made the decision to not firebomb them like they did all the other cities so that they had something interesting to use the nukes on.
Nukes were not the worst atrocities of World War II by any stretch of the imagination. Getting hung up on them is stupid. They were unique in that it was the first time such weapons were used, and the results were far more immediate and dramatic than most atrocities. In terms of actual atrocity though, they don't even score in the top 10. The atrocities that both the US and Japan were willing to commit during a theoretical invasion of Japan would have made the nukes look like an after thought.
Somehow you have convinced yourself that you see hypocrisy. There isn't any. Google set down reasonable rules on how you can link. JC Penny, through another agency, violated those rules and got their rank hurt. Google, through another agency, violated those rules and go their rank hurt.
Google has responded consistently in both cases, even when it is responding to itself. Google isn't some monolith with perfect communication. The right hand did something stupid (hire a shady company and didn't oversee them) and the left hand smacked the right hand for it. This is a good thing.
The reason why people comment on it as being above and beyond kind of cool is that it is Google smacking themselves. It is one things for Google to smack JC Penny. Everyone expects that. It is another thing to smack themselves when one part of the company violates their own rules. This speaks of the quality of the firewall between the search folks and the rest of the company. If Google can confidently smack down its own internal divisions, it leaves you feeling confident that the results are truly as impartial as such a subjective thing can be. Can you honestly see Apple or Microsoft doing such a thing? They would just circle the wagons, justify their actions, and carry on. It is nice to see a touch of corporate integrity, even if it is for the obviously selfish reason of convincing people that Google's search is "fair".
Google considers its reputation to be an asset and guards it like one. It isn't infallible and its reasons for guarding their reputation are clearly selfish and profit motivated, but it is still a good thing. Doing good stuff for selfish reasons is better than acting like an asshole for selfish reasons.
Eh, I normally agree, but I think a smart phone can be different. My smart phone replaced a handful of devices. My Evo replaced my GPS, phone, MP3 player, the need to sync said MP3 player with my computer, the need for a laptop (desktop for power, phone for portability), a printer (no need to print pretty much anything), a notebook, a to-do list, books / squelching boredom of lines implements, uncoupled me from my computer for light computer stuff, and in general makes me a happier person. It isn't like a couch where once you slap down the money and get over the joy of having a shinny new couch you go back to baseline happiness as your brain realizes that it doesn't give a fuck about what the couch looks like it when its ass is planted in it. I think that a smart phone, at least for some people, is an actual permanent boost in your happiness.
Smart phones are one of the very few things that I let violate my "never upgrade rule" on the belief that it is an actual happiness boosting tool. It probably isn't a permanent happiness boost for everyone, but I think for a non-trivial portion of the population it is. Being weary of "upgrading" is a wise idea. Most "upgrades" give you a quick euphoric joy, and then you settle back down to baseline and become pissed if you ever have to downgrade. That is a loss. There do exist things though that make your permanently happier, and those things are worthy of snagging up. Generally things that make you permanently happier are related to human relationships, lifestyle, or health, but for some people there are "things" that can give you a permanent boost. If you are tech-centric, a smart phone might be one of those rare things.
Graphics are not the roadblock anymore. Or, at least, they won't be soon. It is true that we are maxing out the graphics, but to imply that gaming doesn't need MORE POWER!!111!! is simply wrong. We are so far below "maxing out" games that it isn't even funny.
Consider for a moment the much loved Skyrim. The graphics are pretty (especially on a computer). They are not exactly 'maxed out', but they are reasonably close enough where going the last mile or two is not much of a selling point. What does that game lack though? It lacks a world that acts like a world unless we suspend disbelief in a very serious way. When you fling a fireball into the side of a snow covered mountain, nothing happens. At best, it leaves a little burn mark texture. When you open the door to a house, the game has to load the house. Hit a tree with your two handed sword, and it clangs off like you hit a piece of metal. Ice won't melt. Water won't freeze. Weather means nothings. Hit one of your fellow humans and you get a little blood squirt effect and their armor remains shiny and without a dent. Hell, just jump in a fast moving stream and notice that it doesn't freaking move you. Your actions against the Empire or Stormcloacks has no impact outside of the quest line. NPCs behave stupidly and don't run for help when a destruction magic wielding war god tears through their ranks. The list is basically endless.
