1) Preserving domestic energy supplies could be a huge future asset when the rest of the world has none.
2) You could make a drastic reduction in the dependence on foreign petrol/energy by making Better use of it. Let's just mention vehicle fuel efficiency, average one-way commute of 16 miles and setting AC at 70F during summer.
3) Renewable as expensive boondoggles? Germany can make it work, how come it is not possible here in the US?
Nothing made its way up in a year, hardly surprising.
I'm sure people will be happy when they see these chemical showing up in the water a couple hundred years from now, then discovering records about fracking in archives. They will probably say things like : they could not have been this stupid?!
Again, the problem here is timescale. One should not think in decades but in centuries.
At least the NSA says it doesn’t read the contents of your email. Google does, and it admits that it does.
Like I believe NSA does not look at the contents... If it weren't for Snowden, we would still not know about PRISM.
Bundling the OS to the PC what gave a lot of mass appeal. See first sentence at 1990:Breakup.
The cost of Windows is still hidden on pre-installed machines. I doubt you pay the >$100 like for an OEM version when building our PC yourself. This was even better in the early days - when a PC was sold for thousands of dollars, a couple hundred bucks for the OS were not a big deal.
As for changing platforms : most people would not notice that they are using a popular Linux distro if they have a start menu with programs. Compatibility is an issue : I can't watch Netflix on Linux ( but can buy a set-top box for $100, running linux?!), I can't submit a CV (in most cases) in
So Windows became widespread because they had a very good business plan, and a functioning product "good enough" to establish a monopoly. But you cannot claim, in retrospective, that nothing better would have come up within a reasonable timeframe (5 years?), and neither will we know what personal computing could have been during the 1990s and 2000s had MS not succeeded securing their 90%+ market share with PCs early on.
Of course, without Microsoft, the rise and commoditization of x86 would have never happened
Lets not make such strong statements in retrospective. The succession of events leading to the widespread use of PCs might seem logical an inevitable when looking back a couple decades, but it might have happened in a completely different way. We will certainly never know.
What we know is that Bill Gates amassed this fortune by making pushing an inferior product on masses that defines the user experience of most PC users.
Fully agree - sad how hydrocarbon became associated in my mind with zombies sitting in endless traffic jams in the WashDC area...
reinvested to build a supercomputer placing 9th...
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/frances-total-gets-oil-price-profit-boost
Very smart way to spend that money even though I'm not a big fan of hydrocarbons. I'm really curious how hard was it to justify for Board Members?
If you live too close : make a detour.
If you live too far : do only part of it on the bike.
You might not develop a gorgeous torso but your cardio health will be top-notch.
Just because you use it doesn't mean it isn't a niche feature.
Or it might be just the other way around :
"Just because you don't use it, it doesn't mean it is a niche feature."
You dropped $2200*-$4200** on CPUs, but only put 64G ($500) of RAM in the machine? Cheapskate.
Or $600 : cheapest Opteron 8 core..
I doubt that desktop PCs are the biggest market for 3.5" HDDs, just as I don't believe data centers are filled up with 2.5"/SSD drives...
Cumulative effect over 20 years : You can be in H1-B status for 6 + 3 years. The 700K visa holders show this well, being close to 85K * 9 years.
And of course you have not seen the visa holders return home, most of these people get a green card and stay in the US, eventually becoming US citizens.
As AC pointed out above : US gets the best minds from abroad, without paying for their education. If this is not good for the US then I don't see what is...
No hard feelings
What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey
