Massive scalability through distributed computing?
Ask the guys at SETI why it shouldn't all be done on centralized servers.
Not sure if you're being purposefully obtuse, or trolling, but in case you're serious - there are a fantastically wide range of applications that benefit from massive parallelism found in shader languages like GLSL. Just take a look at some of the books on amazon that have CUDA implementations for everything from fluid simulation to computer vision stuff.
Most recently I've been playing with the concept of doing sound synth and processing on the GPU with shaders in js.
In my original post I mentioned that WebGL isn't just for graphics. There are enormous benefits to being able to execute massively parallel operations on a web page.
Honestly, isn't not just for graphics - it's for the whole fantastic class of problems that can be solved via GLSL shaders - GPU accelerated calculations in JS - this is simply so amazingly powerful, IE 10 is essentially worthless without it.
As people start doing high performance computing and solving wildly complex problems in the browser with GPU accelerated JS, the browser will continue to emerge as the platform of choice for a wonderfully wide range of applications. IE will sit off to the side, largely ignored (except for certain "enterprise" business users) and will become even more irrelevant.
I'd expect to start seeing more and more web sites that want to do these things refuse to support IE at all, the shims and plugins just aren't worth screwing with.
I just bought one on T-Mobile - most amazing piece of technology I've ever owned. Absolutely stunning.
At first I was worried that the whole Pen thing would be a useless gimmick, but I use the damn thing all the time. For jotting down quick notes, it's actually as usable as carrying around a paper notebook, which has always been the bar I've measured these things against.
In all the technology I've owned over the years, PDA's, tablets, smartphones etc... they've never given me the ability to do away with paper/pencil notebook. This actually has, which is fantastic.
You know, I've been down on Unity as much as the next guy, until a wild thing happened: my 13 year old son sat down in front of it, never having used it before, and started navigating and using it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I was shocked, he didn't have any of the old UI paradigm hangups that I have, he looked at it with completely new eyes, and was immediately productive with it, using it in ways that had not been obvious to me.
After seeing this, I really had to reconsider my Unity griping. These guys really know something about usability, and while yes, there are flaws, they seem to be getting ironed out.
You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).
Adding obstacles to folks trying to watch their programming seems insane - like they are actively trying to go out of business, driving more folks (like me) away from traditional add supported media. My wife and I do all our watching on Netflix (or Amazon, if there's a show we're willing to buy). I can't imagine going back to the bad old days of television ads.
Not that I mind, given the advances in cell technology, I think we're less than 10 years away from cable companies being nothing more than legacy internet providers anyway, like dial-up.
Comcast = Earthlink in ten years.
Education and Society dictate a persons capabilities.
Do you have any supporting evidence of this other than a naive "I wish it were like this so it must be so!"
Want to throw out decades of research that support genetic influence of behavior on such diverse issues as alcoholism, personality disorders, etc...
A simple search of scholarly articles will give you plenty of studies conducted on identical twins raised in diverse social and economic situations, that have a genetic predisposition towards specific behaviors.
According to your point, if I had the right education, in the right society, I could be a NFL linebacker, correct?
Absurd.
You are an inspiration to many in the geek world, and have pretty much reached the pinnacle of what any geek could aspire to. That being said, you are frequently accused of having an abrasive personality, and many of your public comments (euphemistically) "lack tact." Do you ever suffer negative repercussions from this? Have you ever considered trying a different approach, or reading Carnegie? (That last bit wasn't a snark, I was "laid off" from a job once for similar issues, I turned to Dale Carnegie, and it had a profoundly positive effect on my professional and personal life)
I'm sure you feel very morally superior, and all that "what,what", but have you considered that perhaps there are significant geographical differences between where you live and parts of the U.S.? That this country is *really big* and most of it isn't urban? When I was in high school, my mother drove me 45 minutes each way to my swim team, which was at the YMCA, and was the closest option. My graduating class was 63 people, and the school bus ride was frequently over an hour long.
A +5 modded post for calling everyone in the U.S. "backwards morons" because we don't have city buses spanning the country. Seriously? You do realize that you can fit the entire country of France inside of Texas, right? California is larger than the entire country of Germany.
FFS, what's going on with the mods that a post like this gets modded +5? Mods, how about a tiny bit of quality control here? Or do I just have to post any random anti-US slogan in order to get +5 modded?
Here, I'll try: "Umm, the U.S. is like really dumb and stupid and stuff. Like totally, everyone there is a moron because, you know, they're dumb."
The sum of the Universe is zero.