The world doesn't need to be "realistic", but it does need to follow rules and make sense before we have declared that we have maxed out. Skyrim is about as good as it gets today (and take this as no disrespect to Skyrim, that game is fantastic), but it is leagues away from REALLY being as good as it gets. Maxing out on graphics doesn't mean that we are done. Graphics were just the low hanging fruit. Now it is time to go after physics and AI behavior. What we need is clear, MORE POWER!
If there is anything that PC gamers should be cursing console gamers for, it is for the fact that PCs have the power to kick gaming to the next level and start working these challenges, while consoles are weak and worthless machines that front load what paltry power they have into graphics (which are still not as good as on a PC). PC gamers and console gamers should collectively strangle the shit out anyone who suggests that phones with their even more flimsily specs are the next big things.
There is a certain amount of irony in this though. As a PC gamer, I will get a little sadistic joy out of seeing console gamers cry that portable devices are under powered crap with poor controls...
Yes, and when the Allies stopped the Nazi from incinerating Jews I be the stock in incinerator parts went down. Who gives a shit?
Maybe you should just stop investing in companies that makes it a policy to fuck their customers as hard as possible?
Cool argument bro.
I know I am feeding the trolls here but:
You said:
Apple iDevice owners spend substantially more on data plans, bandwidth, and apps than Android's "wealthy" nerds.
If I said that only nerds have wealth and that all Android users are nerds, your statement might make sense. Somewhere in your head you seem to think that my statement was "Only nerds have money and there are lots of nerds, so if you don't give us your bootloaders, you will be POOOOOR because you can only get money from nerds!!1111! lolz!"
What I really said was:
Nerds are a niche, but a wealthy niche that is generally willing to spend more than the general population for their gadgets. Perhaps more importantly, they are also strong influencers in terms of high tech tastes. When the normalz slam into a wall of technology options, they turn to their nerd friends to make the decision for them. Bagging yourself one well connected nerd is likely to also score you a pile of the his or her "normal" friends and family.
You said:
And I would love to see how many of those friends who got HTC phones on your say-so, end up cursing you because they can't get Siri or Facetime on their phones.
I am pretty sure that most of my friends recognize Facetime for exactly what it is... Skype. If they want to have phone sex or talk to their kids, the only two uses on this planet for Facetime, they will just use Skype. As for Siri, if they had bought an iPhone 4, they still wouldn't have Siri. While Siri is a spiffy feature in its own right, it is hardly the end all and be all. Dumping Android over Siri would be about as goofy as dumping iPhone because it doesn't have widgets or live wall paper. Either way, I apparently have better friends than you because I can safely say that none of them would curse me over those minor tech bullet points. Maybe you need better dude?
You are delusional if you think Android is marked for nerd by nerds. It is marketed like any other crap on the face of the planet, which is to say mindlessly to build name recognition. Nerds are not going to get their nerd specs from a fucking TV commercial. Ads more or less just scream over and over the name of the product and try and lodge some sort of image in your head. It doesn't matter if it is big green robots or dancing shadow people, they just want to lodge something in your head, not actually convince you the product is worthwhile.
Hell, the commercials that started Android's rise to crushing iPhone in terms of the raw units solid numbers game were the "Droid" commercials. The commercials were as devoid of information as most commercials are, but they hammer something iconic in your head so that you remember it. It is just a bonus if at the end you go "oh, that looks cool."
Finally, this contempt for nerds whenever Android is brought up is getting dull. What are you, in high school? Android isn't out pacing the alternative OSes because an army of nerds has arisen and are buying hundreds of millions of phones. Android is outpacing the competition because it has broad general acceptance across the entire population. The normals have smart phones of both the iOS and Android flavor. In fact, they make up the super majority of all users for all OS choices. Get over it.
