Totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life. The name was first used by the party started by Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 until the Italian defeat in World War II.... However, it has also been applied to similar ideologies in other countries, e.g., to National Socialism in Germany...
- Columbia Encyclopedia, Eighth Edition.
The ins and outs of your government's IT policy, and the nation's policy on censorship and promotion within its own ranks, are not necessarily related to fascism, or Nazism, in any way.
Exactly. Microsoft could do almost anything they wanted to, as long as they bundled their software with Windows and made it roughly equivalent to netscape.
That won't stop people from coming up with inane theories about what netscape could have done (the only possibilities I see are die quick, and die slow.) Now the justice department could destroy microsoft. But the conditions that created it would remain.
Commodore had some managment problems, but their intervention probably extended, rather than cut short, the Amiga's lifespan. Unfortunately, once the world switched to the (mostly) open architecture of PCs, Amiga became just another proprietary dinosaur.
One good question is why Apple survived while Commodore didn't. One possible answer is that Apple had a cult following, whereas Commodore usually tried to compete based on price. Also, game consoles like the NES and Genesis took over the low-end home entertainment business. No matter how cool a product is, if it doesn't meet consumer's needs, it might as well be put in a museum.
Ever since computers were run by human beings, who tend to make mistakes when technology becomes unecessarily complicated.
FreeBSD does indeed have a good reputation for security, but not for the reasons you suggest. Also, the slackware user you responded to probably thinks slack is easier because he's been using it for so long, rather than because of any particularly well-made interface (slackware is very minimalist.)
Actually, the telecom industry is one of the best candidates for socialization. It is a public service essential to modern life, but which requires a large infrastructure. This tends to create a natural monopoly.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. The telecom industry doesn't really need the innovations provided by a free market. The basic technologies have been around for decades, but companies and municipal governments have been slow to implement them. With a telecom, the best you can really hope for is a service that is reliable-- similar to water, electricity and road access.
No... this means the Man will have free reign to snoop on everything users do. Chicagoans... ever wonder why you're internet connection sucks? It's because of the Man, keeping you down.
3D rendering speed depends on a lot of things, but CPU speed IS one of them.
He wasn't talking about "hardware video decoders for DVD." He was talking about encoding divX files... which is still done by CPUs these days.
Audio DSP... well, ok... that's not a problem.
Increasing the speed of windows... well, as long as you can run win2k/NT, you're all right. Anything less will crash every 3 hours (approx), and anything more is just a waste of money.
Believe me, in the future you will see applications come out that require fast processors. But it probably won't be as urgent to upgrade as it was in the 386 days.
Did you stop to read the post you're replying to? He said the system was "designed to take a beating." That doesn't sound "flaky as a PC." If you're going to editorialize about something you know nothing about (post-N64 game consoles) at least say something that makes sense in the context of the message thread.
And just so you know, the original NES had tons of problems with cartridge connectors. If you kicked the system around, odds are you would mess up the connectors and get a glitch.
But I really can't blame you for your mindless zealotry because the article itself is flamebait. In general, the X-box's failure rate is pretty average, and this "non-story" is just an excuse to bash the 'sloth. Not that I have any problems with bashing microsloth, but I think there are better reasons for doing so.
I'll gladly admit that Sega's lack of diversity and creativity in content are what killed the Dreamcast, but admit it, you all can;t wait to see Streets of Rage, Shining Force, Sonic, and other Sega titles come out for your system of choice. I hate to flame, but you need to check your video game history. Sega had plenty of creativity. What killed the Dreamcast was other factors such as the poor financial state of sega, the difficulty of attracting 3rd party developers (this might be what you mean by "diversity"), and strong competition from Sony and Nintendo.
I have never seen code that couldn't be rewritten to be either faster or cleaner... That's a pretty bold statement. There is no optimum code? Surely there is a sequence of optimal x86 machine instructions, even if it is fruitless to search for it.
A better statement might be "most ideas can be implemented several ways, about equally well."
..most code isn't highly polished, it just takes some inputs and creates some outputs in a fairly simple way... No. That's scripting, my friend.
No self-respecting programmer would spend weeks on a few lines of code. A page of code, maybe. A few thousand lines, possibly. But even script kiddies should be able to figure it out by then. And the statement that "another pair of eyes" would do so-and-so is pure political drivel. In my experience, the fewer people you can get away with on a project, the better. The more people, the more difficult it is to get all of them on the clue train (assuming that all of them even have tickets.)
More people != more productivity.
