Right, so when we've got the government pumping trillions into "war" to extract oil, why shouldn't a tiny fraction of that be spent to try to create new technologies and a new infrastructure?
What "war" to extract oil?
Before Bush invaded Iraq they were preventing Saddam Hussein from selling oil. If they wanted the oil they just had to say 'actually, we'll buy it from you' instead. It's not as though he was going to refuse to sell.
You get your information from like minded idiots who reinforce your view.
There's a psychological term called 'projection'. You might want to look it up sometime.
The Xbox has finally been making an operating profit after years of losses, but unless I'm much mistaken, it's still billions away from making a real, actual, profit over the life of the product. And now they have to blow a lot more money making a new console, while casual gamers are moving to tablet and phone games.
Consoles are dying. The people who used to play console games are increasingly playing games on a phone or tablet.
The Xbox is a tremendous success
As far as I'm aware the Xbox has still cost a couple of billion dollars more than it's made. If that's a 'tremendous success', I'd hate to see a failure.
and is an example of Microsoft's ability to gain marketshare in a difficult environment.
Buying your way into a market isn't hard if you can throw enough money at it. Shame it's not a market that actually matters any more.
I could never understand how academics could get lifetime positions at universities doing what they do - not exactly the kind of work that provides value in a fast paced world.
Because kids are willing to borrow vast sums of money to pay their salaries, because they think at the end of it they'll get a fat, well-paid job where they don't have to do much for the rest of their life other than argue about the use of commas as an ironic subtext in Oliver Twist.
Once they smarten up and say 'no', the academic bubble will burst.
If you're using a nuclear rocket, you have plenty enough payload to add any required shielding. Besides, you want as many fusion products as possible to go out the back of the rocket, not the front.
There are a few small details to deal with regarding both potential technologies.
Except we know how to create uncontrolled fusion, and a fusion rocket is closer to a hydrogen bomb than a fusion reactor. You're just trying to make fusion happen and throw the resulting plasma out the back, not keep the plasma in one place and generate power from it.
The cost of making a movie now is not film or equipment, but talent and time.
The cost of a movie was never 'film and equipment', unless you had a lot of contacts who could find you locations, props, etc, for free or you were filming pretentious art student debates in your basement.
I am. I can't imagine why you are being sarcastic.
Because all that has done is made doing the same things a bit faster with a bit smaller device. And a lot more ads.
There's very little the average person does today on a phone that they couldn't do fifteen years ago on a laptop. Heck, they could even had had Internet everywhere they went if they didn't mind dragging a satellite antenna with them.
Compared to being able to do things they couldn't do before, a faster Internet on smaller devices is insignificant. Particularly when it's mostly used to shovel ads and funny cat pictures.
Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have called it 'Windows', then people wouldn't have expected it to run Windows software.
Do you really think they wouldn't have the same problem if it said 'Windows RT' instead of 'Windows 8'? How many non-tech users do you know who have any idea that a computer running 'Windows' might not run Windows programs?
The only thing limiting apps right now is small memory and slowish, low core-count processors.
More RAM and a faster CPU than my last PC had in the early 2000s. Didn't seem to limit it too much.
When your pad or phone has 16 cores running at 3 ghz, a decent ultracap power supply, 64 gb of ram... you'll look at that "app bubble" statement the same way we look at what the head of the patent department in the early 1900's was saying when he declared something along the lines of "everything important has already been invented", or the famous "no one needs more than 64k (or was it 640? Can't be bothered, both are equally ridiculous.) The little AI in your pad will laugh with you.
My server has 32 cores, 32GB of RAM and runs at around 3GHz. I haven't noticed it laughing at me yet.
As others have said, there are millions of apps in the app stores, and maybe a few dozen that are actually useful outside of a small niche market (or instead of the web site they're replacing). Most of the rest are just crap to bring in ad views.
We became cynical when people started losing their jobs, lives, and reputations due to shit being posted online about them that was not 100% within their control.
Many of us could see the implications of ubiquitous surveillance years ago. I remember arguing with David Brin about it in the 90s, when he was convinced it would make the world a wonderful place.
Tragedy of the commons is instructive on why sometimes government intervention is a wise course of action.
'The commons' generally only exists because of government intervention. Otherwise someone would already own the place and, if it's valuable, take better care of it.
Because XFree86 / Xorg still performs like it's running on a circa 1993 dumb 1MB frame buffer. Video memory *is* actually useful for storing surfaces, rather than asking an application to redraw every time it's obscured/unobscured by anything. It's literally painful to use. Yes, literally.
