And still it boils down to us giving it task and the computer executing it, once it's done it shuts down. What do you do to build an AI that doesn't have any particular purpose, just a general curiosity for life? What do you do to create a sense of self-awareness and an AI that doesn't want to be terminated? Computers are incredible at executing tasks people give it, but it doesn't have a self. It doesn't do anything by itself for itself because it wants to do it. But since we have no clue what makes us tick, I don't suppose there's much chance we can teach an AI.

It was designed from scratch to be a multi-user system, which is neat and took Microsoft at least until UAC in 2006 to really implement. On the other hand Microsoft is the one who had a fleet of PCs that needed managing and created AD, which is the bread and butter of most corporate networks. That you can ssh in and run scripts isn't even close, I know there are third party tools to mimic some of it but there it's Microsoft that has the native advantage. And you can lock it way more down than the defaults.

In the end, even when you work with sensitive or critical information it's about getting the job done. And here's the real deal with how it works most place. Say 100 admins choose Windows, 99 do fine and one is hit by lightning. And 100 admins choose Linux, 99 get the evil eye and one is a hero for dodging lightning. Who wins? Usually the Windows admins where shit didn't hit the fan, because the happy Windows users outnumber the miserable Linux users. Those who got pwned aren't enough to swing the overall mood.

Well, I'm not sure I agree. The wikipedia definition:

I think some limited forms of "simulated physical presence" is possible here in situations where you're not free to move, but the world appears to move around you, for example you're on a roller coaster ride. Granted that is somewhat like what you could do with 3D IMAX, but the goggles means you get full 360 degree experience as if you were the only one there, you can't break the illusion by looking at the people next to you. Being on the back of a giant bird like they show in the demo as well. Here's the Navy in a parachute VR simulator, you could probably get the tandem jump experience. What you don't get is control, you can't ride the bird or direct the parachute because it's a movie. You're on a scripted experience that must be exactly the same each run, it could still be pretty cool though.

P.S. Actual 3D movies with screen changes would probably be quite disturbing, it's one thing to flip from angle to angle and location to location on a 2D/3D screen, either you have to do it very differently or it's like getting randomly teleported around constantly.

I guess the problem is you... I've had my iPhone for almost 4 years now, cracked the screen once from hitting a stone floor but I don't blame it and a case adds annoyingly much bulk, I tried it and stopped. It's different from back when the screen was a small auxiliary to a phone, using the screen is now the main purpose of a smartphone. That means it needs to be way bigger and more exposed, Apple or not.

Well, mainly because it'd be a total pain to let anyone else use it so there's no real advantage to rent it except for professional maintenance/repair/fleet management. If my apartment building had a "house Roomba" that I could book to come in and clean a few hours a week while at work I'd easily rent that service. Even with a daily commute I'd wager that a car could manage three rounds (7 AM, 8 AM, 9 AM in the morning, 3 PM, 4 PM, 5 PM in the evening) instead of just one as well as off-hour trips and not everyone needs a car every weekend so I imagine there's significant cost savings. Taxis are very nice in everything except price.

And he also describes his politics as "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan". I guess if you see the non-Western Civilization as the enemy, then foreign aid is aiding and abetting them. Because total war justifies children dying of starvation, dirty water, lack of housing or basic healthcare. Except western civilization has been "helping the savages" for a long time, what's lacking is just the religious indoctrination of missionaries, I guess without the reward in followers it's not worth the compassion. Sounds like a great Christian. Here in Norway we've pretty much stopped pushing Christianity on people, there's still a lot of personal faith but I am somewhat concerned that other aggressive religions continues to expand and convert but I'm hoping they can be secularized too. It's not like the Church has been the shining example of democracy, equality, tolerance etc. anyway.

