Indeed. AI is, to most humans, a human AI. Something which feels the need to grow across several realms of knowledge, instead of one.
I know, it's silly, but that's how humanity is. We don't have an AI until we see one reading a book on Horticulture, wearing a smoking man's jacket, driving a car, and playing golf on weekends with humans.
Part of life is reading the fine print; if you are reading the above, and cannot think of at least a dozen scenarios where the above happens, but spending more is not a good idea, then you will probably spend the rest of your life being a sucker for free* iPhones, timeshares, and what not.
See, the problem you are faced here is that you apparently subscribe to sound-bite economics.
"For example, European countries that have cut government spending have seen unemployment rise, sometimes precipitously, exactly as Keynes predicted."
Your example, in this case, does not follow through with the thought: if governments cut spending, of course the people who rely on government spending (be it welfare, employment, or subsidiary employment) will be impacted; you would need to cut spending AND cut taxes, while opening up trade barriers, and ensuring that enforcement of beneficial laws is top notch; then you may call upon the private sector to place those people in positions in which they will, arguably, be both more efficient and better paid. Failure, on any of those parts, will naturally result in failure of the whole. You would get a short term rise in unemployment, followed by a long term drop in unemployment.
"What would have happened if the US government had, instead of paying out billions in unemployment benefits, instead paid out billions to repair highway bridges or build a high speed rail network?"
If the US had done so, we would not have a high speed rail network today. Why? Because unless you have been living under a rock, the cost projections for a high-speed rail system are off the wall! We would literally spend the entire economy just putting in less than half of the system. What more, there is no major economic benefit to it -> American cities / towns are not European cities / towns, they are too far apart, and too sparse! People would have to drive the train stations, and park there; and if you have ridden an Amtrak train lately, you'd know that parking space is a major issue; we don't even have room to park our cars at the existing stations!
At the end of the day, you're going to argue that the wealth of every citizen is increased by working on infrastructure. And I am going to argue that the people working on it, perhaps not the workers, but the firms, will be soaking the government, and the taxpayer, for everything they have; substandard materials, and 1000x invoices. All that wealth you think an infrastructure upgrade will bring about will be soaked up by those cost overruns. So, in the end, you're just spending money, and not caring what you spend it on. And that does not make sense. Any fool knows that if you don't know what you're spending money on, you just park it somewhere safe, until you do. Contrary to what you learned in basic economics, leaving cash in the bank is not a bad thing; spending it on crap is not better than not spending it.
Learning is good for everyone, education, as it is known colloquially, has some disadvantages. Education has, in times past, not been as clean as one might have hoped; propaganda has worked its way into the classrooms through every available route, and spoiled many a person; what more, education is typically formatted to be highly efficient only in a select number of individuals. The teaching methods need an update, but no one has figured out a more effective version.
There will never be a time when robots and computers can handle all of our needs; they may handle many of the more primitive ones, but humans are biomechanical machines (possibly with souls) who are constantly readjusting their wants and needs. As such, as soon as some needs are successfully solved, we move onto new ones.
This is not, assuming it doesn't get too out of control, a bad thing. Humans need to dream, to reach, to grasp, to extend, or they will die. As the machines, as well as other earthly lifeforms, benefit from this: when we go to the stars, we will be taking all of them with us, to places they cannot easily reach on their own, or in their current states. Plants from this planet will populate other planets, and machines will no doubt help terraform those planets. It is, in a strange way, a symbiotic relationship -> we can live without each other, but the results tend to be uncomfortable. Humans can live off of mushrooms if they needed to, but they much prefer the plants; they can live without machines, but that's make for living in a wet, damp cave; the plants can live without humans, but then they must disperse their seed on their own, and tend to their own soil; the plants can live without machines, but that makes growing them much more difficult; the machines can do without either, but then, there's no blueprint for them to explore, or minds to guide them.
Robots taking jobs is fine, as it frees humans up for more versatile jobs. As Einstein pointed out, what man and machine can achieve if they work together is greater than what they can do alone.