Android does have its nerd following to be sure, and it is, generally (though certainly not completely), the nerd phone of choice because you can get a phone in whatever flavor you want, with whatever specs you want, tear apart the OS, and there is a large community to draw resources from to do it. Just because a small number of nerds are tearing into the internals of the phone doesn't mean that OMG ANDROID IS ONLY FOR NERDS!!111!!!! It just means that some Android phones are particularly nerd accessible, in addition to being a normal old smart phone.
Now, is the nerd crowd worth capturing? Eh, your millage my vary, but you need to remember that your elite nerds are the trail blazers in technology. The "nerd accessible" features of the Evo got me to get one. When my friends (who are not nerds) turned to me for advice on what phone to buy, they all ended up with Android phones, most of them from HTC. HTC bagging me by simply making the bootloader easy to unlock, handing out the phone's drivers, and offering up some appealing specs, directly resulted in over half a dozen of my friends and family also getting Android phones, many of them from HTC, and none of them from Motorola who earned my "nerd rage" with their militant efforts to lock down the phone.
Nerds are a niche, but a wealthy niche that is generally willing to spend more than the general population for their gadgets. Perhaps more importantly, they are also strong influencers in terms of high tech tastes. When the normalz slam into a wall of technology options, they turn to their nerd friends to make the decision for them. Bagging yourself one well connected nerd is likely to also score you a pile of the his or her "normal" friends and family. There isn't a damn thing wrong with leveraging that a little and getting products that are, perhaps not tailor made for nerds, but at least accessible. Whine all you want about how the mean nerds keep trashing on people who sell locked down phones, but most of the Android companies, and most famously, Samsung, capitulated before vocal nerd rage and stopped locking their bootloaders and now actively support the modding community.
One reinforced cockpit door and one group of pissed passengers has proven to be 100% effective. As a bonus, because the cowards will be getting their TSA mandate freedom fondle, the non-cowards planes will be filled with, well, non-cowards. A couple hundred non-cowards are by far the best weapon against anyone dumb enough to try and hijack a plan post 9/11. Personally, I would feel vastly safer on a plan where I know everyone around me is not coward enough to go pay extra for a government designed freedom fondle.
The idea of being on an airplane filled with mewling cowards when 5 terrorist pull sheathed ceramic blades literally out of their ass is by far the scarier situation, because I know all of the people around me are chicken shit wastes of humans, and if they can't feel safe enter an airplane with a good solid molesting from a government bureaucrat, they sure as shit are not going to join a charge to kick the shit out of some hijackers.
I have a better idea. Let's segregate security. Split it up so that there are two types of airplanes and terminals you can enter. You can enter the terminal where you get a government sponsored freedom fondle and/or pr0n scan, or you can go into the one that has whatever security the airport feels is actually needed (probably a basic bag x-ray and metal scan). The only stipulation is that you must pay, out of pocket, at the security, the cost of the security. So, if you are getting a pr0n scan in the TSA run line, you see the price, swipe your credit card, and than get molested for freedom. No tax subsidies, you must collect the fee in a clear and unambiguous way, and only collect it from people who are actually using the security.
Let market competition sort it out.
Are people fucking cowards who piss themselves over a one in a few million chance of a terrorist blowing up their airplane and so are happy to pay for security theater? Or, once people see the price, can they control their coward's bladder and save a few bucks for the privilege of not being molested.
I think what pisses me off about this entire thing is the cowardly way that Americans have responded to the "threat" of airline terrorism. Here is a threat of death that ranks well below slipping and dying by falling in the shower, and several orders of magnitude below eating yourself to death. Apparently, Americans being complete fucking cowards, decided to throw a few hundred billion dollars at this absurdly small threat, burned the fourth and fifth amendments, and voted in politicians who sooth their cowards fears with empty security theater.
