What the ISPs want is the equivalent of buying a Cisco brand ethernet switch, wondering why the speed is only 10Mb/s for some of devices plugged into it compared to others, only to find out that if you're not using 'devices made by Cisco or Cisco's partner companies' that the flow of data through the switch will be limited to 10Mb/s instead of the full 1Gb/s the switch is rated for. You'd return it to where you bought it and demand a full refund, wouldn't you? There is no sane Universe where anything other than Net Neutrality makes sense, unless these ISPs want to provide the connection and equipment for FREE to everyone, which is like 'free lunch' if you get my drift. We are PAYING for the connection, we demand to GET the connection, unfettered, not filtered, not slowed or accelerated for anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Them, them, fuck them, and fuck these 'Reason' idiots, too, they need to STFU and GTFO, stop shilling for Crapcast and whoever else.

You have no idea what you're talking about and need to go educate yourself on the subject before you comment on it again, OK? Also you lack a healthy level of paranoia; you seem to think the world is a safe place, when it's clearly not. You're also watching too much TV news, because you think all drivers are shit, and they're not, or maybe you're a shitty driver and you're projecting that onto everyone else. Yes, I'm being terribly rude to you, aren't I? I'm sick and tired of ignorant people with their ignorant, uninformed opinions. Get correct or get out.

Because most people are stupid, that's why. They can't see past their own noses. They allow retail stores to track all their purchases in very personalized detail in return for a few pennies off what they buy. They're willing to have some corporation know where they are and what they're doing 24/7/365, just for a few dollars discount. They let some company have their biometric data because they like their shiny new wristband that tells them how many steps they took today, thinking that's going to make them be not fat anymore. They barter away their privacy, a Pearl of Great Price, something they may NEVER get back, for a few measly pennies, and they don't even understand what it is they almost literally gave away to strangers. Or worse, they do that, then look down their noses at people who WON'T do the same, claiming 'You must have something to hide because you won't share with everyone else everything about your life, including when you're masturbating or taking a dump'. And even worse, there is an entire generation that doesn't have anything like real privacy, and looks at you like YOU'RE the one who's mentally ill, if you believe in privacy and try to explain to them what it is they're missing out on.

Glad I'm not the first one to say this for a change.

I wonder, however: How come I get shot down every single time I make a similar comment/observation about autonomous, driverless, manual-control-less cars? It's really not that different.

Anyway.. If they want the ability to remote pilot commercial aircraft, that might not be a bad thing at all in emergency situations, so long as every effort is made to ensure the security of the system against hacking -- but there must still be a human pilot. Otherwise who the hell is going to trust it?

This. If it's a Black Box, sealed, and I can't get into it at all to do anything? It's a liability. I've spent literally my entire life repairing things I own, especially vehicles, and if you're going to somehow lock me out of it? I'll end up stranded somewhere because it broke down, and I'm screwed. If the world goes that way then I guess I'm going to start buying and fixing up antique vehicles to drive, or just go back to my 20's and own only a motorcycle.

'Cost effective' is one thing, and don't get me wrong, a good thing. As sad as it makes me to have to say it, we need to get away from internal-combustion engines. However, for my own purposes, it won't be 'life effective' unless I can get a small pickup truck that is 100% electric, and a highway-legal motorcycle that is 100% electric, too. Otherwise I'm on gasoline engines for the duration.

Did they, really? You have shit like Xbox 360, which you are FORCED to pay a perpetual subscription fee in order to use at all, and isn't the PS4 just as bad? Now, tell me again how you're saving money? Computer gaming has got just as bad, too, you either pay a premium for game software, which no longer has any substantial single-player mode (if any at all), and you have to PAY to play multi-player online. Smartphone games are monitized to within an inch of their lives. Games like WoW require subscription to play. Again: How are you saving money?

Has it occurred to you, that this 'outdated business model' of which you speak, may have been CAUSED by Nintendo and their contemporaries, driving independent operators and arcades out of business by abandoning them, leaving them with games nobody wanted to play anymore and no new ones in sight? Conversion kits are what kept things going, but those have always been expensive compared to VS System games, which were a few 2764 EPROMs and a co-processor, a new marquee and side decals for the cabinet.