The fear being pandered is that those humans, whose jobs have been transferred to robots, are only good for their previously held job; that there is no upgrade path for them. Additionally, there is a fear that there are a static number of jobs, that new jobs are not constantly coming into being, or that these people would not qualify for those jobs, or that they would lower paying or degrading jobs.
What more, wealth is created. Apples may grow on trees, but unless they are picked, they are not much good to us.
Ask the French how well that has worked out for them.
Additionally, just because a law has been passed before, does not mean it should be passed again. Prohibition was rather popular at the time, but the damage it did to this country we are still getting over.
For Google, it is a new invention. See, Google is attacking MS from the internet, while Microsoft is lashing out at Google from the PC. It's essentially Netscape vs. Microsoft, Part 2. And since Ballmer doesn't hold a candle to Gates's genius, he can't see where he is being attacked from, nor how to respond; sad really, since his predecessor already wrote the game plan for this.
Ballmer is trying to transition MS into an internet company (and sometimes a software / hardware company, ala Apple), and plans to take Google on from there; he thinks attacking them on their home turf, with their home advantage, is a brilliant play. Gates knew enough that when taking on someone, you do not take them on from a position of weakness; he leveraged MS on the PC against Netscape on the internet, and won. Why? Because owning the last mile, as its known in the network trade, is the only important thing at the end of the day.
For reference, see how the cable companies act like drunken idiots when Verizon (ala Bell Atlantic with a skin mod) decides to roll out FiOS in their area. Verizon is staffed with a few ex-Bell engineers, I imagine, who know that fiber is the end game, and whoever gets there first has customers for life. Once again, same idea here with MS: everyone is working to remove MS from the last mile, so its advantage of using bare metal performance to punish internet programs (who need to be tethered to a server, and always introduce latency) is negated. And the board at MS, like an fools, are going along with it! I wouldn't be surprised to find much of the current board staffed with people who do not know what an Ethernet cable is, nor that a byte is typically 8 bits, but instead think of the internet as needing 'something blue, because blue is a soothing color.' There should be a look of absolute horror in your face, right about now.
And where does the "good enough" problem stem from? Survey says -> lack of improvement on the hardware / software side.
For instance, it's 2012, soon to be 2013, and our CPU speeds are stuck. We've gone multi-core, but last year's Phenom II was arguably a better buy than this year's FX. The number of stream processors on GPUs may be increasing, but not by much. In short, the tech sector has run into the problem that plagued the American automative industry -> your products this year are essentially the same as last year, with minor improvements / updates; a 2005 Ford Mustang, in this case, is the same as the 2010 Ford Mustang, with the latter sporting an iPod connector as the big difference.
Personally, I want a Phenom III with 20 cores, running at 5 Ghz with a liquid cooling shim pre-attached. Instead, I will probably be getting an AMD company being driven into the depths of the ocean, and will purchase an Intel processor, right before they screw the market ("x86 is old, everyone is doing ARM now!"), with front seats to watching the tech industry destroy itself. That's what will probably happen.
As for Windows...it was nice knowing you. The current CEO has already engaged the company in a spiral of doom, and looks unlikely to pull out of it before all is lost. This Windows Blue thing...it is what it appears to be: a cash grab. We've seen this before with the Software Assurance stuff, where companies ended up paying year after year, and getting little in return (would have been cheaper to buy everything retail). MS is not Apple, stop trying to be Apple! Apple may have been a Wall St. darling, but its time is over.
It's not popular because it requires the story-teller to write stories / directions that are more immersive than they are used to; this is simply the status quo pushing back.
See, it takes more talent to write a story that looks good in 3D than it does in 2D; additionally, people tire of gimmicky 3D (essentially, cheap shots, like when they have a shark jump out of the screen at you) more quickly than palatable shots (arguably the scene in Avatar where they are on board the shuttle). This is where Hollywood's magic formula breaks down, the one they use to pop out movies that people can barely remember, but will be forced to see (by kids or loved ones); they will have to re-engineer it to work on a mass production level, and that means time and money; something which each studio would prefer the other invest in, get right, then copy for nickles on the dollar, because there will be mistakes, costly ones, and they are very aware of that fact.
