I liked Terry Pratchett version more. It was about reign - when king dies, his successor becomes a king immediately. Idea of modulating the waves by torturing kings at near-death state was also mentioned.

How difficult is it to drop a rock? Easy. Can you please drop a rock from 50km high? After all, dropping a rock is not different if it is 1m or 50km high.

They need to entangle both sides of the communication from single place and this is quite hard longer the distance. Moving it afterwards is also quite difficult, it is not a small, robust device you can carry in your pocket.

Trying to put it in concise list, TFA is bit too verbose. Short version - it is a real DK1 killer, too bad DK2 is already out there...

Comparing to DK2 (prototype versus prototype, so don't jump with 'it will get fixed in final version'):

- horizontal FOV 90 deg (instead of 100)
? no data about vertical FOV
+ better perceived pixel density (because of lower FOV)
- blurry, high-persistence LED screen
- 60Hz instead of 75 Hz (but high-persistence anyway is a killer here)
- no mention of any advanced techniques like time warp
+ headband with tracking leds, which allows proper tracking even when you look behind
+ reported to be more friendly for people with prescription glasses
+ considerably better looking
+ headphones included
- with jack input INSIDE the visor !
= PS4 versus PC
? no exact data regarding tracking quality, seems to be lacking magnetometer compared to DK2, not sure if it makes a difference
+ utilizing PS Move and PS controllers fully, has some concept for VR interaction besides 'up to game designers'

If Oculus will 'borrow' idea of tracking headband and Morpheus will get low-persistence OLED display, we will have very close match here for consumer version...

Yes, they are. You can complain only if protests are forbidden routinely regardless of request for authorization - but it is not happening, absolute majority of protests is allowed.
Rules for registration make perfect sense - quite often, you have two antagonist groups protesting (pro-gay and ultra-right-wing for example) on same day in same city. Thanks to authorization, city can make sure they will remain separate and put extra police in places they might meet.

Now, in some imaginary Europe where you would need to ask for permission to protest and it would be routinely denied, it could be a problem. But it is not a case. And police is not pepper-spraying people just for fun, like in some countries where you don't need to ask for permission to protest...

Hmm, let's look at gas prices (which are one of the basic indicators of US lifestyle and affect cost of most things)
http://www.randomuseless.info/...
Year 2000 - 1.4-1.6
Year 2014 - 3.80
Factor of 2.4-2.7

Beef prices
http://www.criticalissues.us/B...
Year 2000 - 285
Year 2014 - 480
Factor of 1.68

There were just two first things I have checked out of 'americal lifestyle' pseudo-basket. Then we have cable tv prices, as described in original post with factor of around 1.6.
CPI suggests difference of 1.34 between year 2000 and 2014. Shadow stats suggest around 2.26 as you say. Probably one of only importnat things which are following CPI data over this time period are apartment rental prices and this is just because of 2008 crash.

I will agree with you that shadowstats is reporting too high inflation index - they are not trying to provide real numbers, rather to show the difference in creative accounting after 1980. But do you really think that CPI is valid measurement of what is happening? Why almost every report is complaining that XYZ is raising faster than CPI?

It is funny that when people observe that almost everything raise faster that inflation, they blame all these providers/producers separately, instead of question reported inflation in first place.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...
If you look at shadowstats, last year inflation was around 5-%... as observed on cable service prices.

So real question should be not why cable service prices are rising so sharply, but rather, why CPI cheats? Answers are probably going to be more interesting that "rising cost of equipment"

Half million year picture is not a good graph to show - in it, CO2 follows temperature changes, not predates it. It will just give fuel to deniers. You need to pick data carefully if you want to make your point. Maybe just replace labels - nobody in schools will notice and you will get your point through?

Except is has nothing to do with java-the-language. It is about java-the-platform (runtime + libraries, mostly libraries in this particular case). You are calling to kill Clojure and Scala as well, just because you don't like java-the-language?

One could argue that blackmailing and scamming is a form of art, so...

Most of them support OpenGL (or OpenES) for different platforms. Still, all of them went to considerable effort of using DirectX on windows, instead of simplifying their stack.

To be honest, I have lost the track of argument here. My main point was to refute the point that 'writing a game engine' is a serious activity, as opposed to very definition of hobby project, due to all 'serious' companies licensing base engines. Somehow I painted myself into corner of DirectX versus OpenGL on windows debate, while nobody was probably claiming that opengl is a valid alternative for real game development on windows - at least not on this subthread.

I had the same thing with cave diving. I tried it - by driving towards closest diving site, but after 2 hours I gave up on the idea - how people can claim that sitting in traffic jam on the exit road for few hour is 'thrilling'.
So, based on my experience with cave diving I announce it boring and not really dangerous, unless you are afraid of normal road traffic.
And BTW, why do you need a scuba suit for that in first place?

No, writing game engines is not serious. Writing games is. Serious developers just license one of the existing engines and extend from that. So real question is not what low-level API is easier to code against, but what technology main stacks are running on. Speaking for windows world (obviously some of them have opengl/openes ports for linux and android, question is what they chose if there is a choice)

UE4 - DirectX
Cryengine - DirectX
Gamebryo - DirectX
Unity - both DirectX/OpenGL ?
Frostbite - DirectX
id Tech 5 - Opengl - and guess what, dead and sueing Oculus Rift to get some money

Any major players I have missed? With exception of Unity, every successful game engine out there have chosen DirectX for windows.

http://www.kongregate.com/game...

How many points are you getting on that for being in that top 4% percent?

There is a huge difference. In case of broker you give him some information in trust and he has a legal obligation to not misuse this information against you. In case of HFT, people are observing you and using their observations against you.
It is like a doctor or lawyer confidentiality. There is a huge difference between people doing some things based on fact that you have visited doctor (even if it is abortion clinic) and doctor himself publishing/using your private medical details for his own benefits. In former case, it is what they do which determines if it is legal. In latter case, breach of trust is already a killer, with possible illegal activity afterward just adding to that.

Transparency. If you are a broker and say to the client "You can buy from market for 101, but if you try, I'll charge you extra 2 each time" it is adding spread (or broker fee actually). If you are a broker and say "You can buy from market for 101 and I'll do my best to do that" and then you are doing side deals buying all the orders between 101 and 103, then selling them to your client for 103 realizing immediate profits and pretending "somebody else bought cheap ones" - then it is front running.

Of course, HFT is not front running in classic sense.