Comment Next month? (Score 1) 303
If he's just now become happy with the prototype, how are they going to be mass-producing it and selling it in just a month?
Comment Re:Here you go (Score 2, Funny) 287
If you want more information on that plane, you should read the book "Horten flies a Ho."
Comment What about browsing records? (Score 1) 1127
Even if that works on files you drag into the Trash, what about your browsing history and cache? Are those securely deleted when you clear them in Safari?
Bill Gates Remembers 1979 310
Hugh Pickens writes "Last week Gizmodo had a special celebration of 1979, the last year before a digital tsunami hit, that put Bill Gates in a nostalgic mood this week. Bill chimed in with his own memories of that seminal year when everything changed. 'In 1979, Microsoft had 13 employees, most of whom appear in that famous picture that provides indisputable proof that your average computer geek from the late 1970s was not exactly on the cutting edge of fashion,' wrote Gates. 'By the end of the year we'd doubled in size to 28 employees. Even though we were doing pretty well, I was still kind of terrified by the rapid pace of hiring and worried that the bottom could fall out at any time.' What made Gates feel a little more confident was that he began to sense that BASIC was on the verge of becoming the standard language for microcomputers. 'By the middle of 1979, BASIC was running on more than 200,000 Z-80 and 8080 machines and we were just releasing a new version for the 8086 16-bit microprocessor. As the numbers grew, we were starting to think beyond programming languages, too, and about the possibility of creating applications that would have real mass appeal to consumers.' Gates remembers that in 1979 there were only 100 different software products that had more than $100 M in annual sales and all of them were for mainframes. 'In April, the 8080 version of BASIC became the first software product built to run on microprocessors to win an ICP Million Dollar Award. Today, I would be surprised if the number of million-dollar applications isn't in the millions itself' writes Gates. 'More important, of course, is the fact that more than a billion people around the world use computers and digital technology as an integral part of their day-to-day lives. That's something that really started to take shape in 1979.'"
Comment "Self sustaining base" (Score 2, Insightful) 519
No, that is a indeed a fantasy. A self-sustaining base has to be able to produce food, clean water and energy. It has to be able to make replacement parts, and that means mines, chemical plants, machine shops, factories and chip-fabrication facilities. Oh, and also universities. That is a pure, utter fantasy given our current technology and our capacity for space travel. We can't make a self-sustaing colony on Antarctica or underwater, so why would you think we can do it on another planet?
Comment Re:We are a bunch (Score 2, Insightful) 898
There's plenty of reason to fear a plane that has military escorts, if the plane is over Manhattan. An air-to-air missile cannot vaporize a 747. If it was trying to do a kamikaze and they shot it down over Manhattan, it would simply crash in a slightly different place than it was aiming for.
Comment Re:People Don't Want Flat Speakers (Score 1) 93
Electrostats have to be placed several feet out from the wall for optimal sound, which defeats the purpose of having really thin speakers.
Comment Re:How do you reinvent Trek? (Score 1) 444
I believe JMS addressed the question of re-doing the CGI. He said that they had lost all the 3D models, so they had no way of updating the graphics. They would have to do everything from scratch, and nothing would look exactly the same.
There are also other issues, such as the prominent early-90's fashion in the early episodes. It looks pretty dated.
Comment What kind of screens do they have? (Score 1) 519
The previous 20" iMac had a TN screen, and the 24" was an IPS. What kind of screens do the new ones have?
Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 1) 743
Actually, it's called the parking brake, and it's there for... PARKING. It's better than nothing, but it won't slow you down nearly as fast as the regular brakes.
Comment You got served (Score 1) 204
Do they still allow papers to be served by way of a dance-off?
Comment Re:What is this? (Score 1) 663
Isn't there some requirement for a dance-off, as well?
Comment Re:How much spam? (Score 1) 335
I mostly use Yahoo accounts, and I get around 8-10 in my main account, the one that I've posted all over the Internet before spam was an issue. I used to get over 100 spams a day on that one, much more than my legit email. I've wondered whether this means there's less spam now, or if Yahoo is just better at filtering. The 100+ a day spams included the ones put in my spam folder, but maybe they're completely blocking some of them now.
Comment Re:They are obsolete (Score 2, Funny) 584
I think that pagers have been obsolete for more than 10 years now.
No, they aren't. Technology is cyclical.
A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed 461
Technologizer writes "Some folks are outraged over the lack of FireWire in the new MacBook released this week. But Apple wouldn't be Apple if it didn't move faster than any other computer company to kill technologies that may be past their prime. And history usually validates its decisions. We've posted a decade's worth of examples that prove the point."
