Yes, you are missing something. You probably will reject this notion for a long time, but other people in the world care about different things than you do. One of which is how people use technology to navigate cultural differences and perhaps avoid dramatic international business / cultural transgressions.
All of our modern conveniences were created by engineers. Some percentage of those engineers are neurotic and controlling and completely lack social skills. We would be swimming in our own filth if it weren't for those people. What we really need are personality engineers to help them blow off steam or to feed their egos in a self contained environment. For the meantime we have the occasional Kafka moment.
. Many will go so far as to take out hefty life insurance policies to cover short-term risk if their CEO, chief product designer, star analyst etc... gets hit by a bus.
Many companies take out life insurance policies on all of their employees. It's called "dead peasant" insurance. (Albiet, the janitor doesn't get a hefty policy).
Look at the stock market with it's bull runs and bear markets - yet many claim that it's a totally random phenomenon despite this, and tests for randomness support this idea.
The stock market is not random. There is an invisible hand guiding it up and down. Or billions of individual visible invisible hands. It's complicated, but not random.
A few seasons back, Mythbusters did some tests and found that none of their phones were able to affect even remotely the instruments of a plane. It makes sense after all - we're not exactly seeing terrorists trying to sneak twelve cell phones on board and try to text each other into crashing the plane.
DO-254 is one of the big reasons they won't lift the ban. In general they test across a broad range spectrum for radio interference, however there isn't an engineer or manufacturer on the planet that will slap a certification on their airplane hardware that their device will withstand all interference from all consumer electronic devices. Would you?
For the most hypocritical church on earth they're surprisingly progressive with some matters. I don't think they're that keen on Intelligent design either.
That's the nature of hypocrites. They give the best advice.
Being required to show that you are a licensed and insured driver while operating a vehicle that requires a license and insurance to legally operate on public roads it just like "papers, please".
Yeah, I hated it the last time I was pulled over for speeding and got carted away to a gas chamber. Or the time I made an exaggerated similitude and they pinned a propeller-beanie to my head.
Among the questions Roth's research raises is, what role should Amazon and other public-cloud service providers play in preventing customers from using their services to commit crimes?"
None whatsoever. Amazon and other service providers are retailers. They are not a police force. If a crime is being committed, let the designated authorities (i.e. cops) investigate it, police it, and arrest the criminal. No business should ever be involved in policing anything. That's a role specially held for the executive branch of governments.
Although I agree with you, the store owner that sold John Wayne Gacy facepaint probably received some unwanted scrutiny after JWG was outed. The person who sold ammo to the guy who gunned down the congresswoman is probably sick of being pursued by TV cameras. Amazon, however only has to face the occasional lawsuit or lawmaking. There are consequences, but no inherent moral or legal obligation.
For a while, I maintained that I would switch back to Firefox once it matched the speed and minimalist interface that Chrome had, as I didn't like using a browser from Google.
I've never really liked comics books, but wow, I never realised they could also be so consciously boring visually. Most of the 70s, 80s and 00s designs for the car are appallingly uncreative. Many are virtually or totally unaltered versions of existing cars. In fact the most unique, fresh and striking designs come from the TV, movie and cartoon adaptations.
I guess if you want creativity, you don't look at a medium that recycles the same characters for 70 years.
Imagine that, you found a datapoint that reinforces your expectations.
> Games developers, a few corporate app maintainers and...
Most Mozilla project applications including Firefox.. Pretty much all of KDE and some of GNOME. WebKit. Google Chrome. Opera. A good chunk of OpenOffice. Most Adobe applications. Most Microsoft desktop applications including Internet Explorer. CUPS. The Qt toolkit and pretty much everything that uses it. MySQL. Autodesk Maya. Winamp.
I wouldn't say a *few* corporate apps are written in C++, I'd say pretty much every major desktop app that's undergone a major re-write within the last two decades is probably C++.
...National Instruments, Teradyne, pretty much any hardware interface vendor will provide a C++ instrument driver. All your pretty toys and joys of modern life have components that are tested and researched using the language. (Unless they are using LabView, but let's not go there).