Then they need to scream a little louder about this one, because guess who is going to receive the blame for it? "Oh, we had to do the ethanol route! The environmentalists demanded it! It's good for the planet!" - part of being a politician is knowing who to blame, while collecting money for making the mistake.
And while they're at it, if they could undo the NIMBY / anti-nuclear stuff, it would be much obliged. Yes, yes, I know they are now behind nuclear technology, especially when faced with coal and other fun alternatives...but the old propaganda from their fore-bearers / similar groups is still driving the people away from it, and it's really getting out of hand. Something needs to be done before people are so scared of electricity generating technologies, that they turn to burning forests for warmth. And yes, we are approaching that level of stupidity: "Nuclear is bad, oil is bad, coal is bad, but wood is a renewable resource! So, let's just light the forest on fire, and all our neighbors will be warm with us!."
And before you say it, you know someone, somewhere will do this.
Uhh, no. No shame in owning a weapon. Instead, they just announced who to rob, and who to rob during the day when the home's occupants are at work. Because a fair number of felons acquire guns after leaving prison, and this newspaper just handed them a holiday shopping list. Merry Christmas everyone!
I'm sure the people with guns will be happy knowing that their homes may be ransacked by criminals looking for their guns (worth more than jewelry), while the people without will be happy knowing that criminals now know that they do not possess any firearm, and so can murder / rape / whatever them without fear of dad or mom busting out a.44. "My dad is going to shoot you!" "No he isn't; Bob here has that gun permit map thingy from that journal a while back loaded up on his phone, and it says neither you, nor any of your neighbors have any guns. Now Bob here...he hasn't seen a woman in years, on account of him being on the inside, so I'm gonna go make some popcorn while the two of you get comfortable."
OMFG, this is such a bad idea! They've just publicly announced, for every felon nearby, which homes to search for a weapon!
It's going to be like the Walmart of guns! "Bob, age 32, drives to work every day at 9 AM...has a dog, Mr. Scruffles...leaves his garage door unlocked. Well, we know he has a gun, probably in the closet or under his pillow. Let's pick it up after he leaves for work, I feel naked walking around without a gun after prison..."
Why don't you publish the names, addresses, and photos of children in the local area whose parents get home late! It's about that level of FAIL.
They've single-handedly just increased the number of gun deaths and home invasions. *golf clap* Well played, well played.
Dude, this is where everyone else is going, there's no stopping it, so get on the bandwagon and shut up." You sound like the arrogant business guy right out of college, who lands a job at his dad's company, and has whipped out a 'sure thing' strategy for its products, while berating your customers and insulting your employees when they disagree with you. Good luck with that, better learn to enjoy eating vegetables from cans.
"Utilities that have the most interest will always be in the official stores." -> Unqualified statement. For example, any program which MS disagrees with will probably be banned. They may be immensely popular, but that does not mean they will be available through this store. If anything, a number of the more capable programs out there will require installer or setups that may conflict with the Windows Store installer, as such ensuring that they cannot be purchased.
And the rest of your post reads "Dude, this is where everyone else is going, there's no stopping it, so get on the bandwagon and shut up. You sound like the arrogant business guy right out of college, who lands a job at his dad's company, and has whipped out a 'sure thing' strategy for its products, while berating your customers and insulting your employees when they disagree with you. Good luck with that, better learn to enjoy eating vegetables from cans."
What? 64-bit image routines chomp 32-bit image routines! This is a known fact! And that's just the beginning!
And it's the fact that memory is limited under 32-bit code to 4 GB of RAM that we really care about. FF moves like a pregnant yack when you have 20 tabs open, and has the memory usage of a 700 lb sumo wrestler at an all you can eat buffet.
Honestly, who isn't running a 64-bit processor these days? Being limited to 4GB of RAM is a bigger issue than "OMG, it's issuing slightly larger instructions on a 4Ghz processor with a 240 GB SSD and 32 GBs of RAM! That's like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 less efficient than a 32-bit instruction, and is so fast that no one even notices!"
I feel like we're playing tug of war with the Windows XP crowd, who still want to run the latest FireFox, but aren't willing to upgrade their 2002 Pentium 4 with 256 MB of RAMBUS RAM, and the 80GB 5400 RPM 'Value" HD, versus everyone else who has moved on.