I guess you never heard of X11 backing store. We were using that back in 1993.
As long as savvy users can disable/override/change keys, we get the best of both worlds.
What about 'unsavvy' users, who can currently put a CD in their drive and install the OS, but in the glorious 'secure' future will have to fiddling in the BIOS instead, if the hardware even allows it?
I don't know what the kinescope you refer to is, but France had black and white HD (737i) in 1949 and until 1983:
Kinescope is a fancy way of saying 'pointing a film camera at a TV screen'. You can see the picture quality it produces on old black and white Doctor Who shows from the BBC.
I remember a magazine in the UK sometimes including Sinclair Spectrum disks that you could play to load a program into the computer through the cassette input. So it could manage at least 1200bps (think that's what the Spectrum cassette interface used).
Having experienced a runway overshoot, the issue is that things tend to go flying around the cabin in a really nasty way, I don't want my teeth knocked out by the tablet that was previously sitting in the lap of the kid three rows in front of me.
But you'd presumably be quite happy to have them knocked out by a hardcover book?
Either make the rules apply to anything that could go flying around a cabin, or stop making me turn off my Kindle so I have to read a book that weighs five times as much instead.
Congress has the sole right to pass laws regarding interstate commerce. The Constitution does not narrow what laws Congress may pass in this regard.
Right, so the founders intended that Congress could pass any law they wanted so long as they put 'in interstate commerce' at the end. That makes total sense.
The interstate commerce clause has been massively abused for purposes it was never intended for.
Slashdot Mirror
The battery has not marred the plane's launch. In fact, the plane has been launched and in service for a while.
Being grounded for weeks due to a marked tendency to catch fire is the kind of thing that most people would consider to have marred its launch.
I certainly don't plan to get on a Doomliner in the next couple of years.
Give me a break. The plane is solid. And as to this battery, it is in a strong case that vents to the outside.
I'm guessing they didn't actually set it on fire on this 'certification' flight and prove they can land safely at the maximum allowed ETOPS range?
Right, so when we've got the government pumping trillions into "war" to extract oil, why shouldn't a tiny fraction of that be spent to try to create new technologies and a new infrastructure?
What "war" to extract oil?
Before Bush invaded Iraq they were preventing Saddam Hussein from selling oil. If they wanted the oil they just had to say 'actually, we'll buy it from you' instead. It's not as though he was going to refuse to sell.
You get your information from like minded idiots who reinforce your view.
There's a psychological term called 'projection'. You might want to look it up sometime.
The Xbox has finally been making an operating profit after years of losses, but unless I'm much mistaken, it's still billions away from making a real, actual, profit over the life of the product. And now they have to blow a lot more money making a new console, while casual gamers are moving to tablet and phone games.
On what planet is the Xbox circling the bowl?
Consoles are dying. The people who used to play console games are increasingly playing games on a phone or tablet.
The Xbox is a tremendous success
As far as I'm aware the Xbox has still cost a couple of billion dollars more than it's made. If that's a 'tremendous success', I'd hate to see a failure.
and is an example of Microsoft's ability to gain marketshare in a difficult environment.
Buying your way into a market isn't hard if you can throw enough money at it. Shame it's not a market that actually matters any more.
I could never understand how academics could get lifetime positions at universities doing what they do - not exactly the kind of work that provides value in a fast paced world.
Because kids are willing to borrow vast sums of money to pay their salaries, because they think at the end of it they'll get a fat, well-paid job where they don't have to do much for the rest of their life other than argue about the use of commas as an ironic subtext in Oliver Twist.
Once they smarten up and say 'no', the academic bubble will burst.
What about radiation shielding?
If you're using a nuclear rocket, you have plenty enough payload to add any required shielding. Besides, you want as many fusion products as possible to go out the back of the rocket, not the front.
There are a few small details to deal with regarding both potential technologies.
Except we know how to create uncontrolled fusion, and a fusion rocket is closer to a hydrogen bomb than a fusion reactor. You're just trying to make fusion happen and throw the resulting plasma out the back, not keep the plasma in one place and generate power from it.
The cost of making a movie now is not film or equipment, but talent and time.
The cost of a movie was never 'film and equipment', unless you had a lot of contacts who could find you locations, props, etc, for free or you were filming pretentious art student debates in your basement.
I am. I can't imagine why you are being sarcastic.
Because all that has done is made doing the same things a bit faster with a bit smaller device. And a lot more ads.