I thought the fun was in trying to solve it yourself, not through having a machine give you the correct answer.
No, the fun is developing an algorithm to process the image and then another one to solve it. Who cares if it robs the end user of enjoyment or purpose.
I, too, bought an Android phone in November (Motorola Defy). I like it, it's going to work out fine for me. But I have to admit, compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry both, my phone's OS is buggy and clunky, the stock Android stuff is lacking features, and the attempts by the handset maker (Motorola) to make up for its deficiencies don't mesh well with the core OS. Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats.
The manual actually tells you to reboot the phone every so often. I don't disagree with this -- seems like sound advice for a device of this complexity -- but by comparison, my BlackBerry would actually reboot itself automatically every night if I wanted it to. And it turns out that if you don't reboot this phone, after a while it might do stuff like, oh, silently stop receiving your email. Reboot and ten messages show up. As a former BlackBerry user, that is not good. That is bad. And that's just one example -- it seems like random things will start to happen, which might frustrate you if you didn't feel OK with just rebooting the phone. (Though to be fair, any reluctance I have to reboot comes from me being a BlackBerry user, where rebooting is the last thing on Earth you want to do.)
I switched from BlackBerry because I felt like my BlackBerry Pearl was getting long in the tooth, and none of the new models appealed to me. Plus, change is good every now and then. I didn't pick iPhone for various reasons, mostly relating to not wanting to do business with either Apple or AT&T (and certainly not Verizon, when that happens). But I gotta admit, iPhone is the better phone. So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.
Some of the android phones meet and beat the iphone for features and performance. Some of them are a little buggy and require the reboots you mention. Aside from the software that controls my camera and performs terribly in low light (ironically oversaturating the subject with a flood of light), I love the HTC Evo and think it's the phone for Apple to beat. On the other hand, the iPhone 4 is a work of art and a fantastic phone.
Actually, I would love this, because then you could correlate my clean driving record with my phone usage and it would disprove your hangup. Some people can really do two things at once with skill and safety.
And no, an electric drivetrain is for the warmfuzzy and bragging options. People who are actually serious about improving efficiency/the environment buy a used 4-cyl with a small engine and a manual transmission (assuming they don't simply buy a bike or a bus pass). As for backup cameras and GPS... have you been in the drivers' seat of most modern cars? Admittedly the GPS is just for the navigation impaired (and common-sense impaired, if you read the stories about people driving into lakes at the advice of their satnav), but in some cars the rear-view is abhorrent. I test-drove a Ford Fusion earlier this week and was apalled to discover that the rear A frames took up about 1/3 of my backup view, and that the rear parcel shelf was so high you couldn't see the road. Utterly shittily designed car. You're an idiot to buy one, but if you *do* buy one, you're doubly stupid if you buy it without a backup camera.
That would be "And *yes*, electric drivetrain is for the warmfuzzy....". We agree on that despite the fact that I eat granola.
As far as backup cameras go, there is a built in haptic feedback system installed in every car.
Seriously, though, I live in Chicago and park on the street. It is culturally acceptable to lightly bump a car while parking. $150 a month will buy you a garage that will allow you a 2mph collision with buildings, poles, and other molemen lurking in the alleys.
You need to take some classes about both arguing and statistics. You gave anacodatl arguments, which are worthless. We don't care if you personally can do something safely. We care about what the majority of people can do. And studies have repeatedly shown that driving while on the phone is DANGEROUS for most people. It is the equivelent of being drunk.
They have also shown that none of the idiots that were involved in the accidents caused by their dangerous actions thought they were doing anything dangerous. Many of them had clean driving records. Your record is not convincing to me.
For this reason, their activities are illegal. The excuse that you personally believe you are such a good drive that you can do it anyway is not considered a get out of jail free card even if it happens to be true (and studies have shown it in general NOT to be true).
