People are entitled to "tell" them what they like. (*) They don't have to like, nor follow that advice, but the OP is perfectly entitled to free speech on the matter- that doesn't infringe upon their right of ownership as you seem to think it does.

They're free to do what they want with their intellectual property, but they're not exempt from having people be able to say that what they're doing with it is stupid. Your implication appears to be a not-so-distant relative of the ever-popular "If you don't like it, you don't have to buy it, so you have no right to criticise it" fallacy.

No, I think Lionsgate would be entitled to tell him what they liked, and he'd be entitled to ignore their advice and tell them to p**s off if he so wished.

(*) Not, realistically, that they're likely to even notice- let alone care- about what a random person on a geek website is advising them, but that's beside the point here.

He didn't actually claim that they would. Quite likely he meant that it could well have been one of those cases where an early version of the movie was heavily reworked before release (including being re-edited, having scenes dropped or reshot and/or entirely new ones added) for various reasons.

Why not? For the purposes of the argument being made with respect to the UK market, they were both in the same boat.

Besides which, there were two versions of the Spectrum when originally released; the aforementioned 16K model, and an otherwise identical 48K model. The 16K spec was rendered increasingly irrelevant as time went on and the 48K version became the de facto "base model" required for Spectrum games.

Still wasn't as good a machine overall as the C64 (BASIC and faster CPU aside), but that's neither here nor there.

Assuming a company's only aim is to make money, then whatever happens to their products after they die is essentially irrelevant in that respect. (*)

Of course, I'm sure that there are those working within a company (more likely to be in engineering and development) that feel otherwise. But ultimately this will be overridden by those in sales, marketing et al, unless it offers a clear benefit to the company.

Yes, some companies will offer well-backed guarantees or promises about what happens with respect to various things should they go under (e.g. release of source code). But even that is ultimately a means to attract more paying customers- by providing a level of certainty that is valuable to them- while the company is still in existence.

(*) Unless, of course, those in power have a conflict of interest and something to gain from the company's demise.

"Neither Americans nor the rest of the world signed up for a fucking security agency which is no longer under anyone's control except people who feel they can do anything they want."

Uh, the CIA has been pretty much like this since its inception during World War II as the OSS and the CIA immediately after. It was reined in briefly by the Churck and Pike Committees in the 70's but that oversight and those reforms were pretty much rolled back by Reagan. Sure, they got to reach new lows after 9/11 with no hold barred torture, but the CIA has been torturing people through proxies for its entire history, so that wasn't exactly new either.

Not exactly sure why everyone is acting like this is some kind of revelation or anything new, other than its kind of amazing Brennan was foolish enough to admit to it. I predict his career at the CIA will soon come to an end, and he will be replaced with someone with larger brass balls.

The chances you all are gonna change any of this airing your indignation on /. are vanishingly small.

Which would significantly reduce the appeal of the "new language" and probably result in people continuing to use the old version- with masses of support, extensions, accumulated wisdom, and software already built on it- probably forking it at some point if the current owners tried to force the change through.

Let's be honest; VB.Net was a good example of one that *didn't* succeed. It was very different to VB6, effectively a whole new environment and tech tied together with a similarly-syntaxed language, and it never achieved the popularity of its predecessor.

Yes, MS may have forced many to move to .Net by making clear that VB6 and its related infrastructure was obsolescent, but that translated to C# use, not VB. Presumably people either remained with VB6 and those who used .Net were either newcomers who had no need of a legacy language (*) or VB6 users who decided that C# was a more sensible choice (since it was clearly MS's favoured language for .Net, and wasn't hobbled by syntax that was effectively a comfort-blanket holdover from 8-bit home computer BASICs).

(*) I'm guessing that classic VB gained its userbase from the generation (and group) who started with "old school" 8-bit BASICs, and found its syntax accessible, then were able to grow while their "BASIC" grew in capability. Thing is, if you didn't start or grow with VB, then what it became is no simpler or easier to learn than C-influenced syntax like C# (and I'm speaking as someone who *did* use old-school BASIC as my first language, but not VB, and I'd much rather use a C-style language).

No idea what happened there, sorry; suspect I copied my work to a second window for replying then accidentally submitted the first as well.

Yeah, but unfortunately it's *way* to late in the day to avoid having to retain (and, ironically, formalise) the ad-hoc mess without breaking countless existing programs.

The most notorious example being one of the simplest, but also the most obviously naff; the fact that the ternary "?:" operator has incorrect precedence in PHP (compared to every other C-derived-syntax language). This quite obviously *was* a fsck-up early on (IIRC they said as much), but will always have to be kept in, an unwelcome reminder of PHP's amateur, ad-hoc origins that'll look bad to anyone learning the language, regardless of how well it improves in other areas.

