It's all about reputation. I backed Tim Schafer's adventure game because he has proven himself and everybody trusts him.

If someone is unknown, then the risk is higher and you should treat it as casino bet: you must assume the money will be lost, but if you're wrong, then it'll be a welcome surprise!

Kickstarter should also return their 5% fee on no-delivery projects so that their interests are aligned with the backers. A 5 cents on the dollar refund (minus transaction fees) is negligible while the company wants to use that money to grow

I think that taking that hit is worth it because it motivates kickstarter to improve their average success rate, and that's a good thing for the long term.

For a long time, single-core applications were the rule so the CPU Mhz race was on. Once that ended around 3Ghz, the pressure was on for programmers to make computer code better at dividing the load between multiple cores.

It turns out that ARM does well with lower frequencies, and delivers the best performance per watt ratio. Also, it turns out that once all your code is written for 2, 4 or 8+ cores, it doesn't matter much if your cpus are clocked at 1.3Ghz (A6/Snapdragon) instead of 2.6Ghz (i7 in macbook pro 2012).

And if you're doing mobile, where battery life is a big factor, you need the ppw ratio more than anything, so you go ARM.

On mobile, Intel is in a similar situation now that they were against AMD back in the AMD64 days. Their current models (atom) are inferior but competitive. They are dominating servers and desktops which gives them a secure base to experiment from and I expect their mobile offerings in the next 5 years to bridge the gap with ARM.

Will they win? I have no clue. They might crush ARM or become the premier ARM licensee with the best ARM chips. Either way, Intel is going to lead.

StraightTalk costs $45/month for unlimited voice/data/sms, without contract! They use the AT&T 3g network so you get better coverage than T-mobile. They use sim cards which will actually work on a LOCKED T-mobile or AT&T phone.

The only reasonably priced 4G is MetroPCS. You pay 50-60 a month (again, unlimited data, no contract) and you need to be in a big city. Their big drawback is that they don't use sim cards and their handsets suck compared to everybody else. They're at least a year behind in tech.

Everybody else will rape you without lube. Sprint will give you unlimited 4G for $100/month, AT&T and Verizon are way worse. I still can't believe they went from unlimited data to selling by the gig. Their greed is unfathomable.

You were doing so well until you said "I have little sympathy..."

I come from Morocco. I was born in a middle class family that could afford to educate me well and buy me a computer when I was 16.

I understand why you condemn those poor people who didn't revolt soon enough. When I look at it from your perspective, many of those who suffer deserve at least part of their suffering. On the opposite end, those who do well deserve it because of their actions. You live in a world with more justice, where we aren't at the complete mercy of forces greater than ourselves.

Pity that world doesn't exist. You're lucky, I'm lucky. Other people are not so lucky. It's all about luck. Everything could go horribly, horribly wrong for you, me or anybody else. That is the reality we live in, hard as it is to accept for many people (republicans, mostly).

I agree with most of what you said but are you actually saying that uncircumcised people who have unprotected sex are morons?

  Unprotected sex feels better than protected sex, and horny people are not known for their impulse control. We must accept and adapt to this reality.

I pay $90/month for a really sub-par insurance that caps payments to 2000. If I get hired full-time at the end of my contract, I will have a proper insurance plan.

I wish I had a public option, or better yet, medicare.

Except you don't really "choose" to hire someone. You either think you need to grow your business or you don't. If you do, then you need to hire. It's not a choice between hiring a person and hiring a klingon (which would be a real choice). It's either hiring a person or forfeiting potential money you could be making, not a choice at all 99% of the time.

The words "job creator" are bullshit marketing speech for "rich people" that were focus-tested and found to have a better response than the latter.

Discounting the cost of new equipment which is par for the course for any new technology, you still have to take storage costs into account, as well as post-processing costs (ex: frame by frame special effects). Both have to deal with many more frames and this makes filming more expensive (though not necessarily by much) and post-prod longer, which is probably a bigger deal.

60 fps is very unlikely because it's not a multiple of 48 or 24 fps and we'll have to wait at least 40 years to get 96 fps. You will never see movies at 120fps so don't wait.

48 fps is very doable since it'll degrade gracefully into 24 fps to accomodate legacy infrastructure. It's the best we'll have for most or all of our lifetimes.(as far as hollywood movies go anyways.)

If you get lung cancer, emphysema, heart failure, you will likely cost society hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills.

You will also likely change your tune as you age and decide that you were young and stupid, that you still want to live, despite your increasing frailty, because death is so definitive while life is full of possibility.

Therefore, I can't take what you say seriously. You are simply deluding yourself and trying to justify your pack a day habit as something with a positive side.

Been there, done that and it was bullshit when I thought it, it's still bullshit when you write it on slashdot.

hacktivists, by definition, will publicize their break-ins so you can be sure they will be counted.

Common thieves and governmental spies (chinese, russians, etc.) on the other hand, might never be discovered if their level of competence is superior to that of the security administrators of a company.

Therefore, the statistics offered are very dubious and I would not be surprised if they are completely and spectacularly wrong.

If ping to my ISP is more than 20 ms, I am not happy. I play online fighting games and they require good latency. In fact, even the speed of light is too low to play against people on the other side of the planet.

If my ping to most places within a reasonable range (2000 miles) is under 100 ms, it is acceptable.

50 ms is good. 30 ms is perfection.

You make a lot of good points. One only has to look at societies where social justice is stronger than in the US to see that you speak the truth.

Look at Japan, look at Sweden, Norway, Denmark. It is true that they are exceptions and even there, social justice is not perfect. That's because human nature is the same everywhere. I suspect something in the culture simply acts as a counterweight there. And even that counterweight can become evil because it is often grounded in national pride and chauvinism which gives us racism and so forth.

The fact of the matter is that the flawed idealists in this world who get mad when they discover the truth take drastic action always end up the villains.

Here is a scary thought for you. Guerillas in south america, the original russian socialists, today's terrorists are all romantics instead of pragmatists.

I know I'm not going to convince anyone. I just wanted to share some random thoughts.

How was this modded interesting? How is backing out over someone's toe acceptable?

Your line of reasoning is weird and hypocritical. What is worse is that it ignores the contrary scenario: people who just let things go that you would consider unacceptable.

And that invalidates your premise completely.

Neal Stephenson used that very idea as a backdrop for two of his best novels: Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. Both incredibly entertaining reads, especially if you like sci-fi.

The things you say make me shudder. I think you may have a valid point (several, actually).

Can the electoral system be reformed to allow true public servants into office, without relying on big money?