It pisses me off that I have to watch my tax money burned so that I can be molested to sooth fears of mewling un-American cowards. If you are a coward, do rest of the country a favor and stop voting, stop traveling, and be a coward quietly and privately. Far braver people than you have gotten their faces smashed in during civil rights protests by cops or gunned down for storming beachheads defending your liberty. The least you can do for these brave people that were not total fucking cowards is to either fuck off and stop traveling, or get a handle on your cowards bladder long enough accept the paltry and trivial risk that a terrorist might blow up the airplane instead of blowing their own dick off like the last one did.
If using encryption is a monopoly tactic, I'll take more monopolies plz. We should "monopoly" the entire web.
Habitats fabricated in free space can provide thousands of times more habitable surface area than Earth.
You are a moron.
Who gives a fly fuck about 'surface area' to live on. Does the earth look full to you? Have you been to Canada, anywhere in the US that isn't a coast, most of Russia, or the fucking endless oceans that cover 2/3 the surface of the fucking planet? Do you know what all of those places have in common? They are all empty, and they all make vastly easier and better places to colonize than space. No one is lacking for "space" to toss more humans. What we lack is resources. Places to toss more humans are plentiful and cheap. Building a city on Canada, middle America, or even the ocean is a thousands times cheaper than trying to lug people into space. As a bonus, if you have a merry old ocean colony, you also get to score resources, the capacity to trade easily and very cheaply, and the air is free. How exciting.
Lets pretend for a moment that space isn't an empty vacuum, and lets ignore for a moment that even the shittiest sea colony has a thousand times more resources than any space colony in the form of air, water, and trade. Let's ignore all of that... If you want to reduce earth to zero population growth, you would need to toss 300 THOUSAND people into to space a DAY. Good luck with that.
Do you know how many patents an iPhone violates? The innovative parts of the iPhone are just a few thin layers on top of boring mundane components. The only reason why the iPhone was allowed to come into existence was because Apple came into the market with a pile of money. They waded in, bought a pile of patents... not useful patents, but basically just any old patent they could swing at someone, and made their phone. The reason why Apple did this is because Nokia and the other makers in the field would have bludgeoned them to death with patent law if they hadn't.
The team that made the iPhone was originally pretty small. The iPhone could easily have been as a silicon valley start up. If Steve Jobs had been in a start up with the same people and some VC money, the iPhone would never have existed. He could have made the exact same product, and then when he put a toe into the market, Nokia would have beaten him to death with lawyers.
That is the problem with IP law. Apple was able to make the iPhone because it had more money than god and could buy its way in. I'm glad they did, but how many other Steve Jobs are out there NOT making innovative new products because they don't have a few billion dollars on hand to buy up useless patents to ward of the entrenched players with?
No I completely disagree with this in every way. You could spend millions on developing something, come up with an idea, and just as you go to capitalise it pretty much every man and his goat could produce the same thing. They being the entrenched producer will often be able to produce cheaper and with more marketing.
That is non-sense. Patent law has nothing to do with innovation. The cell phone industry is an excellent example of this. Apple, Google, and Samsung wouldn't suddenly give up if they couldn't patent things. They would still be in a bloody knife fight to the death where each tries to out do the other by innovating faster. The first one to stop would be dead.
The only REAL difference is that it wouldn't just be the big manufacturers.
Right now, if you wanted to build a start up that takes off the shelf components to make a custom phone, you couldn't. It isn't because cell phones are too hard. The components are off the shelf, and with Android and some other Linux alternatives, you don't even need to bother developing your own OS. The manufacturing is trivial and can be easily outsourced. Sure, your costs will be higher than Apple or Samsung who can order a few billion parts at a time, but you could stay within a reasonable distance and compete for the high end market. I know I sure as hell would happy pay a heft amount for a custom pimped out phone with personalized extras for me. The only reason why there are not a thousand and one silicon valley start ups offering custom phones is because... ...they would be sued into utter fucking oblivion...