Indeed. This is specifically the police force of the City of London "square mile", i.e. the historic, tiny core of London, long-dominated by financial businesses, and not the police force of London as a whole.

In fact, the rest of London is served by the Metropolitan Police Service. Why would the City need its own special police force? Hmm...

This article may also be of interest.

Indeed. To clarify, this is specifically the police force of the small area confusingly titled the "City of London" (AKA the "square mile"), i.e. the historic, tiny core of London, long-dominated by financial businesses, and not the police force of London as a whole.

In fact, the rest of London is served by the Metropolitan Police Service. Why would The City need its own special police force? Hmm...

This article may also be of interest.

Didn't say it was. I just said NASA should abandon it to whomever wants to pay to keep it operating. Prettty sure its past its original end of life anyway which I think was 2010.

If Russia doesn't want to play nice, or pay to run it themselves, I doubt ESA, Canada or Japan will be able to keep it going if the U.S. pulls out.

Probably one of the best things NASA could do at this point is abandon ISS, stop paying for it, and tell the Russians its all theirs. There is a fair chance they would fly Americans to it for free rather than get saddled with that boat anchor.

If the Russians don't want it either its time to deorbit it. It would free up a LOT of money for more useful endeavors. Its never been good for much of anything, certainly nothing to justify the staggering price tag

SpaceX will have the ability to put astronauts in to LEO in a few years. Its not like its a crisis, there is very little for people to do in LEO at the moment other than to be lab rats for zero G physiology studies. You would think they would have done most of that work by now.

About the only point in putting people in space at all is as colonists, persumably on Mars. You can do just about everything else way better and cheaper with robots.

So until you are ready to fly people to Mars to stay, stop getting your panties in a bunch about getting them to LEO.

I am nearly speechless that you would try to use the ISS as an example of a "success story". It was mind boggling behind schedule and over budget, though turning it in to an international project is partially to blame. The core is based on existing Russian design. If they had just launched that and kept it simple it would have cost a tiny fraction of what it did and accomplished nearly all the science ISS has done.

The fundamental problem with the ISS is its bled NASA and the manned space program white. NASA hasn't done ANYTHING useful, in its manned program since Skylab, other than maybe Hubble. They built Shuttle to fly to the ISS and the ISS so the Shuttle would have a place to fly. It resulted in NO breakthroughs or progress worth the price tag.

So what is your point on Falcon. I think you just agreed with me SLS is hopelessly uncompetitive and SpaceX approach is really smart.

SpaceX is trying to get to space cheaply, safely and with a very high launch rate.

SLS seems to be trying to come up with the most expensive, impractical and dangerous solution possible, just to keep funneling money to Lockheed, Boeing, ATK, etc. Its as if they are TRYING to develop a system that is sure to fail or be cancelled.

Note the proposed launch date, 2017, just long enough after the 2016 election so the next president can cancel it and start over.

"I can't imagine how demoralizing it is to spend years working on a project that would ultimately succeed"

None of NASA's major manned spaced projects are even remotely likely to succeed, they are not intended to do so any more. They are just a place to blow money, create jobs and put money in Lockheed and Boeing pockets. More importantly they buy votes in the critical swing state of Florida.

They are designed to run 4-8 years, produce nothing except votes, paychecks and contractor profits, then they get cancelled and start over. It is way easier and less risk than actually making anything that will fly.

It is not the political process that is broken, it is NASA and the political process.

Get a clue, and spend a few billion on SpaceX to help finish Falcon Heavy. I'm not sure why SLS is even on the table at this point, it isn't remotely competitive.

Lockheed and Boeing also need to be completely removed from the process. They are making a mint milking DOD contracts, they don't need to be in middle of the civilian space program fleecing NASA and taxpayers there too. They do not use money wisely, they devour everything thrown their way and produce as little as possible in return.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. If anything, I'd expect nerds to be the ones more likely to care that the underlying tech was the authentic original, beyond its external appearance.

Or perhaps this is one of the differentiators between a "nerd" and a "geek".

Either way, whatever one thinks of this sort of thing, it isn't really a story. People have been shoving small-form factor PCs inside old computer cases for years now, leading to stupid headlines like "upgraded Commodore 64 runs 10,000 times faster" when it should say "midrange Micro-ATX PC shoved inside gutted and mutilated Commodore 64 case (with holes cut for ports and slimline DVD drive) runs at its usual speed, supports C64 emulator like every other PC, doesn't even use the original keyboard".

I doubt this is even the first time something like this has been done with a Raspberry Pi. I'm not attacking this submitter in particular, and I don't dislike it as much as I would had he destroyed a much rarer retro device for such purposes, but it's still not news.