Seriously, SATA 3 & SSDs. Do not care about the slightly larger instructions, the upgrade to a SSD will do more for IO than 32-bit instructions in FF ever will.
You win the comment of the year award. The tech industry needs to realize that perpetually following or wanting to be Apple is badly damaging all of us. I wonder if it's too hard for them to figure out a design that is not Apple, is them, but one which is clean, pretty, and works.
But going to 64-bit on an x86 machine also doubles the number of registers, as well as introduces any number of extra instructions that can speed things up. If you aren't getting a significant speedup with a 64-bit build, then something is usually wrong. Like you are casting to a 64-bit integer, but are still treating it like it's 32-bit.
Plus your benchmarks mean nothing with FireFox -> the people behind the builds have put that much more effort into optimizing it for 32-bit over 64-bit. It's like complaining how much the 64-bit version of Windows XP sucks compared to the 32-bit version -> there's almost no support for the 64-bit version, and it will remain as such until the Mozilla group stops dragging its heels.
Hmm. The approach being taken towards free speech these days, in the States, is likely to put a damper on R&D. You simply can't have it both ways -> you can't have people designing your next generation weaponry, all while forbidding them from discussing its elements with their colleagues.
What more, our approach to Iran is somewhat whack at the moment. We're making it harder for people to come here to learn, people who (often-times) even up living here for the rest of their lives. At university, I knew of one decent chemist, an Iranian girl, who probably wouldn't be here if our borders were any tighter. And that's the point -> for every one 'terrorist' that slips through, we get ten thousand non-terrorists; just normal people, looking for a decent education and a good job; normal people who are considered the intellectual elite of their home country; if your goal was to prevent their home country from advancing as quickly down a weaponized route, then sending their best and brightest back to them (or never letting them leave to begin with) would probably have an opposite result.
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Indeed. AI is, to most humans, a human AI. Something which feels the need to grow across several realms of knowledge, instead of one.
I know, it's silly, but that's how humanity is. We don't have an AI until we see one reading a book on Horticulture, wearing a smoking man's jacket, driving a car, and playing golf on weekends with humans.
Part of life is reading the fine print; if you are reading the above, and cannot think of at least a dozen scenarios where the above happens, but spending more is not a good idea, then you will probably spend the rest of your life being a sucker for free* iPhones, timeshares, and what not.
See, the problem you are faced here is that you apparently subscribe to sound-bite economics.
"For example, European countries that have cut government spending have seen unemployment rise, sometimes precipitously, exactly as Keynes predicted."
Your example, in this case, does not follow through with the thought: if governments cut spending, of course the people who rely on government spending (be it welfare, employment, or subsidiary employment) will be impacted; you would need to cut spending AND cut taxes, while opening up trade barriers, and ensuring that enforcement of beneficial laws is top notch; then you may call upon the private sector to place those people in positions in which they will, arguably, be both more efficient and better paid. Failure, on any of those parts, will naturally result in failure of the whole. You would get a short term rise in unemployment, followed by a long term drop in unemployment.
"What would have happened if the US government had, instead of paying out billions in unemployment benefits, instead paid out billions to repair highway bridges or build a high speed rail network?"
If the US had done so, we would not have a high speed rail network today. Why? Because unless you have been living under a rock, the cost projections for a high-speed rail system are off the wall! We would literally spend the entire economy just putting in less than half of the system. What more, there is no major economic benefit to it -> American cities / towns are not European cities / towns, they are too far apart, and too sparse! People would have to drive the train stations, and park there; and if you have ridden an Amtrak train lately, you'd know that parking space is a major issue; we don't even have room to park our cars at the existing stations!
At the end of the day, you're going to argue that the wealth of every citizen is increased by working on infrastructure. And I am going to argue that the people working on it, perhaps not the workers, but the firms, will be soaking the government, and the taxpayer, for everything they have; substandard materials, and 1000x invoices. All that wealth you think an infrastructure upgrade will bring about will be soaked up by those cost overruns. So, in the end, you're just spending money, and not caring what you spend it on. And that does not make sense. Any fool knows that if you don't know what you're spending money on, you just park it somewhere safe, until you do. Contrary to what you learned in basic economics, leaving cash in the bank is not a bad thing; spending it on crap is not better than not spending it.