More code != better.
If you want an idea of how "too many cooks can spoil the broth," study mozilla for a while.
(By the way, I have no doubt that this'll piss off a lot of folks; it's not necessarily the most pleasant conclusion for those who's [current] livelihoods are at risk...) but... aren't the very concepts of "free speech," "freedom of information" and "a free market" totally and utterly mutually exclusive (and in direct opposition) to the very notion of "intellectual property?"
No.
Free speech is the freedom to speak your mind on political issues without harassment from the government. Free speech does *not* mean "you can say whatever you want": you cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, for example.
Freedom of information results from information being released to the public rather than concealed. For example, it is often beneficial for the government to release information that might be useful to the public.
Personally, I don't believe all information should be "free." My medical records, for example, should probably only be released to me and whoever else I choose to release them to.
In a free market, the market determines the price of goods and services. The United States has never had a completely free market, and probably never will. Some government functions are indispensible (e.g. building roads and regulating commerce.)
So no, I don't see how intellectual property, or any other kind of property for that matter, is incompatible with the ideas described above. They only conflict if you think that all information should be free. In my experience, though, this argument is usually a thin cover for greed ("all information should be free"-- including Diablo II. Yoink!)
The current intellectual property laws are broken in some ways, and have been heavily influenced by cartels like the RIAA, but that doesn't mean all intellectual property is bad. In fact, the day may come when intellectual property is America's main export.
The world is not made up of "bureaucrats or monopolists" and 1337 haxxors, kiddo. And if you think "corporate america" is out to get you (or cares about you at all) because Napster got shut down, you had better think again.
1) Warcraft II was a good game, and so was Starcraft, but they were both a little heavy on the micromanagement and a little light on actual strategy. No, not really. If anything, I think that starcraft, especially, needs less micromanagement than some of its competitors. In Age of Kings and Age of Empires (both are Microsoft games) there are like 6 different kinds of resources for you to worry about. Blizzard kept it simple with just minerals and vespene.
It would be nice to see a button for selecting idle workers, and possibly the ability to have unit groups of more than 12, but these aren't things you really need. Starcraft is the only RTS that I know about that offers "attack mode" where you can tell your units to walk to a location *but fight back if they're attacked on the way*. Sounds like a little thing, right? Wrong.
Warcraft II isn't usually that complicated, but starcraft strategy gets *very* complicated. True, basically you build up an army and then attack, but you have to decide what units to use, who to attack, and where. Since you don't usually have complete information about what the enemy is doing, this gets really complicated real fast.
I can tell you this much: someone who knows when to attack, and what to build, will almost always win over someone who can micromanage his workers, or build 3 bases simultaneously.
As regards Diablo I and II, I've never played them. I've never been a fan of hack n' slash.
3) None of their games have been groundbreaking in any catagory, and they tend to spend a metric assload on graphics and sound but not too much time worrying about gameplay Exploding Sheep was probably their only original idea. Actually, I think the exact opposite is true. Almost all of Blizzard's games have been groundbreaking. They tend to spen a lot of time worrying about gameplay and less about graphics and sound. Their graphics have traditionally been a year or two behind the tech curve. You don't need the latest greatest box to play. But, their graphics have looked good. It doesn't look like an ancient NES game (unlike command and conquer.)
Especially in starcraft, Blizzard spent a lot of time worrying about things like unit balance (unlike Command and Conquer), playability, and convenience. The average length for a game isn't 4 hours, unlike Age of Empires.
If you want a game that requires hard thinking, try chess or go. But even in those games, memorization of previous board positions and learning through experience play a large part. And looking down your nose at "clicking on sprites" doesn't make you 1337. It just makes you someone who probably got his ass kicked in starcraft or warcraft, and wants to make excuses for himself.
Re:How do you write 1337speak in hebrew?
on
Textmode Quake 2
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· Score: 1
>Heard of an Astrolobe? The first tool invented >to calculate positions of the celestial bodies. >It helped many a captain sail the seas.
Are you talking about the astrolabe?
>How about the fact that the merchant jews became >the financiers of the arab world, because of >arab prohibitions on banking.
Jews occupied a similar position in christian europe, for similar reasons (the catholic prohibition on simony, or charging interest.)
>This and many more made the arab culture ripe >for the rape by the men living in the scientific >age of France, who BTW learned arabic in order >to read all the knowledge culminated by the arab >scholars (jews and muslims included.)
