What's in it for Microsoft, when the upgrades are free? They've had six years to make improvements that users might pay for and they're just going to hand them over for free. Why? They're not making profit on the hardware the way Apple does, selling software is their core business. Part of getting a new machine is also getting the latest OS, if you already have Win10 on your 2.8 GHz i7-860 w/DDR3 and 16x PCIe 2.0 and add a new graphics card and some more RAM you have a pretty solid platform to play with. It's not like they massively improve each year anymore.

I think it's about control. Users have repeatedly refused to get on boards Microsoft's failtrains like ME, Vista and Win8 staying on the last good version for years. I think it's everybody on the Win10 train and when they pull another stunt there's nowhere to get off, if you want to stay supported you'll be upgrading to the latest 10.x release whether you want to or not. Unlike the OS service packs are only supported for a short while and in this new model it's not even clear if consumers will get that or if it's just one update stream of security patches and "upgrades" all rolled into one.

And you're playing at most 1920x1080x60 Hz, from what I understand often less. This is the kind of card you want if you're looking for 2560x1440x144 Hz or 3840x2160x60 Hz gaming on say an Acer XB270HU or XB280HK, pushing at least 4x as many pixels. For games that only run at 30 fps or 720p/900p make that 6x-8x as many pixels. Sure, it's like comparing a soccer mom car to a $100k+ sports car, it's not "sensibly" priced. It has terrible MPG with a 250W power consumption. But when you put the pedal to the metal, it's seriously fast.

The Titan X was clearly a "because we're the fastest, charge double" card. I guess you're always looking at it from your point of view and saying the others are the insane ones, "Paying a $1000 for a graphics card? That's crazy, I'll settle for a $650 GTX 980 Ti". Next guy says "Paying $650 for a graphics card? That's crazy, it'll settle for a $199 GTX 960" and so on. Basically you spend relative to your interest and the amount of money you can comfortably spend. Don't go to a five star luxury resort if the budget says a hostel, but if you can afford the resort do it. YOLO and all that.

Uh, no. You're not trying to find a needle in a haystack, the ATM is trying to determine if the one person in front of the camera matches the one identity on file. it doesn't matter if there's 300.000 people who look enough like you to pass the check as long as the thief is one of the other 300+ million. You're weeding out the 99.9% who look nothing like you.

The repair business is way down. Say 25 years ago small electronics repair was a big thing, radios, TVs, computers, stereos and so on. Except for warranty repair - which is suspect is more and more synonymous with warranty replacement or the replacement of complete subsystems - nobody really does that anymore. It went from replacing capacitors to replacing cards to just replacing the whole unit, while the skill level dropped from engineer to glorified delivery boy.

Nobody I know mends their clothes or socks or shoes anymore, they come cheaper off the assembly line. Really all the kinds of small household items I'd be more inclined to replace than start finding duct tape and glue. Maintenance is a little better, I still need people to paint walls but a quick search indicates robots want to take that job too.

More and more has embedded diagnostic sensors and service programs where you're really just following a list of instructions, granted the actual work is still done manually but by much lower skilled staff than before. The less electronics is involved, the more likely your job is safe. Also fixed items that you can't easily replace like electric wiring, water/sewage pipes or air conditioning. Make sure you need actual skills, not just swapping parts as otherwise it won't pay well or be very fun.

The magic you're looking for is called "investments". I can't run an ad hoc burger shop from my home kitchen and make that a viable business by selling one burger, then two, three and so on. I'd have to find a location, get furniture and equipment, supplies, utility services, permits and staff so I can keep stable business hours and so on. On day one I'm in a net negative and I'll pretty quickly need a big turnaround to cover running costs and make a return on investment. The software business is the exception here where many have started with nothing and just written code without any real investment except time.

In practice that's how it is for many software projects too, if you want to launch an AAA game you can't write a little, sell a little and so on. You need to hire lots of people, give them enough time (= money) and make a big splash selling for more than you spent. Or something boring like accounting software, if you can't do the tax forms right it simply won't sell. That's generally how the world works, people want to buy finished products not buy the book while it's written or the movie while it's filmed. But that investment requires a return on investment.

Which brings us to open source, which sucks at that. Service and support is almost purely a "What have you done for me lately?" business, if it's the kind of software you'd buy support for in the first place. You have Kickstarter and other crowdfunding schemes, but you have no idea what and if anything really is going to be delivered at the end of the day. And there could be a lot of bad blood if someone does the heavy lifting while someone else gets paid off for exposing the functionality. Cooperation and money generally don't mix well. So that is why I think open source is often caught in this Catch-22, it's not that it's impossible to get out of but you'll get no reward for making the effort.

It's not their fault that I can't play GTA V either, but it's a pretty good reason to stay on Windows. I have used WINE quite a bit back when I tried to run Linux and really half the problem with it is the same as with overclocking, if it's buggy now is it the application or the emulation? And what do you do if there's a bug somewhere in the bowels of WINE that nobody will support? Playing around with it on my desktop where it's my time on the line is fine, I wouldn't rely on it in a business setting.

Same goes with lack of drivers, proprietary protocols, proprietary file formats and whatnot it's not anybody's fault. It's still a pain in the ass for anyone trying to use Linux where the de facto standard is something else. That said, with mobile and tablets there's a whole lot of non-Windows code being written out there, I wonder when Google will get serious about an Android desktop. Or at least something more widely targeted than Chromebook.