Part of that nationalism is significantly overrated, I don't care if Norwegians eat sushi (Japan). I don't care if they listen to blues (US) or reggae (Jamaica). I don't care if hundreds of millions read/watch Harry Potter to create some kind of "global" culture, though I suppose that's <10% actually. What I do care about are laws and social norms, we've spent the last 100+ years turning Christianity from a patriarchal, reactionary, homophobic organization who fought hard against all kinds of self-perceived "wickedness" to a mostly cuddly care bear so we could have peace, prosperity and progress. If you look at the worst ongoing conflicts the biggest and worst are always about religion. Even if ours is somewhat benign it's part of the problem, not the solution.

At a consulting company I used to work at we defined our "core processes" and in a bizarre act of simple self insight - probably because it wasn't billable - they found we had two:

1. Sell
2. Deliver

You're the system architect, are you the one doing the selling? Because I can't stress this enough, if you're not making sales you're going out of business fast. Even if you don't need a traditional salesman somebody has to promote the product in all sorts of media and get the word out to all your potential customers. The other part is having at least one guy who really groks code, since you're not it. You're going to produce a version 1.0 and it's going to have rough edges and it's going to have bugs. You won't have the to do all the things you'd like to do because you need to ship and make money, so stay on top of your early clients and make sure what bothers them is a top priority.

Is it a database-driven UI application? If so make sure you got database design experience as horrible table design and data inconsistencies will come back to haunt you, user interface designer who can also double as technical writer so your users actually understand to use it - this is also far harder than you think - in addition to the generic data processing skills. And really if that's three people, one salesman and if you haven't even started yet I wouldn't plan past that at the moment. If you're still alive and making money and looking to expand then you can start considering the rest. You'll quickly enough see where you need more people because you're out of resources, don't forget that the primary concern is running a business and secondary keeping your employees happy, if you fail at the first you fail.

Not just that, we use a very limited part of our vision. The actual reading we do with the super-sharp fovea (3 degrees wide) while keeping track of line to line using the semi-sharp macula (18 degrees wide). The remaining 160 degrees of horizontal vision and 120 degrees of vertical vision aren't really effective to use. What you want for immersion like games or video is totally different from the optimal width for a newspaper column. In fact, an A4 page full of typically sized text is probably too wide and an artifact of punch cards and typewriters, research suggests ~60 characters per line rather than 80 as optimal. And we got 600 years of research on this.

Come on, there's an arbitrary number of formulas that could be used to encode the next bit. If you look at a sequence 1 3 5 7 and ask what's the next number most people would answer 9. Then the answer is "11, because it's the odd numbers excluding squares like 3*3 = 9" and people would go "How the f*ck should I know that?" and there's no analytic function that says how "weird" your formula is. You're just making a guess of how long it'd take before someone tries a formula like this, it could be in five minutes or fifty years.

Also, a cypher would be all but useless for building a TrueCrypt replacement because the secret is in the algorithm, not the key. Everyone with the software would have the cypher, it only works if that's a shared secret between you and the one you want to communicate with. Modern cryptographic software is built on the assumption that the algorithm is so strong that it doesn't matter unless the attacker has the key. Why create anything less, unless you plan to do it by hand?

Translation: Our core business (browsers) is so ridiculously profitable and since our mission is open ended we can spend it on almost any pet project we like. Sounds like a good opportunity for a smaller and more focused group to create a better fork and run off with the market, but what do I know. It seems Firefox was initially a two-three man project (depending on which page I look at) that rebelled against the Mozilla suite, with ~17% market share (according to StatCounter) being worth $300 million then 0.17% should be worth $3 million. That sounds like solid money for a reachable goal, if you got enhancements that would make 1% of the user base switch.

Probably this, but who says they'll keep bumping it? Maybe they really wanted to do 7 now and 10 was the first non-confusing number. Maybe Windows 11 => 10.1, Windows 12 = 10.2, Windows 13 = 10.3, Windows 14 = 14. Like so many point out, it's not really a number anyway and you don't do arithmetic with it. 10 > 6 the same way 7 > 6, either way it's a major version bump. I doubt anyone in marketing even knows what kernel version they're running and if they did they wouldn't care.