The design on the VS system motherboard never changed throughout it's entire lifespan. Nintendo are bastards because the evidence on the schematic of the PCB clearly shows that they intended to develop a home system all along, and once that was launched and well-established, they abandoned the coin-op industry entirely, leaving everyone with aging games and no new ones being developed. Back in the day it caused quite a bit of controversy. Some operators had hundreds of Nintendo VS System games, which no one wanted to play when they could play the SAME games at home for FREE. Nintendo fucked everyone.

You misunderstand my post; everything I'm talking about is on the PCB in the coin-operated game. Literally two shift registers with copper traces connecting them. If you are sufficiently enabled electronically-speaking, then google 'nintendo vs system schematic, find the VS system operator's manual, which contains the PCB schematic; look for the player inputs, they go to 74LS165's, which are shift registers, which then lead to other shift registers converting the serial data back to parallel, which is then gated onto the data bus. Literally no reason to design it this way. Coin switch inputs (that detect a coin inserted) and DIP-switch inputs aren't gated onto the bus this way, only player inputs.

Firefighters and military need to be at their peak levels of physical fitness, not allow their ankles to get weak because they're using a form of crutch. Devices like this should be limited in use to people who are injured or disabled in some way, not healthy people who can and should regularly exercise in order to maintain (or improve) their overall health.

In a previous lifetime I repaired coin-op arcade games, and the Nintendo VS system was certainly one of them. At some point after Nintendo utterly abandoned the coin-op industry (leaving countless operators flapping in the wind with no new games for their VS system cabinets) I discovered, in the schematics of the VS system motherboard, proof that Nintendo was using the coin-op industry as a test-bed for a home system: the control panel inputs, which in an arcade game are all discrete inputs per switch (4 for a joystick, for instance) didn't go to a parallel buffer or parallel-input register IC, they went to a parallel-input shift register, the serial output of which was routed to a serial-to-parallel shift register, which was then connected to the data bus! If you have or can get a schematic for this PCB, look for it for all the player inputs. There is no reason to have this over-complicated arrangement in an arcade game -- but it just so happens that this is the exact arrangement that the NES used to connect player controls, via a skinny cable with as few connections as possible. So don't go getting so misty-eyed about Nintendo, they're utter bastards who care only about profits, and not who they screw over in the process.

You, sir, I think I like. Do you happen to live in Northern California? You sound like someone I'd like to have as an in-real-life friend, someone perhaps worth knowing.

Fuck so-called 'social media'. For something that claims to 'connect people', I have never seen anything so effective at giving people an excuse to not connect, never see each other in person, and otherwise just stare at a screen. Don't get me wrong -- I have always lived a technological lifestyle, I've been building my own computers since before the IBM model 5150 (The PC) was even dreamt of (soldered together circuit boards with wirewrap wire for my very first computer), and have worked in IT and hard electronics my entire life, and currently work for 'a major microprocessor manufacturer', so you can't call me a Luddite by any stretch of the imagination -- but shit like Failbook is just plain insulting, intrusive, false, misleading, and sometimes downright illegal. Who the fuck needs 10000 'friends' (with an lower-case 'F', mind you) who you have NEVER met, NEVER will meet, and NEVER want to meet? What the actual fuck is that shit anyway? In this life, if you have half a dozen decent, in-real-life, see-them-in-person Friends (with an upper-case 'F') that you can actually trust, have common interests in, and hang out with on a regular basis? Then you're doing pretty damned good. You don't NEED 'social media'; it's just yet another way for corporations, governments, and nosy people who have no business being in your business, to mine data about you, make (usually comically incorrect) assumptions and draw (almost always tragically wrong) conclusions about who you are and what you're about, and otherwise turn you into a product, like you may as well have a gods-be-damed UPC barcode tattooed on the back of your necK. Me? The day that I decided that posts on Failbook of mine past a certain age needed to go away for good, and I discovered much to my horror that it would not allow me to delete anything permanently, and would put them all back the next day? That's when I concluded that It Was Up To No Good, deleted my account, and vowed to never go back to it or anything like it ever again. I recommend you all do the same and start actually connecting with people in real life, work on those social interaction skills, and stop giving away all the details of your lives to these asshole corporations and nosy ne'er-do-well 'friends' who don't give a rat's ass about your well being, only what they can SELL you to someone else for.

Please, bring the hateful comments, now; every one of you who posts your insults, bald-faced hate, and other negative, spiteful, derisive shit, just convinces me more and more that I'm right an you're just either the Sheep or the Wolves (not sure which is worse).

If the subject line of this posting appears blank to you, don't worry, it wasn't intended for you anyway.

..also, The Game.

That is all.