Stop thinking about it as a computer, start thinking about it as an antique. It is the beginning of the company with the highest market cap in the world and whose products are a household item. If you have an "Apple I" billions of people will recognize the product or the company, perhaps even more than a Picasso or Da Vinci. It is a very tangible, practical showpiece that doesn't easily decay or require tons of maintenance that is very rare - 63 are known to still exist - but not so uniquely rare as to all be locked up in an art museum, nor so huge and impractical as the first computers.

Compared to other showoff pieces it doesn't have any nasty history like old artifacts stolen from somewhere, it doesn't involve rare or endangered animals, it's somewhat nerdy but I'd consider it similar to owning a genuinely antique car. You might only drive it for a parade or not at all, but it's the classic "I got something you don't got" which is the essence for rich people who want to impress other rich people. The manly verison of women who pay 10x as much to wear a designer dress - which sometimes is neither prettier nor more practical - but more exclusive.

The details may be a bit fuzzy, but entropy makes forever seem impossible and it doesn't rely on any particular macro model. The one exception is the Big Bang, which created a ridiculous amount of energy in a point source. It doesn't matter if we invent fission/fusion/anti-matter/warp drive to colonize the universe or Dyson's spheres to harness the power of entire stars, eventually all the stars run out of fuel and we die even if we've figured out how to rejuvenate and live "forever". Or we'll discover some freaky quantum effect that makes energy seep into our universe tomorrow, leaving us with an infinite power source. Or in a million years. It's not exactly an immediate concern and mostly belongs in a philosophy class, if everything will end does anything have a meaning.

Yes, but the whole plug to make it /.-worthy is that he's using 3D PRINTING. Which is pretty much like saying he's saving the Louvre by making PNGs of Mona Lisa for home printing. Most any art of significance is extensively photographed, measured and cataloged. Without the artifacts themselves you're relying on a chain of authenticity, meaning that whatever you photoshopped at home won't matter one bit. In short, your 3D printer is no more significant in preserving history than your 2D printer is, which is to say not at all.

I don't think that argument is going to fly, because you could argue the same about landscape photography. Nature isn't copyrighted and you could have been at the same place at the same time choosing to capture the same image. Yet that particular image is copyrighted. I think the argument will be that even though it's transformational, it is also part original. Imagine for example a news article, even though it may quote pieces of a book for context, it clearly also contains a lot of the journalist's original thoughts.

This isn't actually new ground, it's been thoroughly reviewed with songs and compilation albums, photographs and photobooks and many other situations. The selection, structure and composition may give rise to a new copyright on making that particular arrangement. I can license all the songs of one of the "Absolute hits" CDs, yet I can't make the exact same compilation CD. Then again, I think you'd have a strong case for a "fair use" defense of anyone using your work in a "fair use" way.

And there's a feedback loop here too, because you a) have less life left to live and b) is generally weaker you get less treatment. A relative of mine is dying from cancer and it's low intensity life-prolonging treatment. If he was 20 years younger, they'd put him on high intensity drugs that would keep the cancer suppressed much, much longer. If he was 50 years younger, they'd probably try a full bone marrow transplant which is a massive procedure that is not only ridiculously expensive but likely to kill the old by itself. So being forever young wouldn't just avoid age-related diseases, it'd open up far stronger treatments as well.

Why artificial? All the blueprints are in my DNA. On severe burn victims they do muscle and skin grafts, with sufficiently advanced technology we could grow pretty much anything. The non-ethical way would be to just clone me, zap the higher brain functions and keep for 15 years in a vegetative state you'll have all the organs to fit an adult man. The ethical way would be to find ways to grow just that organ in a lab. It wouldn't be the cure to everything as you could have brain tumors and whatnot but you could get pretty far that way.

Since you have different DC voltages you either need DC wall warts (not achieving anything), per outlet transformers (sounds expensive and turn the socket into a wall wart) or one circuit per outlet (sounds expensive and needs big conduits). And because of fire risk, property damage and whatnot you'll never get to use the same plug, tripling each outlet. Then you need something fancy to flip each socket at the source and what part of the socket is powered at the sink in a safe way, for every outlet. And I doubt 9VDC/500mW-2A matters much economically, if you want the aesthetics embed the wall wart in the wall, it'll probably be less hassle than the alternatives.

Nerd fail, invalid use of significant digits ;). Though I was thinking the same thing, one in a million doesn't seem very significant. It's like 5 people dying in my country of 5 million, that's one bad car crash not exactly dropping like flies.

Fair enough, many climb Mount Everest for no better reason.

Well mostly you'll be living in a bunker living off a long supply chain from Earth. It'll be a lot like living on a submarine that you mostly endure rather than pioneer. Many will envy you going, not so many the actual living conditions.

Name the third guy to set foot on the moon. I'm not saying there's no fame, but there's many easier ways to celebrity status. Except if you're the next Neil Armstrong.

True. But I imagine it'll be a rather unglamorous and unthankful task. Remember that you're a million miles away from any fans or fame, no vacations or time off and it's unlikely any amount of money will get you fresh bacon and eggs.

And as for changing the world, they won't send you up there just to be a warm body. If you can change the world up there, you can probably change the world down here too. There's thousands of people who can say they contributed to the Apollo program, even though they never went to the moon.