OK, so in summary: 1) I am not attacking you in particular, 2) many other people are dangerous while using the phone while driving, and for all I know you are the best driver in the world and can in fact do this safely. 3) It doesn't matter because it is still illegal because other people are not as good as your god like driving. 4) You admit you engage in an illegal activity but claim it is not dangerous 'for you'. 5) The government doesn't care about youer particular claim to god-like driving ability. 6)we care about what is safe for most other people, not you in particular and base the laws on that, not your personal god like driving ability.
P.S. Other studies have shown that it is not a single person on the road that cause traffic jams, but a combination of two or more people with poor driving skills. For example two guys driving the exact same speed in the next lane prevents cars passing, slowing traffic in general. Or one idiot slamming on the brakes and the guy tailgating him.
Bad argument? I wholeheartedly agree. You should hear my views and arguments on raising the Blood Alcohol Limit and decriminalizing drinking while driving.
Notice I said 12 people. The days that they all call in sick / vacation are the days that the road is clear.
You may earnestly want to create and enforce laws that affect a subset of the population to the detriment of another subset of the population. I like some of these laws, but personally hate this particular law. Who wants their freedom limited when it doesn't affect them?
Tell you what. I'll keep my trap shut on it being illegal for me to do something that is personally non-distracting if we legalize the carrying and firing of sawed off shotguns on the highway.
I think this is theoretically possible, not 100% sure.
I want to see the sources of all mobile phone use within 100 ft of my car. Of course, ideally I would want a head's up type projection on the windows, showing all the morons using their phone (texting or voice - hands free or regular), in red. But I would settle for a 30 ft warning telling me that the guy in the next lane was doing stupid, dangerous stuff.
One simple way to know which idiots to be extra careful of.
Actually, I would love this, because then you could correlate my clean driving record with my phone usage and it would disprove your hangup. Some people can really do two things at once with skill and safety.
In all seriousness, though, it would be great to show you a radar with relative hazards based on driving record. You could even correlate if someone was just in front an accident before it happens. (I have a theory that there are jerks out there that regularly cause accidents immediately behind them. Maybe we can finally single out those 12 people on the road everyday who cause all the traffic jams.
You think a normal person cares about horsepower? Or top speed for that matter? Even handling is a bit borderline. You're going to be as driving as fast as you feel comfortable in that situation. If I live in a built up area I don't need an engine that could accelerate a car to lightspeeds.
But the 'techy' stuff is cool.
I would agree with you except that people with social lives like sports, cars, and cats, often combining their passions together, or using one to get the others, or falling back on one, when the others aren't working. It is normal for a person to have a fetish about technology that is car-centric.
In the short run, this leads to distracted drivers, which is bad......but in the long run, this takes us ever closer to self driving cars and removing humans from behind the wheel.
Whoever wants to drive manually in my utopian future can do so on a track, for what I care. People kill too many innocent other people by being stupid behind the wheel.
In the long run it keeps us in the electronics industry employed. Thank you automotive sector and your army of customers! I like all the fancy beer that I drink and the continuation of my mortgage payments, although I can't quite understand why you need a backup camera, a GPS, or an electric drivetrain that is a net polluter.
As far as distracted driving goes, I never pay attention to the road anyways, often zoning out for half an hour at a time. It's fine.
Maybe they can watch the polling stations and make sure people with the same name as ex-convicts won't be purged from the voter list and we could elect someone that won't invade a country by quoting The Transformers or by lying to the people. Someone that wasn't so terrible that for the first time in American history, the population was willing to vote for a half-black man as an alternative.
Most music nowadays is bite size but most of Floyd's stuff you really had to listen to the entire Album to appreciate it. But it's a new world, I suppose, and if people want to listen to just one song from the Wall randomly mixed in with Britney Spears and Lady Gaga then power to the people.
Which is funny, because I just got done listening to a mashup of Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Pink Floyd.
Microsoft does ONE thing well : it hires thousands of competent programmers and it makes usable software. There are many critics but the stuff isn't all bad and they do try to improve it. It SELLS the software to users, and because it has so many customers, the revenue vastly exceeds the cost of paying thousands of programmers. They have a swanky corporate headquarters with all the free soda you can chug, and many many 6-figure jobs.
