Bullet points and slide presentations did not start with PowerPoint. If anything, the "bullet point thinking" of the Challenger tragedy shows that we were already experts at presenting information poorly before we had software tools to make us more efficient at it.

Of course we did.

For how many decades was the transparency projector used in academia and other things?

And some of us also remember things with slide projectors where the audio went "bing" for some schmuck to advance the slide.

Power Point is bells and whistles on some pretty basic technology we've had for a very long time.

But, honestly ... if people wanted the Microsoft stuff, they'd have bought a Microsoft phone.

I find myself thinking ... why the hell would I want Microsoft anything on an Android or iOS device?

Is there a market of people tripping over themselves for this? Unless it was a corporate device and I had no choice, I see zero value in this for anybody who didn't buy a Microsoft product to begin with.

Oh, I don't know ... the steaming shitpile which is the state of security on consumer electronics bears repeating.

Because apparently it isn't going to go away any time soon.

Don't knock it; it's very much on the "classic sports car" end of the spectrum, not the "old junky econobox" end

So, you're defending your mullet and your bad 80s hair metal tapes? Or are you fully driving around acting like you're Vanilla Ice?

"Classic sports car" gets you a little too much "Wayne's World". ;-)

Well, what problem is this making a dent in other than a billionaire setting up a small private school for his kids and some of his employees?

Because if the entire story is "billionaire sets up private school for own kids" ... who gives a shit?

If he's purely doing something for his own benefit, this has no business being in the news. Because then it's just "rich asshole can afford to buy his children a better education than you can afford", and kind of pointless.

Otherwise, we'd see daily stories that say "Netcraft confirms it, Larry Ellison is still a douchebag".

Well, if you let an egotistical billionaire run the education of 20 students, you will probably come up with awesome results.

But how much of this is applicable when it isn't being paid for by an egotistical billionaire?

You can say nothing about this other than ... highly focused, very expensive private education can be effective, but that this doesn't tell you anything about educating the rest of them.

You can't say this was better because you eliminated grades. This is a PR stunt, but it's not some revolution in education.

But where regulation is not being updated to allow new mobile phone app services which are good for passengers, drivers and even other road users, then clearly there is a legislation problem.

Do you know how stupid that sounds?

"I'm OK with taxi regulation as long as they drop them for Uber".

Look, Uber can play the victim card here all they want.

This isn't a legislation problem. This is a problem of the world not suddenly bowing to the will of a fucking tech company who thinks a mobile phone app is magic and that laws should be changed to accommodate them.

And civil disobedience is a legitimate way to highlight bad law.

And impounding Uber drivers' cars and fining them is a legitimate way to say "we don't give a fuck that you think the law shouldn't apply to you.

Uber is a greedy technology company, who is trying to control the spin of "boo hoo, we're downtrodden" to prop up their business model which amounts do "an app for dispatching illegal cabs and pretending laws don't apply to us because we stepped in unicorn poop and are now magical".

But pointless laws to create false scarcity are a crime against humanity.

No, again, you're full of crap and stating your opinion as if it is a fact.

The laws aren't there to create artificial scarcity and drive up prices. You'd have to be an idiot to think that.

The laws are to regulate who is running a taxi, the rules under which they operate, and the minimum safety standards ... stuff like that.

That some people want to make the idiotic claims that laws are hurting innovation, or that regulating an industry is some fucking grand conspiracy to keep taxi owners rich ... saying it doesn't make it true. It's still batshit crazy stuff which has nothing to do with reality, other than indicating you desperately wish reality adhered to your crazy beliefs.

Which is precisely what Uber does as well.

My municipal government can't even keep the streets in good shape. Ever seen this meme? It's an accurate reflection of the condition of the roadways here. They don't even have the hard freeze excuse that my municipality in the northeast had. You want them running the last mile? Thanks, but no thanks.

There's probably merit to someone owning the last mile infrastructure and leasing it out to ISPs; there's definitely merit to separating the TV side of the house from the ISP side.

No, there is no public interest in inhibiting fair competition. This is about protecting vested private interests, not the public interest.

No, that is bullshit.

If you want fair competition, you have to do it under the same rules as everyone else.

Not by throwing a tantrum like a spoiled child and deciding the rules don't apply to you.

This has nothing to do with fair competition, or protecting entrenched players. This is about governments having the authority to pass laws, and whiny idiots claiming they don't want laws.

Uber wants to run a illegal cabs, contrary to the law. The problem isn't the existence of the law. it's that Uber are a bunch of whiny self-entitled douchbags whose business model relies on running illegal cabs and playing the victim card.

Free markets don't solve every problem, but they can solve this one.

Your desire to have the mythical unicorn of the free market still doesn't change the reality that those laws exist, they exist for a reason, and it's not up to Uber to decide what the law is.

Uber aren't the champions of truth and justice ... they're a greedy corporation who think they are something special.

But don't let reality stand in the way of your libertarian fantasy world.

It was mentioned in the CNN article I linked earlier. I also watched them carry it out of the car on NBC Nightly News last night. Feel free to find the footage on NBC's website if you wish.

No, piss off Uber.

The laws and regulations exist. That Uber (and you) disagree with those regulations is completely fucking irrelevant.

Uber doesn't get to throw a tantrum like a child and refuse to adhere to the law. You can't refuse to eat your broccoli, the real world doesn't work like that.

Don't like it, try to change the law. If that doesn't work, you can suck it up and accept that the law exists, and claiming you don't like it or that you think it doesn't apply to you is nothing but a crock of shit.

Just because in some libertarian fantasy of the world you think you shouldn't be regulated doesn't mean a damned thing.

Surely Time Warner has learned the lesson of not being bought for funny money stock?

Because when AOL bought them with trumped up stock, somehow AOL was worth more than an entity with cable, programming,network infrastructure, move studios.

Somehow I wonder if Time Warner isn't selling the farm for a couple of magic beans (again).

And you can bet your ass this single entity will not do anything to lower prices or foster competition ... it will be more "we're screwing you because we can".

The only people this will be good for are executives who get huge severance packages. But I'm betting in the long run it hurts consumers, and quite possibly shareholders.

How big is thing thing going to be?

In my experience, the development environment for software is larger than the actual software.

Working copies, and interim copies, and what have you. Tools, pieces, and parts.

Now imagine something as massive as a video game, specifically involving art and computer graphics ... models, mockups, rendered seqeunces, things I don't even know what might be in there.

I'm betting the amount of source material which feeds into a finished game is likely many thousands of times the end-product. Because you probably have various edits and do-overs of stuff which took a long time to make, and is probably valuable.

I can't imagine how many terabytes it takes to build a modern video game.

But 40GB of cool stuff? Yeah, I totally buy that as possible.