Perhaps the development of database centric programming languages (at least in enterprise environments) diminished the demand of general purpose programming languages to do that sort or work.

Your post got me thinking. What did they use for programming for the mission to land on the moon. They only did it once, so their was really only one programming language used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

The answer: Assembly Language or specifically AGC. So there you go...

Ya 'cause Canadian's just leave the cases of beer alone? More likely it will turn into a drinking contest and devolve into a poorly played hockey game...

Or we'll start a beer gap, which will cause both countries to create strategic beer reserves...

Yes, then we'll assimilate you into the Canadian collective with out politeness. Resistance is futile!

"Taking over Canada was easy eh? How aboot we celebrate with some maple syrup and some hockey! Hey wait a minute!"

If the success of Marvel has shown me anything... it is that the convergence of individual movies is the way to go. Nerds need to prepare themselves else they suffer catastrophic head 'splosions when the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises collide in a JJ Abrams script.

Gigantic Lens flare fade...
Starship Enterprise in a background field of stars drifts into picture right to left.
Pan from below slowly counter clockwise...
Appearing behind the ship, a "DEATHSTAR!"
Insert Massive ship battle.

Or

Due to public outcry the first 30min of the story will be about how the hilt of a lightsaber works with little tiny lightsabers.

Also

Waiting to see what the Star Wars Disney Princess looks like... If she starts singing a song I'm walking out.

That said, in some cards it is difficult to tell if it is even on, causing you to try the ignition again. Also some seem to have a delay start, probably the hybrids, which is also confusing. So there is some practical sense to engine noise should you want/need it outside of making your engine sound all beefy. Car modders been doing that for many years with custom exhaust (many of which are ridiculous), so this isn't anything that is really new.

The Starship Enterprise exploring a wormhole comes across a region of space controlled by the "Alliance"... After an improbable accident they are all stranded in Alliance space and spend the next 5 years doing more interesting and entertaining things.

My only concern would be how you define "supported lifetime of the device". I know at one time MS liked to think every time you upgraded a component, or changed your hardware configuration slightly, it was suddenly a brand new install.

That said, if you have your physical media for Windows 7 and licencing keys, at worst you just waste your time doing backups/installs. I know I would be more comfortable on an "Upgrade" that they allow you to download and burn a physical disk with individual software keys for a full version of Windows 10. Because when shit goes wrong and you need to fix it, I am not sure how great that upgrade is going to be.

My favorite explanation:

Windows 9: Because the German market would say "No!"

Also an addendum:
Windows ME: Slowly grinds cats into freezer meat!

I had Windows ME pre-installed on a Dell 4200 back in the day. It lasted a week before I wiped it and replaced it with Windows 2000.

Also you forgot Windows 2000: ...I don't know, a bit more friendly than NT, with Multiprocessor support.

My experience,
Windows Vista: Drivers not included.

The last Simcity I think really tarnished their reputation. They may have a hard time reclaiming their fans.

That said, if they do a reasonable approximation to MOO2, they will come flocking back. It is a fine line between a Game and a Sim however. MOO3 was the only game I ever pre-ordered (and last) for that reason. It was more Sim than it was Game. In that it wasn't really any fun. Something to be careful of if you are known for making Sim type games.

Babylon 5 was the best, however it was a true Space Opera, with long story arcs, so it perhaps lost some audience that had a hard time breaking into the series. It also had cutting edge CGI at the time, but it likely hasn't aged all that well.

STTNG was probably the best of the various series, however it was for the most part pretty hokey and predictable with a few notable exceptions.Voyager as many have noted over compensated with the female captain. It wasn't enough that she was competent, she also needed to be all things to everyone. Both had some lazy writer at times really leaning on the "holodecks" for historical pieces or time travel...

Farscape is another one that was missing. I think it was one that built slowly it's audience. It also had a pretty good contiguous story arc, but was a bit more campy (it had a puppet for pete's sake), and was very tailored to the audience. The Peacekeeper Miniseries was done quite well also.

Lexx was just weird. I watched it however. It deserves points for just that.

Space Above and Beyond I remember really liking. As I recall it was more "realistic" and more militaristic than all the rest.

I was never really a fan of Quantum Leap and thought it was a bit of a silly show, though everyone else in the world seems to think it was the best thing since sliced bread.

Some mention Stargate. It is a bit hard to judge. It was on for so long, with different casts. It should get points for longivity at least.

Makes me wonder what the 2000's, or 2010's had to offer in comparison...

Stargate and Atlantis (just because they have been around so long)
BSG 2003-2010
Capricra 2009 (meh)
Firefly 2002
Andromeda 2000-2005 lol :)
V 2009-2011 (never watch it)
Enterprise 2001-2005

Falling Skies 2011 (was ok if a bit cheesy)
Defiance 2013 (Actually like this one a bit, but could use some improvement)
Ascendance 2014 (probably the best of the bunch of new, hope they have a new season)
Extant 2014 (never watched)
The 100 2014 (LOL. Watched one episode. Terrible.)