It's failed miserably at EVERYTHING ELSE IT HAS TRIED. As far as I know, it has not made ONE DOLLAR OF NET PROFIT ON ANYTHING ELSE.
It's wasted billions of dollars trying to compete as an online portal and as a search engine. A company crammed to the brim with top CS grads and extremely good custom software SPECIALIZES in search and basically nothing else. Expecting to ever beat them and make more money is a fool's errand.
It's wasted more billions, with little or NO net profits on gaming consoles. (MAYBE it's finally breaking even on that, but I doubt it)
And 50 other assorted ventures that never made a dime that we don't hear about.
Software is STILL a good idea. How about the executives pay dividends and focus on doing their core business WELL.
Yeah, no. They're making hand over fist licensing the Xbox platform to game publishers. They make money by selling virtually nothing. Who cares if they give the razor away?
More specifically, my main issue with the OP's point is that the movie's anthropomorphization of the computer's inner workings is too obviously inaccurate -- anyone who knows anything about computers can easily see that it's just a thin sheen of technobabble hastily thrown on top of a standard action movie. Props to the guy they got to do the UNIX commands in the real life scenes, but other than that, the tech stuff was so out of this world that it left none of what good sci-fi needs to engage the viewer -- that thin line of plausibility and the possibility that our world could really become like the one in the movie one day.
Woah! Who told you that Tron is Science Fiction? It's a fantasy movie, but instead of trees and elves, there are merchandising tie-ins stuck in a mainframe in the dusty basement of an unused arcade.
Slashdot Mirror
am i missing something - how is this news?
Yes, you are missing something. You probably will reject this notion for a long time, but other people in the world care about different things than you do. One of which is how people use technology to navigate cultural differences and perhaps avoid dramatic international business / cultural transgressions.
I'm sorry, that's it.
America over.
The end.
All of our modern conveniences were created by engineers. Some percentage of those engineers are neurotic and controlling and completely lack social skills. We would be swimming in our own filth if it weren't for those people. What we really need are personality engineers to help them blow off steam or to feed their egos in a self contained environment. For the meantime we have the occasional Kafka moment.
. Many will go so far as to take out hefty life insurance policies to cover short-term risk if their CEO, chief product designer, star analyst etc... gets hit by a bus.
Many companies take out life insurance policies on all of their employees. It's called "dead peasant" insurance. (Albiet, the janitor doesn't get a hefty policy).
Look at the stock market with it's bull runs and bear markets - yet many claim that it's a totally random phenomenon despite this, and tests for randomness support this idea.
The stock market is not random. There is an invisible hand guiding it up and down. Or billions of individual visible invisible hands. It's complicated, but not random.
A few seasons back, Mythbusters did some tests and found that none of their phones were able to affect even remotely the instruments of a plane. It makes sense after all - we're not exactly seeing terrorists trying to sneak twelve cell phones on board and try to text each other into crashing the plane.
DO-254 is one of the big reasons they won't lift the ban. In general they test across a broad range spectrum for radio interference, however there isn't an engineer or manufacturer on the planet that will slap a certification on their airplane hardware that their device will withstand all interference from all consumer electronic devices. Would you?
I wish Facebook would expire... the sooner, the better.
What's the matter? Did an army of 14-year old girls subvert your internet?
For the most hypocritical church on earth they're surprisingly progressive with some matters. I don't think they're that keen on Intelligent design either.
That's the nature of hypocrites. They give the best advice.
Libertarian rage! Raaargh! Freedom!
Being required to show that you are a licensed and insured driver while operating a vehicle that requires a license and insurance to legally operate on public roads it just like "papers, please".
Yeah, I hated it the last time I was pulled over for speeding and got carted away to a gas chamber. Or the time I made an exaggerated similitude and they pinned a propeller-beanie to my head.
Among the questions Roth's research raises is, what role should Amazon and other public-cloud service providers play in preventing customers from using their services to commit crimes?"