Learning is good for everyone, education, as it is known colloquially, has some disadvantages. Education has, in times past, not been as clean as one might have hoped; propaganda has worked its way into the classrooms through every available route, and spoiled many a person; what more, education is typically formatted to be highly efficient only in a select number of individuals. The teaching methods need an update, but no one has figured out a more effective version.
There will never be a time when robots and computers can handle all of our needs; they may handle many of the more primitive ones, but humans are biomechanical machines (possibly with souls) who are constantly readjusting their wants and needs. As such, as soon as some needs are successfully solved, we move onto new ones.
This is not, assuming it doesn't get too out of control, a bad thing. Humans need to dream, to reach, to grasp, to extend, or they will die. As the machines, as well as other earthly lifeforms, benefit from this: when we go to the stars, we will be taking all of them with us, to places they cannot easily reach on their own, or in their current states. Plants from this planet will populate other planets, and machines will no doubt help terraform those planets. It is, in a strange way, a symbiotic relationship -> we can live without each other, but the results tend to be uncomfortable. Humans can live off of mushrooms if they needed to, but they much prefer the plants; they can live without machines, but that's make for living in a wet, damp cave; the plants can live without humans, but then they must disperse their seed on their own, and tend to their own soil; the plants can live without machines, but that makes growing them much more difficult; the machines can do without either, but then, there's no blueprint for them to explore, or minds to guide them.
Robots taking jobs is fine, as it frees humans up for more versatile jobs. As Einstein pointed out, what man and machine can achieve if they work together is greater than what they can do alone.
The fear being pandered is that those humans, whose jobs have been transferred to robots, are only good for their previously held job; that there is no upgrade path for them. Additionally, there is a fear that there are a static number of jobs, that new jobs are not constantly coming into being, or that these people would not qualify for those jobs, or that they would lower paying or degrading jobs.
What more, wealth is created. Apples may grow on trees, but unless they are picked, they are not much good to us.
Ask the French how well that has worked out for them.
Additionally, just because a law has been passed before, does not mean it should be passed again. Prohibition was rather popular at the time, but the damage it did to this country we are still getting over.
For Google, it is a new invention. See, Google is attacking MS from the internet, while Microsoft is lashing out at Google from the PC. It's essentially Netscape vs. Microsoft, Part 2. And since Ballmer doesn't hold a candle to Gates's genius, he can't see where he is being attacked from, nor how to respond; sad really, since his predecessor already wrote the game plan for this.
Ballmer is trying to transition MS into an internet company (and sometimes a software / hardware company, ala Apple), and plans to take Google on from there; he thinks attacking them on their home turf, with their home advantage, is a brilliant play. Gates knew enough that when taking on someone, you do not take them on from a position of weakness; he leveraged MS on the PC against Netscape on the internet, and won. Why? Because owning the last mile, as its known in the network trade, is the only important thing at the end of the day.
For reference, see how the cable companies act like drunken idiots when Verizon (ala Bell Atlantic with a skin mod) decides to roll out FiOS in their area. Verizon is staffed with a few ex-Bell engineers, I imagine, who know that fiber is the end game, and whoever gets there first has customers for life. Once again, same idea here with MS: everyone is working to remove MS from the last mile, so its advantage of using bare metal performance to punish internet programs (who need to be tethered to a server, and always introduce latency) is negated. And the board at MS, like an fools, are going along with it! I wouldn't be surprised to find much of the current board staffed with people who do not know what an Ethernet cable is, nor that a byte is typically 8 bits, but instead think of the internet as needing 'something blue, because blue is a soothing color.' There should be a look of absolute horror in your face, right about now.
And where does the "good enough" problem stem from? Survey says -> lack of improvement on the hardware / software side.
For instance, it's 2012, soon to be 2013, and our CPU speeds are stuck. We've gone multi-core, but last year's Phenom II was arguably a better buy than this year's FX. The number of stream processors on GPUs may be increasing, but not by much. In short, the tech sector has run into the problem that plagued the American automative industry -> your products this year are essentially the same as last year, with minor improvements / updates; a 2005 Ford Mustang, in this case, is the same as the 2010 Ford Mustang, with the latter sporting an iPod connector as the big difference.
