That's exactly what this is.

The position requires a security clearance, for God's sake! This is an internship for the children of congressman and other highly-placed public officials (and, of course, children of big donors to the Republican and/or Democratic parties). Nothing will get accomplished, but a lot of rich kids will get to put it on their resume.

You seem to be implying that somehow mathematics are not sufficient for describing the "real" world, and that is simply not the case.

Mathematics are the language of the universe, as far as we can tell.

Nobody cares about backwards-compatibility.

Why do you think both Sony and MS gave up on it a few years ago? It adds cost to the system, and it doesn't increase sales. A $99 add-on? Hardly anyone would buy it. Sony and MS aren't stupid- if backwards-compatibility was something that would help them sell more systems and/or games and make more money, they would include it. But it doesn't, because hardly anyone wants to play old games. And those that DO want to play the old games play them on the OLD CONSOLE!

Uh, XP Home can't join and Active Directory domain. That's why businesses bought it, dipshit. NONE of the "home" versions of Windows can join a domain.

Well, in many ways, Linux *is* inferior to Windows. Don't kid yourself. Especially for business use.

The fact is, most business software is Windows only. That's the deal-breaker for Linux, right there.

And Linux has nothing to compare to Active Directory. If you have to manage a bunch of desktops, Active Directory and Group Policy have no real equivalent on Linux. Yes, there is Puppet and stuff like that. But it's a colossal pain-in-the-ass compared to the very nice GUI tools (and Powershell, now) that Microsoft provides.

Linux has lots of advantages, but manageability isn't one of them. It lags FAR behind Windows on that front.

It's great for web servers and SMTP servers. Those are the only areas where Linux clearly beats all flavors of Windows, in my opinion. On the desktop...not so much. Works great for people that just want to use a browser and OpenOffice, though.

When the iPhone was released, RIM should've *immediately* began creating a new operating system for their phones, and *paying* developers to make apps for it.

Their problem, as the article alludes to, is that they got so used to people paying for the Blackberry *service*, that they couldn't imagine simply making money on the devices and taking a cut of the app market. I'm sure it seemed risky, and it would've been.

But they had no choice, really. And now they're fucked. They deserved it, frankly. They had ALL the cards, and they blew it entirely. It's Netscape all over again, really.

Sounds like that's what they're going for- an "open" OS that can be used for any gaming device. It's a neat idea, but...

It will fail spectacularly. There is no money to be made on console hardware. Who is going to bother building a SteamOS device besides Valve? No one, because Valve is going to be making all the money.

Valve would've been smarter to go all-out, and just build a new proprietary console, but one that is supremely developer and consume friendly. Maybe that is what they are doing, but they are doing it too slowly. If the mythical SteamBox isn't at least as powerful as an Xbox One, and released within the next year, it's doomed, too.

Don't go to "Burning Man".

"Burning Man" is for pretentious douchebags.

So it looks like they never had enough funding in the first place. This should have been obvious.

Stephenson fancies himself as being very tech-savvy, but he's no programmer. I'm sure he had this idea (that many people still have, admittedly), that making a game isn't all that hard. Making a game is *colossally* difficult. It requires all kinds of specialized skills, and the people with those skills aren't cheap, and there aren't many of them.

Yeah, you can crank out 16-bit-level games pretty quickly and cheaply these days, but for a real "A-level" title with all the pretty 3D graphics and fancy sound effects and cool soundtrack? $10 million, minimum. Plus a custom controller that needs to be developed? $20 million.

Everyone involved with this, including the people that donated, were naive in the extreme.

Absolutely.

Ballmer is the one that put the "Every department MUST rate their employees, and MUST fire the employees that have the lowest ratings. Every year." system in place, which is...insane. And stupid. In fact, it's so insane and stupid it's almost unbelievable. This guy is the CEO of one of the richest companies in the world? And he put a system in place to ENSURE that EVERYONE spends most of their workday sabotaging the other employees in order to save their own job?

Ballmer only got/kept the job because he's buddies with Gates, and buddies with the Board. That's how it works in EVERY corporation these days, but generally the CEO is somebody that, at worst, is harmless. Ballmer was actively incompetent, and his idiocy damaged the company. He should be sued by the shareholders.

Yes, wouldn't it be great if someone made a completely developer-friendly, unlocked phone with good specs at a decent price?

Yeah, no fucking shit it would. The carriers would NEVER allow it on their networks. We won't see a phone like that until we have a worldwide standard for cell networks, so that somebody could make that phone and actually sell it in the US.

Paying more than $200 for one is nuts. They need to figure out how to make them cheaper.

These days, you can get a Windows 8 notebook for $350, sometimes less. With MUCH better specs than most ChromeBooks, and, obviously, much more software.

But Chromebooks are nice. ChromeOS is nice. Just too expensive.

We have plenty of our own problems here on Earth! Why is a government-built probe going into interstellar space? Is Obama trying to make health-care truly "universal"? I suppose if our own "illegal aliens" get free health care, why shouldn't Andromedans?

Keep alien overlords out of my health care!

Movies aren't under NEARLY the time pressure that video games are.

A good movie is a good movie. It will ALWAYS be a good movie, and it they'll be able to sell it (on various media) for DECADES after it is released.

Video games are transient. You have about 18 months before your game is obsolete, and sales basically STOP. Hardly any games continue to sell after more than 2 years on the market.

All the problems with the game industry stem from this requirement to get shit done FAST. You can't take 2 years to make a game anymore. You can barely do 18 months.

This is just how it is. Any company that does any kind of "construction" ignore all the safety rules they can. Safety takes time, and costs money. Insurance will pay out on the off chance that someone gets hurt or killed.

The guys working these towers are almost certainly told by their bosses that they need to work faster, and if that means skipping safety measures, then they need to skip safety measures.