Think of it as evolution in action. You can stay on one planet while some disaster takes it out. We have lots of choices of disaster, don't we? The human race can continue via those "space nutters".
Sure, we should try to avoid the disaster, etc., but planets are not forever.
I fully agree that PhysX and G-Sync aren't open either.
As for Mantle being Open there was the case of Intel asking about Mantle information -- and AMD declining the request.
In no way shape or form is Mantle "open".
Don't believe me? Go ahead and link to the online documentation that tells me how to make a triangle pop up on a screen using Mantle.... Go ahead I'm waiting.
That's not even taking into account the fact that Mantle works with Windows and uh... Windows.
Direct3D: Also not "open" but anyone with a working Windows installation can still write & compile programs that use Direct3D to do graphics without any further licensing needed, and Direct3D is documented.
OpenGL: Actually is Open and if you keep up with the newer releases you'll note that a lot of the miraculous features promised in Mantle seem strangely similar to features that were already available in OpenGL.....
Pray, could you tell me about how Intel "illegally" pounded ATI -- you know, the discrete graphics card company -- into the ground illegally? I know that way way back in the day, long before AMD's very ill-advised $6 Billion boondoggle buyout -- that Intel tried to launch a discrete graphics card, but it didn't go anywhere and didn't seem to phase Nvidia, AMD, or 3dfx (yes, it was THAT old) in the slightest.
P.S. --> If Big Bad Intel was really that Big & Bad at "pounding" AMD, then where did AMD get that $6 Billion for a massive buyout of ATi in the first place??
P.P.S. --> Why is it that Nvidia, ARM licensees, and everyone else seem to have no fear of Intel, but whenever it comes to AMD the only thing we hear are these made-up persecution fantasies? Is everyone else... or maybe is it just AMD?
Dammit! First it's spy satellites watching my every movement on earth, and now you can't even have privacy ON MARS!
Pope says Global Warming Bad! Enact Ecotopia now!
Slashdot Crowd: Pope agrees with our preconceived notions, GOOD! All that crap we say about how anyone religious should just STFU and die*? We take it back!
* Exception for Muslims of course since we love to call all Christians evil barbaric murders but are too chicken to do it for the "religion of peace."
Pope says: Freedom of Speech should be limited!
Slashdot crowd: Religion is EVIL! STFU AND DIE POPE!!
Good Atheist Liberals: Basically agree with the Pope but couch their censorship argument in politically correct terms like "cultural diversity" and the fact that Muslims are a "poor oppressed minority"
Slashdot Crowd: AS LONG AS IT'S NOT FROM SOME EVIL RELIGIO-TARD I AGREE WITH IT 100%!! SCREW REPUBLICAN HATE SPEECH!!
And what if you don't get the green card? Then you will go back home, and be the ideal candidate for offshoring the job you care currently doing -- although at much lower wages.
Understand, I *want* you to get the green card too. We should just issue more green cards faster to tech workers if we need them. If there is an H-1B program, it should be a fast track toward permanent residency.
Concentrations of tech workers *create* jobs. That's why Facebook moved from Boston to the Bay Area. Boston has plenty of tech talent for a small company, but if you're planning on growing from a half dozen to thousands of tech employees in three or four years the Bay Area is arguably the only place you can do that. So why would we want to kick tech talent out of the country? Only to send their jobs with them.
This has nothing to do with protectionism. Nobody is saying not let foreign software into the country.
As for foreign labor, I have no objection to bringing foreign labor in. My objection is kicking that labor out after it has gained experience. If there really was a tech worker shortage, these are the very workers we'd want to stay.
What this does is create a pool of offshore labor that's familiar with the work being done *here*. The obvious purpose is to use the immigration system to assist companies that want to relocate work overseas. And there's nothing special about American tech people; anything we can do can be done in India or Ukraine. That's fine, but I don't think the US government should be in the business of making it attractive for companies to move jobs overseas.
It's something so irrational (if we were to assume for the moment that the US government works for the welfare of the American people) there isn't even a word for it. It's the mirror image of protectionism. It's self-predation.
Well, Windows 8 is a capable OS too. It's just got a somewhat awkward and unfamiliar graphical shell.
I don't even hate the Windows 8 shell; I pretty much take it for granted that modern desktop shells suck. That's because designers keep trying to get them to do more for users, when users don't really need *more*; they need the shell to do what they want, when they want it, and then stay the hell out of the way. On top of that there's the unfamiliarity. Windows has always UI problems with putting a cheery facade over a complex train wreck, but the fact that they keep changing the signposts.
I just roll with it. It's like learning to conjugate irregular verbs when you're mastering a language, only they keep changing them every few years. As an *OS*, apart from the somewhat confusing shell, I have no complaints about Windows 8, unlike Vista, whose aggressive "optimizations" broke a number of tools I use regularly. It's all increasingly peripheral, anyway, as more information is managed through the web. The desktop is no longer the focus of the user's experience, it's just a terminal.
"The Russians have always understood that a space station is nothing more than a prototype of an interplanetary spaceship."
Given the fact that Russia has never managed to even get an unmanned probe working successfully on Mars -- much less even gotten a manned mission to orbit the Moon -- maybe they should realize that the "prototypes" they've been building for over 40 years haven't been too successful.
Oh, and oil just crashed... have fun paying for all that with your Putin Pictures -- uh, I mean "rubles".
Thank non-existent diety that NASA is currently run by Atheist/Islamic bootlickers then!
I mean, NASA is so much more capable today after we implemented the anti-religion tests compared to those dark-ages of the 1960s!
I mean, can you believe that one of those primitive cave men EVEN READ FROM THE BIBLE without being decapitated ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... )
Now, it would be just fine with use brave, completely even-handed and rational Atheists if he had read from the HOLY Q'U'R'A'N' (Obama Ackbar! ISIS is misunderstood!) but the Bible? That's sacrelige!
We are SO much better off with today's NASA than that relic from the '60's! Don't let that evil Ted Cruz take us back to the DARK AGES!
After all, apocalyptic Global Warming made exclusively by evil white racist Republicans -- oh but I repeat myself --- is a proven scientific fact and anyone who disagrees is just an infidel -- uh I mean "right wing religious extremist denier scum".
Why waste government money studying Settled Science (TM)?
I've heard this story, but it was after my time there. It's definitely in the classic style of MIT lame nerd humor. There's an often element of ironic self-deprecation in MIT humor.
Up until the 80s at least MIT had an archaic phone system in all the dorms. It was almost certainly maintained in part by student labor, since due to tuition costs most students had work study jobs -- often quite technical.
Well, there actually is a legitimate issue here.
Not every takedown notice in the Chilling Effects database is bogus. By putting the text of legitimate notices in a searchable database, Chilling Effects can be used to find infringing content. For example I didn't see "Interstellar" when it was in the theaters near me. Using Chilling Effects I very easily found a number of sites offering bootleg downloads.
If Google removes an infringing link from search result, having the takedown notice copy stored at Chilling Effects appear in Google search result effectively nullifies the takedown. The offending URL is right there in the takedown text.
So what is being balanced here is Chilling Effects' mission -- serving as a database for researching takedowns -- vs. the legitimate copyright interests of the people issuing the takedowns. It won't stop legitimate or illegitimate users of the Chilling Effects database, but it won't guide casual search engine users to infringing content either.
Of course this won't satisfy intellectual property interest groups, whose only mode of operation appears to be "scorched earth".
Diving to 30+ meters? Probably air. And I'm guessing it's probably not a good idea to work divers to exhaustion.
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
