The question here is - how long will the eruption and the ash cloud last? Judging from historical records, it's not uncommon for eruptions to last decades. If - then what? New routes? Limit cross-atlantic flights endpoints to southern Spain or something?

That's a wrong way to do this conversation - you really need to pull something like: "I'm concerned the radiation levels of your wireless router are causing you all to have brain cancer" followed by "innocent" inquiries into if anyone on the office has headaches or problems sleeping, suggesting the AP might be the cause. It's bullshit of course but the only way to get people interested is to make it about *their* asses. If you're good enough (i.e. go through it in a really circumspect way) you may even get them to pay you to investigate and reconfigure the said AP :)

People will buy anything if the price is right. Offhand I'd say iPad needs to be a tiny bit cheaper to succeed widely but the crowd who thinks iPhones are affordable will buy them up regardless and the rest of us will wait for less extravagant alternatives (the Android looks like a no-brainer possible future competitor, in cheaper hardware).

Tablets are not niche, they were just unaffordable and without a good UI - at least the second problem will be solved by porting apps made for mobile phone touch interfaces. Time will solve the first one.

tin_hat_mode_on
Hmmm this is too convenient... maybe MS wanted the document to "leak", giving false assurances to the masses? In actuality, they are logging every single bit that passes through!
tin_hat_mode_off
nah... couldn't happen... or could it?
How could a document like this "leak" out? By whom? A law enforcement agency employee? A Microsoft employee? The document is actually pretty benign - it basically states that the data logged is that which is also logged by every web server in existence, nothing more serious than that. Pretty good-natured from MS.
Anyways... stay crunchy!

Yes, it's called "human nature" and by overwhelming agreement it's one of the worst things in the universe. Unfortunately, no two people agree on how to fix it...

This is really cool to read about - looks like an extremely interesting project from engineering POV. How they deal with latency alone must be damn impressive. I guess the drones must have some sort of autonomy and the pilot basically says "go west, kill spider" or something to the tone. Probably an AI-like engine similar to those in RTS games - point and click but the low-level details (like actual flying!) are handled locally. So cool...

More impressively - the sonic boom "waves" effect is actually a three-D object - imagine if we could see it from multiple POVs, a spherical wave instead of 2D one :)

An it is only fair - I wish other countries will do the same. There should be no reason not to reciprocate any such nonsense requirement.

Would be great if the equipment came in blue color :)

I don't know for sure but I thought some of the "real" scenes were also CGIed - specifically, the scenes where the jarhead records his log at the various stations - to me they looked completely artificial - and the uncanny valley effect was there.

For me, programming was never ever the goal in itself. Sure, it was fun experiencing building something out of more-or-less abstract logic, but it was always about what I could *do* with the program. E.g. solve practical (i.e. of immediate concern to me) problems. Of course there are other personalities - those more mathematically oriented who end up in pure CS.

My suggestion would be - show the kid what he can do *with* programming, then see what he likes best and then choose an appropriate language / environment for him. If he's graphically inclined, you might want to start with e.g. Flash. If he's fascinated more by how quicksort works then maybe Haskell or LISP.

Python can do all those but it's for people who already know what they want.

Because "true Apple lovers" are mostly either multimedia designers, artists, writers or just ordinary users with more money than sense, and not down-in-the-trenches C/C++ developers? It will really be interesting to see how this story with VLC develops. I bet VLC would be even more successful on Mac if they charged $39.99 for it.

Actually, I think this would be a good point to make with the developers: create a "VLC Gold" edition for Mac, which will be basically the same with some fancy Apple-like UI tweak or just a logo change, and charge for it. This way development gets funded and people get the warm fuzzy feeling of actually buying something good.

There is another side of the story, though I'll agree it's effects may not be as important: in ages past, you, being Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, would be intrigued by that idea and would think about it, learn some math, tinker with it and eventually maybe produce something of monumental importance. I imagine someone like Einstein asking himself "what happens if you travel the speed of light?" then looks it up in Wikipedia and reads "Nothing much." then shrugs and continues with his merry life...

Though it doesn't have to end this way - he might say "Oh yeah? Says who?" and do the math anyway...

Ah, so it's a vendor lockin situation :)

What is reasonable and affordable for a small Swedish company certainly isn't for a big behemoth like Oracle. There are now many, many more layers to feed with the product. The time for this decision has passed.