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Comment Re:idiots (Score 4, Interesting) 192

Nintendo's position seems to be that they can keep innovating in the console space, and keep their position atop a heap of their own making. They don't want to deliver on someone else's platform, because it isn't as profitable. They are going after big long term profit, not reactionary short term profit.

No matter how many times folks at Nintendo explain this, people still don't seem to get it - maybe the same people who invest in Nintendo after another company releases Pokemon Go. Or maybe because it's a bigger gamble or bolder play, and most people are very risk averse, they can't wrap their heads around it?

Comment Re:So what? (Score 1) 240

Exactly this. Netflix, a similar business, had figured out they needed leverage, so they started to produce their own content to draw a user base. They use that to negotiate more favorable deals with content providers. Valve did the same with Steam (though they started with their own content out of the gate). Nintendo did the same ages ago, etc.

1. Stop whining.
2. Get a better vision and understanding of business and competition.
3. Profit!

Comment Re:Dumbest hypothesis ever (Score 1) 262

That's ridiculous. Older people have had a much longer period of time to have their genes mutated than young people.

The hypothesis doesn't say it's selecting a trait or gene (intelligently or otherwise), it's saying when a crap random mutation happens in some single cell, and the normal mitigating factors to deal with the broken cell fail, the last fail safe is to kill the whole colony/organism to prevent the spread of that broken gene through the herd. I can't even see why that's controversial, it makes sense without saying anything about the social fitness of anyone's genes/traits.

And it's not like cancer doesn't happen to young people.

Comment Re:Purpose (Score 1) 262

Evolutionary traits have some pretty clear purposes. The way we grow old and die evolved. It's easy to say there is no purpose to life in a philosophical way, and maybe that's true, but it's also easy to identify the purpose for so many evolved traits.

Evolution is random chance through random mutation, followed by natural selection. Selection is even purposeful in creatures that have brains.

Comment Re:There have been worse outages (Score 1) 133

Here (in upstate NY) Verizon runs the phone system - and they can't keep that thing running for 10 minutes it seems - if you can even get it (my appartment building is not wired for Verizon anything - phone or other). In my old place an hour away I had Verizon phone and DSL (don't get me started), that's where the phone kept going down. Cable is rock solid, and home cell service is a good backup (they even offer a home phone box that has a nice built in battery backup that can run for a few hours).

On a side note, I suspect you are deferring to "what seems to make sense" talking about "analog" phone service being simpler and easier to understand than the more complex VOIP systems, with their increased number of failure points due to the added complexity. This is insufficient thinking on a number of points, but mostly it indicates a tendency toward fundamental thinking, which can lead to all kinds of zealotry like Libertarianism, or other ideology. It's the outcome that matters, and I suspect that's different everything when it comes to phone service and other regionally deployed technologies.

There are plenty of places where the older, simpler analog systems are run by bigger dunderheads than comparatively more complex systems, and that has a much bigger impact on success and failure rates than some idea of how simple it works. Then there's the economics, the age of the equipment/industry, etc., etc.... Lot's of things matter more than what seems to make sense.

Comment Changing form factors, changing software (Score 1) 125

No one needs to do anything for software to run on these at all. nVidia would be developing a kernel module or something that would JIT existing software into their optimized in-order pipeline, then cache that result. The out-of-order architectures all do this too - in hardware (which uses more power maybe, but also executes more quickly and theoretically gets into sleep mode more often).

There's no need for anyone to generate special code for these CPUs, but it is interesting that a common perception is that there is a need to do so.

What I'm curious about is whether they could take the actual Transmeta route, and translate x86 bytecode (or anything else) in software to their own in-order architecture, or if there are enough low level APIs open for end users to take a stab at it (to create awesome emulators).

Comment better understand propaganda (Score 2) 250

This highlights the need for citizens who would set up municipal broadband to better understand the techniques of propaganda (marketing in the US) and communication - and to not forget to utilize those techniques to further their own agendas. A technique isn't evil or good - it's just a technique, and an advantage if it's a good one.

Some understanding of cognitive science and political science wouldn't hurt either.

Comment multiple inputs for 4k? (Score 1) 186

Computers can handle multiple monitors at 60Hz, so why not 4K with duel inputs? Is that feasible, and are there some models on the horizon that have multiple HDMI, dual-dvi, or dual-display port (pre-thunderbolt-2 display port - I don't know the version numbers)? It seems it could be possible.

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