Personally, I want a Phenom III with 20 cores, running at 5 Ghz with a liquid cooling shim pre-attached. Instead, I will probably be getting an AMD company being driven into the depths of the ocean, and will purchase an Intel processor, right before they screw the market ("x86 is old, everyone is doing ARM now!"), with front seats to watching the tech industry destroy itself. That's what will probably happen.
As for Windows...it was nice knowing you. The current CEO has already engaged the company in a spiral of doom, and looks unlikely to pull out of it before all is lost. This Windows Blue thing...it is what it appears to be: a cash grab. We've seen this before with the Software Assurance stuff, where companies ended up paying year after year, and getting little in return (would have been cheaper to buy everything retail). MS is not Apple, stop trying to be Apple! Apple may have been a Wall St. darling, but its time is over.
It's not popular because it requires the story-teller to write stories / directions that are more immersive than they are used to; this is simply the status quo pushing back.
See, it takes more talent to write a story that looks good in 3D than it does in 2D; additionally, people tire of gimmicky 3D (essentially, cheap shots, like when they have a shark jump out of the screen at you) more quickly than palatable shots (arguably the scene in Avatar where they are on board the shuttle). This is where Hollywood's magic formula breaks down, the one they use to pop out movies that people can barely remember, but will be forced to see (by kids or loved ones); they will have to re-engineer it to work on a mass production level, and that means time and money; something which each studio would prefer the other invest in, get right, then copy for nickles on the dollar, because there will be mistakes, costly ones, and they are very aware of that fact.
And if we pay some people to dig ditches, while others fill them in, we can employ hundreds of thousands of people.
Why do we elect career politicians again? Has the country improved at all since this became status quo?
Then they need to scream a little louder about this one, because guess who is going to receive the blame for it? "Oh, we had to do the ethanol route! The environmentalists demanded it! It's good for the planet!" - part of being a politician is knowing who to blame, while collecting money for making the mistake.
And while they're at it, if they could undo the NIMBY / anti-nuclear stuff, it would be much obliged. Yes, yes, I know they are now behind nuclear technology, especially when faced with coal and other fun alternatives...but the old propaganda from their fore-bearers / similar groups is still driving the people away from it, and it's really getting out of hand. Something needs to be done before people are so scared of electricity generating technologies, that they turn to burning forests for warmth. And yes, we are approaching that level of stupidity: "Nuclear is bad, oil is bad, coal is bad, but wood is a renewable resource! So, let's just light the forest on fire, and all our neighbors will be warm with us!."
And before you say it, you know someone, somewhere will do this.
Can we make it an executable offense for this level of stupidity?
Uhh, no. No shame in owning a weapon. Instead, they just announced who to rob, and who to rob during the day when the home's occupants are at work. Because a fair number of felons acquire guns after leaving prison, and this newspaper just handed them a holiday shopping list. Merry Christmas everyone!
I'm sure the people with guns will be happy knowing that their homes may be ransacked by criminals looking for their guns (worth more than jewelry), while the people without will be happy knowing that criminals now know that they do not possess any firearm, and so can murder / rape / whatever them without fear of dad or mom busting out a .44. "My dad is going to shoot you!" "No he isn't; Bob here has that gun permit map thingy from that journal a while back loaded up on his phone, and it says neither you, nor any of your neighbors have any guns. Now Bob here...he hasn't seen a woman in years, on account of him being on the inside, so I'm gonna go make some popcorn while the two of you get comfortable."
Both, actually. Homes that aren't marked are safer to rob, while homes which are marked are now offering a gun-special.
Exactly. They've just destroyed the element of surprise for those homeowners. Might as well have posted the security codes to their alarm systems.
OMFG, this is such a bad idea! They've just publicly announced, for every felon nearby, which homes to search for a weapon!
