You are right about historical reasons but I believe wrong about the ones you have supplied. I believe the primary reasons are more likely to do with distance and communication.

When you were a factory in the 40s and 50s pumping out cars you were focussed on the manufacturing aspects and your business was located in a single location - ie Detroit. The idea of trying to manage a network of stores across the country when communication was by post or expensive phone calls just simply didn't make sense. It was more cost effective to outsource that work, in exactly the same way it makes more sense to outsource things like accountancy, IT services and legal in many organisations.

Selling cars is a different business to making cars. And there is no guarantee that if you are good at making cars you will be good at selling them. The original idea was that these dealer were to be your customer interface, and ideally do a better job than you could.

The fact that manufacturers obviously decided that wasn't working at some point in the past and tried to open dealer owned stores is a sign that that system broke down.

Today, communication is almost instant, manufacturing processes and methodologies are more flexible than ever before and there is far more information available to your average consumer. A lot of what were "meant" to be the value adds of dealers are gone. Dealing directly with the customer allows you better control of your brand and if done well will increase profitability by removing a stage in the process.

But it can't work for every product. You still won't be buying your softdrinks direct from Coke or your shampoo from Unilever. Because in these situations the dealers (ie supermarkets) still make more sense.

Because, as I understand it, the Oculus is able to track your head movement which means your perspective can change. If all you are watching it a teacher on the screen then absolutely use a tv. But if you have a 3d mapped model the ability to naturally shift your head to change perspective would, I believe, be very useful.

In addition to this a lot of the rules are centred around clean up operations later. It's one of the reasons for the discussions around cluster munitions. In 2010 about 100 countries agreed to stop the use, manufacture and delivery of cluster munitions - about 35 have ratified that I think.

It has nothing to do with them being inhumane and everything to do with cleaning up the un-exploded bomblets later.

The other is the ban on anti-personnel land mines. It is the cleanup costs later.

By referring to Expo88 I'm guessing dbill is another Aussie like me and Distance Education in Australia means kids sitting at home listening to a radio because they live on a farm 400km from the nearest neighbour.

From their website "The Alice Springs School of the Air provides an educational service for about 120 children living on properties or settlements covering over 1 million square kilometers of Central Australia."

Agreed bandwidth will be a major problem for the school of the air type kids. But if we do see some of those smaller towns connected with better internet then maybe it becomes feasible for some of them.

Actually though I was thinking more for tertiary education than primary and secondary. For example if you want to study a Masters in Petroleum Engineering the number of universities that offer that course is relatively small.

This could be excellent for distance education. A virtual classroom for those people who simply cannot get there.

Or in the situation where the teacher has the best view and you and everyone to see that. Imagine being able to watch, from the exact perspective, in stereoscopic a master surgeon at work.

That would surely depend on whether the platform was closed to content. I could be very wrong here but I thought the Occulus was merely a way of viewing content not in anyway controlling what the content is.

In the same way that an iPod can be filled with MP3s directly or via the itunes store means Apple doesn't control the content. It can control whats on iTunes but that is a different thing to controlling what is on your iPod.

I guess I see it as someone having the patent on LCD screens (which I'm sure there is). They don't control what you see on the LCD.

I think you missed what I meant. I'm not saying it's not interesting in a "news for nerds way" I'm saying I don't believe this will have any impact on someone using google glass or equivalent, hence they wouldn't care. I don't actually believe this is any form of a counter measure baby step or otherwise.

Also, don't know about the states, but I would be very surprised if jamming wasn't illegal no mater whether it is a private residence or not. I would almost take a stab at being 100% sure that it would be illegal inside a restaurant or a store.

Finally lets say that you could take these types of devices offline. There is nothing particularly unique about the hardware in them so you would have to make your approach such that it would carpet bomb heaps of innocent devices. Virus that attack the glass will attack phones. Approaches that can break the pairing or wifi connections will disrupt all those networks everywhere.

In addition it kinda depends on what it is that you are doing. If we take this facility what is it actually doing? Is it assembly, which takes a relatively small amount of energy, or is it full fabrication, which obviously uses a lot more.