I'll stick to criticising content, not grammar and spelling, or we'll be here all day. It is true that Arabic civilization, such as it was, enjoyed a flowering of knowledge and culture during the first millenium A.D. Much of this was an extension of Greek and Roman learning, including geometry.
As for the "rape" of Arabic civilization, that is pure fiction. First of all, not all the learning the arabs possessed originated with them. Secondly, even if it had, acquiring learning is not some form of aggression, but a means of bettering oneself. Why do you think the united states allows foreign nationals to study at american universities?
Lastly, and most importantly, most arabic lands were not extensively "colonized" by the europeans, except perhaps north africa. The stagnation of arabic civilization cannot be blamed on the europeans, who had little contact with the arab world.
Making businesses sell obsolete products would just result in more red tape and hassle. On the other hand, having a ten-year limit on the software copyrights might be a good idea.
Relativist: Whatever I think right is so for me.
Socrates: I think you're wrong.
The implication here is that the relativist is wrong in the eyes of Socrates. Relativisim itself says relativism is false. Who could believe a self-congratulatory, self-contradictory ideology like this.
This begs the question as to whether the human species is richer for landing on the moon. I personally see little evidence that this is so. What are you talking about? Landing on the moon was one of the crowning achievements of the 20th century. In a century most of our inventions are created to kill one another or provide mindless amusement to the masses, the space program stood out. If the thrill of seeing astronauts walk on another planet has faded now, it is because we have grown used to the marvels of technology, not because they have become any less wonderful.
What better way to control my very existence than a complete map of every vulnerability the genetic lottery gave me at birth... They try to bate us with the carrot that such and such disease will be eliminated in our lifetimes, but what value is that to me if they fix everything but the ailment afflicting me? See, even the appeal to greed doesn't work when you break this sales pitch down... Again, your argument makes little sense. Yes, some research organizations use the prospect of treating genetic diseases as "bait" to get funding, but that is mostly because pure science needs all the funding it can get. Why would you think that they would "fix everything but the ailment afflicting you"? That's taking paranoia to a massive scale. And even if it were true, it would still be worth it to the other billions of people on earth, who have not been singled out by "corps" and "govts" for selective non-ailment research. Ha!
Where does this blind faith--and that is all it is, you know, the belief that things are getting better because of scientific progress... come from? Last century was the most murderous the species has yet seen, and it was facilitated by the advances in science you universally praise.
Yes, there have been advances in comfort and longevity (paid for by the blood of Ishii's and Mengele's victims, along with countless hapless space monkees sacrificed to Tyler Durden's dreams), but what value do they ultimately have if they merely allow more beings longer lives filled with more misery? Most people on the earth do not live lives of abject misery. If you do, I think you need help from a psychiatrist, not slashdot.
Where is Science when it comes to solving the fundamental problems of human existence? In other words, if the map is not the territory, then why is it so important to persue it?
My point is not that mapping the genome should not be done; it will proceed with or without my blessing. What I hope you do--what every "technocrat" will do--is realize that can does not imply ought, and decisions about chemicals billions of years in the making should be kept outside profit or government. Perhaps you should enlighten us as to what the "fundamental problems of human existence" even are. Apparently they are not science or the advancement of knowledge. Oh well.
What would make you think RAM prices would come back up again? RAM prices have been falling continuously since the beginnings of Moore's Law decades ago. Next thing you know, you'll be telling us to buy pentium IIIs before "the price rockets back up again."
Not that there aren't temporary fluctuations in the price of RAM, but the overall trend is down, down, down.
Despite the fact that the original poster was an ass, you're still clueless. Maxwell's equations will continue to be important for a long time in electronics, just as Newton's laws are important in mechanical engineering. Learning new things doesn't always make the old things worth less. Take some physics, E&M to be exact, and you'll understand.
Digital designers would adapt to quantum computing without much trouble, if it ever became feasible. They never worried about the precise technology behind the 0.15 micron process or the 0.08. Quantum computing would be a bigger step, but not the end of the world.
Personally I think the biggest applications of "nanotechnology" are in MEMs and processor fabrication technology. The former doesn't compete with the existing fields, for the most part, and the latter will adapt when we come to that point. This stuff about nano-robots belongs to the next century, at the very least. People can't even make regular-scale robots that have much practical use due to control and design issues. Why would people see nanotechnology as anything more than glorified chemical engineering?
Slashdot Mirror
Totalitarian philosophy of government that glorifies the state and nation and assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life. The name was first used by the party started by Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 until the Italian defeat in World War II.... However, it has also been applied to similar ideologies in other countries, e.g., to National Socialism in Germany...
