One of my all time pet peeves is the term "price point" - they can't just say "the price"; no it has sound like some sort of scientific data point. And unfortunately, I'm hearing regular folks using that "term" in everyday conversation now.

Not sure what the problem is with this really. Use of the term "price point" implies a relation between a certain level of features/benefits and the cost to the purchaser. It also tends to imply that there will be a cluster of competing products or services that offer similar features and are at around the same price - a price point.

The reason for this is that it's cost prohibitive for manufacturers to produce and market a near infinite number of items with various combinations of features to satisfy everyone, and so they choose a set number of products to manufacture, each targeting a specific demographic or price point, with features to match. Their competitors do much the same thing, and what results is a set of discrete price points at which you can buy a given item with an associated set of features, with not much in between.

e.g. Customer: "Hey, can't I buy a DSLR for $Y that has $A feature I want?"
Store Sales Guy: "Sorry, they don't manufacture them at that price point. You either have the entry level types for $X and the cheaper prosumer types at this price point up here at $Z. If you want that feature you'll have to fork out a lot more."

With the rise of competitors to challenge it, Microsoft is not seen as the big ogre it once was. And yet its reputation for reliability has never been exceptional.

HomeOS... would you really feel comfortable turning your back to it? Leaving your children alone in the care of HomeOS? And if you were in the shower, I can imagine that HomeOS might allow you to set the temperature on command, e.g. "Four degrees warmer, HomeOS." - "Fabulous!". But if you dropped the soap in there with HomeOS just how would that work exactly?

Call me old fashioned, but I'm just not yet ready to flirt with HomeOS. The whole thing might just be one big PITA.

I'd be wrapped to have a missile array on my roof!

I know! It'd be the bomb! (...especially if manufactured on Friday).

Then you are ignorant. Please go back and review your history.

Here is some modern history for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg

And here is the longer term history, which certainly has reduced over time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homicide_in_America_over_Time.png

Despite our modern bureaucracy and technology, something certainly made violent crime skyrocket after the non-violent times (domestically speaking) of the 1930s-1950s, despite the increase in police technology and effectiveness that IMO has driven violent crime rates down over the longer term. Over the longer term, you have to compare likelihoods that you were going to get caught for a crime, as that certainly affects the decisions of the vast majority of people who would be tempted to kill someone. It would be a lot easier to commit a murder and not get caught for it back before the days of telephones, cars, accurate time keeping, analysis of blood types, tests for human vs animal blood and a lot of the medical techniques for determining modes of death. Comparing that to modern day conditions is apples and oranges.

As to us living like kings, in some ways that is correct, in other ways not. I used to make the same argument you are making, btw. Quality of food and entertainment has improved for sure. Information and communications technology is amazing. Having a large family is harder, if that is what you want. The available land per person has certainly dropped.

No he wasn't I refuse to take Episode I, II, III as cannon.

Indeed. It is clear that they were works of much lower caliber.

This is horse shit. I've worked with plenty of religious folks that are great at solving problems.

This is very much true. I knew several very good engineers when I went through college, one of whom took his Christianity very seriously and still does today. It is to his credit that he put up with my obnoxious ribbing over his beliefs.

And I have to say that, even if Christianity is a big fairy tale, at least it promotes a morality that is just and peaceful within that society. The PC dogma that has largely replaced Christianity in the Western world as the defacto religion is definitely lacking in that respect. I used to question the response that older Christians would have when I would ask them difficult questions about their religion. Sometimes they would eventually say that if it wasn't for religion, people wouldn't behave nicely. I used to reply that people are nice, surely religion is taking the credit for something it's not responsible for.

But now I see how society has turned out a few decades later as Christianity is withering and on the defensive, and I certainly question my former attitude. It seems that there is more evil these days and it is held in check far less effectively, both by the liberal attitude of "anything goes" which gives tacit approval for the criminally prone to explore criminality, and the other generally liberal attitude that we should allow murderers to live out the rest of their days in prison, and even regularly grant them the opportunity to con parole boards for a chance at freedom their victims never have. So as a practical matter, in some ways Christianity looks better than the current alternative.

If you're against Christian teaching and you think you're an analytic thinker, I challenge you find out what's wrong about the content of the bible and find an convincing argument why people who believe in Christ are doing it in vein.

I'm aware that some people take their religion pretty seriously, but mailining it has to be at the fringes of even the most extreme fundamentalist practice.

That's funny. The harder I think about that comment, magically, the more sense it makes.

Exactly. One should never secure military grade computer systems with passwords like "Joshua" that will fail a simple dictionary attack (let alone open them up to public login).

... when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

It would have been interesting to see how many people rate our ability to create a self-sufficient off-world colony somewhere. My guess is that it would be easier than mind uploading, which is the only other option (besides the pessimist's option, extinction) that is not physically impossible, given our current understanding of physics.

You see this bullshit all the time from people who never took more than BIO 100 and presume that humans work like bacteria. Turns out, they don't. The proof of that is first world nations. They all have at most low population growth, and many have neutral or negative population growth. The "human bacteria" theory says they should be the prime places for a massive booming population. There's abundance in everything and IMR is low so population should explode... But it doesn't.

I'd be a bit more circumspect about my ability to judge the long term growth rates of humans just two generations after the introduction of the contraceptive pill and Roe vs Wade. It's like the equivalent of spraying some dilute poison in the petri dish that most but not every bacterium is affected by and thinking that the long term growth rates can be predicted by the growth rates of that bacteria in a few hours.

Maybe not exactly like it. Maybe a BWB or flying wing might have better payload/range, considering that the replacement would be able to be made more aerodynamic due to the availability of more powerful computational devices than a slide rule. However, possibly not that much better that the investment is going to be worth it.

To be honest though, the government has been doing this sort of thing for a very long time. Hopefully they can at least use the data they have to catch some murderers and child molesters.