It takes a shitload more than $20 million to make a AAA sci-fi or fantasy movie. A $20 million dollar movie that relies on special effects to keep suspension of disbelief would look pretty shit, even if bloody Meryl Streep and Colin Firth were the two mains. My point with the pyramids is exactly this, we have become accustomed to a certain level of fit and finish in the media we consume. While a lot of money that goes into the media industry might be "squandered" in the opinion of slashdot geeks, but a lot is still spent on stuff that needs buying or people that need hiring in order to keep the quality up. Like I said, I'm talking strictly about Sci Fi and Fantasy movies, which have a requirement for special effects, both on computers and in the real world, and often film in lots of diverse locations. You can't do that with a $20 million budget and still have a product that looks amazing at the premiere. You're right that the little guys won't derive much benefits from the crowdsourcing model, and that's my objection to the anti-copyright people. So you say the current system is flawed (true enough), and you want to replace it? Fine. What are you going to replace it with? A completely new system that might not even work for the media format in question? Suuuuure.

Nobody builds pyramids to house the bodies of dead monarchs anymore, but thousands of people flock to Egypt every year to see the old ones. I don't know about you, but I quite like big budget science fiction, fantasy and action movies. The stories are a bit dumb, but I have no doubt that without the million dollar budgets, the effects that these movies rely on to function would not be possible. Cutting out copy protection would hurt these movies the most, and I've seen indie attempts at making science fiction and fantasy movies. The writing is normally better, but the effects are almost hilariously bad, and the actors are pretty iffy as well.

Why would I want a laptop with a screen smaller than 10 or 11 inches? That sounds useless. I would use a tablet that small, which is what Microsoft seems to be targeting with that rule, but a laptop? No thank you. Besides, even with zero-cost Windows, making a medium-sized tablet or tiny laptop with good internals for less than $99 is going to be a tough proposition, especially with low-end Androids flooding the market.

Google's been making some noise about improving the offline capabilities of ChromeOS, and letting approved Android apps into the ChromeOS store. If these things happen in a reasonably quick period, then that's a pocket Linux lappy I would use.

Holy shit you are a pompous shitbag.

More seriously, because Apple has nothing to little to gain from copylefting Xcode, and a lot more to lose. It makes more sense to focus on an GCC alternative than to trust the GNU team to not put even more roadblocks in place to prevent GCC integration into Xcode. I can't believe you made me defend Apple.

Keep in mind that hundreds of millions of years of extinctions and adaptive radiations have taken place between then and now. It's not only a question of whether insects can exist at the larger sizes they once grew to, but also whether they'd be competitive enough to take back their former ecological niches from the current incumbents. To use a tech analogy, it's like asking whether a flip phone can dominate the premium phone market in 2014, because they once dominated it in 2005.

Judging from the range and distribution of insects alive in the present, it seems that for most insects, small size and rapid reproduction are the way to go for them. Their body plan, with it's less efficient circulatory system, and less complex brains, seem to put them at a disadvantage if they began to grow larger. Remember that there are a vast array of mammals and birds that specialize specifically in preying on insects.

You mention a phone booth in a historical site, so I'm thinking maybe you didn't recognize what the more ahem, "modern" phone booths looked like? They're pretty inconspicuous unless you're walking by them.

Really? Here on slashdot, the bastion of conservative tech news, you'll be downvoted? Psshh.

You've fallen victim to an pretty obvious problem, which is greedy reductionism. If you actually studied biology, one of the least "STEM-y" of the physical sciences, you would realize that objects can be analysed on multiple levels, and a lower level analysis is not inherently more useful or germane than a higher level analysis (although in the physical sciences, it often is, this is not necessarily the case all the time, especially when dealing with human behaviour, which is why sociology and psychology are both equally valid fields).

Lots and lots of things are less ignorant than epyT-R.

In many countries around the world, that would probably be easily doable. But it probably has a higher level of difficulty in China and Russia. For the short term, Snowden is probably very safe in China. They're probably going to take... steps... to ensure this PR gold mine remains at their doorstep for now while they figure out how best to use him.

Think about it, the USA loves castigating China about their human rights record. Snowden "disappearing" would mean the shoe would be on the other foot when the HoS of the two countries meet.

He (Snowden) worked in Intelligence, and probably knows a good deal more about the diplomatic relationship between China and the USA than most of use commenting here. There's always a chance he might be wrong, but there's no chance he didn't choose Hong Kong for perfectly rational and logical (albeit to him) reasons.

OS X has never been the king of performance or speed. Responsiveness and a clean, elegant UI? Yes. Winning benchmarks left and right? No. Companies making apps for Macs generally don't make them because OS X is the most efficient or performant OS on the market, and this news isn't going to make them switch to Linux. Also, because for most people the main reason for buying an expensive Mac is OS X, they aren't likely to switch to Linux because the OpenGL driver works slightly faster.

Yes, keep thinking it's because people have thin skin, and not that they're being insulted based on their group all their lives, while you are not.

Listen up Captain Clueless, when someone uses a word for a woman's genitalia to insult a certain woman, they're definitely not doing it because they think woman as a group are wonderful people. It's like when straight people say "I don't care if you're gay, just don't be a faggot!", or when white people say "I don't care that you're black, just don't be a nigger.". Whatever their justifications, it's obvious that this person is not your friend, they imagine themselves above you, able to judge you as a representative of your group, and will move against you or hurt you if they think they can get away with it. A woman/gay person/black person that agrees with this line of thought ("don't be a "), has internalized a lot of self-hatred.

Yes I do. Like I said, using gendered insults says a lot more about the person using them than the person being insulted.

Here's what your logic is missing shitface: you're using a word for female genitalia as an insult. When you do this, you're basically saying that being female, or possessing a vagina, is an insulting state of existence. Gendered slurs, they don't say good things about the people that use them.