- Columbia Encyclopedia, Eighth Edition.
The ins and outs of your government's IT policy, and the nation's policy on censorship and promotion within its own ranks, are not necessarily related to fascism, or Nazism, in any way.
In other words, I invoke Godwin's law.
That won't stop people from coming up with inane theories about what netscape could have done (the only possibilities I see are die quick, and die slow.) Now the justice department could destroy microsoft. But the conditions that created it would remain.
One good question is why Apple survived while Commodore didn't. One possible answer is that Apple had a cult following, whereas Commodore usually tried to compete based on price. Also, game consoles like the NES and Genesis took over the low-end home entertainment business. No matter how cool a product is, if it doesn't meet consumer's needs, it might as well be put in a museum.
Ever since computers were run by human beings, who tend to make mistakes when technology becomes unecessarily complicated.
FreeBSD does indeed have a good reputation for security, but not for the reasons you suggest. Also, the slackware user you responded to probably thinks slack is easier because he's been using it for so long, rather than because of any particularly well-made interface (slackware is very minimalist.)
Research isn't always about solving problems. But it's always about coming up with new ideas.
Actually, the telecom industry is one of the best candidates for socialization. It is a public service essential to modern life, but which requires a large infrastructure. This tends to create a natural monopoly.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. The telecom industry doesn't really need the innovations provided by a free market. The basic technologies have been around for decades, but companies and municipal governments have been slow to implement them. With a telecom, the best you can really hope for is a service that is reliable-- similar to water, electricity and road access.
No... this means the Man will have free reign to snoop on everything users do. Chicagoans... ever wonder why you're internet connection sucks? It's because of the Man, keeping you down.
ah yes... MIS management..
are they offering courses in that now?
Why have a fast CPU? Well...
3D rendering speed depends on a lot of things, but CPU speed IS one of them.
He wasn't talking about "hardware video decoders for DVD." He was talking about encoding divX files... which is still done by CPUs these days.
Audio DSP... well, ok... that's not a problem.
Increasing the speed of windows... well, as long as you can run win2k/NT, you're all right. Anything less will crash every 3 hours (approx), and anything more is just a waste of money.
Believe me, in the future you will see applications come out that require fast processors. But it probably won't be as urgent to upgrade as it was in the 386 days.
Did you stop to read the post you're replying to? He said the system was "designed to take a beating." That doesn't sound "flaky as a PC." If you're going to editorialize about something you know nothing about (post-N64 game consoles) at least say something that makes sense in the context of the message thread.
And just so you know, the original NES had tons of problems with cartridge connectors. If you kicked the system around, odds are you would mess up the connectors and get a glitch.
But I really can't blame you for your mindless zealotry because the article itself is flamebait. In general, the X-box's failure rate is pretty average, and this "non-story" is just an excuse to bash the 'sloth. Not that I have any problems with bashing microsloth, but I think there are better reasons for doing so.
Let him have his fun. If he thinks a 1% defect rate is high, or that defects are unique to Microsoft, he's probably too stupid to be persuaded.
I'll gladly admit that Sega's lack of diversity and creativity in content are what killed the Dreamcast, but admit it, you all can;t wait to see Streets of Rage, Shining Force, Sonic, and other Sega titles come out for your system of choice.
I hate to flame, but you need to check your video game history. Sega had plenty of creativity. What killed the Dreamcast was other factors such as the poor financial state of sega, the difficulty of attracting 3rd party developers (this might be what you mean by "diversity"), and strong competition from Sony and Nintendo.
I have never seen code that couldn't be rewritten to be either faster or cleaner...
..most code isn't highly polished, it just takes some inputs and creates some outputs in a fairly simple way...
That's a pretty bold statement. There is no optimum code? Surely there is a sequence of optimal x86 machine instructions, even if it is fruitless to search for it.
A better statement might be "most ideas can be implemented several ways, about equally well."
No. That's scripting, my friend.
No self-respecting programmer would spend weeks on a few lines of code. A page of code, maybe. A few thousand lines, possibly. But even script kiddies should be able to figure it out by then. And the statement that "another pair of eyes" would do so-and-so is pure political drivel. In my experience, the fewer people you can get away with on a project, the better. The more people, the more difficult it is to get all of them on the clue train (assuming that all of them even have tickets.)
More people != more productivity.
More code != better.
If you want an idea of how "too many cooks can spoil the broth," study mozilla for a while.
