Point out ONE emulator that doesn't emulate the CPU. Go ahead. I'm waiting.

Dosbox.
Wine. (plus various offshoots)
Dosemu.

Yeah, that was a very good book. Back in the days when it was possible to more-or-less understand exactly what was going on inside the CPU...

Assembler has a main() function? That must be new, didn't have one back when I used to do a bit of assembly. In the old days, the loader simply used to jump to a specific address in the executable and then you were on your own.

all languages have a runtime environment, but it isn't necessarily a virtual machine!

The runtime environment for C++ is often fairly simple, it handles the operating system program entry point and passing arguments to the main() function, as well as initializing parts of the standard library.

The runtime environment for Java is a bit more complicated, it usually involves a bytecode interpreter.

But that is mostly a choice of the implementation. Native compilers for Java exist, and so do C++ interpreters.

That is true, but my point is (which I concede wasn't stated properly) that the USA certainly has the capacity to pay down the debt, and the only impediment to doing this is political. So it is not comparable at all to a typical debt holder. The comparison with someone who could potentially become insolvent is meaningless.

Its rather hypothetical, but possibly one could even argue that the constitution actually allows the USA to sell off California to China in order to repay debts. But no way could china seize California!

Is there a total of 40 man-years of work going into constructing a house? I think that's an interesting question, and I suspect its probably less than that, I'm not really sure, and its certainly a lot more than it might seem at first glance. Consider all of the work that goes into preparing the building materials and so on. I reckon the cost of the house itself probably does reflect, quite accurately, the amount of total work that goes into it. The cost of land however, is a different question. That is a question of how much you value a particular location, and can get crazy high, but on the other hand its probably worth it, for the people who actually want to live there.

That is a pretty astounding thing to say. Most people who have a mortgage have a far higher debt load than the US government, and sub-prime victims excepted, the vast majority of home-owners do not go insolvent in the process.

I suspect it is very uncommon to be able to do conversions between metric and imperial in your head. Indeed, theinability to convert to metric is the principal excuse for not having converted everything already. What I am totally failing to see is any reason why the 'ability to cope with different systems' is useful for anything. Even in the bizarre example posted earlier of communicating with an alien race, it is unlikely that anyone other than a handful of specialists would ever need to do any unit conversions. Just like today; only a handful of people (eg, scientists, engineers) regularly need to do any metric/imperial conversions.

The Watt is a unit of power, not energy. And the 100 figure you quote isn't even the total power, that is the power density (power per unit area) required for ignition. 100GW/cm^2 means you need 100GW of power if the ignition source is 1 square centimetre. That is way bigger than needed, more realistic is something like 0.1mm by 0.1mm (so 10^-4 cm^2). This gives a total power of 10^7 W. These lasers are pulsed, and only produce that power for around a nanosecond (10^-9). Energy = power x time, so the energy consumed in each pulse is around 10^-2 Joules, or around 10 millijoules. Which is a number mentioned in TFA as well! I'm not sure what a typical spark plug consumes but a quick google gives 0.125 J as a typical figure, so about 10 x what the laser requires. But both these numbers are quite small.

It doesn't need multiple beams, it just needs focussing. Like a magnifying glass.

Technocrat was a great site, especially early on, but I recall Bruce saying it never made money. It was fun for a while, but it acquired a somewhat fringe group of supporters (quasi survivalists) that gradually became lunatic. I'm not sure what exactly was the tipping point that caused Bruce to shut Technocrat down, but there were problems with offensive commenters, and the way it was going, sooner or later there was going to be something of interest to the FBI ;-). Or maybe it just didn't end up what Bruce wanted it to be ... ? Anyway, I doubt anyone would have been in a position to take over Technocrat - certainly some of the regular contributors would have been sad to see it go, but I doubt any of that crowd would have had either the cash or the inclination to take over running it.

The problem in your scenario is that there's no such thing as a "write only" file...

Not correct. There are lots of ways of setting up a system that can write but not read. For example, a line printer that records a transaction log. To see the password, you have to physically read the printout. You could get the same effect with a dedicated server with a single-use connection to the main server (and no internet connection! Doesn't even need to have a TCP/IP stack) and a well controlled software environment.

I get what you're saying, but, if you look dispassionately at the original trilogy, are they that much better? A lot of the acting and plot in episode IV is quite implausible too. Ep V is pretty good, but when I watch ep VI these days I skip over large sections of the Ewok battles. At least Jar-Jar came in small doses.

I think you're confused. Socialism is about the cooperative management of resources and the means of production, leading to equal power sharing among citizens. I don't see how mandating a particular proprietary format (which it is, despite the ECMA and ISO standards) fits anywhere in the socialist spectrum.

On the other hand, it seems to be capitalism at its finest (or worst, depending on point of view); a company on the free market gets big enough that it has an effective monopoly and can use that power to leverage government regulation. Of course the end result is counter to free market principles, but a completely laissez-faire market almost inevitably results in the biggest fish taking over the pond, so it is a natural consequence.

Thanks, I'll check out Clementine! I've since switched to Sonata, which I don't like as much as old Amarok, but I do like the idea of the Music Player Daemon back end.