You may have noticed that your eyes are laid out horizontal. You also may have noticed that you have a much wider horizontal FOV and vertical. That is the reason for wide screens, and why movies have been doing it for years and years.
Now that doesn't mean things should be as wide as possible, or that all monitors should be equally wide. Vertical space is useful. In general, the smaller, the more square they should be. Laptops would probably benefit from 4:3 screens in general. However when you have a nice large 30" desktop display, well 16:10 is real nice. It do a better job of covering your FOV in a useful way, and looks good too (16:10 in particular is near the golden ratio).
For that matter, if you want a real long screen, they are good for that too. If I wanted to I could flip my screen in to portrait mode and have 25" vertical which rather beats out any 4:3 display I ever saw.
Also remember that monitors are used for a lot more than scrolling text. People use them for watching movies, playing games, that kind of thing, which really do benefit from that wide FOV (as I noted about the whole eyes thing).
The State Department can revoke your passport. You might notice there's a little part that says "This passport is the property of the United States (Title 22, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 51.9). It must be surrendered upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States Government." They have the right to revoke your passport and criminal charges are a reason they can. In that event what happens is you can get a special travel document that'll let you go back to the US. Yes, if he takes that, he'll face trial in the US. That is the point of revoking his passport. A passport is not a license to run away, it is a travel document to allow you to travel legally. The US can revoke your passport and tell you to come home if they are charging you with a crime.
I think you need to read up a bit more on the law and human rights. It is quite well established that a country can charge their citizens with a crime, and can do things like revoke travel rights while they stand trial. What Snowden is accused of is a crime. You can certainly argue that they shouldn't charge him, but releasing classified information you've been given access to is a crime. You sign all kinds of NDAs to that effect having a security clearance. You are made full and well aware it is a crime to reveal classified information.
So the US has a valid charge against him, and it is within its rights, nationally and internationally, to revoke his passport and demand he return to face trial. That doesn't mean it is morally right, but that is up to the individual to decide. There is no human rights issue here though. Revealing classified information you are given access to is a crime in every nation I am aware of (in some it is a crime period, even if you are given the information from someone else and have no clearance yourself), and in the US they make it VERY clear when you get your security clearance that you agree not to do so, under penalty of law.
So his first leak was understandable to many: He found a program that seemed to be, if not illegal, at least questionable and had an American intelligence agency targeting American citizens which it is not supposed to do. Ok, you can understand why someone would choose to reveal that, even if you disagree with that choice. There is a strong argument to be made for the public's interest in knowing this information (if it is accurate).
However now he seems to just be leaking anything and everything. "The NSA is spying on China!" "This NSA is spying on the EU!" Not only is that shit really not that surprising, but it really isn't the kind of thing he can make the same claim about in terms of public good. This seems to be more of a "spill my guts on anything I know because they are after me,' situation.
Well that is not the kind of thing that is going to endear him to many people, or many nations. While a nation might be interested in using him as an asset (one of the oldest parts of spycraft is doubling people) and finding out in private what he knows about the US's spying against them, they are far less interested in hearing it screamed in public to any that will listen.
So I really think he overplayed his hand on things. Had he just leaked information about the PRISM program, I find it far more likely he'd find somewhere to take him in, perhaps in trade for a private debrief about what else he knows. As it stands he is harming his own position.
They aren't giving the NSA stuff that nobody else gets. The NSA is just on the early notification list. Various groups get told about vulnerabilities as soon as MS knows about them. The rest get told about them when there's a patch. So sure, I guess the NSA could quickly develop and exploit the vulnerability (if it is relevant, amazing how few no-user interaction, remote initiated exploits there are now that there's a default firewall) before MS patches it, but that is not really that likely a scenario, and more than any of the other groups that get it.
Check out the Underhanded C contest (http://underhanded.xcott.com/). There are great examples of code that look innocuous, but aren't. What's more, some of them look like legit mistakes that people might make programming.
So that is always a possibility. Evil_Programmer_A who works for whatever Evil Group that wants to be able to hack things introduces a patch for some OSS item. However, there's a security hole coded in purposely. It is hard to see, and if discovered will just look like a fuckup. Eventually it'll probably get found and patched, but nobody suspects Evil_Programmer_A of any malfeasance, I mean shit security issues happen all the time. People make mistakes.
In terms of how long to spot? Depends on how subtle it is. If you think all bugs get found real fast in OSS you've never kept up on security vulnerabilities. Sometimes, they find one that's been around for a LONG time. I remember back in 2000 when there was a BIND vulnerability that applied to basically every version of BIND ever. It has been lurking for years and nobody had caught it. Worse, it was a "day-0" kind of thing and people were exploiting it already. Caused a lot of grief for my roommate. By the time he heard about it (which was pretty quick, he subscribed to that kind of thing), their server at work had already been owned.
Don't think that just because the code is open that it means that it gets heavily audited by experts. Also don't think that just because an expert looks at it they'll notice something. It turns out a lot of security issues are still found in the runtime, not by a code audit. Everyone looks at the code and says "Ya, looks good to me," and only when later running it and testing how it reacts do they discover an unintended interaction.
I'm not trying to claim this is common, or even happening at all, but it is certainly possible. I think people put WAY too much faith in the "many eyes" thing of OSS. They think that if the code is open, well then people MUST see the bugs! All one has to do is follow a bug track site to see how false that is. Were it true, there'd be no bugs, ever, in release OSS code. Thing is, it is all written and audited by humans are humans are fallible. Mistakes happen, shit slips through.
AES was developed in Belgium by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. It was originally called Rijndael and was one of the AES candidates. What happened is the NIST put out a call for a replacement for the aging DES algorithm. It was one of a number of contenders and was the one that one the vote. The only thing the NSA has had to do with it is that they weighed in on it, and all the other top contenders, before a standard was chosen and said they were all secure and that they've since certified it for use in encrypting top secret data.
It was analyzed, before its standardization and since, by the world community. The NSA was part of that, no surprise, but everyone looked at it. It is the sole most attacked cypher in history, and remains secure.
So to believe the NSA has a 'backdoor' in it, or more correctly that they can crack it would imply that:
1) The NSA is so far advanced in cryptography that they were able to discover this prior to 2001 (when it got approved) and nobody else has.
2) That the NSA was so confident that they are the only group to be able to work this out that they'd give it their blessing, knowing that it would be used in critical US infrastructure (like banking) and that they have a mission to protect said infrastructure.
3) So arrogant that they'd clear it to be used for top secret data, meaning that US government data could potentially be protected with a weak algorithm.
Ya, I'm just not seeing that. That assumes a level of extreme mathematical brilliance, that they are basically better than the rest of the world combined, and a complete disregard for one of their missions.
