Yeah, but eventually you'll want grandkids...

Hari Seldon, is that you?

Apple's (and arguably Android's) success at controlling the distribution of software are steps toward more closed environments. Just like Facebook's success takes us nearer to the end of the "wild west" age of the Internet.

Sure, no one is going to take away your free devices nor prevent you from having a proper self-hosted website/communicating through email and IRC. However, if people become content with doing everything through closed services provided by a handful of companies, then you have no choice but to do the same (if you want to keep in touch with friends/family).

That's one reason to hope Apple doesn't suceed. To avoid becoming part of the fringe.

I understand being respectful/tactful if someone I know personally dies. But with a public figure like Jobs, I don't mind people being straightforward like in RMS's statement.

It's taking all my willpower to restrain myself

*eye twitch*

Now classes are over I've been spending a lot more time in front of my PC and my eyes are starting to suffer. Your eye scream stories have motivated me to buy a Kindle so I can at least read pdfs without staring at a screen.

As much as I want to love Google and all of its services, why are we rooting for them? It's just another centralized social network like Facebook except they're more likeable. Wouldn't it be more positive to have something like Diaspora or the system with Slashcode you proposed some time ago?

Thanks!

Also, this cropped up on reddit a while ago. Were you aware?

Confirmed!

First thing you gotta do is throw some invites my way *winky* *blinky*

The lousy part is the simulations I ran in the 80s predicted all this, almost down to the year - 2011 - as being the start of the irreversible decline. I was just off by a couple of years because of the financial crisis. Oh well, shoot me

Er.. what?

Do you get this problem when reading books? Otherwise you could look into reflective displays (like those you can use out in the sun). I think those are the same thing as paper to your eyes.
And if the technical solution doesn't work... good luck in whatever you decide to do next.

No idea. Some genius had the bright idea of teaching us waves before electromagnetism, so I don't know.

It's where the cooling exhaust goes, that's why it's hot.

They're not perfectly still, they are standing waves. Their equation is something like cos(wt)exp(-kx), meaning every point oscillates in phase and the amplitude decays quickly with distance.

If you put a medium with a different refractive index (can't remember if higher or lower, I'd have to work it out), you can get a propagating wave from that.