I have no idea what is in these batteries but lets say they look like lead acid batteries internally for the sake of this. Are they taking in lumps of lead, heating them, moulding them and then placing them into plastic containers which were shaped and formed in a different part of the site. Or do they bring in sourced preformed sheets of lead which they cut to size and insert into pre-formed containers manufactured in China?

Makes a pretty huge difference.

But how exactly is it a counter-measure?

I've played with google glass and they aren't interesting enough for me to bother with. But I simply can't imagine walking into a starbucks and faffing around with connecting my glasses to the wifi in starbucks. If would be paired with my phone in my pocket. If I was taking photos it would go out through the phone.

To me there is no point to this. This seems like the equivalent of your neighbour putting a wifi password on their network to stop you getting access to the internet. Ignoring the cable connection directly into your house and the fact you have never once connected to their network.

The whole region is contested. Every party from Russia down to Vietnam and the Philippines is squabbling over bits of dirt so they can claim the huge oil & gas reserves that are under the sea bed there.

We saw an escalation a couple of months ago when China towed a drilling platform out into contested water and got into a dust up with so local coast guard ships (I can't remember who the other country was - Vietnam I think).

Destabilisation in the middle east is sharpening the focus on finding secondary supplies of energy. ISIS has the potential to take out huge areas of oil producing land with Iraq unstable, Syria in civil war, Lebannon screwed, Libya in civil war, Egypt under military rule and most of the other countries being split on Sunni or Shiite lines there is a real risk of an energy crisis is ISIS cannot be stopped and stopped soon.

Ok so the google glass or what ever doesn't connect to your local wifi.... Um and the google glass wearer with their paired LTE phone in their pocket cares why exactly????

And as for a drone connecting to your wifi - i'm assuming we are looking at war-driving (flying I suppose) drones?

Pointless devices that is probably illegal looking for a situation that doesn't exist.

I'm not sure I agree with you on this. From your descriptions your encounters with coffee and alcohol have been of pretty rough stuff. I believe that over time you develop a taste for particular types of food or drink. Over time certain less savoury aspects (bitterness etc.) get trained out and you detect other flavours.

I wasn't a coffee drinker until my early 20s and the primary reason for that was the crap my parents drank was AWFUL! If that was my only choice for coffee today I wouldn't drink it. Seriously International Roast Instant!!!!

Now though I can acknowledge I have a caffeine addiction (I will get head aches 3 days after my last coffee) but not only that I love the taste. In particular a well crafted Mocha based on a dark bean blend is fantastic. (1 shot coffee, 1 tbs cocoa & sugar mix, frothed milk)

When it comes to Alcohol I didn't drink at all till I was 18 (legal age in Australia) for no reason other than just because. Also I have never been a heavy drinker. But I am very partial to a nice Shiraz now which is a drink which is fairly inaccessible to people who haven't developed a taste for wine. It is much easier to drink a sweet white or a gentle merlot then a Shiraz with high tannin levels.

If you like Coronas you obviously prefer the lighter paler beers. And, assuming you are in the USA, I found their beers a little rough in general. Try finding a german pilsner or a uk pale ale. I would suggest you will find them a nice drink.

I caused an issue for AOL by accident back around that time.

I was operating on dialup and I was too young to have a credit card to be able to rent a server for an FTP site. So my friend and I came up with the idea of using an online email system (can't remember which one now) that allowed you to auto-reply to an email with a 1.5mb file. We then created an email address for every disk of the game (Krush Kill & Destroy in ARJ format). We then told people that was how you got the program, send an email to each address in turn and it will reply with the disk.

Seemed like a really really simple idea. Then a guy in the States sent an email to every address in one go. He was on AOL and had a 10mb email limit. So he got the first couple of disks before his system started replying mailbox full. That triggered another copy of the file to be sent etc etc etc etc. Apparently he was questioned by the authorities about being involved in a serious DDOS that took a chunk of AOL offline. I never heard whether anything else came of it. I assume not.

The nitrogen will still form a blanket of gas independent of the quantity or flow rate and this is what keeps you safe. The problem occurs if the liquid nitrogen pools or is otherwise forced into direct contact (like you could do with a suitably high enough pressure stream or immersion). That is when people get hurt.