It seems far more likely that, yes, AES is secure. Nobody, not even the NSA, has a magic way to crack it.
And if you want to argue that, then you want to actually argue against the printing press. I cannot remember the book or author, Vonnegut I think, had a good bit about how prior to the printing press knowledge was something like the martial arts: You had to work on it,sweat, spend your time and effort, often a lifetime to attain it. Your mastery died with you. For each person, learning something required an apprenticeship, basically.
The printing press changed all that. Now ideas could be made permanent, and disseminated. Now people didn't have to discover everything themselves or learn from what masters they could, they could get information and then build on it. They could stand on the shoulders of giants, as Newton said. So when a genius like Newton came along and advanced the knowledge of mathematics, physics and optics by probably 100 years or more, it wasn't something just limited to him and perhaps those that studied with him, the world could learn.
If you think that there needs to be a lot of effort for information, well then the printing press is your enemy, because that is what it became easy. Not as easy as it is now, but pre and post printing press was a bigger difference than pre and post Internet.
It is also necessary if you want to keep advancing things. There's really only so much time one person has to learn, only so much information they can soak up so fast. So if things are going to continue to get more complex and require more information, then we are going to need easy access to that information.
While these cards are a shitty setup, they are NOT company scrip in any way, shape, or form. They are denominated in US dollars and can be cashed out in that, or spent as that at stores that accept the reliant payment processor (Visa or Mastercard).
Company scrip was money that could only be spent at stores owned by the company, not anywhere else, and had no value in terms of government currency.
Don't make shit up. It weakens your argument. When something is bad, demonstrate its problems as they are. Don't try and invent new ones. When people find out you are lying they'll disregard your argument.
The cost to actually send the money to the employee direct deposit is $0.35 per transaction. That's what the payroll service pays, and what you'd pay if you did it directly. That is what ACH charges. It is a cheap system. That's why places are more than happy to have bills paid via ACH. When they do an ACH deduction, they pay the fee (the initiator pays), but it is so very cheap in terms of getting money. Much less than a CC.
In terms of an actual check, it varies but is generally in the range of $0.75-$1 when you count the cost of the check stock, printing, envelope, and postage fees. Perhaps a bit more if you factor in labour (depending on how automated the system is).
Neither system costs an employer much. Checks cost the bank somewhat more to deal with, though they have automated that to a large degree, but ACH costs them nothing (when they receive). The sender pays a small transaction fee and that's it. ACH is cheap on purpose because it can be, and is, used for massive volume and thus does well.
No matter how you look at it, it doesn't cost much. The costs are mostly in the other services, as you of course notice from the cost of your payroll service that does all the other work for you (my folks used a payroll service when they ran their business for the same reason).
Still a trivial cost as compared to all the others, as you point out. $15 is trivial shit compared to the other costs of having an employee, even a minimum wage one.
1) You can, indeed, get free checking from Credit Unions pretty easy. Some banks too. There really are places that'll do business with you for no money up front and they won't charge you fees so long as you don't do things like overdraw.
2) They say companies are trying to do this instead of direct deposit. DD costs companies next to nothing. The Automated Clearing House (which is how they all do it) charges $0.35/transaction. This is why companies like to pay people that way. It adds just a trivial cost, and it all automated, the money comes out of their account in to yours. Well the only reason to go prepaid cards instead would be because the bank is bribing them, not because it is cheaper because the ACH cost is just fucking trivial.
This is not a matter of being nice to poor employees, this is a matter of fucking people over.
I could certainly understand offering it as an option. Maybe some employees would find it convenient or financially advantageous. But trying to force people on it? That is just trying to screw them over for a very minor benefit. Like I said, ACH is $0.35/transaction (or 0.06% of a minimum wage paycheck, not counting payroll tax and all that jazz if you want to look at it that way) and it is good bookkeeping wise since the transaction hits right away so you know the status of your current accounts.
At the university there are only two kinds of budgets: capital and personnel. We have money for salaries, and money for equipment. Those are the categories. You may disagree with their method for doing it, but it is set by the regents and the state and it not something we control. Basically our personnel budget isn't being reduced, in fact there are small state mandated raises coming. However the equipment budget has only been 33% approved.
Personally I don't think toner should be an IT item, it should be in the same category as office supplies which is a department budget the business managers have. However, it is in the IT budget and that is that. We don't control it.
In terms of printers we have little control over that. We aren't like most IT shops where we can tell people what it is. We have to do what they want, by and large. Were it up to me, people wouldn't have personal printers, they'd use the large floor combo copier/printers which have much cheaper consumables on account of being so large. However they don't do that because:
1) They are lazy.
2) They use their printers for non-work related uses. We can audit the departmental stuff, not so for the personal stuff.
You have to remember that universities operate rather differently from companies.
Show what you'd lose at a 50% cut. Show him the things that they want to have, that would go away if they cut that much. Often people fail to appreciate what a budget is spent on and if it gets explained what they'll have to trade off they'll be more accommodating.
We may have to do just that where I work. The Dean has been fiddling with the budget again (he's really, really bad at budgeting) and has approved about 33% of our capital budget. He says he'll see if there's more money once the FY starts. Well if not, we are just going to have to make it clear what they don't get to have. Toner will be a big one, we spend almost a third of the budget on that because every professor just HAS to have their own personal printer (this isn't something we get to say no to). Well, those purchases will have to stop, departmental toner purchases only, and then only for academics and business needs. We'll identify the computer labs that are running Windows XP that cannot be upgraded to 7/8 that will need to be shut down next year when updates stop. There will be no new purchases of desktops for anyone unless their computer is just non-functional, no refresh. Etc, etc.
At that point, he'll likely decide that more budget is needed, and move money around (I haven't looked, but my suspicion is he's giving the advertising group more they are a black hole that always wants more). If not, we'll keep going on what we have, and services will be cut because there won't be the funds for it.
It can be very effective to not only show people what you give them, but what you won't be able to give them. A 50% cut is huge, that isn't the kind of thing where you "just make do with a little less" or "cut some minor things" that is where major services have to be cut out. Show him what those are. It is easy to say "I want a 50% cut," when you just look at the money side. When you see what you are going to lose, then it is not so easy.
The UK's SIS is one of the all-time legends of the intelligence community. Not surprising, given the importance that intelligence played in WWII and the threat that the UK faced. The SIS is one of the best of the best. Likewise France's DGSE is a pretty heavy hitter, with a number of publicly known operations (and likely many more not known) and a six hundred million Euro annual budget.
So ya, the EU itself has no central intelligence agency, but if you think its members don't, well then you haven't bothered to check.
So sorry to burst your bubble about the EU and members being nothing but noble, but they are nations, with interests, just like all the others and they have intelligence agencies to that end.