None whatsoever. Amazon and other service providers are retailers. They are not a police force. If a crime is being committed, let the designated authorities (i.e. cops) investigate it, police it, and arrest the criminal. No business should ever be involved in policing anything. That's a role specially held for the executive branch of governments.
Although I agree with you, the store owner that sold John Wayne Gacy facepaint probably received some unwanted scrutiny after JWG was outed. The person who sold ammo to the guy who gunned down the congresswoman is probably sick of being pursued by TV cameras. Amazon, however only has to face the occasional lawsuit or lawmaking. There are consequences, but no inherent moral or legal obligation.
For a while, I maintained that I would switch back to Firefox once it matched the speed and minimalist interface that Chrome had, as I didn't like using a browser from Google.
You know there ARE more than 2 choices, right?
Did you consider Opera?
Don't forget Internet Explorer 6!
I've never really liked comics books, but wow, I never realised they could also be so consciously boring visually. Most of the 70s, 80s and 00s designs for the car are appallingly uncreative. Many are virtually or totally unaltered versions of existing cars. In fact the most unique, fresh and striking designs come from the TV, movie and cartoon adaptations.
I guess if you want creativity, you don't look at a medium that recycles the same characters for 70 years.
Imagine that, you found a datapoint that reinforces your expectations.
> Games developers, a few corporate app maintainers and...
Most Mozilla project applications including Firefox.. Pretty much all of KDE and some of GNOME. WebKit. Google Chrome. Opera. A good chunk of OpenOffice. Most Adobe applications. Most Microsoft desktop applications including Internet Explorer. CUPS. The Qt toolkit and pretty much everything that uses it. MySQL. Autodesk Maya. Winamp.
I wouldn't say a *few* corporate apps are written in C++, I'd say pretty much every major desktop app that's undergone a major re-write within the last two decades is probably C++.
...National Instruments, Teradyne, pretty much any hardware interface vendor will provide a C++ instrument driver. All your pretty toys and joys of modern life have components that are tested and researched using the language. (Unless they are using LabView, but let's not go there).
I thought the fun was in trying to solve it yourself, not through having a machine give you the correct answer.
No, the fun is developing an algorithm to process the image and then another one to solve it. Who cares if it robs the end user of enjoyment or purpose.
I, too, bought an Android phone in November (Motorola Defy). I like it, it's going to work out fine for me. But I have to admit, compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry both, my phone's OS is buggy and clunky, the stock Android stuff is lacking features, and the attempts by the handset maker (Motorola) to make up for its deficiencies don't mesh well with the core OS. Unexplained things happen every so often, which don't really phase me as a seasoned computer user, but would drive my mom bats.
The manual actually tells you to reboot the phone every so often. I don't disagree with this -- seems like sound advice for a device of this complexity -- but by comparison, my BlackBerry would actually reboot itself automatically every night if I wanted it to. And it turns out that if you don't reboot this phone, after a while it might do stuff like, oh, silently stop receiving your email. Reboot and ten messages show up. As a former BlackBerry user, that is not good. That is bad. And that's just one example -- it seems like random things will start to happen, which might frustrate you if you didn't feel OK with just rebooting the phone. (Though to be fair, any reluctance I have to reboot comes from me being a BlackBerry user, where rebooting is the last thing on Earth you want to do.)
I switched from BlackBerry because I felt like my BlackBerry Pearl was getting long in the tooth, and none of the new models appealed to me. Plus, change is good every now and then. I didn't pick iPhone for various reasons, mostly relating to not wanting to do business with either Apple or AT&T (and certainly not Verizon, when that happens). But I gotta admit, iPhone is the better phone. So what is making all these other people choose Android phones instead of iPhones, assuming they don't share my unique background and prejudices? It's not price -- as far as I can tell, that's pretty comparable for both platforms these days.
