If you're trying to get me to code in a new language that only works for your company, my first thoughts are,"Why you trying to make me exclusive?" Exclusive code helps every company because that means more people buy their hardware and OS if some good software is written on it. This is why I didn't pick up C# initially because it was only for Windows(though Unity today is multiplatform). I'm not going to pick up a Google only language or an Apple only language either. And you know what, even if Linux takes off as the platform of the future, I'm not going to pick up a Linux only language.

For what I use now, its either Java or Flash(AS3). Some may laugh at Flash, but it compiles to Web/iPhone/iPad/Android all without editing your code base for porting.

How can you tell how old your iPhone is? Call it and count the rings.

Landscapers are becoming in demand because of their ability to provide wood chips.

Play Nintendogs, now with more bark.

Search functionality vastly improved for native binary trees.

I have been addicted to Video Games since 1980 with PacMan. In 1987 I played a majority of the quality games out. I said,"Hey, I'm bored, and I want to make games since they don't have action RPG, and no big online RPGs." So I was right with the future of gaming, started coding a MMORPG somewhere around 1992, and got a lot done, but I couldn't figure out the networking. Video games most definitely got me interested in coding.

Back in the early 90s, I discovered the magic of seed based procedural generation to make a MMORPG world the size of an actual planet. The problem I had with a 2d based tile game is that its okay if you wrap around the edges east-west, but when if you go so far north. My solution which I never implemented was to translate you to the top of the map where you'd be translated to, but it had problems too because a player would be disoriented,"Why am I going down now?" So I was thinking you'd need to maybe flip the whole map upside down, but then that makes problems making sprites that would have to be flippable and such. This was not an easy problem to think of, but today I stick with KISS. I'd probably put them where they should be, 'maybe leave them where they're at', not flip the map, and say,"Congratulations, you just reached the top of the planet, now start going back down"

Ground control to major Tom...

Third type of website is a public service. Maybe you're not making money off it, but people like it. An example of this would be: Capgeek. Its owner got sick and passed away. No one runs it anymore because he put a lot of work into it, and no one could maintain it.

If the Internet is full of public service websites, maybe we should try and see them go forward even if we die. This like a mutual favor that people could do.

Two types of websites would be good after you die:

The first is obvious-Your website makes a profit, and you want your family members to continue to profit in your absence. This is kinda like how life insurance works.

The second type is for spiritual types like me- I believe in an after life, and I want people to have faith in Jesus. I might not meet you personally in this life, but if I helped your faith, it'd be cool to know you later. I'm not one who gets in arguments about what is the minimum for salvation, or what the minimum you need to do to get to Heaven. But I know it stokes God when we follow him, do good, be loving, and help people in their faith. So helping people to find Jesus even when I'm not around will be beneficial.

In either regard, if it matters to you for your website to be up after you die, you should probably be sharing the credentials with at least one other trustable person now.

Hopefully all is well with the nuclear power plant. I wish we'd make some new plants every 10-20 years to keep our technology up to date, have sufficient employment for STEM grads and have additional safety.

Now that you made me think of Transformers... Do you think Sound Wave ever gets made fun of by Decepticons for not keeping up with the times. A Lamborghini, Mac truck or F16 is still cool, but a guy who transforms into a cassette player is basically obsolete unless you still have mix tapes laying around.

Sure you might only get 2-10 Mb/s download compared with other countries many thousand, but the ping times are unrivaled outside a university. If you want high end gaming, it suffices... Part of me longs for 8000 Mb/s internet with low latency because I'm sitting on networking code for an action based MOBA which could allow more players in the same zone than there are people living on Earth now. Forget 64 player limit FPS, have everyone on a single server in a single zone kungfu fighting. But another part of me thinks I wouldn't be able to balance it and it'd be dumb :P

My numbers on how many programming man hours it would take could be under by an order of magnitude or so due to the complicated nature of the software. And I didn't factor in all the other employees required in this huge task. Don't criticize me too hard on quickie back of the envelope calculations.

I make apps. I was converting a web app to cell phone app, and it was around 100,000 lines of code with the game + 2d level editor. I don't think it was any super achievement, but just something a guy like me can do in about a year.

I think if you want to account for all sorts of things like weather, fuel of the planes cycling in the sky, collision pathing avoidance, and so on, it might be very complex. You factor in some functionality you can automate to make air traffic controller's lives less stressful, and I'd think the software could get bloated. 2 million lines sounds like it isn't bloated at all. It sounds right about the right number for next gen air traffic control software. A bloated 20 mil+ line of code would sound like they're trying to automate more than they should be instead of relying on air traffic controller's minds. 2 mil is good to start, see what they like, and move on from there.

Those air traffic controller guys have been on their toes stressing out for decades! Hopefully they should be able to relax a bit, get a feel for the automation, without becoming useless in case of computer failure(I'd make them run drills a few times a year with some hardware/software down).

Barring any stupid bugs: What is nice is that this software can be tested and see if the air traffic controller guys can be happy. If so, have them also be given a end user evaluation observation and see if there is more to be done in the next update. The cool part is you have modernized code that you can just keep updating moving forward. Unlike stuff written 40 years ago, this code should be maintainable and updatable if written by a competent crew. Giving the air traffic controllers a break is long overdue.

What would be interesting is if both systems can run simultaneously in case of emergency or some sort of system failure. Give this new system a breaking in period of about 4 years before worrying about scrapping the old system fully. Anyway, that's what I'd do.

To me, 2 million lines of code sounds good. That's about 20,000 man hours. 20 man years on 20 hour work weeks(you shouldn't expect programmers to just code non stop, give them breaks). If you're paying the coders 150,000$/yr, that's only 3 mil you pay the programmers which is basically free in terms of how important improved air traffic control automation is direly needed.

I also like 4 USB ports, because I want 4 XBOX 360 joysticks to play all the old video games on emulators.

A few more is obviously better.

The thing I hate most about Sucralose is that if you don't squint hard enough on the ingredient list, it looks like Sucrose. The first time I encountered that evil poison, I kept wondering why the pop I drank tasted foul as if it had an artificial sweetener. Only months later did I learn of the Sucrolose vs Sucrose deception.

www.botcraft.biz is my AI site for a how to.

One thing I thought about AI is that it will do two things: Concentrate wealth and allow one man to control a perfectly loyal army.

So whoever makes AI really needs to think deep and hard about how to control it with back door access or secret password inputs or something. You'd basically yell some strange series of words to the robots and they'd shut down. The technology could easily be used to have mankind have extra factory workers. But it'd also be be easily abused and exploited for harming people.

So the stupid/scary thought I had is,"Don't shy away from making AI because it could do harm. Be the first guy who does it, so you can put some obfuscated code in there that can shut it down if it goes rampant because a bad guy gave it commands."

Now truth be told, I'm not going to be the first guy who does it. All I know is the rough components/software needed to make it.

Its interesting to think of what society would be like if robots did all the labor. Who gets all the wealth then? The guys who own the robots? I'm sure that's how it'd begin, but as more and more people lost jobs, how will they survive? (we're kinda moving to that now even without AI, but with automation/cheap labor)