Seems more lacking now, and none seem to be around very long, also more low budget. BSG and Enterprise being the only exceptions. Firefly was the best, but only the one season :(

The problem wasn't the need. Everyone wants that. The problem was it had to be an absolute need, because it was so damn expensive. The handsets started at about 5000$ (and this was quite a long time ago), and the packages you had to buy were exorbitant to say the least, for very little capacity. The Iridium satellites were very expensive to launch, and as a result they needed to change a lot of money to make it worthwhile, couple that with the fact they didn't launch as many as they were going to (I think?), and the fact that the bandwidth was so low that it reduces the number of possible uses/users which also inflate the price.

Branson is likely counting on two things to make this profitable.
1) That due to recent changes in space competition particularly private companies, that launches will be MUCH cheaper. Couple that with the advent of miniaturization of components and microsats, even more bang for the buck launchwise.
2) Advances in technology that will allow for much higher bandwidth. While still maybe not comparable to being able to watch YouTube on your satellite phone, probably more than enough to have a much larger user base for relatively simple things now like voice and text type services. (Though they mention things like LTE, who knows)

Note: I didn't notice a lot of dates being thrown around, so this is likely a very longer term project (or it will be despite any words contrary).

Agree. I do this all myself, mostly because I dislike waste. I do far more than most preachy environmentalists. It is about personal choice.

A perfect example: I work for a pretty "green" organization. Each year they run a big competition with surrounding businesses to see who can conserve the most CO2 for 3 weeks. The ones that do get little prizes...

I participate every year, but do not really contribute much. The reason? Because it is a measurement of what you would waste VS the 3 weeks of conservation. So if you are the worst offender, and then for a scant 3 weeks to actually try and do something you win. I tried to tell the organizers it was a horrible metric to measure success by, as you are basically awarding the behavior of those that pollute the most CO2 normally.

I bought a house that is a 10min walk from work. As a result it is old, small, and expensive (for size). I could go out to the suburbs and get a new, huge, cheaper (for size) house and drive 20min every day to work, or in the country or another community for a 30-50min commute.

So yeah, as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words...

Though not sure about the whole communists comment... :)

OK, the whole scenario is a bit far fetched, however this is how it would play out, and their is historical precedent.

1) The USA has by far the largest, most powerful, most advanced, most strategic, military forces in the world. The next two in line Russia and China, are also not all that dominated by Muslims. When you start to look down the list, you got to go WAY down the list to find Muslim dominated countries with advanced military might. So in a strictly conventional war, it is really no contest.

However, as recent history has shown, it isn't entire nations, but radicalized groups... but of course we are talking entire populations, but whatever....

2) Only two nuclear weapons were ever used in war. They were used for basically one reason. The reports on what the estimated casualty rate of American soldiers varied but it was in the range of 500,000 to 1 million troops dead to invade Japan. A politician then weighed how unpopular it would be to order 1 million american citizens to their death VS incinerating a couple hundred thousands enemy civilians in a far off land. Obliviously, they went with Plan B, and that was just on the off chance that it MIGHT work. If you think that the US is incapable of making that exact same decision again, if faced with similar circumstances, particularly when the enemy lacks a response or anyway to deliver it, then you would be wrong. If you want to see how fast the moderates are in exposing and eradicating the radicalized components of that society, it wouldn't take long.

So you are right, anything like that would be unpopular as hell. However it only has to be less unpopular than the alternative for it to happen.

The last time I was in the store was a big disappointment. I recall good experiences when I was younger. About two years ago, the CD player in my car died. It was old enough that it didn't even have an aux out port, so it was basically a radio after that, and then a speaker stopped working.

I bought a new deck from Future Shop and tried to install it myself, which turned out to be more difficult than I thought. As it turns out my car (2002 Nissan Sentra, Spec V SER) comes with a "premium" stereo package which includes 7 speakers and a SW with amp in the trunk which makes things vastly more complicated. If I have had a normal stereo, the process would have been painless likely. Anyway not even the Nissan dealer wanted to touch it with a 10ft pole (jerks).

Eventually have a lot of research online, it seemed the cause of my troubles (Alternator whine, speakers popping, etc...) was because of multiple grounds, and no matter which way I tried to ground the thing, nothing would work. Talking to places, they would want to rewire the whole car system (at large cost). Finally I found a possible solution, in a electronic device called a "Ground Loop Isolator". Obviously not something you find everywhere, and because I wanted it NOW (I was really sick of this project not working), one of only places that had such a thing was Radio Shack. So I went to Radio Shack for the first time in a long time.

Not only did none of the staff know what the hell I was talking about or even if they carried it, it took all the staff to even find one on their shelf. It was only 2 channel, so I would probably have to buy 2, and they cost 50$. As it was I decided to buy one and try it out. I did it in the parking lot as I brought my tools. As it turns out, it wasn't even the correct one, as it had only male connectors, not both male and female. I immediately returned it, and got my 50$ back.

Then I went online and got this:
http://www.monoprice.com/Produ...

It cost me 8$, was 4 channel, and had the correct connectors. I installed it, and it works fine. It messes with your levels, so you have to adjust them in your stereo setup at the start. Which can be annoying as every time I take my car in for service they seem to love disconnecting my battery, which resets my stereo to the defaults, which makes me have to set it up again. However it does what it is supposed to do.

So it is not surprising that they are going out of business. If you are going to sell overpriced electronics, you actually need staff that know what they are selling or talking about. Otherwise I might as well just go online and take my chances...