Do you comprehend the difference between the old 32-bit SPARC processors and the ones Oracle sells now?

I thought not.

Turn in your geek card.

Even a megapixel display at 24 bits required 3MB per frame... and a megapixel display has been "low end" for a lot of years now!

Seriously, though -- why does everyone sneer at the fact that not everyone is a gamer? Why are gamers so god damned fucking ARROGANT about their "my dick is bigger than yours" hardware?

The point is to write a "feel good" letter because "we tried to stop them."

Besides, everyone knows the US military and it's mega corp providers are probably the biggest researchers in this area, probably have been for 50+ years, and are unlikely to ever give up their funding just because a bunch of people with degrees think they should do so.

As the letter points out, the technology needed is widely available. That means that even Joe Blow in his basement could work on such AI systems. From there it's just a matter of connecting the AI to a weapons system, and there is no shortage of remotely-controllable weapon systems already. (Drones, anyone?)

Personally I applaud the letter writers for trying. They're incredibly naive to think their letter will have any impact on the decision makers, but they did try! :P

I don't know about you, but I kinda prefer having targeted advertising for stuff I'm actually interested in, as opposed to being bombarded with random ads for beer and diapers and feminine hygiene products that I get when I'm in a "fresh" browser or incognito mode. I'm also OK with using the random Google accounts I created to do online shopping... they're anonymous enough for me relative to the realname account that I only use for talking to the handful of actual people in a "social" context.

It amazes me how many rappers are gang-bangers first, and "musicians" second. So many of them put their loyalty to "the gang life" above everything else. :(

Not everyone wants the noise of an add-on video card. Some of us don't game, and only need "good enough" graphics to drive the display manager requirements. Add on a dollar or two saved on the power bill per year, less money spent on the power supply, and the money saved for the no-longer-necessary add-on graphics card, and built-in CPU graphics sounds like a "win" to me.

I might keep on using my fanless NVidia card on my next box, but I'm going to wait and see whether I can saturate my drive IOs while putting up with the shared memory of the built-in GPU first. If I can saturate the drive, I'll save the power load and stick with the built-in graphics. Besides, Intel has a better reputation for their drivers on Linux than NVidia does. Not that I've ever had problems with the NVidia drivers myself, but in theory they can be a problem.

There are a number of websites that try to push interstitials to the desktop. When I get those blank pages with AdBlock Plus installed, I just close the browser tab. The story or photos are NEVER interesting enough to put up with that kind of shit.

If Windows won't roll back to a working install, it kind of moots the point of taking recovery snapshots before installing updates, doesn't it?

Not so. CTV and CBC here in Canada pay the BBC for the shows they air from across the pond. I presume the BBC buys content from CBC and CTV as well. I know, for example, that BBC America buys "Orphan Black" from Space here in Canada. Were you to allow foreigners to access CTV's website, they could watch Orphan Black for free instead of their local broadcaster paying for the rights.

I'm sure the BBC offsets a pretty penny selling Doctor Who around the world.

Still, I'm not so sure Hollywood would object all that much to being able to sell to a market of half a billion people with a single broadcaster's contract. But what it might do is price the media out of the range where any single broadcaster could afford to pay for it, because they're still constrained by the market revenue of their local nation and not getting paid by the entire half billion worth of people.

It's all well and good to say "down with geoblocking" until you realize that geoblocking is how the market share is divied up between broadcasters. None of the broadcasters in the world is set up on the basis of serving the globe, not even "giants" like NBC, CBS, ABC, or the BBC.

HP tried to step back in history today to more profitable and professional times, unfortunately reality refused to cooperate and they were still bleeding money like a sieve. Worse, their engineers were now leaving because they were pissed off by the dress code.

The one criticism of atheists and agnostics that resonates with me is that they don't really have an established book of beliefs and guidelines. Living life without a code of behavior is somewhat like a computer running without a program... how are you going to predict what it's going to do?

It would be nice for everyone to have their own compiled set of standards, rules, and objective functions that characterizes their philosophy and that they actually use to guide their behavior. Unfortunately, the OKCupid tests are the only thing I've seen that comes anywhere close :P