Pick the nation, I can likely name the intelligence agency. How about Canada? Those nice Canadians surely don't have one. Oh wait, they have the CSIS, modeled after the British SIS. Ok well not the Norwegians, I mean they are such a wonderful country. Oh, no, wait, they have four of them, three mostly foreign (NIS, FOST, NSM), one mostly domestic (PST).
I really can go on for basically any nation. Nations have collected intelligence on each other for basically as long as we've had nations. This shouldn't surprise you if you've studied history at all. There are also some fairly recent (in historical terms) events that remind nations of the importance of intelligence, like the second world war.
That the US spies shouldn't surprise you. If you think it shouldn't, ok that is valid, but understand it would be essentially the only nation that doesn't. You also might want to learn up on problems that would cause, and then see if you are still ok with the tradeoff.
Many Wikileaks supporters seem to feel that it and its members should have near inviolable privacy, and nobody else should. It is sacred ground, that can be as secretive as it likes, while shedding light on anything else.
Now I suppose I could respect that if it were a more generalized "public/private" thing. In that they believed that government entities, being under the public's control, should have no secrets, but that private individuals and entities should be allowed secrets. However they don't do that, they've published things like sorority secrets which are for a private entity and have no public interest (meaning actual use to the public, people are interested in them with the same voyeuristic attitude as prying into celebrity lives).
It just seems to be how many Wikileaks members and supporters feel. It and its members are one of the few things that should be allowed as much privacy, including total privacy/anonymity, as they want. Everyone else? Fair game, publish whatever they can get their hands on that they decide is a juicy secret, regardless of utility or public good.
For that matter you can even see that with the governmental data they've leaked. There's various stuff that you can argue if it is in the public interest to release it but there is plenty you really can't. For example the private opinions of the diplomatic corps about the Russian leaders. There is NO REASON to release it to the public. It harms diplomatic relations, harms the individuals involved, and doesn't reveal anything, not even US policy, just the opinions of those involved. It isn't evidence of malfeasance or illegal action, it isn't useful to release. But they did, because they could.
Their drivers aren't crap, but they aren't up to nVidia's standards. I've a 7970M in my laptop, which I got when it was a brand new chip, and it has been a trial. So there are two big issues it has had, only which could be relevant to the PS4:
1) Issues with Enduro, that's AMD's hybrid GPU switching. The laptop can use the integrated Intel 4000 graphics for easy stuff and fire up the 7970M for hard stuff. Well until fairly recently, that didn't work that well. The 7970M didn't operate at full capacity, something with the drivers was inefficient. You could see it on other laptops which has a mux to allow you to switch off the iGPU. With just the 7970M they ran much faster. AMD finally got it (mostly) fixed, but it took for damn well ever. Also when it first came out, the interface for choosing GPUs was really clunky.
2) OpenGL issues. AMD has sucked at the OpenGL for as long as I can remember, and it never seems to get better. They SUPPORT it, but it doesn't work well. On nVidia, GL and DX run equally fast. They are both first-class APIs and there really is no speed or capability difference between them. On AMD, not so much. Recently the issues I've seen were with Brink and HFSS. Brink was a shit (man it was a waste of money) game that used iD Tech 4. As such, OpenGL. On my AMD GPU, it never ran well despite being WAY passed the spec needed. Tried it on a lesser spec nVidia system, flawless. Said problems were all over the forums. With HFSS we set up a desktop at work with a cheap AMD chip, a 7570 or something like that, just for basic graphics (it was server class hardware, so no good iGPU). The user reported HFSS worked over RDP, but not local and sure enough, that was the case. So it occurred to me: HFSS will use OpenGL to accelerate its interface. Out came the AMD card, in went a cheap nVidia GT 210, and HFSS worked fine.
Now of those, the OpenGL problem could be problematic to the PS4, since that's what it uses. Maybe they won't have a problem since this is ONLY a GL driver and they've had time and all that, but I worry. The PS4 may lose its, on paper, graphics advantage due to driver issues. It would suck for Sony if their console which has more graphics units and more memory bandwidth had lesser GPU capabilities because AMD can't work out a good GL driver.
At any rate the overall situation is AMD still has problems nVidia drivers don't. I really like AMD's hardware, it is often faster and is nearly always a good price, but I get continually bit with driver issues. Not something huge like "The system blue screens and won't run," but things that are very real and very annoying. Hence I have nVidia in my desktop and I've seriously considered replacing the card in my laptop (it is a Clevo laptop and the card is field replaceable). They aren't perfect, but I find them WAY less problematic.
And don't even get me started on Linux drivers. There is NO comparison there. nVidia binary drivers is lightyears ahead of anyone else.
Sony actually intended for it to be the graphic chips. Early on they were doing graphics demos of things running on a number of Cell chips. However, it wasn't good at that either and as the PS3 went in to hardware development, it was clear that they'd need a real GPU.
Well rather than just admit that the Cell wasn't ready for a consumer device (I mean who the fuck tries to put first gen technology in a consumer device) they decided to make it the CPU instead, and had nVidia make them a GPU.
Ultimately Cell's long term problem has been GPUs themselves. As you say Cell sucks as a general purpose CPU. No problem, that wasn't really its design. However as a stream processor it can't keep up with the new GPUs. That wasn't an issue when it was designed (this was back in the pre nVidia 8800 days) but now it gets out stream processed by GPUs.
Hence it has kinda just languished. IBM has chattered about it a bit, but nothing has happened.
Because they can't do anything about you. The reason your own government is more of a concern than foreign governments is they have power over you whereas foreign governments do not. Now yes, technically foreign governments can go after someone, like North Korean kidnappings or the US drone program, however by and large they have little control over citizens of other nations.
In terms of looking at civilians, you think that is new? Most people in a country are civilians, as in not in the military. That doesn't mean they aren't involved in things a nation might take interest in. A simple example would be spies. You think they are military officers? No, they are regular civilians, or often diplomats.
Also in some countries, like China, the line is considerably less clear. The PLA outright owns many industries, and has their hands in many others, so even were you to take the line that spying is only for military things, well that would be rather unclear there.
That aside, I've seen little enough protesting period, and none that seems to be people mad about civilian spying. It is DOMESTIC spying that seems to bother them. They are mad that the NSA is (allegedly) spying on Americans which they are not supposed to do according to the law. I haven't seen any protests complaining about foreign spy agencies doing it, and they do it, make no mistake.
Spying on foreign nations is the NSA's business. If you don't like that, then it is something to take up with your representitive, but I would have to ask why all of a sudden you have a problem with it, since that has ALWAYS been its business. The NSA is the US's signals intelligence agency. It's reason to be is to spy on the electronic communications of foreign powers.
