I disagree. If they were are even half as effective as the BATFE and DEA at keeping illegal guns from moving across the Mexican border and keeping drugs off the street, I am sure nobody would ever be harmed be a drone.

In fact, they should extend this policy to home made, hand launched polymer and cellulose drone gliders (like paper airplanes). Just imagine if one of those got sucked into the engine of a 747 full of babies. That could kill like 350 babies when the plane explodes.

I already acknowledged that there were people who would buy them, but consider that Facebook spent $2 billion just acquiring the technology, and who knows how much they spent in the nearly 2 years following in development.

They'd need to sell tens of millions of units (*just like Sony would for a console console*) just to even come close to breaking even, and when they are catering only to the rich-disposable-income gamer crowd and maybe small volume businesses, where are they going to make up the rest of the tens of millions?

It was already an iffy-proposition even at the $200-400 price point.

It had better be targeted to the average PC gamer at least, if they plan to make money. It is *just* a peripheral, and while I'm sure some people are content dropping $800 for a monitor, most gamers (going by the most popular monitors) are only willing to spend $150 for a big 1080p monitor, or $250 for a 144hz big 1080p monitor. The Rift's price point is 50% more than a PS4.

I'm sure they are going to sell some to boutique PC gamers (like the ones with two Titans and water cooling systems), but I have a hard time believing they are going to sell enough volume to cover their R&D costs at that price point.

That is bullshit. Self defense with a firearm is over two orders of magnitude more common than gun suicides, homicides, or accidental deaths with a firearms.

A friend in my highschool about 10 years ago was put under house arrest for 6 months because he brought a plastic laser pointer that looked like a really tiny revolver. Someone freaked and instead of getting detention or something, he was arrested for a toy.

Whether it be xenophobes, islamaphobes, or hoplophobes, you have nuts of all type out there willing to persecute people they think they are afraid of.

"Whatever government does, is done poorly."

That is your fundamental assumption and worldview, but not actual fact. The government does many things better than the free markets. Pretty much in every area where the objective isnt to abuse and wring money out of people.

There is a reason why Telcos have a 30% net profit... it is because the free market doesnt work when there are extreme startup costs.

Yea, Cello was only "made famous" because Leonard played it on the Big Bang Theory too...

...You should have done your goddamn job in the State Department instead of letting this shit get wild. I don't want another big brother in the Silicon Valley making 'oops' all over our internet to cover for your fuck-ups.

The whole idea of themed planets or themed races largely turned me off of reading SF, and one of the reasons I won't go near StarWars with a 10 foot pole.

Trying to define an entire race or culture or planet with a 3 word phrase is asinine. Doing that for every race or culture or planet in a galaxy just makes me cringe. I can't read or watch it.

Most Alienware computers are not gaming rigs. Or at least, they are so poorly optimized for the role that it would be shameful to call them such.

A gaming rig is a computer defined by its ability to play videogames well. For that, the single most important component is the graphics card or GPU, as most of the work done by a videogame is through the graphics APIs. It also needs a processor powerful enough to feed the graphics card. For modern games (since the late 00's), the processor doesn't need high single-threaded performance (because again, the work is done on the GPU, just needs to feed the GPU), but it is preferable to have more usable threads for some games (like Planetside 2) that track lots of physics.

Alienware computers typically are defined by having very high price tags (more on this later), powerful processors (typically top end i5's and i7's), but relatively weak graphics cards. Because of this, they typically play games at *lower* performance that their components might suggest (and certainly their price tags would). The reason for this bizarre design might have something to do with kickbacks from Intel (at least was true in the past), but also something akin to the MHz Myth for gaming and processor power, which allows Dell to sell PCs while still having a pretty fat profit margin.

When you buy an Alienware, you are paying close to retail (or usually a little more than retail) for the parts, plus some amount for labor, plus a pretty large (40-50%) profit margin on top of that.

Because of those things, you can oftentimes build a BETTER gaming rig for less than *half* the cost of an Alienware if you assemble yourself.

A good first build would have something like a low range i5, an FX-6300, or an FX-8350 combined with the most powerful graphics card you can afford. Right now the market is pretty much dominated by the GTX 960, 970, and 980 because of their amazing power, power/price point and their low power draw (about half the power draw of ATI/AMD's offerings). You can fit 2x GTX 960s plus an FX-6300 and the rest of the computer on a single 500W PSU, which is pretty remarkable.

Hey, what do you know? He is allowed to criticize as if he knows better. He doesn't get his information from the liberal mainstream media, his worldview come from Fox News. That makes him an EXPERT on foreign affairs and being a president. Duh.

Yea, and then he ate dinner fuck up before watching TV fuck up before going to sleep fuck up so he could be well fuck up rested for the next fuck up day. Fuckup. Everything Obama does is a fuckup.

Mark Cuban needs to drop a few hundred Gs on Unicef, and Cybersmile needs to go fuck it's pretentious agenda.

And Slashdot, shame on you most of all. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.

Someone can be standing outside your window listening all night too, but they are not. The difference with XBOX is that they *are* listening, not that they *can* listen.

Chill with the sarcasm, dude. If Slashdot isn't for venting frustration by devolving any unrelated topic into bashing management, the U.S.A., Christians, Apple/Microsoft/AMD, or those know - nothing NASA scientists from our computer chairs, then what is it here for?