Here (in upstate NY) Verizon runs the phone system - and they can't keep that thing running for 10 minutes it seems - if you can even get it (my appartment building is not wired for Verizon anything - phone or other). In my old place an hour away I had Verizon phone and DSL (don't get me started), that's where the phone kept going down. Cable is rock solid, and home cell service is a good backup (they even offer a home phone box that has a nice built in battery backup that can run for a few hours).

On a side note, I suspect you are deferring to "what seems to make sense" talking about "analog" phone service being simpler and easier to understand than the more complex VOIP systems, with their increased number of failure points due to the added complexity. This is insufficient thinking on a number of points, but mostly it indicates a tendency toward fundamental thinking, which can lead to all kinds of zealotry like Libertarianism, or other ideology. It's the outcome that matters, and I suspect that's different everything when it comes to phone service and other regionally deployed technologies.

There are plenty of places where the older, simpler analog systems are run by bigger dunderheads than comparatively more complex systems, and that has a much bigger impact on success and failure rates than some idea of how simple it works. Then there's the economics, the age of the equipment/industry, etc., etc.... Lot's of things matter more than what seems to make sense.

TWC just wants you to send them increasing amounts of money. They don't care for what.

No one needs to do anything for software to run on these at all. nVidia would be developing a kernel module or something that would JIT existing software into their optimized in-order pipeline, then cache that result. The out-of-order architectures all do this too - in hardware (which uses more power maybe, but also executes more quickly and theoretically gets into sleep mode more often).

There's no need for anyone to generate special code for these CPUs, but it is interesting that a common perception is that there is a need to do so.

What I'm curious about is whether they could take the actual Transmeta route, and translate x86 bytecode (or anything else) in software to their own in-order architecture, or if there are enough low level APIs open for end users to take a stab at it (to create awesome emulators).

This highlights the need for citizens who would set up municipal broadband to better understand the techniques of propaganda (marketing in the US) and communication - and to not forget to utilize those techniques to further their own agendas. A technique isn't evil or good - it's just a technique, and an advantage if it's a good one.

Some understanding of cognitive science and political science wouldn't hurt either.

I was thinking more of a half of the screen from one cable, half of the screen from the other to effectively use the whole screen from one machine.

Computers can handle multiple monitors at 60Hz, so why not 4K with duel inputs? Is that feasible, and are there some models on the horizon that have multiple HDMI, dual-dvi, or dual-display port (pre-thunderbolt-2 display port - I don't know the version numbers)? It seems it could be possible.

The guys that vacuumed up all the money in the US economy through (continuing) extraction in the name of "free markets" and other cockeyed holy market nonsense, own industries other than anything that might grow and/or create jobs. So they spent all that money legally bribing elected officials to pass laws lackies for the wealthy owners of all the capital wrote, to advantage themselves over everyone else. When they still can't out compete anyone else to turn a profit, because they have a declining asset (or even industry), then they use the same levers of power to make sure no one else can rival them.

Why can Europe do it? Because they have people there organized into political parties who believe there should be something in the economy for them too, and don't just believe in holy markets for the sake of economic royalists, like we do here in the US.

Do to be clear, you imagine everyone has access to clean water, all the food they need in their personal farms, and the means to harvest all that - in their back yards?!

You might need to think about what sustains you, where it comes from - and especially how it gets to your dinner table before making such a ridiculous assertion as "Roads aren't essential for survival."

Next you'll tell me child labor laws aren't essential to stop child labor abuses, or that polio vaccines aren't essential to survive polio outbreaks.

Good grief.

Do you have to be a political dissident (or some kind of criminal) to be targeted by law enforcement? It sometimes seems as if no one knows why we have courts at all. Maybe we should skip all that and just let the NSA/FBI/police lock people up straight away.

Capitalism only works for capitalists - those who own and control the means of production. In capitalism, they get to make all the decisions. This is why capitalists governments all over the world are currently failing to meet the demands of the public. If you don't own any capital (and most of us don't), it's just a fool's paradise.

Capitalism (in your narrative) worked a little while only because there was a broad social contract in place, that for a generation or two people really did adhere to (and was enshrined in law, institution and culture). That social contract has been torn up, replaced with "greed is good" which is a more "pure" form of capitalism, and now here we are, a shitty cut throat system that most of us (except some of the 1%) don't like.

I guess the rest of us, those with non-market driven interests (life, liberty, happiness, etc.), may have to actually get involved in government! If all politicians are getting is lobbied from private interest A and private interest B, well, they have a decision to make - A or B!

They'll need an option C.

When a group of business men/women lobby the government for special rules on behalf of their own private interests, and those of their companies (or bribe/buy special rules) - I suppose that's a kind of "politics protecting business." I never understand who exactly is supposed to protect "the free market" from this kind of behavior in this quirky American libertarian dream world that IT specialists seem so fond of.

After a "free market' has run it's course to it's predictable - and predicted - consolidated end, exactly what benevolent force would prevent private market forces from exerting their accumulated power influence on a government for their own protection and benefit? And what would prevent them actually becoming the government as some in the same realm of IT specialists have recently suggested?

We used to have this idea that citizens had to work hard and engage in their government (which is to have the consent of the governed to be legitimate) to lobby on behalf of those things that aren't about money - life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc. Now it's all about the all mighty magical "free market," or more accurately neofuedalism.

Medieval times indeed.

er, pursued - why can't I find that edit button...

MLK, Gandi, etc. passionately perused peace. I'm not sure how passion means war exactly. Science and reason without conscience can be just as destructive or productive as other political motives (or even more so, since it's science, and can do everything better).