Now, you can argue the US shouldn't spy at all if you like, but you do have to realise that would put the US at basically the only major nation that didn't. More or less all nations have intelligence agencies. The UK has the SIS (and the Security Service to an extent), France has the DGSE, Canada has the CSIS, Switzerland has the NDB, Finland has the SUPO, China has the MSS, Russia has the SVR (and realistically the FSB, FSO and GRU as well). Nations spy on each other. They have for a long, LONG time.
The flap with the NSA is that they have been spying on American citizens. That is something they are not supposed to do. While some countries, like China, have a unified intelligence apparatus (the MSS is their spy agency, secret police, all that jazz), the US purposely has divided agencies. The NSA, CIA, etc are not supposed to collect intelligence on Americans. That is only supposed to be done by law enforcement, and then only in compliance with court orders.
That the NSA would spy on other nations is not only unsurprising, it is the reason they exist.
In terms of China being an enemy, well you can't really think in those terms. Nations don't have friends and enemies so much as they have interests. As such other nations can align or not align with those interests to different degrees. If you mean an enemy as a nation they are at war with then no, but of course they US hasn't officially gone to war in a rather long time. However China is certainly a nation the US would have many reasons to watch. They are quite authoritarian, the military is heavily mixed up in their economy (I'm talking direct ownership of things), they have imperialistic ambitions and they have a lot of weapons. Thus it should not be surprising if the US has interest in watching them.
Also if you think the US is irrelevant, you need to wake up and have a look at world affairs. The US is an extremely influential country in a tremendous amount of ways. It is the only military superpower at the moment, it controls the world's reserve currency, it has the largest economy in the world, it exports culture (in the form of books, TV movies, video games, that kind of thing) like no other in history and so on. You might wish the US was not relevant, but it is, very much so.
Also it isn't small. Buy a globe. Or use a search engine. The US is the 4th largest country in the world by land area, and 3rd largest by population. If that is "too small" by your metric, then I don't want to know what you rank most countries (which are, by definition, much smaller).
1) Not really a Rogue kind of guy. It isn't my sort of game. I like more story in my RPGs which does, of course, preclude random generation. It is a tradeoff.
2) When you play a game made for a PC, it doesn't translate well to touch. Touch dictates some things be done rather differently to work well, and these do not have the UI to deal with that.
3) As you said, they are old, I've already played them. I like new games, not playing the same ones over and over for a quarter century.
It still quite supports my and the GP's point about the lack of good games for mobile.
It has amazed me how hard it is to find good games for mobile devices. I'm a big-time gamer, I'd much rather play a game than watch TV for entertainment. It is my primary goof-off activity. So I have a nice powerful smartphone (Android in this case), and it would be nice to have some portable games for it.
Some I want just for quick things, like waiting in the doctor's office or the like. Those are reasonably easy to find, I have a small collection of simplistic titles that do the trick for that. Still though it took a good bit of wading through crap to find them, and there were some things that initially looked promising but turned out to be "pay-2-win" that wanted to suck tons of money out of your pocket.
However I also wanted some with more substance, for if I'm traveling or something like that. Those... Well results haven't been great. I've bought some of the highest rated and reviewed stuff and so far it has been at best ok, either than Plants vs Zombies (which I already had on my PC). These are games that would be 5 or 6 of 10, maybe 7 in rare cases on the PC or a console, but are the "best" you find. Symphony of Eternity, NFS Most Wanted, etc are ok to play, but they really aren't up to what I'm used to.
Then some games that used to be good go to shit. Like Zenoia. Not a wonderful game, but at least a reasonably competent Zelda type. I have the first two. There are more... but again they are all pay-2-win crap.
Now compare that to the PC. I have more games then I can play. I have games on Steam I literally haven't installed yet, because I don't have time to play them yet, and I have another list of games I'd like to buy, if I have time. My problem isn't finding games I want, it is finding the free time to play them all.
I'll believe iOS or Android can compete with Sony and Nintendo if I start to see some serious amount of high quality titles out. Not a small handful, many of which are ports, but a real library that regularly sees new releases.
X-Com is a great example: That launched a year ago for consoles and PCs. I played it and loved it. So now had I waited I could get it, with lesser graphics, and a rather cramped UI to be touch enabled... No thanks. I'll stick with it on the first-flight systems, thanks.
If you did, you'd know you can take out as much of your money, any time you like. Things like ATMs have daily withdrawal limits to help prevent theft/fraud, but you can go in to a branch and cash out your balance, any time you like (or transfer it to another bank electronically).
With any regular bank or brokerage, you can take your money out whenever you want, on fairly short notice. This applies even if you have tons of money in it. Now, if you have a lot, like lets say multiple billions of foreign exchange reserves, then placing a sell order on all of it will drop the value, the price will have to go down for all of it to sell, but you can do that, if you wish.
Heck that was part of the problem in the big downturn a few years ago. People were panicking and selling their whole portfolio at reduced prices, which of course feeds back on itself. A guy I know is a financial manager and he would try as hard as he could to convince people not to, since it would realize big losses for them, but they wanted none of that, they wanted it in cash (or bonds, or other safer stuff) and they wanted it NOW. So, he did as he had to and followed their wishes.
As the parent points out, the reason Bitcoin wouldn't let you is ponzi type reasons. If someone big cashes out all at once, that could cause the value to drop a lot, which could cause the whole thing to tumble down. They are trying to make sure that doesn't happen, to prop up the farce.
Consoles are focused on lowest possible cost of their hardware, since they sell to consumers at a loss, or at the best a slim profit. They need their suppliers to give them hardware for bottom dollar. That means you don't get much profit per unit.
Now that doesn't mean AMD is getting screwed, I'm sure they are making money per unit sold, but make no mistake: The reason they got the contracts is they could offer the lowest price and that means a thin profit. So 10 million chips sold in the console is less profit than 10 million sold in a desktop or server or the like.
It is not the grand prize of hardware contracts.
On another note I find it hilarious how fanboys relish in the concept of a competitor doing badly, as if we all wouldn't be more screwed if there was a single company. Personally, I like nVidia GPUs, they work better in my experience. However I'm real, real glad AMD is around. Why? Well if they weren't nVidia could, and would, charge more than they already do, and they wouldn't release new tech as fast.
So if you are an AMD fanboy wishing the death of Intel and nVidia, what you are really saying is "Gee I hope AMD will be able to overcharge me for lower end technology when they have nobody to push them!"
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You may have noticed that your eyes are laid out horizontal. You also may have noticed that you have a much wider horizontal FOV and vertical. That is the reason for wide screens, and why movies have been doing it for years and years.
