I still don't get how the website could have failed so incredibly miserably.

The problems the site faces seem to be elementary, the type of mistakes that I made when I was first doing web development. I get that the scale of the site is massive, and that at that scale you have to do many things a little differently than smaller-scale web apps. But this was a president who had very tech-savvy people at hand on his campaign, and even in his first term (Look at "change.gov" for example; that site gets massive traffic and holds up pretty well, even if the responses from the WH are patronizing as hell at times). How come this site crashed and burned so pathetically?

"The Wolfram Language does things automatically whenever you want it to"

Did that make anyone else think of Zombo.com?

"But capitalism alone can't address the needs of the very poor."

Nice to see a hyper-wealthy businessperson actually admit this.

I don't think I've ever played a AAA title. Well, ok, Skyrim. Lots and lots of Skyrim. And Civ V, if that counts; I don't know that it does. I've seen my friends play games like...um...I don't even know the names of them. Call of Duty: MW was the last one I remember seeing. Oh, and Left 4 Dead. I read a lot about GTA5 on Reddit too.

I regularly purchase games from the Humble Bundle. I recently got Fez and fell in love with it. So clever and so brilliantly designed. I think that game was made by one person, wasn't it? I understand that "AAA" titles look amazing and realistic and everything... but does that really make the game THAT much more fun to play? Serious question. Is the gaming experience, say, *actually* 1000x better if the budget is 1000x more?

I don't disagree that AAA titles push the boundaries of technology w/r/t video gaming, but one of the big criticisms I've seen of these titles is that they essentially become interactive movies, and lose a lot of the "game" aspect; ie. less mentally challenging, more mentally stimulating. I do not know whether or not this is the case, but do people who like AAA titles prefer that sort of game? Hyper-realistic interactive movies?

Yeah, just imagine... they'd put profits over quality and the product would start to suck and its advertising would feel really patronizing, with lots of glitzy flash but little substance.

Man, I can't even imagine a world where Microsoft operated that way.

Take that, TSA.

I guess I understand them not wanting to do last-minute dispatches, since 14.04 is scheduled to come out in the same month they're releasing these CDs... but they're just going to have to upgrade the 12.04 systems almost immediately since 14.04 (the next LTS) will be released that same month.

It would be nice if online accounts like this had some sort of "longevity health" that was a function of how often they were updated (and when they were last updated). Every tweet, for example, would add some length of time onto the lifespan of an account, based on some kind of metric on how often people should be interacting with their stream (ie. 1/day or something like that).

When a user does not log into their account, a clock ticks down and when it hits zero, the account is archived and deactivated. The user can "reset" the countdown by logging into their account. And the more interacting they do while logged in the longer the countdown lasts while they are logged out.

May not be the best implementation, but it would just be nice to see some kind of auto-culling behavior on networks like these. Not just for spammers but for people who create an account, send three tweets about "what do I do on here?" and then never log in again. #namespacewaste

It won't make the iPad look like the Zune. The iPod didn't beat the Zune because it was cheaper, it beat it because it was a superior product. (I'm no apple fanboy, though I did briefly own an ipod before I got my smartphone). Dropping the price really low will make it look like a knock-off product, like "COBY" headphones or a fake Louis Vitton bag. Everyone will have one, but everyone will know that you paid a pittance for it.

They're probably just trying to take advantage of that cheap American labor...

Wait, how is "tracking me" taking money out of my pocket?

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm

Last year, we consumed 6.8 billion barrels of oil. This has been a pretty consistent average over the past 5 years, all things considered (5 years prior it was 7.5B, but seems to mostly fluctuate around 7B). And this is US consumption *alone* -- not even factoring in the increased rate of Chinese consumption, or any of the European, African, Asian, Australian, South American nations (Antarctica gets a pass, because it's effing cold down there and they can use a little oil to not die while watching penguins)

7.4B to 11B barrels is 2 years AT BEST if we pare down our oil consumption. Then those resources are GONE.

Considering "oh, but there might be more than we think left over!" is pretty pointless when we alone are consuming oil at this rate. Absorbing the mild inconvenience of reducing our oil consumption should be priority #1 for all of us. It doesn't solve the problem but it will (a) give us a *little* more time to get off the sauce and (b) start altering our habits and consumption practices in a direction that will prepare us for the inevitable end of oil reserves, which are guaranteed to happen someday.

One movie per year....for the trilogy? Or until Harrison Ford finally dies?

Next thing you know, you'll start see blue-tinted crystal meth popping up everywhere....

I agree. Just because someone is not paying the taxes on their lunch does not mean the taxes are not being paid. Pretty sure the IRS would probably take a rather big issue if an employee as large as Google was dodging taxes on their revenues.