It's going to be like the Walmart of guns! "Bob, age 32, drives to work every day at 9 AM...has a dog, Mr. Scruffles...leaves his garage door unlocked. Well, we know he has a gun, probably in the closet or under his pillow. Let's pick it up after he leaves for work, I feel naked walking around without a gun after prison..."
Why don't you publish the names, addresses, and photos of children in the local area whose parents get home late! It's about that level of FAIL.
They've single-handedly just increased the number of gun deaths and home invasions. *golf clap* Well played, well played.
Edit:
Dude, this is where everyone else is going, there's no stopping it, so get on the bandwagon and shut up." You sound like the arrogant business guy right out of college, who lands a job at his dad's company, and has whipped out a 'sure thing' strategy for its products, while berating your customers and insulting your employees when they disagree with you. Good luck with that, better learn to enjoy eating vegetables from cans.
"Utilities that have the most interest will always be in the official stores." -> Unqualified statement. For example, any program which MS disagrees with will probably be banned. They may be immensely popular, but that does not mean they will be available through this store. If anything, a number of the more capable programs out there will require installer or setups that may conflict with the Windows Store installer, as such ensuring that they cannot be purchased.
And the rest of your post reads "Dude, this is where everyone else is going, there's no stopping it, so get on the bandwagon and shut up. You sound like the arrogant business guy right out of college, who lands a job at his dad's company, and has whipped out a 'sure thing' strategy for its products, while berating your customers and insulting your employees when they disagree with you. Good luck with that, better learn to enjoy eating vegetables from cans."
What? 64-bit image routines chomp 32-bit image routines! This is a known fact! And that's just the beginning!
And it's the fact that memory is limited under 32-bit code to 4 GB of RAM that we really care about. FF moves like a pregnant yack when you have 20 tabs open, and has the memory usage of a 700 lb sumo wrestler at an all you can eat buffet.
Honestly, who isn't running a 64-bit processor these days? Being limited to 4GB of RAM is a bigger issue than "OMG, it's issuing slightly larger instructions on a 4Ghz processor with a 240 GB SSD and 32 GBs of RAM! That's like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 less efficient than a 32-bit instruction, and is so fast that no one even notices!"
I feel like we're playing tug of war with the Windows XP crowd, who still want to run the latest FireFox, but aren't willing to upgrade their 2002 Pentium 4 with 256 MB of RAMBUS RAM, and the 80GB 5400 RPM 'Value" HD, versus everyone else who has moved on.
Seriously, SATA 3 & SSDs. Do not care about the slightly larger instructions, the upgrade to a SSD will do more for IO than 32-bit instructions in FF ever will.
You win the comment of the year award. The tech industry needs to realize that perpetually following or wanting to be Apple is badly damaging all of us. I wonder if it's too hard for them to figure out a design that is not Apple, is them, but one which is clean, pretty, and works.
*facepalms*
But going to 64-bit on an x86 machine also doubles the number of registers, as well as introduces any number of extra instructions that can speed things up. If you aren't getting a significant speedup with a 64-bit build, then something is usually wrong. Like you are casting to a 64-bit integer, but are still treating it like it's 32-bit.
Plus your benchmarks mean nothing with FireFox -> the people behind the builds have put that much more effort into optimizing it for 32-bit over 64-bit. It's like complaining how much the 64-bit version of Windows XP sucks compared to the 32-bit version -> there's almost no support for the 64-bit version, and it will remain as such until the Mozilla group stops dragging its heels.
Hmm. The approach being taken towards free speech these days, in the States, is likely to put a damper on R&D. You simply can't have it both ways -> you can't have people designing your next generation weaponry, all while forbidding them from discussing its elements with their colleagues.
What more, our approach to Iran is somewhat whack at the moment. We're making it harder for people to come here to learn, people who (often-times) even up living here for the rest of their lives. At university, I knew of one decent chemist, an Iranian girl, who probably wouldn't be here if our borders were any tighter. And that's the point -> for every one 'terrorist' that slips through, we get ten thousand non-terrorists; just normal people, looking for a decent education and a good job; normal people who are considered the intellectual elite of their home country; if your goal was to prevent their home country from advancing as quickly down a weaponized route, then sending their best and brightest back to them (or never letting them leave to begin with) would probably have an opposite result.