Lots of games worked, but many didn't. Good luck getting sound from a game that expects an ISA Sound Blaster or Adlib card. Some games used software delays to control the execution speed, which became unusably fast on newer CPUs. Regardless, having to install an old operating system is not what I'd call backwards compatibility.

The thing I miss most in 64-bit Win7 is the ability to enter 80x25 text mode. It really brought back the feeling of playing old Infocom games for the first time.

We just keep the old consoles. They're not that big -- maybe a foot across. And (until they got internet connectivity) they were mostly guaranteed to work forever without user intervention.

Backwards compatibility on PCs was not trivial before DOSBox, and I understand that running Windows 3.1 games is still pretty difficult. Keep in mind that consoles don't have a single standard architecture. Different consoles in the same generation are not compatible, and the hardware on consoles changes much more from generation to generation. The NES and SNES used 6502 derivatives, and the PlayStations used custom Sony processors built around a MIPS or PowerPC core. The jump from one generation to the next typically isn't enough for software emulation. (The PS2 had a PS1 built into it, and the early model PS3s had a PS2 processor on the motherboard.) Aside from the CPUs, there are also special graphics and sound chips. The SNES even allowed for coprocessors on the game cartridges themselves! (That's why you need a multi-GHz CPU to properly emulate a ~21 MHz SNES.) The exception to all this is later model PS3s having software emulation for the PS2. I suspect this was possible because of the weird Cell processor, but I don't know for sure.

The Xboxes' hardware has always been closer to PCs, so I don't know what the Xbone's excuse is.

Yeah, I'm shocked at how naive most Slashdotters seem to be about politics. "What? A single-issue gimmick candidate who didn't actually want to be president (until he got laughed at) got shut out of a major public debate? CONSPIRACY!"

No shit, Sherlock. The DNC isn't a charity; they exist to get people elected. The debates promote the entire party, and they're trying to create a contrast with the Republican clown show. There's little benefit to adding fringe kooks to the debate.

"He's no more of a kook than anyone else who's running!" Yes he is. How was he planning to get any of his campaign finance reform passed? The House of Representatives will most likely remain in Republican hands until 2020. You can't just dictate policy to the opposition party, especially if they're as corrupt as you claim. (That's assuming you can get your own party to go along!) Overturning Citizens United certainly can't be done with an executive order. The idea that a president can swoop in and save the republic through sheer force of will is a fantasy -- a pleasant fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless.

And now that he actually wants to *stay* president, he's even more of a joke. What experience does he have in domestic and foreign policy aside from a handful of pet issues?

GIF was created by Compuserve in 1987 for their BBS-like service, so they had a captive user base. Their previous image standard was black and white -- 8-bit color was a new thing. JPEG was created by an international standards group to handle photographs, and I get the impression it came along about as soon as computers could handle it. I couldn't find any earlier (pre-1992) lossy color image formats. PNG was developed in 1995, within a year of Unisys announcing that it was going to enforce patents on the LZW compression used in GIFs, and even then it took many years and some bad publicity for Unisys before PNG really caught on.

GIF and JPEG were the first major color image formats of their type, and they were created about as early as possible. PNG was created in response to the limitations of GIF's patent status and 8-bit color, and was adopted much more slowly. I don't see a new image format catching on without a compelling reason, and historically, improvements in compression have not been enough. A reasonably high-quality, high-resolution image is just not that big.

By comparison, new video formats come along more frequently due to the large and increasing bandwidth requirements of high-quality streaming video, with early adoption coming from pirates, anime fansubbers, and other tech-savvy user bases.

What makes you think you would have known all about other people's mental illnesses when you were a teenager? Or who was medicated, or who attempted suicide? The first instinct most people (and their families) have is to *hide* their mental illness, and that's only if they make it past denial in the first place. SSRIs are usually taken once a day at home. When I went on Prozac in high school 15+ years ago I didn't tell anyone, and I don't think anyone knew. People noticed that I was in a better mood, and my grades went up, but it's not like there was a sign over my head that said "I don't want to kill myself anymore."

Well, what you said before was (emphasis mine):

You presented a scenario: Your wife discovers something about you that she didn't know. This new information leads her to suspect that you have been deceiving her, and have broken the trust in your relationship. (Not an uncommon thing, sadly.) Telling her the information in advance averts the surprise, and makes your explanation appear less likely to be ("another") lie. She might even enjoy reading other people's stories too.

I'm not talking about "people". I'm talking about one person, who (I hope) knows you pretty well.

You don't seem terribly concerned about your friend's wife, or the control he's imposing over her life by lying to her. I'm not saying you should stop being friends with the guy, but not caring at all seems quite extreme.

Personally, I find that my friends influence how I change as a person over a long period of time. Thus, the morality of my friends matters to me. I'm not interested in imposing my morality on others, I'm interested in improving my own.

I think you responded to the wrong comment.

This problem can be solved by the simple method of telling your wife that you have such an account.

If you don't care whether your friend violates the trust of the person he's supposed to be closest to, that's your decision. But most people would consider that an extremely low standard. Would you care if he lied to you?

(If his wife knows about it and is okay with it, that's different. But it doesn't sound like that's what you're talking about.)

On the other hand, a microcontroller needs software, which means a development and programming toolchain. Those tend to change fairly often -- come back to that project in a few years and you might have a whole new IDE to learn.

The neutrinos are traveling in a straight line through the Earth's crust. They barely interact with normal matter, so I don't think it's possible for there to be a "fault" that changes their path. For the same reason, neutrinos aren't terribly threatening to humans. Here's a Stack Exchange question with more information.

http://physics.stackexchange.c...

It's been almost eight years. I think a $30 video card could probably do a decent job of running Crysis at this point.

That was supposed to be the case with IPv4, and for a long time it was. If you want point-to-point communication, you need some kind of unique address on each end. It doesn't matter whether it's an IP address or a TCP port number. What makes it traceable is logging. Logging might be easier if every device actually has a pre-assigned static IP, but I suspect that for technical reasons ISPs will continue to prefer dynamic IP assignment. Tracing will probably be easier, but I doubt it will be "a police state and media cartel's wet dream".

Of course, inventing imaginary villains "SJWs" will ruin your mood regardless of technological infrastructure, so maybe you should work on that before worrying about IP addresses.

In addition to what others have said, lithium batteries batteries tend to burn or explode when traumatized. And motors are made out of metal.

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I wish I had mod points.