That has to be the stupidest virus on the planet. Why would you want to do this I mean, sure, you annoy somebody for a day or so, possibly make them spend money to get it fixed, but then the problem is solved. The most successful viruses are ones that nobody knows are there. You can then spread to other machines silently without anybody knowing. Then the virus gives you remote control over the machine so you can collect valuable information. If you really just want to annoy the user and break their computer, you could probably just have the virus flash the BIOS with some invalid firmware.

This type of thing can have good and bad sides though. Somebody in Germany or the UK likely has a lot more money to spend than somebody in Greece. With Geo-blocking, you can charge people in Greece a price they can afford, and you can charge the people in Germany a price they can afford. If you aren't allowed to discriminate based on where the customer is, the only options are to charge Greek prices to everyone, or have the item at a price where Greeks couldn't afford the item. If they price it at a price that Greeks can afford it, then they are quite limited in how much money the can make, so they will probably opt to just charge the German price to everyone, and Greeks are left without any option of paying for the product at all, and they will just pirate it. Having lower prices for countries where people actually have less money probably helps cut down on piracy. If there's only 1 price allowed, then there's going to be a lot of people who simply can't afford the product.

That's not true at all, at least in my experience living in Canada. You can go to the doctor whenever you please. There are certain procedures they aren't supposed to do because they aren't necessary.

They got rid of yearly medicals where they would run a bunch of blood tests even if you lacked symptoms or reason to be testing it. If they think there's something actually wrong with you, a blood test is no problem, and is done. But there's very little reason to send people for blood tests when from all other accounts they are perfectly healthy.

But if you actually have something wrong with you, or even a medical concern you want to ask about, you can just book and appointment, or walk-in to a local clinic or the emergency room, depending on the severity. There's also other options like a nurse hotline to answer your medical questions. Call up a 1-800 number and you get a registered nurse to talk to about your concerns. They can tell you if it's worth going to see a doctor, or if you should just take an over the counter remedy so we don't waste the doctor's time.

Also, it's worth pointing out that with a system like they have in the US, some people with lots of money have lots of choice and can see a doctor whenever they want. However, the vast majority of people are not that well off, and actually can't possibly afford the care they need. Their waiting time is forever, because they will never be able to afford the care they need. They can either choose to get care and go bankrupt in the process, or fore go care and hope it clears up on it's own.

I checked the price and it seemed reasonable, and then I checked the map and found out why it was so cheap. It's closer to JFK airport than the length of the main runway at JFK. It's also pretty much right along the flight path. Only 14 miles to Times Square, which sounds close, but Google Maps says the trip takes about an hour. So I guess we should expect lots of traffic.

My aunt lives about 10 km from Pearson International in Toronto. There's so many planes, it's almost unbearable. Mind you, she lives in a really nice neighbourhood, and she says you get used to it, but I'm not sure if it's really worth the trade off. She obviously thought it was.

New York and Toronto are kind of the same in a lot of respects. There aren't really many houses to speak of it you want to live downtown and aren't a millionaire. Getting a house means that you pretty much have an hour+ commute each way if you have to get anywhere near downtown. The commutes that people put up with amaze me. People commute 2+ hours each way just so they can afford a house. So many people basically have 12 hour work days.

Yes, voice might work, but it can't be the only method of text entry. Could you imagine trying to do voice recognition on the bus? When everybody else on the bus is trying to do the same thing? There still has to be an keyboard for the times when voice recognition just doesn't make sense.

I agree that many people can play instruments if they work hard enough at it, but I don't think that you can draw a direct comparison between something like playing violin and programming.

I think that the music equivalent of programming would be something like song writing or composing. With playing a song, your are really just following the instructions that somebody else gave you, like following a recipe in a cook book. Most people can learn to do this well. However, composing an original piece of music is more like making up a recipe of your own from scratch and having it turn out well. I know people who are very good at following recipes and make amazing food, but who are unable to figure out which spice to substitute for another when they are out of an ingredient. Or are unable to take a random bunch of stuff they have left over in their cupboard and turn it into something good.

Relating this back to programming, I think that programming is quite hard to grasp for a lot of people. It's easy enough for them to grasp the basics. Tell them the exact specifications of small function, such as "write a function that removes all the vowels from a string", and they could probably do a pretty good job of it. However, give them a larger problem without a direct answer, like for instance, "write an application that allows 2 users to send messages to eachother" and they are completely lost. They have no idea how to plan out the application and will probably take 10 times longer to complete the project than a good programmer would.

There's a huge problem, even with people already working in the field, who can't do something as complicated as Fizz Buzz. That should be a simple function, and yet a lot of people fail even this simple test.

People are inherently bad at this. I get asked for identification all the time when purchasing alcohol and I'm 35. The drinking age is 19. They are supposed to ask anyone who looks under 25, but I think they are trying to change it to ask anybody under 30 because they realized how hard it is to judge age.

Not unless industry starts using batteries for storage as well. Currently, the peak power usage has very little to do with residential usage. Where I live, it's always the same as cheap overnight rates on weekends and holidays. Because residential users don't account for that much power. The real power draw comes from industrial and commercial uses.

Doesn't even sound like he was using a lot of stuff. Basically doing laundry and dishes while preparing a big meal. It probably woudn't happen every day, but I could easily see it happening.

I think that power companies should offer more incentives for people to have these in order to smooth out the electricity demand. Imagine if everybody had one. The grid wouldn't need as much capacity, and they would be able to use more renewables because the draw would be constant and people could store their own power. Many electricity companies are already charging higher rates during peak times. This is one way to get rid of the peaks. It's already a $0.05/KWh difference where I live. If the price of these gets low enough, it might make sense for everybody to install one, even without solar panels.

This is exactly my problem with Apple and many other product designers. Phone screens that don't work with gloves. Phones that aren't waterproof. Phones that can't have the storage upgraded or battery replaced. Self driving cars that can't handle rain and snow. There's a lot of products out there that only work in very specific conditions and that fail when used outside the very narrow range in which they were tested.

I don't think I've known anyone to use an iPhone for 5+ years. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's probably very uncommon. Most of the people using old iPhones constantly complain about how the updates to the OS slow it down. Updates are great for security, but when they ruin the user experience by slowing down the device,

Why? Is there something particularly good about the iPhone hardware. It's expensive, has very little storage for the price, and has a non-replaceable battery. Why would anybody want an iPhone unless they wanted to run iOS?

I think the main question is how much reworking is needed to make the apps run well. Reworking could mean anything from ensuring there is no requirement for things that possibly couldn't exist on a standard windows machine, such as games that require tilt controls. It could also mean rewriting 90% of the code. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to get this to work. If they can get Android and iOS apps to run on windows tablets, phones, and desktops, then that will be one more reason for users to switch back to Windows. Personally, I have a Windows tablet and I love it. The only real problem is the small number of apps. If they could make iOS and Android apps run on it, then all the better.

Never heard of it before now. But looking at the specs, it looks promising. I hope that we start to see more game consoles built around standard Android where games are available on Google Play or some other place where the games can work between systems. This will make the console market much more competitive, and we'll be more likely to see hardware upgrades more than once every 4-5 years like we do with Playstation, XBox and Wii. Basically bringing together the best of console and PC gaming. For $150-$200, it wouldn't be too bad to buy new hardware every 12-24 months like people do with their phones, provided the games you bought previously continue to work on the new system.