It would be true absent politics. Some useless people can band together and legislate some useful people out of existence. Then when hardship comes, they'll miss them since know fuck-all.

That's what I said. I wasn't paying attention, because I shouldn't have to pay attention to make sure they don't do something staggeringly stupid.

I enjoy it a lot less now with this buggy-ass patch to their hubristic fuckup.

Everything you said is stupid, but you're also a coward so shock, amazement. I didn't hear about it until it was happening, and I shouldn't have to ride herd on the devs to make sure they don't inexplicably waste a bunch of screen real estate and castrate the interface. It should be obvious that's a stupid idea.

And as a corollary, a civilization which spends too much time at any given stage is going to collapse again when it uses up its ready resources, and/or renders its biosphere uninhabitable. If we had used up all the trees, for example, on the planet. Many civilizations did deforest astoundingly large areas even before the invention of power equipment. If we had used up all the ready ores without inventing power equipment. If we use up all the fossil fuels without figuring out what to do about the CO2.

What Congressional hearings? We've already had the whole NSA thing blow up, and half of Congress was frothing at the mouth at any suggestion of legislative action to restrict the surveillance, because "we need it for teh terrorists!".

If you google for programming for windows, visual studio download is going to be one of your top hits. It's not like this is any different in Linuxland, but that's my point. It's still just a download away. On the other hand, it sounds to me like you're complaining that Windows package management is shit. Obviously, Microsoft should make it possible for you to install package from repos. Oh wait, that's what they're doing now.

The thing is that the DT466, the T444, and even the IDI engines (e.g. A185) were all used successfully in all of those contexts, and people even swap DT466s into 3/4 ton pickups (let alone those other engines.) But shoehorning full Windows onto a handheld would be more like putting one of those engines into a roadster.

It wasn't just GM. Everyone who hadn't already done this (that is, everyone but the Japanese) did this in the 1980s. It is in fact the general trend for all automakers. VW Group exemplifies this tendency today. The 350 chevy continued to be a highly desirable powerplant for pretty much all purposes right through the 1980s, and up until they developed its successor, the LS1.

That has nothing to do with the engines, which for the most part were the same engines from the prior decade, and everything to do with American producers trying to compete on cost with the Japanese.

No, they're there to cater to a couple of UI designers' whims, which is how we got an interface that none of the users wanted.

Let me tell you about my mother. [blam!]

The challenge is a challenge. The goal is clearly to produce usable power, not to need more filtering. While the requirements for this contest don't require grid-tie, that's something that can be implemented later.

Yes. Don't listen to the sibling comment, which ignores the well-known fact that deforestation in fact was a contributing factor. Of course, if you actually wanted to know the answer to your question, you would have found it with google, dozens of times over.

You don't get points for giving up what you can't hold at the time anyway.

Well, I'm not sure how long I would have had to wait to get a better player for $20 at a yard sale.