Just remember-- if it doesn't have 36 bits, You're not playing with a full DEC. Nyuk nyuk.
Seriously, though... who would waste time investing in computers that weigh less than a ton?
(By the way, I have no doubt that this'll piss off a lot of folks; it's not necessarily the most pleasant conclusion for those who's [current] livelihoods are at risk...) but... aren't the very concepts of "free speech," "freedom of information" and "a free market" totally and utterly mutually exclusive (and in direct opposition) to the very notion of "intellectual property?"
No.
Free speech is the freedom to speak your mind on political issues without harassment from the government. Free speech does *not* mean "you can say whatever you want": you cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, for example.
Freedom of information results from information being released to the public rather than concealed. For example, it is often beneficial for the government to release information that might be useful to the public.
Personally, I don't believe all information should be "free." My medical records, for example, should probably only be released to me and whoever else I choose to release them to.
In a free market, the market determines the price of goods and services. The United States has never had a completely free market, and probably never will. Some government functions are indispensible (e.g. building roads and regulating commerce.)
So no, I don't see how intellectual property, or any other kind of property for that matter, is incompatible with the ideas described above. They only conflict if you think that all information should be free. In my experience, though, this argument is usually a thin cover for greed ("all information should be free"-- including Diablo II. Yoink!)
The current intellectual property laws are broken in some ways, and have been heavily influenced by cartels like the RIAA, but that doesn't mean all intellectual property is bad. In fact, the day may come when intellectual property is America's main export.
The world is not made up of "bureaucrats or monopolists" and 1337 haxxors, kiddo. And if you think "corporate america" is out to get you (or cares about you at all) because Napster got shut down, you had better think again.
1) Warcraft II was a good game, and so was Starcraft, but they were both a little heavy on the micromanagement and a little light on actual strategy.
No, not really. If anything, I think that starcraft, especially, needs less micromanagement than some of its competitors. In Age of Kings and Age of Empires (both are Microsoft games) there are like 6 different kinds of resources for you to worry about. Blizzard kept it simple with just minerals and vespene.
It would be nice to see a button for selecting idle workers, and possibly the ability to have unit groups of more than 12, but these aren't things you really need. Starcraft is the only RTS that I know about that offers "attack mode" where you can tell your units to walk to a location *but fight back if they're attacked on the way*. Sounds like a little thing, right? Wrong.
Warcraft II isn't usually that complicated, but starcraft strategy gets *very* complicated. True, basically you build up an army and then attack, but you have to decide what units to use, who to attack, and where. Since you don't usually have complete information about what the enemy is doing, this gets really complicated real fast.
I can tell you this much: someone who knows when to attack, and what to build, will almost always win over someone who can micromanage his workers, or build 3 bases simultaneously.
As regards Diablo I and II, I've never played them. I've never been a fan of hack n' slash.
3) None of their games have been groundbreaking in any catagory, and they tend to spend a metric assload on graphics and sound but not too much time worrying about gameplay Exploding Sheep was probably their only original idea.
Actually, I think the exact opposite is true. Almost all of Blizzard's games have been groundbreaking. They tend to spen a lot of time worrying about gameplay and less about graphics and sound. Their graphics have traditionally been a year or two behind the tech curve. You don't need the latest greatest box to play. But, their graphics have looked good. It doesn't look like an ancient NES game (unlike command and conquer.)
Especially in starcraft, Blizzard spent a lot of time worrying about things like unit balance (unlike Command and Conquer), playability, and convenience. The average length for a game isn't 4 hours, unlike Age of Empires.
If you want a game that requires hard thinking, try chess or go. But even in those games, memorization of previous board positions and learning through experience play a large part. And looking down your nose at "clicking on sprites" doesn't make you 1337. It just makes you someone who probably got his ass kicked in starcraft or warcraft, and wants to make excuses for himself.
>Heard of an Astrolobe? The first tool invented >to calculate positions of the celestial bodies. >It helped many a captain sail the seas.
Are you talking about the astrolabe?
>How about the fact that the merchant jews became >the financiers of the arab world, because of >arab prohibitions on banking.
Jews occupied a similar position in christian europe, for similar reasons (the catholic prohibition on simony, or charging interest.)
>This and many more made the arab culture ripe >for the rape by the men living in the scientific >age of France, who BTW learned arabic in order >to read all the knowledge culminated by the arab >scholars (jews and muslims included.)
