Win 3.x would pre-emptively multitask DOS windows if you had a 386. It was one of its touted features. (There may have been a setting to turn this off and on, it may have been off by default). Personally during this period I used DESQview (or however it was capitalized) as a multitasker.

Windows 3.0/3.1 would pre-emptively multitask DOS windows if running on an 80386.

So did the Acorn Archimedes (the computer the ARM CPU was originally made for). RiscOS even had things like anti-aliased fonts by then, and certain user interface concepts that didn't show up elsewhere until Mac OSX came out.

However, the PC and Microsoft was already massively entrenched, and the news was huge - finally the computers most people actually used at work were going to catch up with the Mac, Amiga, Archimedes and other machines.

But anyone could tell that Windows was going to be huge. The PC was already dominant and Microsoft was already nearing monopoly position in the PC market (and IBM compatibles at the time had fallen in price such that they were price competitive with the Amiga) and the upgrade path for most people was not to buy a whole new computer but just add Windows.

I remember the news at the time. It was huge. Finally, the PC that nearly everyone was using was catching up to the Mac, Archimedes, Amiga etc.

Raising minimum wage *past a certain point* won't help anyone. If you've ever done basic calculus you will have come across the concept of oprimization - in the abstract for instance, finding where the derivative of a function that's some sort of concave-down curve crosses zero.

The minimum wage will be like that. If you graphed the spending power of the minimum wage people (their income minus their expenses) it will probably be some kind of curve. Starting from zero, the graph will slope upwards, until you hit a peak, and then it will slope downwards as the increased labour cost exceeds the benefit of higher wages.

We are probably somewhere to the left of this optimal point. The increase LA is making probably will move people closer to the optimal point. Increasing the minimum wage to $100/hr will move you to a point far to the right of the point at which the first derivative of the graph crosses zero.

Most farms are highly mechanised and the cost of labour makes up only a tiny part of the cost. (My dad's ex's family are farmers, and farms employ a tiny fraction of the number of people than they did even just 40 years ago).

That assumes 100% of the cost of a product is labour costs.

In reality this is not true. In your example, the wage might go from $60/day to $120/day, but the product will go from $60 before to $80 after. Competition will mean many businesses take lower profits rather than pass on the entire price increase, and virtually no products are 100% labour cost. While wages cannot be raised infinitely, there will be an optimal point, and I suspect we are well below that optimal point as other cities have already demonstrated.

Only if 100% of that product's cost is labour.

In reality this is rarely true, and competition means that businesses often can't pass on all of the cost increase - what it'll mean is businesses will make a little less profit, prices will increase by less than the increase in the minimum wage, and more people will have some sort of disposable income they can now spend on discretionary items. So sales increase.

Certainly you can't raise wages infinitely, and at some point you'll hit a peak, but I suspect we are a long way below that peak.

I'm not sure how they hope to contain such a yeast strain. Sure, they can lock it up *now*, but for how long will that last? It'll only take a single corrupt employee, or group of employees, being offered more money than they could ever hope to make in several lifetimes. Then it's out in the wild. Unless they plan on building in some kind of critical vulnerability in the strain, any home brewer can replicate the yeast with ease. Even if they do build in a critical vulnerability, it'll be an "addon" and thus, possible to disable.

I foresee another "War on Drugs" coming, where the objective in unobtainable. Fortunately after the first round of funding, the objective becomes irrelevant ( of course, the cynic in me is YELLING that the objective IS the funding..but I digress ).

You're still not going to fool me. Years ago when my old CRT TV failed, I upgraded to a largish screen LCD. Works perfectly fine, still, even close to 7 years later.

I didn't need a 3d tv, or a 4k later. I really don't want a "smart" tv, despite the deliciously ironic name. I'm not going to upgrade every couple years, no matter what you try.

I half expect "smell-o-vision" next.

...even though this isn't an election year, per se.

Sad that we can only hope for some semblance of our lawmakers actually doing their jobs for the barest fraction of time we pay attention to them doing it.

Fun story; prostitution is likely cheaper than marriage. When you factor in all the crap that comes along with marriage, paying a high end prostitute 4 times a month is usually a cheaper route to take.

A valid point as well; young women's ability is overvalued while young men's abilities are undervalued.

However, I suspect how society has been treating men for the past several decades plays into the VG and porn "addiction". We're told any sexual advances we ( men ) make are wrong, and they objectify women, but we're still expected to make them or we're "not men". Well, guess what? A lot of us are tired of the doublespeak and the games where we're always at a disadvantage ( one way or another, we're "wrong" ), so instead we choose to check out.

Why bother? Why waste all that time and energy for a potential reward? Video games and porn are a guaranteed rate of return and thus, a better value.

He's looking at the symptoms and declaring them to be the problem without any real understanding of the underlying causes.

Guys focusing on video games and porn are a natural result in a society which is heavily biased in favor of women. Hell, I'd rather avoid dealing with women romantically too, given all the risks involved. All it takes is the mere accusation of rape, and a man's life can be torn to shreds. But even beyond that, we see a legal system completely set against men; custody, domestic violence, divorce? All stacked against men.

So more men are choosing porn and forgoing women. Seems like a perfectly rational response to me.

I'm not even talking about asking questions. I LIKE questions from my trainees, shows they're paying attention and have a genuine interest in learning. I don't even mind the "that way is stupid, we should do it this way instead" comments as I learned they're much the same question as "why do we do it this way?", just wrapped differently.

No, I'm talking about solely the bitching and moaning. The "they don't pay for vision?!" or "Why won't they send me to training?", or my favorite ( I hear this a lot ), "We have to clock out for lunch?". It seems to always be a shock to them how the real world operates. I'd like to think I was better than that when I was there age, but I was probably every bit as bad.