Well, I hate getting into a process too early and I hate getting into a process too late. Too early and they still haven't agreed on what it is they want, why they want it and you end up wasting time listening to a whole lot of arguing and proposals back and forth that have nothing to do with the technical feasibility of any solution. It's like having the chef waiting while the guests are debating fish vs steak vs chicken, they're all good dishes so pick the one you want. It's another thing if they're looking for help at finding a best practice, but in my experience they don't look to IT for that.

Come in too late and the requirements are woefully inadequate while the solution is half-designed with no regards to sanity. Like a proposal I recently reviewed, it had very little in terms of objetives and results but an almost complete IT solution that'd be a technical, administrative and logistical nightmare. Written by somebody knows the subject matter very well but has never managed more than his own laptop, my Dunning-Kruger meter went all the way to 11. And he wins most arguments by exhaustion, he makes these long deliberations in a slow, monotone voice that drives me nuts.

Well, more than half the trouble with micro-payments is getting you to sign up for an account and tie it to a credit card. Once they have that, they can up-sell you more. And I'm betting Google is giving them a sweet deal because once you need to be signed in to Google to avoid the ads when visiting your favorite sites you'll in practice be signed in 24x7. And if they didn't have a good profile on you before, they sure will now.

True, but how often do you hear people here complain about CEOs making millions? Either it's related to effort "He's golfing with vendors and reading trade magazines while I work my butt off 60+ hours a week" or results "I've created millions in revenue for them and after 20 years they lay me off and outsource my job to India." Does anybody tell you to STFU, take an MBA and become a CEO yourself? No. But if a nurse complains about long shifts and crappy pay for saving lives then it's easy to pull the same card and say if you wanted to become an engineer, well you could have picked a different career. If you want to argue that the free market hasn't provided you with a pay equal to what you're worth that's fine, just don't be a hypocrite when others do it too.

Your pay is basically as much as necessary and as little as they can get away with, if the job is important or not doesn't really matter only the price of your replacement. That's why they made minimum wage laws, otherwise they'd have people underbidding each other until they were all working for pennies. It's nice when you're on the upside having a rare skill that's unexpectedly in demand and can command a fat pay check, but if you think your real worth to society is so high because you can make big money throwing a football in NFL or writing HFT routines for Wall Street you're wrong.

How does sex tie in to this? Well, according to feminists the reason "female" professions is paid so low is because the jobs are being systematically undervalued compared to equivalent work dominated by men because the executives - that are mostly men - can get away with it. Kind of like the two wolves and a sheep story, except the wolves are just deciding sheep work is worth less, if you want wolf pay you must do wolf work. Note that in many of the "female" professions like grade school teachers or nurses there's no direct economic output. What second grade math is worth is largely what society's perception of the value is. It's a lot easier to say that without this developer we can't deliver this product that'll create this much revenue.

I'm not saying that there actually is a problem, but it's not an open and shut case. Since it's inherently comparing apples and oranges I guess there'll never be absolute truth. I think it happens with minorities though, for example in cleaning services because the language requirements are practically none. If companies more-or-less collude to depress prices, they can squeeze out the natives which get better paying jobs elsewhere while the immigrants have very little choice but to keep working. Is creating such an ethnicly-dominated, extremely low paid underclass racism? Or reflection of their lack of work skills? I'm inclined to go with pure captialism, if women can't/won't leave "their" occupations that will be exploited to pay them less.

No, they're just pointing out that if you want to use it as a "private cloud" to sync your own files between your own devices you need a seed. Let's for example say you have a cell phone, a tablet and a laptop and they're on and off at different times then BT Sync only works when several of them are online and depending on setup, I wouldn't want my cell phone to try pulling down everything on my laptop. Not like iCloud or whatever where your cell phone can upload photos to "the cloud" while your tablet and laptop is off.