Now that doesn't mean things should be as wide as possible, or that all monitors should be equally wide. Vertical space is useful. In general, the smaller, the more square they should be. Laptops would probably benefit from 4:3 screens in general. However when you have a nice large 30" desktop display, well 16:10 is real nice. It do a better job of covering your FOV in a useful way, and looks good too (16:10 in particular is near the golden ratio).
For that matter, if you want a real long screen, they are good for that too. If I wanted to I could flip my screen in to portrait mode and have 25" vertical which rather beats out any 4:3 display I ever saw.
Also remember that monitors are used for a lot more than scrolling text. People use them for watching movies, playing games, that kind of thing, which really do benefit from that wide FOV (as I noted about the whole eyes thing).
The State Department can revoke your passport. You might notice there's a little part that says "This passport is the property of the United States (Title 22, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 51.9). It must be surrendered upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States Government." They have the right to revoke your passport and criminal charges are a reason they can. In that event what happens is you can get a special travel document that'll let you go back to the US. Yes, if he takes that, he'll face trial in the US. That is the point of revoking his passport. A passport is not a license to run away, it is a travel document to allow you to travel legally. The US can revoke your passport and tell you to come home if they are charging you with a crime.
I think you need to read up a bit more on the law and human rights. It is quite well established that a country can charge their citizens with a crime, and can do things like revoke travel rights while they stand trial. What Snowden is accused of is a crime. You can certainly argue that they shouldn't charge him, but releasing classified information you've been given access to is a crime. You sign all kinds of NDAs to that effect having a security clearance. You are made full and well aware it is a crime to reveal classified information.
So the US has a valid charge against him, and it is within its rights, nationally and internationally, to revoke his passport and demand he return to face trial. That doesn't mean it is morally right, but that is up to the individual to decide. There is no human rights issue here though. Revealing classified information you are given access to is a crime in every nation I am aware of (in some it is a crime period, even if you are given the information from someone else and have no clearance yourself), and in the US they make it VERY clear when you get your security clearance that you agree not to do so, under penalty of law.
So his first leak was understandable to many: He found a program that seemed to be, if not illegal, at least questionable and had an American intelligence agency targeting American citizens which it is not supposed to do. Ok, you can understand why someone would choose to reveal that, even if you disagree with that choice. There is a strong argument to be made for the public's interest in knowing this information (if it is accurate).
However now he seems to just be leaking anything and everything. "The NSA is spying on China!" "This NSA is spying on the EU!" Not only is that shit really not that surprising, but it really isn't the kind of thing he can make the same claim about in terms of public good. This seems to be more of a "spill my guts on anything I know because they are after me,' situation.
Well that is not the kind of thing that is going to endear him to many people, or many nations. While a nation might be interested in using him as an asset (one of the oldest parts of spycraft is doubling people) and finding out in private what he knows about the US's spying against them, they are far less interested in hearing it screamed in public to any that will listen.
So I really think he overplayed his hand on things. Had he just leaked information about the PRISM program, I find it far more likely he'd find somewhere to take him in, perhaps in trade for a private debrief about what else he knows. As it stands he is harming his own position.
They aren't giving the NSA stuff that nobody else gets. The NSA is just on the early notification list. Various groups get told about vulnerabilities as soon as MS knows about them. The rest get told about them when there's a patch. So sure, I guess the NSA could quickly develop and exploit the vulnerability (if it is relevant, amazing how few no-user interaction, remote initiated exploits there are now that there's a default firewall) before MS patches it, but that is not really that likely a scenario, and more than any of the other groups that get it.
Check out the Underhanded C contest (http://underhanded.xcott.com/). There are great examples of code that look innocuous, but aren't. What's more, some of them look like legit mistakes that people might make programming.
So that is always a possibility. Evil_Programmer_A who works for whatever Evil Group that wants to be able to hack things introduces a patch for some OSS item. However, there's a security hole coded in purposely. It is hard to see, and if discovered will just look like a fuckup. Eventually it'll probably get found and patched, but nobody suspects Evil_Programmer_A of any malfeasance, I mean shit security issues happen all the time. People make mistakes.
In terms of how long to spot? Depends on how subtle it is. If you think all bugs get found real fast in OSS you've never kept up on security vulnerabilities. Sometimes, they find one that's been around for a LONG time. I remember back in 2000 when there was a BIND vulnerability that applied to basically every version of BIND ever. It has been lurking for years and nobody had caught it. Worse, it was a "day-0" kind of thing and people were exploiting it already. Caused a lot of grief for my roommate. By the time he heard about it (which was pretty quick, he subscribed to that kind of thing), their server at work had already been owned.
Don't think that just because the code is open that it means that it gets heavily audited by experts. Also don't think that just because an expert looks at it they'll notice something. It turns out a lot of security issues are still found in the runtime, not by a code audit. Everyone looks at the code and says "Ya, looks good to me," and only when later running it and testing how it reacts do they discover an unintended interaction.
I'm not trying to claim this is common, or even happening at all, but it is certainly possible. I think people put WAY too much faith in the "many eyes" thing of OSS. They think that if the code is open, well then people MUST see the bugs! All one has to do is follow a bug track site to see how false that is. Were it true, there'd be no bugs, ever, in release OSS code. Thing is, it is all written and audited by humans are humans are fallible. Mistakes happen, shit slips through.
AES was developed in Belgium by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. It was originally called Rijndael and was one of the AES candidates. What happened is the NIST put out a call for a replacement for the aging DES algorithm. It was one of a number of contenders and was the one that one the vote. The only thing the NSA has had to do with it is that they weighed in on it, and all the other top contenders, before a standard was chosen and said they were all secure and that they've since certified it for use in encrypting top secret data.
It was analyzed, before its standardization and since, by the world community. The NSA was part of that, no surprise, but everyone looked at it. It is the sole most attacked cypher in history, and remains secure.
So to believe the NSA has a 'backdoor' in it, or more correctly that they can crack it would imply that:
1) The NSA is so far advanced in cryptography that they were able to discover this prior to 2001 (when it got approved) and nobody else has.
2) That the NSA was so confident that they are the only group to be able to work this out that they'd give it their blessing, knowing that it would be used in critical US infrastructure (like banking) and that they have a mission to protect said infrastructure.
3) So arrogant that they'd clear it to be used for top secret data, meaning that US government data could potentially be protected with a weak algorithm.
Ya, I'm just not seeing that. That assumes a level of extreme mathematical brilliance, that they are basically better than the rest of the world combined, and a complete disregard for one of their missions.
It seems far more likely that, yes, AES is secure. Nobody, not even the NSA, has a magic way to crack it.
And if you want to argue that, then you want to actually argue against the printing press. I cannot remember the book or author, Vonnegut I think, had a good bit about how prior to the printing press knowledge was something like the martial arts: You had to work on it,sweat, spend your time and effort, often a lifetime to attain it. Your mastery died with you. For each person, learning something required an apprenticeship, basically.
