It's been this way whenever a new technology became normalized in the public eye.

I had a chat with my late grandfather about this in the mid-90s. I told him about when I was a kid and there was a big push in making children "computer literate". So much so, in fact, that I took a class in 3rd grade or 4th grade in LOGO on a VIC-20.

My grandfather said that reminded him of when he was a boy in the 1930s. In his time people thought EVERYTHING would be mechanized and learning how machines work and how to fix them would be required to be literate in the future. So, he actually took classes in engine design (!) and maintenance in the mid-30s, and it wasn't a vocational school.

As we all know, the deep knowledge required to design a car or an oven similar machine is held by specialists and baked into the products we buy.

Similarly, the deep knowledge required to program a computer to do useful work SHOULD be baked into the products we buy.

Think of it this way: who needs to read the manual when they get a new car? You just figure it out because it is largely intuitive. A TON of non-intuitive thought went into making the car easy to use.

I think it is our responsibility (those of us here who are engineers) to work towards putting that level of ease of use to work. This is the real reason Apple is popular. Their stuff is easier to use than most other products and people are HUNGRY for that.

We don't need to teach every kid to program. We just need better programs.

Solar sail can achieve 25% light speed, according to NASA, and Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away.

You want a manned mission (with robots doing all the actual work) to determine if the conventional wisdom that a manned mission to the outer planets is physically impossible is correct. Even if the pilot dies, you learn the furthest a manned mission can reach. There's seven billion people, you can afford to expend one or two. Ideally, they'd be volunteers and there'll be no shortage of them, but if you're concerned about valuable life, send members of the Tea Party.

It is not as if we must have the 'start' menu, or even a work-like or work-similar functionality. What fills us with dread is that the new Windows 10 UI is likely to be difficult and time-wasting to use...and since Windows is ubiquitous...we will likely be using it anyway. We, all of us, use a variety of digital UIs every day...the dashboard on our car, the screen on our home entertainment system, our smart phone, kitchen appliances, etc. Most of these are fairly simple and intuitive to use...simple enough that we don't give them a second thought. That's the point, here. Windows 8 is NOT simple or intuitive. It is painful, irritating, and time-wasting. That 'start' menu was nothing special as a UI feature. It was actually very poor...beginning with the obvious conflict between clicking on 'start' to perform a 'shutdown.' But...we were used to it. We were familiar with it. There's nothing wrong with a new UI if it is good as in 'powerful,' 'simple,' 'easy,' and 'fast.' The first iPhone (and ipod touch) was radically different from anything that had gone before it but it was a very good UI and people were able to use it effectively after just a few minutes. The Windows 8 UI, on the other hand, requires a book with screenshots in one hand and a smartphone with tips in the other hand to really accomplish anything for a first-timer. So...Windows 10, whatever it ends up being, will be carrying a lot of baggage to the rollout. Know that Microsoft.

No big surprise. The military are willing to invest what it takes for what they need. Military entities are, by necessity, pitifully naive when it comes to anything useful, but once they specify what they think they want, they don't shirk at the cost, they get the job done. A pointless job, perhaps, but nonetheless a completed job.

The corporate sector wants money. Things don't ever have to get done, the interest on monies paid is good enough and there hasn't been meaningful competition in living memory. Because one size never fits all, it's not clear competition is even what you want. Economic theory says it isn't.

The only other sector, as I have said many times before, that is remotely in the space race is the hobbyist/open source community. In other words, the background behind virtually all the X-Prize contestants, the background behind the modern waverider era, the background that the next generation of space enthusiasts will come from (Kerbel Space Program and Elite: Dangerous will have a similar effect on the next generation of scientists and engineers as Star Trek the old series and Doctor Who did in the 1960s, except this time it's hands-on).

I never thought the private sector would do bugger all, it's not in their blood. They're incapable of innovation on this kind of scale. It's not clear they're capable of innovation at all, all the major progress is bought or stolen from researchers and inventors.

No, with civilian government essentially walking away, there's only two players in the field and whilst the hobbyists might be able to crowdsource a launch technology, it'll be a long time before they get to space themselves. The military won't get there at all, nobody to fight, so the hobbyists will still be first with manned space missions, but it's going to take 40-50 years at best.

We have the technology today to get a manned mission to Alpha Centauri and back. It would take 15-20 years for the journey and the probability of survival is poor, but we could do it. By my calculations, it would take 12 years to build the components and assemble them in space. Only a little longer than it took for America to get the means to go to the moon and back. We could actually have hand-held camera photos taken in another solar system and chunks of rocky debris from the asteroid belt there back on Earth before Mars One launches its first rocket AND before crowdfunded space missions break the atmosphere.

All it takes is putting personal egos and right wing politics on the shelf, locking the cupboard and then lowering it into an abandoned mineshaft, which should then be sealed with concrete.

No true Pascal programmer would write "i := i + 1". They'd say "i := succ (i)"

So, you see, Pascall sucks.

What is intuitive about using "==" for equality!

Going to cause a lot of collateral damage to start doxxing people who may or may not be pedobears

Call me when anonymous starts busting down doors without warning at 3 AM and kills occupants. Call me when they snag people rolling through town who just took out cash to buy a car, and confiscate the money. Call me when they drag people through the court for years, ruining their good name with no real conviction. Call me when they just shoot you on the street even though you're un-armed.

Those are all things the "real cops" have been doing. When the authorities aren't doing their job, alternatives start to look better.

Some arbitrary, country dependent limit like five fucking years old?

RTFA.

The brain?

Ha! That's an old one. After you find the golden rivet you can hop in your F-35 for a little snipe hunting.

Why don't you tell us how you feel about systemd?

If you live outside of Kentucky you might only know them for their derby. What many people don't know is that Kentucky also makes some of the finest jelly around, and that many stores outside the state carry it. So if you've never had the experience, you should pop 'round to your local grocer and ask about Kentucky jelly today!

Unless the pilot has X-ray vision, his eyeballs ain't gonna help. Fighter Pilot: Yes, confirmed it's a plane that hasn't been hijacked and may or may not have a bomb on board. Commercial Pilot: Told you so.

Go to a friends house and turn on their flat-panel TV. 99% of the time, it will have frame-rate interpolation turned on; which basically means that any content they see on that TV will be at 60 or 120 Hz. Even movies shot at 24.

More and more often as I do presentations to executives, they don't understand why my TVs look so "juddery" compared to what they expect -- it's because at home they're watching everything at 120Hz.

So no -- most people are happy with high frame rate most of the time, and that percentage is getting larger quickly. I am a big 24fps fan, but I believe the days are numbered.

What kind of talk is that? We need to come up with some decent excuses for why Nvidia can't access the last 500M of RAM! I'm going to suggest that it's global warming! The video card was designed for a room temperature of less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit but ever since global warming, room temperatures have been warmer than that!