There's very little the average person does today on a phone that they couldn't do fifteen years ago on a laptop. Heck, they could even had had Internet everywhere they went if they didn't mind dragging a satellite antenna with them.
Compared to being able to do things they couldn't do before, a faster Internet on smaller devices is insignificant. Particularly when it's mostly used to shovel ads and funny cat pictures.
So just like my laptop fifteen years ago, but smaller and doesn't need a modem cable plugged into the wall any more.
I am so impressed by your rapid progress of technological evolution.
The name isn't the problem. There wasn't significant confusion between the Windows CE and 95/98 or Windows Mobile and XP/7.
That's because one ran on a desktop and one ran on a phone, and no-one in their right mind wanted a phone that ran Windows.
Now you have two tablets running 'Windows', yet only one actually runs Windows programs.
Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have called it 'Windows', then people wouldn't have expected it to run Windows software.
Do you really think they wouldn't have the same problem if it said 'Windows RT' instead of 'Windows 8'? How many non-tech users do you know who have any idea that a computer running 'Windows' might not run Windows programs?
Yeah, I remember last time, when that was called RPC.
The only thing limiting apps right now is small memory and slowish, low core-count processors.
More RAM and a faster CPU than my last PC had in the early 2000s. Didn't seem to limit it too much.
When your pad or phone has 16 cores running at 3 ghz, a decent ultracap power supply, 64 gb of ram... you'll look at that "app bubble" statement the same way we look at what the head of the patent department in the early 1900's was saying when he declared something along the lines of "everything important has already been invented", or the famous "no one needs more than 64k (or was it 640? Can't be bothered, both are equally ridiculous.) The little AI in your pad will laugh with you.
My server has 32 cores, 32GB of RAM and runs at around 3GHz. I haven't noticed it laughing at me yet.
As others have said, there are millions of apps in the app stores, and maybe a few dozen that are actually useful outside of a small niche market (or instead of the web site they're replacing). Most of the rest are just crap to bring in ad views.
Just because we can do something, the question is should we do something?
Debating is pointless: it will happen because the technology allows it.
The question is, what will you do about it?
We became cynical when people started losing their jobs, lives, and reputations due to shit being posted online about them that was not 100% within their control.
Many of us could see the implications of ubiquitous surveillance years ago. I remember arguing with David Brin about it in the 90s, when he was convinced it would make the world a wonderful place.
Tragedy of the commons is instructive on why sometimes government intervention is a wise course of action.
'The commons' generally only exists because of government intervention. Otherwise someone would already own the place and, if it's valuable, take better care of it.
Most of all: The game is BORING!
Consistent with Bioshock 1, then. Never played #2 because I gave up on #1 a few hours in.
Because XFree86 / Xorg still performs like it's running on a circa 1993 dumb 1MB frame buffer. Video memory *is* actually useful for storing surfaces, rather than asking an application to redraw every time it's obscured/unobscured by anything. It's literally painful to use. Yes, literally.
I guess you never heard of X11 backing store. We were using that back in 1993.
As long as savvy users can disable/override/change keys, we get the best of both worlds.
What about 'unsavvy' users, who can currently put a CD in their drive and install the OS, but in the glorious 'secure' future will have to fiddling in the BIOS instead, if the hardware even allows it?
I don't know what the kinescope you refer to is, but France had black and white HD (737i) in 1949 and until 1983 :
Kinescope is a fancy way of saying 'pointing a film camera at a TV screen'. You can see the picture quality it produces on old black and white Doctor Who shows from the BBC.
I remember a magazine in the UK sometimes including Sinclair Spectrum disks that you could play to load a program into the computer through the cassette input. So it could manage at least 1200bps (think that's what the Spectrum cassette interface used).
Having experienced a runway overshoot, the issue is that things tend to go flying around the cabin in a really nasty way, I don't want my teeth knocked out by the tablet that was previously sitting in the lap of the kid three rows in front of me.
But you'd presumably be quite happy to have them knocked out by a hardcover book?
Either make the rules apply to anything that could go flying around a cabin, or stop making me turn off my Kindle so I have to read a book that weighs five times as much instead.
Congress has the sole right to pass laws regarding interstate commerce. The Constitution does not narrow what laws Congress may pass in this regard.
Right, so the founders intended that Congress could pass any law they wanted so long as they put 'in interstate commerce' at the end. That makes total sense.
The interstate commerce clause has been massively abused for purposes it was never intended for.