Some of the android phones meet and beat the iphone for features and performance. Some of them are a little buggy and require the reboots you mention. Aside from the software that controls my camera and performs terribly in low light (ironically oversaturating the subject with a flood of light), I love the HTC Evo and think it's the phone for Apple to beat. On the other hand, the iPhone 4 is a work of art and a fantastic phone.
Actually, I would love this, because then you could correlate my clean driving record with my phone usage and it would disprove your hangup. Some people can really do two things at once with skill and safety.
Did you know over 80% of people consider themselves above average drives? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ability)
You may be as good as you think you are but I don't want to be on the road with you to find out.
Yes I did. Did you know that some of them are?
Please tell me you ride the bus....
And no, an electric drivetrain is for the warmfuzzy and bragging options. People who are actually serious about improving efficiency/the environment buy a used 4-cyl with a small engine and a manual transmission (assuming they don't simply buy a bike or a bus pass). As for backup cameras and GPS... have you been in the drivers' seat of most modern cars? Admittedly the GPS is just for the navigation impaired (and common-sense impaired, if you read the stories about people driving into lakes at the advice of their satnav), but in some cars the rear-view is abhorrent. I test-drove a Ford Fusion earlier this week and was apalled to discover that the rear A frames took up about 1/3 of my backup view, and that the rear parcel shelf was so high you couldn't see the road. Utterly shittily designed car. You're an idiot to buy one, but if you *do* buy one, you're doubly stupid if you buy it without a backup camera.
That would be "And *yes*, electric drivetrain is for the warmfuzzy....". We agree on that despite the fact that I eat granola.
As far as backup cameras go, there is a built in haptic feedback system installed in every car.
Seriously, though, I live in Chicago and park on the street. It is culturally acceptable to lightly bump a car while parking. $150 a month will buy you a garage that will allow you a 2mph collision with buildings, poles, and other molemen lurking in the alleys.
You need to take some classes about both arguing and statistics. You gave anacodatl arguments, which are worthless. We don't care if you personally can do something safely. We care about what the majority of people can do. And studies have repeatedly shown that driving while on the phone is DANGEROUS for most people. It is the equivelent of being drunk.
They have also shown that none of the idiots that were involved in the accidents caused by their dangerous actions thought they were doing anything dangerous. Many of them had clean driving records. Your record is not convincing to me.
For this reason, their activities are illegal. The excuse that you personally believe you are such a good drive that you can do it anyway is not considered a get out of jail free card even if it happens to be true (and studies have shown it in general NOT to be true).
OK, so in summary: 1) I am not attacking you in particular, 2) many other people are dangerous while using the phone while driving, and for all I know you are the best driver in the world and can in fact do this safely. 3) It doesn't matter because it is still illegal because other people are not as good as your god like driving. 4) You admit you engage in an illegal activity but claim it is not dangerous 'for you'. 5) The government doesn't care about youer particular claim to god-like driving ability. 6)we care about what is safe for most other people, not you in particular and base the laws on that, not your personal god like driving ability.
P.S. Other studies have shown that it is not a single person on the road that cause traffic jams, but a combination of two or more people with poor driving skills. For example two guys driving the exact same speed in the next lane prevents cars passing, slowing traffic in general. Or one idiot slamming on the brakes and the guy tailgating him.
Bad argument? I wholeheartedly agree. You should hear my views and arguments on raising the Blood Alcohol Limit and decriminalizing drinking while driving.
Notice I said 12 people. The days that they all call in sick / vacation are the days that the road is clear.
You may earnestly want to create and enforce laws that affect a subset of the population to the detriment of another subset of the population. I like some of these laws, but personally hate this particular law. Who wants their freedom limited when it doesn't affect them?
Tell you what. I'll keep my trap shut on it being illegal for me to do something that is personally non-distracting if we legalize the carrying and firing of sawed off shotguns on the highway.
I think this is theoretically possible, not 100% sure.
I want to see the sources of all mobile phone use within 100 ft of my car. Of course, ideally I would want a head's up type projection on the windows, showing all the morons using their phone (texting or voice - hands free or regular), in red. But I would settle for a 30 ft warning telling me that the guy in the next lane was doing stupid, dangerous stuff.
