I knew the minitel when it was still mainstream! (gosh, what am I now? some kind of reverse hipster? )

It used to be fun to type random stuff on the black screen with the keyboard while offline, but it kind of gets old pretty quickly, I tell you. Other than that it a handy to find postal address and phone numbers... I wasn't old enough for the hotter stuff. The biggest downer was it was pay per minute. Then internet came, like fifteen years ago, with the fancy html and stuff, plus you could do the same thing and more with it. I'm surprise the service still exist until this week end, but I figure old people are difficult to move to newer technology.

Either way, this treaty need serious rethinking, as in it's current state, it is hardly enforceable. For one thing, apart maybe for China and India, There were no manned space exploration program seriously supported by any government since the 70s. It might be that not being able to exploit the moon or another celestial body made it difficult to sell to earth people, and ultimately difficult for government to justify to put money on it. It's just a thought.

An other difficulty to enforce this treaty, is that their is no real way to punish transgressor... Imagine China set a colony on Mars. What is the rest of the world gonna do, apart from learning to speak mandarin?

Maybe we could offer this to some death waiting prisoner as an alternative? Maybe not the sanest crew... But They would have double motivation to succeed.

It's funny how people just can't stop saying PS have huge features that lakes Gimp. I'm sure that's true, but I never see what those features are or why they are so goddamn importante.

I mean, normally, in a good flameware KDE/Gnome or Linux/OSX/Windows or vi/emacs, you gets some details, but here, pretty much nothing.

So I'm curious : What's so great about PS that it's worth paying for? ( And yes, I know it isn't hard to get it free, but it's not what I asked, you pirate's scumm! )

There is a difference between doing bad maintenance or changing a brake to tinker the software that control your speed. if you get a bufferoverflow you can have a car speeding up in the middle of a city, or braking suddenly on the hightway, and you might not be able to predict it until it happen.

Anyway, bad maintenance is bad enough, if you can do both, it is just more troubles awaiting.

To be fair, it's not really the "electric engine" part that matter.

Most people don't hack their computer programs, but some does and sometimes some came up with something usefull for more people than just himself. It's great and cool.
Now all systems aren't critical on a car, but if you build an Open Source Car (electric or not), you Open all systems, else it's a Closed Source Car with Open Source equipment. But you don't want average joe to hack the direction, speed regulator or brake systems. 'cause average joe will probably f*ck it up. And you want your roads to be relatively safe, or else you don't bother with rules for them. On a racetrack the rules are different : tinkering is expected, so why not hack what you can?

I'm all for freedom to hack your properties, but like all liberties it shouldn't allow you to put other people in danger.

The point I think isn't that any Joe Nobody can make change and fix bug, but that constructors can produce the derivative product, cuting cost of developpement, and that independent car's repairman can do their job without paying what-thousand dollars to a car constructor for certification.

As for private tinkering, It shouldn't be autorised for vehicules on the public roads, but it can still be interresting for stock-car amateurs...

That's simply not true.

Ubuntu, to name the most obvious distribution, make linux grandma simple. As much as a windows at least.

As for iPad/Android/whatever, if your grandma isn't able to work things out with Windows/Linux/OSX, she probably won't be able to figure that out too.

If people are afraid of technology, they will stay away from complex devices, no matter how "easy to use" they are. If they aren't they can handle Windows or Linux, as long as they don't mess with edgy stuff. Windows has an advantage here, because most people, even some "technology afraid people" have been forced to do stuff with it, have learned the basics and are at least familiar with it. Apple has for him that it's smart things for smart people. Well that's what "they" say anyway. Linux has a rep of being complex and difficult to understand. It's true, as much as Windows or OSX, and it's irrelevant for most user. It's even simpler : to install a software, you launch the app Store and search for it then click install button. To launch a software, you click it's icon in the menu, pretty much like windows anyway. most users don't need to know more. (And grandma certainly doesn't)

If it's works for you, it great. But you can't expect everybody to go with some personal mantra every day just to memorize a few password.

And anyway, this is really unnecessary. For most account, you just need a moderately strong password, a word with a number and 6 signs are more than enough since nobody will bother finding it by brute force.

Facebook games are getting better at the "game" things I guess, but their is still work to do on that. The social aspect is more than often a lure. It has worked pretty well, but it really gets old after a bit. They are good browser based games with good social aspect though, but none that have to thank fb for that.

For Google/Apple's games, they work because they open "video games" to a broader audience. but games you can pick up and put down in a minute aren't what a gamer will look for. Gamers won't disappear just because of casual game on phone. It's just not the same usage.

Wii/Xbox/PS3 have specificities, and it's up to the game designers to figure what support is suited for what kind of game. I really don't enjoy action games on a phone, the command are crappy and most of the time they hide the screen (you know, because of the tactile thing) and I sure won't buy scrabble for my Xbox. As for the networking aspect, things are going in the right direction I think.

PC has the most wide panel of possibilities from controllers to social things and Internet connection, so it gives it an edge. But my guess is no platform is going to disappear, they'll just radicalize.

Like much anything in physics if you want to be pedantic about it...

75 times closer to a Star five times smaller than the sun. I'm not gonna do the math if it's more complex than the apparent 5/4 ratio but it's important to consider the size of the Star if you're gonna talk about wide angle. And there might be a matter of brightness of the star too.

Anyway, the planet apparently does get more light, since its temperature is about 200C

I see that. Obviously, if you don't have the '???', your doing something wrong.

Well, sure, because there isn't anywhere else where trillions are spent on unreasonable stuff.

It's the worse argument ever, being repeated over and over again. Yeah sure, you could do something else with those dollars, but for fuck sake, those dollars aren't lost anyways! To go to Mars we need new medecine, new engeneering, etc... that can be usefull for other thing. But that's not my point. My point is there is enough money to spend on all research if you don't sink your country with military stuffs, because you fear your own shadow.

Well yes, that's what the Soyuz is for... And they used to do so in the USA too.