The printing press changed all that. Now ideas could be made permanent, and disseminated. Now people didn't have to discover everything themselves or learn from what masters they could, they could get information and then build on it. They could stand on the shoulders of giants, as Newton said. So when a genius like Newton came along and advanced the knowledge of mathematics, physics and optics by probably 100 years or more, it wasn't something just limited to him and perhaps those that studied with him, the world could learn.
If you think that there needs to be a lot of effort for information, well then the printing press is your enemy, because that is what it became easy. Not as easy as it is now, but pre and post printing press was a bigger difference than pre and post Internet.
It is also necessary if you want to keep advancing things. There's really only so much time one person has to learn, only so much information they can soak up so fast. So if things are going to continue to get more complex and require more information, then we are going to need easy access to that information.
While these cards are a shitty setup, they are NOT company scrip in any way, shape, or form. They are denominated in US dollars and can be cashed out in that, or spent as that at stores that accept the reliant payment processor (Visa or Mastercard).
Company scrip was money that could only be spent at stores owned by the company, not anywhere else, and had no value in terms of government currency.
Don't make shit up. It weakens your argument. When something is bad, demonstrate its problems as they are. Don't try and invent new ones. When people find out you are lying they'll disregard your argument.
The cost to actually send the money to the employee direct deposit is $0.35 per transaction. That's what the payroll service pays, and what you'd pay if you did it directly. That is what ACH charges. It is a cheap system. That's why places are more than happy to have bills paid via ACH. When they do an ACH deduction, they pay the fee (the initiator pays), but it is so very cheap in terms of getting money. Much less than a CC.
In terms of an actual check, it varies but is generally in the range of $0.75-$1 when you count the cost of the check stock, printing, envelope, and postage fees. Perhaps a bit more if you factor in labour (depending on how automated the system is).
Neither system costs an employer much. Checks cost the bank somewhat more to deal with, though they have automated that to a large degree, but ACH costs them nothing (when they receive). The sender pays a small transaction fee and that's it. ACH is cheap on purpose because it can be, and is, used for massive volume and thus does well.
No matter how you look at it, it doesn't cost much. The costs are mostly in the other services, as you of course notice from the cost of your payroll service that does all the other work for you (my folks used a payroll service when they ran their business for the same reason).
Still a trivial cost as compared to all the others, as you point out. $15 is trivial shit compared to the other costs of having an employee, even a minimum wage one.
1) You can, indeed, get free checking from Credit Unions pretty easy. Some banks too. There really are places that'll do business with you for no money up front and they won't charge you fees so long as you don't do things like overdraw.
2) They say companies are trying to do this instead of direct deposit. DD costs companies next to nothing. The Automated Clearing House (which is how they all do it) charges $0.35/transaction. This is why companies like to pay people that way. It adds just a trivial cost, and it all automated, the money comes out of their account in to yours. Well the only reason to go prepaid cards instead would be because the bank is bribing them, not because it is cheaper because the ACH cost is just fucking trivial.
This is not a matter of being nice to poor employees, this is a matter of fucking people over.
I could certainly understand offering it as an option. Maybe some employees would find it convenient or financially advantageous. But trying to force people on it? That is just trying to screw them over for a very minor benefit. Like I said, ACH is $0.35/transaction (or 0.06% of a minimum wage paycheck, not counting payroll tax and all that jazz if you want to look at it that way) and it is good bookkeeping wise since the transaction hits right away so you know the status of your current accounts.
At the university there are only two kinds of budgets: capital and personnel. We have money for salaries, and money for equipment. Those are the categories. You may disagree with their method for doing it, but it is set by the regents and the state and it not something we control. Basically our personnel budget isn't being reduced, in fact there are small state mandated raises coming. However the equipment budget has only been 33% approved.
Personally I don't think toner should be an IT item, it should be in the same category as office supplies which is a department budget the business managers have. However, it is in the IT budget and that is that. We don't control it.
In terms of printers we have little control over that. We aren't like most IT shops where we can tell people what it is. We have to do what they want, by and large. Were it up to me, people wouldn't have personal printers, they'd use the large floor combo copier/printers which have much cheaper consumables on account of being so large. However they don't do that because:
1) They are lazy.
2) They use their printers for non-work related uses. We can audit the departmental stuff, not so for the personal stuff.
You have to remember that universities operate rather differently from companies.
Show what you'd lose at a 50% cut. Show him the things that they want to have, that would go away if they cut that much. Often people fail to appreciate what a budget is spent on and if it gets explained what they'll have to trade off they'll be more accommodating.
We may have to do just that where I work. The Dean has been fiddling with the budget again (he's really, really bad at budgeting) and has approved about 33% of our capital budget. He says he'll see if there's more money once the FY starts. Well if not, we are just going to have to make it clear what they don't get to have. Toner will be a big one, we spend almost a third of the budget on that because every professor just HAS to have their own personal printer (this isn't something we get to say no to). Well, those purchases will have to stop, departmental toner purchases only, and then only for academics and business needs. We'll identify the computer labs that are running Windows XP that cannot be upgraded to 7/8 that will need to be shut down next year when updates stop. There will be no new purchases of desktops for anyone unless their computer is just non-functional, no refresh. Etc, etc.
At that point, he'll likely decide that more budget is needed, and move money around (I haven't looked, but my suspicion is he's giving the advertising group more they are a black hole that always wants more). If not, we'll keep going on what we have, and services will be cut because there won't be the funds for it.
It can be very effective to not only show people what you give them, but what you won't be able to give them. A 50% cut is huge, that isn't the kind of thing where you "just make do with a little less" or "cut some minor things" that is where major services have to be cut out. Show him what those are. It is easy to say "I want a 50% cut," when you just look at the money side. When you see what you are going to lose, then it is not so easy.
The UK's SIS is one of the all-time legends of the intelligence community. Not surprising, given the importance that intelligence played in WWII and the threat that the UK faced. The SIS is one of the best of the best. Likewise France's DGSE is a pretty heavy hitter, with a number of publicly known operations (and likely many more not known) and a six hundred million Euro annual budget.
So ya, the EU itself has no central intelligence agency, but if you think its members don't, well then you haven't bothered to check.
In case you are wondering, they HAVE in fact killed people. One example that is publicly known? The DGSE sunk a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand, which killed one person. It was called Opération Satanique.
So sorry to burst your bubble about the EU and members being nothing but noble, but they are nations, with interests, just like all the others and they have intelligence agencies to that end.
Pick the nation, I can likely name the intelligence agency. How about Canada? Those nice Canadians surely don't have one. Oh wait, they have the CSIS, modeled after the British SIS. Ok well not the Norwegians, I mean they are such a wonderful country. Oh, no, wait, they have four of them, three mostly foreign (NIS, FOST, NSM), one mostly domestic (PST).