Patent law has created a cartel. Everyone is violating everyone else's patents right now. You physically can not make a phone without violating dozens or hundreds of patents owned by dozens of different people. The way everyone gets around this is by building up a war chest of patents, and engaging in some MAD economics. Samsung can sue HTC, but HTC will turn around and sue Samsung back. Both are technically in the wrong. Instead, they come to an accommodation where they won't sue each other. Sure, it prevents one side from taking out the other, but it also has the happy side effect (happy for them, very unhappy for the consumer) where no one else can enter the market.
If Steve jobs and the iPhone team, a relatively small group of people in the grand scheme of things, had tried to enter the cell phone market as a start up, they would have been killed on sight. They wouldn't have gotten anywhere near to sell their product before being sued into oblivion. The only way they were able to make a product was because Apple was sitting on a few billion dollars and was able to buy their own patent arsenal. Think about that for a moment. The iPhone, the phone that ushered in a new wave of smart phones, would have been murdered on arrival if it wasn't for the fact that Apple had a pile of money and could buy its way into the cell phone patent cartel.
How many innovations have we NOT seen because some young designers and engineers have been shut out of the cartel created by patent law?
That isn't "innovation". This is a bunch of very large corporations screwing consumers, wasting money (your money) suing each other, and creating a cartel to ensure that they never have to face too much competition. Small businesses and innovative movers and shakers are getting fucked. As awesome and as advanced as cell phones are these days, they are echos of what could have been if that entire market wasn't locked up into a big patent cartel.
It doesn't matter if they lose a few bucks on each tablet sold. Amazon REALLY doesn't care. They can happily eat a loss on each tablet because they are not selling tablets. They are selling Amazon content delivery devices. The purpose of an Amazon content delivery device is to get you to buy content. If it takes a net cost of $10 to get one in your hands, they will happily pay. In fact, on the initial run, they will happily pay far more than $10 net dollars to get their Amazon content tube plugged into your face. They will eat a hefty loss just to build the market and work the margins down better.
This is exactly what they did with the Kindle. The first Kindle was subsidized in terms cost. They were happy to do this to build a market. They recouped everything they threw down by selling books, and then made a pile more once they created and dominated the e-book market. Amazon is just turning around and looking to do the same thing with tablets. Step one is to build a credible market and take a loss doing it if they have to. Step two is profit.
1.Sell discounted media consumption device
2.Build market for the new device
3.???
4.Profit
The cost isn't what you are paying the IT folks per hour. The cost is how much you shell out in your overall IT budget. I work in the private sector and occasionally outsource various jobs. Might the per hour cost of an in house programmer be cheaper? Maybe, but I don't care about the per hour cost. Out sourcing is without a doubt cheaper. The reason is simple. I don't need a programmer 40 hours a week, every week of the year. I need a programmer in bits and bursts. I can't get the money to hire a programmer and then find the management to put them under, especially when market conditions are uncertain.
The cost of hiring someone is pretty brutal. It isn't just what you pay them and the benefits, but it is also what you have to pay them should you lay them off, and the blow to moral if you keep hiring and firing people as needed. Getting a few thousand to contract for a narrowly defined project is comparably easier and cheaper.
So, seeing that the government more or less does exactly what I do doesn't get my blood in a boil, especially considering that with government unions it makes it even harder and more expensive for the government to downsize should the need arise or the work dry up. If you are going to need programmers to continuously work on or support something, in house is certainly the way to go. If you don't need someone for 40 hours a week from now until the end of time, outsourcing to a contractor is a solid way to keep costs down and let you remain flexible on your IT spending , especially in uncertain market conditions.
Publishers really are not the problem. Publishers have more to fear handing money over for a knock off FPS than this. Your COD low budget rip off isn't going to make any money. What publishers do have to fear for is game play. If the game play is solid, they are going to have absolutely no problem gathering up the cash. In fact, if there is good game play here, I think publishers will be clawing their eyes out to get their hands on this. Everyone wants a Portal or Minecraft.
