Yes, HD-DVD did not have region lock where BD-DVD did not. However, that had nothing to do with why BD-DVD won out. IIRC, BD-DVD had a higher amount of data, and simply had a wider deployment since Sony put a BD-DVD player in every Playstation 3, so game makers and more were already pushing BD-DVD for that reason alone. There was no similar push for HD-DVD except the ill-fated Add-on for the XBox that Microsoft did. If Microsoft had made it built-in component, then there probably would have been a bigger battle between the two since the XBox sold nearly as well as the PS3 at the time.

That's why I buy DVD. I don't buy BD-DVDs (aka Blu-Ray DVDs). The movie industry is still having a very hard time with people buying BD-DVDs.

I wouldn't agree. There's a lot of things in the C# and C++/CLI (aka Managed C++) world that are just ass-backwards. If I wanted the advantage of what the .NET CLR gives me - supposed platform independences - then I'd write Java. As it is, I don't write Java b/c Java is a major PITA with no advantages over C++ or Python.

Only advantage of .NET CLR/C#/etc is that it is heavily optimized for the Windows environments so its gets a boost that other frameworks (e.g Java) cannot take advantage of. But that, again, goes against the whole platform independence.

Regarding Mono, it's not worth the bytes that make up the source. Apart from the potential legal issues (patents MS holds wrt to Mono were only licensed to Novell/SuSE users for a 5 year period, which has since expired), the APIs are highly tied to Windows. Yes, Mono has made some Gtk equivalents, but then why use it? Why not just use Gtk/C/C++ to start with?

Qt is by far better designed. WxWidgets and Gtk are probably better designed too.

MS doesn't take a cut because you're giving it to them by using their Platform - Windows. VC++ is a write off in that manner. They invest highly in it to get Developers to write for their platform and products and write it off as part of the marketing/promotion/etc of the various products and company as a whole. If they didn't have Visual Studios then there would be a lot fewer developers developing specifically for Windows, and thus a lot less incentive for people to use Windows.

Microsoft does the same thing. For instance, one company I know of bought a product. They thought they had all the licensing taken care of, only to later discover that they needed another $500m in Terminal Services licenses. Sure, MS might not have taken a cut from the product developers, but they sure did get a big cut of the sales (possibly more than what the product developers originally got).

Or for instance if you develop using SQL Server Express (or whatever it is called now) and they outgrow what that will do; the choice? You build support for another database (e.g MySQL, MariaDB, PostgresSQL, Oracle, DB2, etc) or you help them upgrade SQLServer Express to SQL Server - which of course carries a lot of licensing and hardware requirements with it. Again, a big cut for Microsoft and one that the customer might not have anticipated.

That depends on where you live. The elected DA is only the one at the top of the DA's office. There are many attorney's under them that also receive the monitor "DA" whom are not elected; they do have to balance out cases against how the elected DA sets priorities, but they are more or less just regular attorney's working as prosecuters.

Again, it's all a matter of where you live. Not all areas even allow the top DA to be elected; while other areas have more of the chain in the election routine.

Well, you'd be wrong.

My mom once tested out how fast the car could go (when she was a teen) nearby a police station because she figured they wouldn't be looking there. Things have changed a little since, but most likely it's still the case that they tend to turn a blind eye around the station because of the (incorrect) bias that "no would be dumb enough to commit crimes near the station".

And the beauty of the Second Amendment of the U.S Constitution is that you do too.

You example is allowed for the safety of the officer and others (thus you are not allowed to refuse), and is already after probable cause having been established (on account of the grounds for arrest being present); however, in most cases you can refuse unless they have a warrant - even if the court would consider it a valid case of a valid warrantless search.

It may increase their ability, but the reality is that people are less likely too as it placates them unless someone tries to mess with one of the things that is placating them.

This is why Social Security and Medicare/Medicaide are such hot bed political topics and essentially considered a no-no to touch politically, despite the fact that they need drastic overhauls to be sustainable (assuming that is even possible; for Social Security it isn't as designed).

I'd say your drop of the rest of the sentence there was its own problem. The parent (quoted by me as well) was probably be facitious in their question.

Well, no it wouldn't be a 5th Amendment Issue, it'd be a 4th Amendment issue since the 4th Amendment requires a Search Warrant for the government, and the Search Warrant must have limits. A Search Warrant, btw, is only issued via the Judicial Branch not the Executive Branch.

So they could still stand up and say "no; provide us a Warrant first".

And that too would also be within the law as the law is superceded by the Constitution and any amendments therein; thus even though it may have been passed prior the Amendment, the Amendment still takes precedent and therefore limits the law and the government thereby still requiring a Warrant and changing to "the government must do what it can (within the law) to obtain the information". If they can't get a warrant than they have still satisfied the law in question.

No, you got that wrong. You give them Welfare, Social Security, and Health Care so that you can do whatever you want to do since you can then start finger pointing at the other guy to change the conversation by saying "but he wants to take away X" instead of talking about the actual issue at hand.

And prior to land animals and anything in the seas.

Most of those hacks are not really hacks - just things that were there for testing that users discovered; some things will always be possible if you put enough effort into it.

For instance, an easy way to negate the hack my friend did is to force the download of the content in upon the connection to the network; this however has two hacks: (i) doing something that prevents the download and thus forces it back into using whatever is cached on disk which can be manipulated, and (ii) adding some kind of MITM that lets you inject the content you like - this however may be at the cost of some latency which most players wouldn't like.

As you said, it's a bit of an "arms race", but the race is more people discovering what developers did than cracking into the software.

Given that many programmers take the "path of least resistence" and don't optimize programs much besides what the compiler does, I would certainly agree that we are not utilizing computers to their full potential. However, an AI would not be able to do so either without being trained how to organize itself better for the hardware it is using. It won't just magically come up with a more efficient algorithm to do what it is doing without being taught something about how to optimize and how the hardware it is using works.

True; though the examples for today - such as the genetic one you quote - are considered "specialist AIs" and in some respects are not much of an AI at all, much like IBM's Deep Blue or Watson computers are not really AI, just very fast depth search algorithms that can mimick an AI to some degree in a very specialized field.

Well, technically they're not being good stewards (per Christianity) in doing so, but legally they have probably jeopardized their "church" non-profit status as a result.

Funny thing is - the conservative right-wingers will typically take money if you make it available, but they don't typically want it made available as they'd rather not pay the higher taxes that cover it to start with. However, it's the liberal left-wingers that want the higher taxes and all the "free" money programs that everyone (especially the liberals) abuses. The right-wingers would prefer the "market" handle things instead; most will agree that some level of oversight is necessary when it comes to safety, etc but that it should still remain minimal; unlike the left-winger "you didn't build that" sentimentality.