I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.

Does it bother any of my fellow pedantic Slashdot that the software depicted in the movie "Her" isn't really an OS, and doesn't perform the functionality of an OS (such as scheduling and memory management), but rather a novel user-interface layer, and would likely be implemented as some user space package?

i guess what i'm trying to ask is...is Siri an OS now? is sphynx?

yes, but in C you can use it as both. if you type-pun a pointer-to-struct-pixel to a pointer-to-struct-coord, the addresses work out the same. add a few function-pointers, and you can get some pretty good polymorphism going.

Sales pay structure is different. They are paid by the sale, not by the year. Therefore, their pay is dependent on how much work they do. Best deal you can hope for in IT is by-the-hour -- because by-the-issue would raise all kinds of new problems.

As a software developer, your only hope for such astronomical pay is either by stock-options, or by selling a product on your own.

All I was saying is that any latency that the user experiences has very little to do with kernel design, and much more to do with the UI layer.

Technically, one of the problems with micro-kernel design is MORE latency then a monolithic kernel, not less. Not that it matters with today's computers. It's just a little apparent that you don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you should go back and finish that degree, eh Billy Gates?

Reply to undo erroneous mod. sorry.

So now we should go back to 4:3 so our 16:9 content can have a 'tool window' below it? sounds like an infinite loop we've got ourselves in, huh?

Technically, milling is not the same as printing, but yes, good point.

Why? casting bullets from lead and stuffing them into (used) shell casings is insanely cheap and easy. it will be a LONG time before 3d printing can improve on a process we've been using for a century to create ammunition.

You can make bullets really cheap, at home, right now. It's marginally dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, but no more so then printing ammunition would be.

Here's some links to get you started! good luck!
http://www.midwayusa.com/find?dimensionids=5671
http://www.buffaloarms.com/products.aspx?CAT=3764
http://www.wideners.com/itemview.cfm?dir=210%7C212%7C235

Well, there are the Ringo Starr solo albums...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringo_Starr_discography

But what about the Moon Nazis?

I think that's exactly what he's getting at; and he's not far off (by our current definition of robotics)

Here's the thing: We don't actually want them to think for themselves. We want machines that can interpret higher and higher level instructions -- "drive me to work", not "steer right 30 degrees, accelerate at 1 m/s**2, steer left 15 degrees"

Very few. Those papers tend to be very philosophical, and not so technical. They usually present new ways to think about storing and processing data; not necessarily designs for artificial intelligence.