If this game doesn't get picked up, it is because it is not fun. You are free to wrap up a moral lesson on the value of journalism, war, or whatever, but if it is just a moral lesson wrapped with empty and dull game play, no one is going to play it.
You can color me mildly skeptical of this game. They have spent a lot of time talking about the neat gimmick that is the setting and the protagonist's job. Nearly everyone agrees that the setting sounds interesting and unique. What I have not heard them say much about is how they are going to make the game fun. Am I going to be an idiot with a health bar chasing the Call of Duty guys as they tear up the street and mow down civilians? Is this going to look more like an on open world FPS RPG than a shooter on rails? Am I going to be scoring points for getting action shots of civilians getting shot and terrorist getting blown away, or am I sleuthing around and talking to people trying to find a story?
Fun game play doesn't have to involve putting a bullet between someone's eyes, but I am pretty sure it has to involve more than chasing around the Call of Duty guys with a camera as they run through scripted battles. I'm not saying that this game isn't going to be fun, just that they have not shown what neat game play gimmick is going to go along with what everyone agrees is an interesting concept and setting.
The US doesn't need autonomous killing machines. Sure, the US will develop them, but so long as the Americans are busy busting on sheep herders armed with AK47s, they wont use them. You might get to the point where drones are doing everything but pull the trigger, but having a human in the loop approving all death and destruction is cheap and easy. You don't gain anything when you are fighting peasants with shitty guns by having a fully autonomous killing machines.
The US will develop the technology though. It does make sense to have this technology in certain cases. The most obvious case would be in a theoretical war with China. Drones might work all well and good when killing goat herders, but against another super power that has the capacity to jam, you might need autonomous killing machines. I could easily see the US developing a drone that, once given the outline of a type of an obvious targets (like a tanks, transport ship, and AAA instillation) can be fired in the general direction of a concentration of military units and carry out its mission, even if it gets jammed and the target moves.
Of course, in the only instances where the US would actually have need of fully autonomous drones like that, a few civilian casualties are the absolute least of your concerns. If US is fighting an enemy that can put up an effective ECM defense for more than the 3 hours it normally takes the US to level such defenses, the US is fighting someone who has the capacity to turn the US (and a goodly portion of the rest of the world) into a radioactive waste pit.
I don't recall that Union Carbide were operating a nuclear power plant in Bhopal.
What part of "one of" do you not understand?
Yet just over 10 years ago Indian Point Energy Center did not have any planes crashed into it. Somehow WTC 1&2 were more attractive to terrorists than IP 2&3...
Yup, they sure are dumb. In one of their last attempts of an attack on the US they managed to blow their junk off and then get the shit kicked out of them by civilians.
Slamming a 747 into Indian Point would have been tens of thousands of times worse than knocking down two measly buildings. You don't need to crack the reactor core, just kick up radioactive junk by lighting a few fires and burning some stored waste. Cracking the reactor core or some how causing a melt down by destroying secondary systems is just gravy. Blanketing NYC with even low levels of radiation would cause the city to evacuate and collapse. That would be 17 million people or roughly 5% of the entire US population. The abandonment of NYC would lead to a world wide financial collapse the likes of which this world has never seen. It would make the financial hardships we have seen recently look like a little economic hiccup. It would utterly destroy the American economy and maul the rest of the world economy... and for what? To save a few cents on electricity if you close your eyes and ignore the massive costs inflicted on the tax payer when you include the cost of regulation and waste storage? Thanks, but fuck that. Indian Point sitting 40 miles from NYC is possibly the the stupidest fucking idea in the history of the US.
OBL is a fucking idiot. He could have actually achieved his goals if he had hit Indian Point with a couple of 747s. Knocking down the WTCs was just annoying. Blanketing NYC in radiation, even low levels, could have very well collapsed the west's ability to project its power due to the brutal economic hardship the the abandonment of NYC would have caused.