I'll stick to criticising content, not grammar and spelling, or we'll be here all day. It is true that Arabic civilization, such as it was, enjoyed a flowering of knowledge and culture during the first millenium A.D. Much of this was an extension of Greek and Roman learning, including geometry.
As for the "rape" of Arabic civilization, that is pure fiction. First of all, not all the learning the arabs possessed originated with them. Secondly, even if it had, acquiring learning is not some form of aggression, but a means of bettering oneself. Why do you think the united states allows foreign nationals to study at american universities?
Lastly, and most importantly, most arabic lands were not extensively "colonized" by the europeans, except perhaps north africa. The stagnation of arabic civilization cannot be blamed on the europeans, who had little contact with the arab world.
Making businesses sell obsolete products would just result in more red tape and hassle. On the other hand, having a ten-year limit on the software copyrights might be a good idea.
Relativist: Whatever I think right is so for me.
Socrates: I think you're wrong.
The implication here is that the relativist is wrong in the eyes of Socrates. Relativisim itself says relativism is false. Who could believe a self-congratulatory, self-contradictory ideology like this.
What are you talking about? Landing on the moon was one of the crowning achievements of the 20th century. In a century most of our inventions are created to kill one another or provide mindless amusement to the masses, the space program stood out. If the thrill of seeing astronauts walk on another planet has faded now, it is because we have grown used to the marvels of technology, not because they have become any less wonderful.
What better way to control my very existence than a complete map of every vulnerability the genetic lottery gave me at birth... They try to bate us with the carrot that such and such disease will be eliminated in our lifetimes, but what value is that to me if they fix everything but the ailment afflicting me? See, even the appeal to greed doesn't work when you break this sales pitch down...
Again, your argument makes little sense. Yes, some research organizations use the prospect of treating genetic diseases as "bait" to get funding, but that is mostly because pure science needs all the funding it can get. Why would you think that they would "fix everything but the ailment afflicting you"? That's taking paranoia to a massive scale. And even if it were true, it would still be worth it to the other billions of people on earth, who have not been singled out by "corps" and "govts" for selective non-ailment research. Ha!
Where does this blind faith--and that is all it is, you know, the belief that things are getting better because of scientific progress... come from? Last century was the most murderous the species has yet seen, and it was facilitated by the advances in science you universally praise.
Yes, there have been advances in comfort and longevity (paid for by the blood of Ishii's and Mengele's victims, along with countless hapless space monkees sacrificed to Tyler Durden's dreams), but what value do they ultimately have if they merely allow more beings longer lives filled with more misery?
Most people on the earth do not live lives of abject misery. If you do, I think you need help from a psychiatrist, not slashdot.
Where is Science when it comes to solving the fundamental problems of human existence? In other words, if the map is not the territory, then why is it so important to persue it?
My point is not that mapping the genome should not be done; it will proceed with or without my blessing. What I hope you do--what every "technocrat" will do--is realize that can does not imply ought, and decisions about chemicals billions of years in the making should be kept outside profit or government.
Perhaps you should enlighten us as to what the "fundamental problems of human existence" even are. Apparently they are not science or the advancement of knowledge. Oh well.
That was very good. Now sit down and wipe the drool from around your mouth.
What would make you think RAM prices would come back up again? RAM prices have been falling continuously since the beginnings of Moore's Law decades ago. Next thing you know, you'll be telling us to buy pentium IIIs before "the price rockets back up again."
Not that there aren't temporary fluctuations in the price of RAM, but the overall trend is down, down, down.
Get a sound card that comes with software that can record from audio out. No wires, no analog, no quality loss. (AFAIK.)
Oh, come on... that's nothing compared to the brilliant aesthetic of the recycling bin.
Despite the fact that the original poster was an ass, you're still clueless. Maxwell's equations will continue to be important for a long time in electronics, just as Newton's laws are important in mechanical engineering. Learning new things doesn't always make the old things worth less. Take some physics, E&M to be exact, and you'll understand.
Digital designers would adapt to quantum computing without much trouble, if it ever became feasible. They never worried about the precise technology behind the 0.15 micron process or the 0.08. Quantum computing would be a bigger step, but not the end of the world.
Personally I think the biggest applications of "nanotechnology" are in MEMs and processor fabrication technology. The former doesn't compete with the existing fields, for the most part, and the latter will adapt when we come to that point. This stuff about nano-robots belongs to the next century, at the very least. People can't even make regular-scale robots that have much practical use due to control and design issues. Why would people see nanotechnology as anything more than glorified chemical engineering?