I think it's simpler than that.

Put in a leadership position, most people are disliked. Most of us come across as assholes. Intelligence does not play into this quotient. If they were less intelligent, they wouldn't come across as any more likable. It's just that if their intelligence is beyond a certain point, that becomes the primary trait that people notice and assume it's that attribute that's the reason they are so awful. But it's not the high intelligence that is to blame; it's that most people lack the right level of charisma and empathy to make a good leader.

Interesting. I wasn't in the market for 16MB memory in 1993; I purchased 1MB modules because just having 4MB was an impressive upgrade. So I have no direct experience with prices for modules of that size. You position makes sense; the larger modules should cost more, as they would have smaller production yields. Still, to achieve the $60,000 price-point the RAM would have to cost $900+ per megabyte. But 16MB modules would be reserved for servers and business applications, and those always are more expensive than consumer hardware, so maybe?

Still, looking at the advertisements in Byte Magazine of that era (September 1992) this doesn't seem to be the case. The ads don't specify whether or not the memory is 30- or 72-pin, but regardless the memory does seem to stay within the $40MB range (with some increase as the modules get larger; up to 4MB modules stay within the $40/MB range but it jumps up once you start pricing 16 or 32MB modules). 8MB modules go for around $300-$400 (with one outlier being $695). 16 MB modules range from $700 to $900, and the exceptionally rare 32MB modules range from $1800 to $2700. Nowhere do I see prices close to those you suggest. Even the priciest 32MB module is available for a "mere" $85 per MB, a far cry from the $900 you remember. Doubtless all this RAM was of the non-parity variety; adding ECC would increase the price but even so not by an order of magnitude.

Still, it's fun to look at those prices and compare them to the hardware of today. The 32GB RAM I have in my current computer - were such a thing been available in 1993 - would have cost over a million dollars at those prices.

Actually, in the early '90s, the price of RAM was ~$40/ MB ($33/MB according to this list, so 64MB would cost you around $2500.

Finding a board with 64MB could be tricky, but I seem to remember at least one that allowed it (it supported SMP (dual) processors and was supremely expensive).

Both the 486DX and 486SX were 32-bit processors; the 486SX lacked a float-point processor (you may be thinking of the 386SX, which - although it was a 32-bit processor - only had a 16-bit bus).

Arguably, Russia's involvement in the US elections was aimed at this goal, at least in part. It has long been Russia's intent to smear the "great experiement" that is the United States of America's democracy; claims that the US is as corrupt and venal as anyone else have been part and parcel of their dialog for nearly a century.

This is not only an attempt to weaken the US but also to make Russia's own politics look better in comparison. After all, if the United States - long champion of democracy - can't ensure honest elections, it is hardly fair to expect any other nation to do so either. Putin's own political maneuverings were suspect long before 2016. While Navalny, an anti-corruption activist isn't expected to win in the 2018 Russian elections, he has gathered a sizeable following who threaten Putin's absolute power. They will be very suspicious of Putin's victory, even were it completely on the up-and-up (which, it is widely believed, will not be).

But by casting blame on the US, Putin can misdirect the blame; if the US can't secure their own elections from foreign influence, it's no surprise if poor impoverished Russia is even more vulnerable. Thus, if Putin wins /despite/ such influence, it only further legitimizes his victory.

Actually, I've found that once the package is on the truck delivery time is the same no matter if you are Prime or non-Prime (assuming you ordered 2-day non-Prime). The biggest difference is not in the shipping, but the handling. If I order as a Prime customer, the package gets shipped out the same day. If I order non-Prime, it takes two or three days before it gets put on the truck.

YMMV, of course, but that's the way it has been in my experience.

... if a scientific panel decides that the benefits justify the risks.

Sounds like code for pharmas need new blockbuster drugs...

To cure that new disease that is suddenly spreading like wildfire?

You're a marketing GENIUS!

Although... cure? Maybe just "control". Ensures a more constant income than a one-time cure.

Actually, I think the point of my post was that the Republicans could have gotten an easy win - that people on both sides of the aisle would have supported them - if they had simply reversed the recent FCC rulings back to where we were at the end of 2016.

Would it have been self-serving? Yes, in the sense that politicians need to win the favor of voters. Would I have been thrilled it was a Republican bill? No, because the GOP would use this victory as proof they had the mandate of the people and probably would try to force other, more unpalatable policies down this country's throat. But would I have opposed it simply because it was a Republican bill? No, because ultimately a reversal to the Tom Wheeler rules - imperfect as they were - would be far, far better than where we are now.

And given that the vast majority of the American electorate is appalled by the changes made by Ajit Pai, I think that this is the case for most Americans.

This was an incredible opportunity for the Republican party... and they missed it. Again.

The Republican party is in a bad place. After a disastrous year, they are desperate for a win... any win. It's why they are pushing so strongly for the tax bill, even though many of them recognize how terribly flawed it is - not only from an social and economic perspective, but also from a political one: the tax plan will cost them votes. But, they fear, not having passed any significant legislation will cost them more. So we get the this tax plan.