I really can go on for basically any nation. Nations have collected intelligence on each other for basically as long as we've had nations. This shouldn't surprise you if you've studied history at all. There are also some fairly recent (in historical terms) events that remind nations of the importance of intelligence, like the second world war.
That the US spies shouldn't surprise you. If you think it shouldn't, ok that is valid, but understand it would be essentially the only nation that doesn't. You also might want to learn up on problems that would cause, and then see if you are still ok with the tradeoff.
Many Wikileaks supporters seem to feel that it and its members should have near inviolable privacy, and nobody else should. It is sacred ground, that can be as secretive as it likes, while shedding light on anything else.
Now I suppose I could respect that if it were a more generalized "public/private" thing. In that they believed that government entities, being under the public's control, should have no secrets, but that private individuals and entities should be allowed secrets. However they don't do that, they've published things like sorority secrets which are for a private entity and have no public interest (meaning actual use to the public, people are interested in them with the same voyeuristic attitude as prying into celebrity lives).
It just seems to be how many Wikileaks members and supporters feel. It and its members are one of the few things that should be allowed as much privacy, including total privacy/anonymity, as they want. Everyone else? Fair game, publish whatever they can get their hands on that they decide is a juicy secret, regardless of utility or public good.
For that matter you can even see that with the governmental data they've leaked. There's various stuff that you can argue if it is in the public interest to release it but there is plenty you really can't. For example the private opinions of the diplomatic corps about the Russian leaders. There is NO REASON to release it to the public. It harms diplomatic relations, harms the individuals involved, and doesn't reveal anything, not even US policy, just the opinions of those involved. It isn't evidence of malfeasance or illegal action, it isn't useful to release. But they did, because they could.
Their drivers aren't crap, but they aren't up to nVidia's standards. I've a 7970M in my laptop, which I got when it was a brand new chip, and it has been a trial. So there are two big issues it has had, only which could be relevant to the PS4:
1) Issues with Enduro, that's AMD's hybrid GPU switching. The laptop can use the integrated Intel 4000 graphics for easy stuff and fire up the 7970M for hard stuff. Well until fairly recently, that didn't work that well. The 7970M didn't operate at full capacity, something with the drivers was inefficient. You could see it on other laptops which has a mux to allow you to switch off the iGPU. With just the 7970M they ran much faster. AMD finally got it (mostly) fixed, but it took for damn well ever. Also when it first came out, the interface for choosing GPUs was really clunky.
2) OpenGL issues. AMD has sucked at the OpenGL for as long as I can remember, and it never seems to get better. They SUPPORT it, but it doesn't work well. On nVidia, GL and DX run equally fast. They are both first-class APIs and there really is no speed or capability difference between them. On AMD, not so much. Recently the issues I've seen were with Brink and HFSS. Brink was a shit (man it was a waste of money) game that used iD Tech 4. As such, OpenGL. On my AMD GPU, it never ran well despite being WAY passed the spec needed. Tried it on a lesser spec nVidia system, flawless. Said problems were all over the forums. With HFSS we set up a desktop at work with a cheap AMD chip, a 7570 or something like that, just for basic graphics (it was server class hardware, so no good iGPU). The user reported HFSS worked over RDP, but not local and sure enough, that was the case. So it occurred to me: HFSS will use OpenGL to accelerate its interface. Out came the AMD card, in went a cheap nVidia GT 210, and HFSS worked fine.
Now of those, the OpenGL problem could be problematic to the PS4, since that's what it uses. Maybe they won't have a problem since this is ONLY a GL driver and they've had time and all that, but I worry. The PS4 may lose its, on paper, graphics advantage due to driver issues. It would suck for Sony if their console which has more graphics units and more memory bandwidth had lesser GPU capabilities because AMD can't work out a good GL driver.
At any rate the overall situation is AMD still has problems nVidia drivers don't. I really like AMD's hardware, it is often faster and is nearly always a good price, but I get continually bit with driver issues. Not something huge like "The system blue screens and won't run," but things that are very real and very annoying. Hence I have nVidia in my desktop and I've seriously considered replacing the card in my laptop (it is a Clevo laptop and the card is field replaceable). They aren't perfect, but I find them WAY less problematic.
And don't even get me started on Linux drivers. There is NO comparison there. nVidia binary drivers is lightyears ahead of anyone else.
Sony actually intended for it to be the graphic chips. Early on they were doing graphics demos of things running on a number of Cell chips. However, it wasn't good at that either and as the PS3 went in to hardware development, it was clear that they'd need a real GPU.
Well rather than just admit that the Cell wasn't ready for a consumer device (I mean who the fuck tries to put first gen technology in a consumer device) they decided to make it the CPU instead, and had nVidia make them a GPU.
Ultimately Cell's long term problem has been GPUs themselves. As you say Cell sucks as a general purpose CPU. No problem, that wasn't really its design. However as a stream processor it can't keep up with the new GPUs. That wasn't an issue when it was designed (this was back in the pre nVidia 8800 days) but now it gets out stream processed by GPUs.
Hence it has kinda just languished. IBM has chattered about it a bit, but nothing has happened.
Because they can't do anything about you. The reason your own government is more of a concern than foreign governments is they have power over you whereas foreign governments do not. Now yes, technically foreign governments can go after someone, like North Korean kidnappings or the US drone program, however by and large they have little control over citizens of other nations.
In terms of looking at civilians, you think that is new? Most people in a country are civilians, as in not in the military. That doesn't mean they aren't involved in things a nation might take interest in. A simple example would be spies. You think they are military officers? No, they are regular civilians, or often diplomats.
Also in some countries, like China, the line is considerably less clear. The PLA outright owns many industries, and has their hands in many others, so even were you to take the line that spying is only for military things, well that would be rather unclear there.
That aside, I've seen little enough protesting period, and none that seems to be people mad about civilian spying. It is DOMESTIC spying that seems to bother them. They are mad that the NSA is (allegedly) spying on Americans which they are not supposed to do according to the law. I haven't seen any protests complaining about foreign spy agencies doing it, and they do it, make no mistake.
Spying on foreign nations is the NSA's business. If you don't like that, then it is something to take up with your representitive, but I would have to ask why all of a sudden you have a problem with it, since that has ALWAYS been its business. The NSA is the US's signals intelligence agency. It's reason to be is to spy on the electronic communications of foreign powers.
Now, you can argue the US shouldn't spy at all if you like, but you do have to realise that would put the US at basically the only major nation that didn't. More or less all nations have intelligence agencies. The UK has the SIS (and the Security Service to an extent), France has the DGSE, Canada has the CSIS, Switzerland has the NDB, Finland has the SUPO, China has the MSS, Russia has the SVR (and realistically the FSB, FSO and GRU as well). Nations spy on each other. They have for a long, LONG time.
The flap with the NSA is that they have been spying on American citizens. That is something they are not supposed to do. While some countries, like China, have a unified intelligence apparatus (the MSS is their spy agency, secret police, all that jazz), the US purposely has divided agencies. The NSA, CIA, etc are not supposed to collect intelligence on Americans. That is only supposed to be done by law enforcement, and then only in compliance with court orders.
That the NSA would spy on other nations is not only unsurprising, it is the reason they exist.
In terms of China being an enemy, well you can't really think in those terms. Nations don't have friends and enemies so much as they have interests. As such other nations can align or not align with those interests to different degrees. If you mean an enemy as a nation they are at war with then no, but of course they US hasn't officially gone to war in a rather long time. However China is certainly a nation the US would have many reasons to watch. They are quite authoritarian, the military is heavily mixed up in their economy (I'm talking direct ownership of things), they have imperialistic ambitions and they have a lot of weapons. Thus it should not be surprising if the US has interest in watching them.
Also if you think the US is irrelevant, you need to wake up and have a look at world affairs. The US is an extremely influential country in a tremendous amount of ways. It is the only military superpower at the moment, it controls the world's reserve currency, it has the largest economy in the world, it exports culture (in the form of books, TV movies, video games, that kind of thing) like no other in history and so on. You might wish the US was not relevant, but it is, very much so.
Also it isn't small. Buy a globe. Or use a search engine. The US is the 4th largest country in the world by land area, and 3rd largest by population. If that is "too small" by your metric, then I don't want to know what you rank most countries (which are, by definition, much smaller).
Well three problems there:
1) Not really a Rogue kind of guy. It isn't my sort of game. I like more story in my RPGs which does, of course, preclude random generation. It is a tradeoff.
2) When you play a game made for a PC, it doesn't translate well to touch. Touch dictates some things be done rather differently to work well, and these do not have the UI to deal with that.
3) As you said, they are old, I've already played them. I like new games, not playing the same ones over and over for a quarter century.
It still quite supports my and the GP's point about the lack of good games for mobile.
It has amazed me how hard it is to find good games for mobile devices. I'm a big-time gamer, I'd much rather play a game than watch TV for entertainment. It is my primary goof-off activity. So I have a nice powerful smartphone (Android in this case), and it would be nice to have some portable games for it.
Some I want just for quick things, like waiting in the doctor's office or the like. Those are reasonably easy to find, I have a small collection of simplistic titles that do the trick for that. Still though it took a good bit of wading through crap to find them, and there were some things that initially looked promising but turned out to be "pay-2-win" that wanted to suck tons of money out of your pocket.
However I also wanted some with more substance, for if I'm traveling or something like that. Those... Well results haven't been great. I've bought some of the highest rated and reviewed stuff and so far it has been at best ok, either than Plants vs Zombies (which I already had on my PC). These are games that would be 5 or 6 of 10, maybe 7 in rare cases on the PC or a console, but are the "best" you find. Symphony of Eternity, NFS Most Wanted, etc are ok to play, but they really aren't up to what I'm used to.
Then some games that used to be good go to shit. Like Zenoia. Not a wonderful game, but at least a reasonably competent Zelda type. I have the first two. There are more... but again they are all pay-2-win crap.
Now compare that to the PC. I have more games then I can play. I have games on Steam I literally haven't installed yet, because I don't have time to play them yet, and I have another list of games I'd like to buy, if I have time. My problem isn't finding games I want, it is finding the free time to play them all.
I'll believe iOS or Android can compete with Sony and Nintendo if I start to see some serious amount of high quality titles out. Not a small handful, many of which are ports, but a real library that regularly sees new releases.
X-Com is a great example: That launched a year ago for consoles and PCs. I played it and loved it. So now had I waited I could get it, with lesser graphics, and a rather cramped UI to be touch enabled... No thanks. I'll stick with it on the first-flight systems, thanks.
If you did, you'd know you can take out as much of your money, any time you like. Things like ATMs have daily withdrawal limits to help prevent theft/fraud, but you can go in to a branch and cash out your balance, any time you like (or transfer it to another bank electronically).
With any regular bank or brokerage, you can take your money out whenever you want, on fairly short notice. This applies even if you have tons of money in it. Now, if you have a lot, like lets say multiple billions of foreign exchange reserves, then placing a sell order on all of it will drop the value, the price will have to go down for all of it to sell, but you can do that, if you wish.
Heck that was part of the problem in the big downturn a few years ago. People were panicking and selling their whole portfolio at reduced prices, which of course feeds back on itself. A guy I know is a financial manager and he would try as hard as he could to convince people not to, since it would realize big losses for them, but they wanted none of that, they wanted it in cash (or bonds, or other safer stuff) and they wanted it NOW. So, he did as he had to and followed their wishes.
As the parent points out, the reason Bitcoin wouldn't let you is ponzi type reasons. If someone big cashes out all at once, that could cause the value to drop a lot, which could cause the whole thing to tumble down. They are trying to make sure that doesn't happen, to prop up the farce.
Consoles are focused on lowest possible cost of their hardware, since they sell to consumers at a loss, or at the best a slim profit. They need their suppliers to give them hardware for bottom dollar. That means you don't get much profit per unit.
Now that doesn't mean AMD is getting screwed, I'm sure they are making money per unit sold, but make no mistake: The reason they got the contracts is they could offer the lowest price and that means a thin profit. So 10 million chips sold in the console is less profit than 10 million sold in a desktop or server or the like.
It is not the grand prize of hardware contracts.
On another note I find it hilarious how fanboys relish in the concept of a competitor doing badly, as if we all wouldn't be more screwed if there was a single company. Personally, I like nVidia GPUs, they work better in my experience. However I'm real, real glad AMD is around. Why? Well if they weren't nVidia could, and would, charge more than they already do, and they wouldn't release new tech as fast.
So if you are an AMD fanboy wishing the death of Intel and nVidia, what you are really saying is "Gee I hope AMD will be able to overcharge me for lower end technology when they have nobody to push them!"
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250982/2013-year-on-year-sales-and-market-share-update-to-may-18th/
Relevant part being lifetime sales:
PS3: 77,313,472
Wii: 99,574,394
Xbox 360: 77,311,669
"Every gamer you know" is not a valid metric. Anecdotal evidence is not useful.
Also this is only the 7th gen. Step back to the previous one and the PS2 is the best selling console of all time, over 200 million sold.
Sorry if it shoots your off-the-cuff rant to shit, but Sony is a force to be reckoned with in the console area. So in Nintendo.