One simple way to know which idiots to be extra careful of.
Actually, I would love this, because then you could correlate my clean driving record with my phone usage and it would disprove your hangup. Some people can really do two things at once with skill and safety.
In all seriousness, though, it would be great to show you a radar with relative hazards based on driving record. You could even correlate if someone was just in front an accident before it happens. (I have a theory that there are jerks out there that regularly cause accidents immediately behind them. Maybe we can finally single out those 12 people on the road everyday who cause all the traffic jams.
You think a normal person cares about horsepower? Or top speed for that matter? Even handling is a bit borderline. You're going to be as driving as fast as you feel comfortable in that situation. If I live in a built up area I don't need an engine that could accelerate a car to lightspeeds.
But the 'techy' stuff is cool.
I would agree with you except that people with social lives like sports, cars, and cats, often combining their passions together, or using one to get the others, or falling back on one, when the others aren't working. It is normal for a person to have a fetish about technology that is car-centric.
In the short run, this leads to distracted drivers, which is bad... ...but in the long run, this takes us ever closer to self driving cars and removing humans from behind the wheel.
Whoever wants to drive manually in my utopian future can do so on a track, for what I care. People kill too many innocent other people by being stupid behind the wheel.
In the long run it keeps us in the electronics industry employed. Thank you automotive sector and your army of customers! I like all the fancy beer that I drink and the continuation of my mortgage payments, although I can't quite understand why you need a backup camera, a GPS, or an electric drivetrain that is a net polluter.
As far as distracted driving goes, I never pay attention to the road anyways, often zoning out for half an hour at a time. It's fine.
Or they could shoot crackheads. *pew* *pew*!
This has happened before, and it'll happen again.
So say we all.
Most music nowadays is bite size but most of Floyd's stuff you really had to listen to the entire Album to appreciate it. But it's a new world, I suppose, and if people want to listen to just one song from the Wall randomly mixed in with Britney Spears and Lady Gaga then power to the people.
Which is funny, because I just got done listening to a mashup of Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Pink Floyd.
From a Microsoft stock holder : NO. NO, NO, NO.
Microsoft does ONE thing well : it hires thousands of competent programmers and it makes usable software. There are many critics but the stuff isn't all bad and they do try to improve it. It SELLS the software to users, and because it has so many customers, the revenue vastly exceeds the cost of paying thousands of programmers. They have a swanky corporate headquarters with all the free soda you can chug, and many many 6-figure jobs.
It's failed miserably at EVERYTHING ELSE IT HAS TRIED. As far as I know, it has not made ONE DOLLAR OF NET PROFIT ON ANYTHING ELSE.
It's wasted billions of dollars trying to compete as an online portal and as a search engine. A company crammed to the brim with top CS grads and extremely good custom software SPECIALIZES in search and basically nothing else. Expecting to ever beat them and make more money is a fool's errand.
It's wasted more billions, with little or NO net profits on gaming consoles. (MAYBE it's finally breaking even on that, but I doubt it)
And 50 other assorted ventures that never made a dime that we don't hear about.
Software is STILL a good idea. How about the executives pay dividends and focus on doing their core business WELL.
Yeah, no. They're making hand over fist licensing the Xbox platform to game publishers. They make money by selling virtually nothing. Who cares if they give the razor away?
More specifically, my main issue with the OP's point is that the movie's anthropomorphization of the computer's inner workings is too obviously inaccurate -- anyone who knows anything about computers can easily see that it's just a thin sheen of technobabble hastily thrown on top of a standard action movie. Props to the guy they got to do the UNIX commands in the real life scenes, but other than that, the tech stuff was so out of this world that it left none of what good sci-fi needs to engage the viewer -- that thin line of plausibility and the possibility that our world could really become like the one in the movie one day.
Woah! Who told you that Tron is Science Fiction? It's a fantasy movie, but instead of trees and elves, there are merchandising tie-ins stuck in a mainframe in the dusty basement of an unused arcade.