And yet, here we have a perfect opportunity for them to pass some major legislation that would not only be incredibly popular (some 70% of the country support Net Neutrality) but would be fairly easy to get through Congress. It has support on both sides of the aisle. It wouldn't even require much work: just enshrine the already-written pre-Ajit Pai rules as law. It is quite possible that they could have gotten this law passed in mere days.

The Republican party would have been seen as working for the people, standing up against huge telecoms, and able to work and lead the country as a whole rather than satisfying a small base. It would have been a home-run, a Christmas Miracle. It would have been that desperately needed success the GOP has been selling its soul for.

And then they go and do this.

Oh, GOP.

I am not a lawyer.

However, it was explained to me that the problem is that Kaspersky was singled out specifically, rather than failing to make the cut due to certain considerations. It's one thing to say "the government may only buy software from vetted software companies that are not also doing business in Russia" versus naming the company directly even though the end result may be the same. It's like how you can't make laws to single out individuals.

  The current ruling means that even if Kaspersky corrects everything that the government doesn't like about them (e.g., moves out of Russia, replaces all their programmers, opens their source-code, whatever), they are still out of the running for government contracts solely because they are Kaspersky, and it is this that the company is claiming is unlawful. The law prevents this because otherwise the government could simply forbid certain otherwise qualified companies (usually because someone in the government has stock in company X and doesn't want company Y to be able to compete).

Or so I was told. Hopefully somebody with a better understanding of both this ruling and the law will be able to clarify the issue.

It's a shame the verdict wasn't that the tobacco companies had to put up an equal anti-smoking advertisement for every advert they use to sell their products.

If they pay for a full-page advert in a magazine? Then they need to pay for a second full-page advert three pages later. Huge-ass billboard on the side of the highway? An equally large billboard by the next exit. Put a sign in store window saying your product is sold here ? There better be an equally large sign right next to it. Paying to have your product prominently featured in a film? Pay for that actress who is painfully suffering from smoking-induced lung-cancer in the next scene.

That way the more the tobacco industry advertises FOR their products, the more they advertise AGAINST their products too. Right now it's pretty much a one-shot deal whose effects will be gone almost as soon as the adverts are in the paper.

Even if they were only releasing patches, it might not keep them out of legal entanglements, especially if they have to bypass authentication or copy-protection methods to get it to work. Publishers have successfully argued that offering such methods violates the DMCA.

With older games the fan-developers might get away with it since the copy-protection was usually built into the executable and only checked at launch; modifying the multiplayer code likely wouldn't touch the copy-protection at all. But bewer games also use access-control measures when they authenticate with online servers and bypassing that can get you into hot water. I am not sure how the Battlefield games do it.

Of course, regardless of the legality of their actions, EA has the resources to make the developer's life hell through extended legal battles. It sounds like - since the developers were posting full executables rather than diffs - they were caught red-handed and EA would probably be able to get a judgement against them. If they just switched to offering patches - even if the patches themselves were fully legal - EA would still be able to go after them for their prior actions. So the developers probably took the wiser course by settling and just took everything down.

Now, if some other group took their work and released diffs based on those previously-released executables (and if these patches didn't violate the DMCA clause against trafficking in bypassing access-control measures), EA would have a much harder legal battle. Of course, for a company that makes $800 million per year on FIFA alone, they could still terrorize the patch-makers with endless law-suits, no matter how spurious, so it still might not be worth the effort on the part of the patchers..

But people playing old classics aren't playing - and buying - the new hotness... and more importantly, the new hotness' DLC, microtransactions and loot-boxes (that's where the real money is). And gamers have repeatedly shown that they will keep buying new games regardless of how poorly a publisher treats them. So there is absolutely no advantage to a publisher to keep old game servers running: it cannibalizes new sales, shutting them down doesn't dissuade new sales, and servers cost money.

Would releasing patches - which don't contain any copyrighted material - that can be applied to end-user's executables be a legal work-around? Although ensuring the correct version might be difficult; I am guessing these games went through a multitude of updates.

More than just being scripted, it wasn't even real-time. The actual fight was filmed over multiple days. This was the most entertaining cut of all that work, which is rather sad. The moves were all pre-programmed and carefully choreographed. 30 years on and millions of dollars later and we still end up with something that looked significantly less impressive than the power-loader fight in Aliens and had just about as much verisimilitude.

Forget all that:

How the hell will the delivery guy fit food into my fridge? I can barely fit stuff in there and it usually requires a clean-out first before I can tetris the new stuff into the machine.

Firefox supports EME, but you can disable it by unchecking "Play DRM-controlled content" in preferences.

For now. Until two or three versions from now, when that feature is removed from Preferences and can only be toggled via about:config, or five or six versions of Firefox later when even that is removed...