The reason why the regulations are "expensive" is because when a nuke plant fails, it kills thousands and/or leaves huge swaths of nations uninhabitable. Regulation IS a part of the cost of running a nuclear power plant.
The problem with a nuclear power plant is that while its failure mode is relatively rare, it fails in such a way that it becomes one of the worst flavors of industrial accident in existence. So, you are sitting there struggling to prevent an extremely rare failure that pretty much always happens in a way you didn't previously predict. You need to run around nailing down every one in a billion chance or coincidence that could possibly lead to failure. Your task is basically impossible, but you need to do your best anyways. So, you need regulate the hell out of that process. Not only that, but you need to police it like a Nazi or else all your regulations are for naught when some asshole decides to try and save a few bucks or gets lazy. Even then, there is not such thing as fool proof. Ram a 747 into a nuclear reactor, blow up a bomb, get whacked by an act of god, or suffer a series of highly improbably coincidences that result in a failure no one could have seen coming, it all comes down to the same thing. If you have a world covered in nuclear reactors, sometimes they are going to blow. Humans just can't make unsinkable anything.
Personally, I don't think that nukes can survive. The problem is pretty basic. The cost of running a nuclear reactor is the cost of building it, running it in a highly regulated manner, disposing of waste, shutting the thing down and cleaning it up, and finally providing insurance against the rare possibility that it blows and renders a few hundred miles of land the nuclear power plant company doesn't own uninhabitable. My tax money shouldn't be underwriting all of the above because it is the cost of doing business. If it doesn't make any financial sense, it shouldn't get built. No nuclear power plant should EVER be built within spitting distance of New York City, because anyone who claims to have bought the insurance against NYC landing in a fallout zone is full of shit.
I'm not completely against nuclear power plants, but I am utterly against using tax money to pay for running those things safely, disposing of the waste, and insuring against their failure. Frankly, I don't think that nuclear power plants can exist in a world where they actually have to pay the cost of all of their externalities.
Personally, I would eat a couple of years in jail at a low security prison than a $600,000+ fine. Low security prison, frankly, isn't that bad. You piss away a couple of a years reading books, and then you are done. Whenever you go into a job interview, when you get to the point where you need to disclose a prison record, you just explain that you were in because you shared 30 music files on your computer. As an employer, I wouldn't balk for a second. If anything, I would be more inclined to hire in a tie as a small attempt to outweigh a brutal injustice. Being two years behind in your job growth/promotion path is annoying, but trivial.
A $600,000 fine is brutal. It means that you will never be able to save enough to retire. You will absolutely end up becoming a dependent on the state and have to rely entirely on social security when you retire. You are have been fucked for the rest of your life. You will never have enough money to do anything more than scrape by. You will never be able to take out a loan for basically anything. Unlike being stuck with a mortgage of that amount, you can never declare bankruptcy. You are in financial servitude to the state for the rest of your entire life.
Better for the State to outright steal a few years of your life than to be enslaved for the next 60+ years that this poor kid is going to be alive for.
Constitutional reading fail. The 8th amendment is about as clear as you can make it.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
If $150,000 for copying a song is a 'reasonable fine' than the 8th amendment literally has no meaning. We might as well recycle it into toilet paper, because at least if someone was using it to be wiping their ass, it would doing at some good to someone, somewhere.
No, I love my country. I just hate cowards. Anyone who would despoil the constitution because of a bunch of sheep herders occasionally murder a few people is a fucking coward. Are you a coward? If you are, I would like to encourage you to either remove your cowardly ass from my country, or at least refrain from giving voice to your pathetic craven fears and stay the fuck out of a voting booth. I'm not asking you to storm a beachhead, just try and keep from shitting yourself over a one in a few hundred thousand chance of a terrorist killing you. Be a god damn coward if that pleases you, but don't try and give away my liberties to sooth you sad and pathetic fears.
Yeah, I misread the list. I thought Septicemia (number 10 on the list) was food bacteria.