HFT is not gambling. If it were, people wouldn't do it. If it's anything it's min-maxing.

The issue here was that he did speak. Then didn't. Then did.

In other words, he spoke. The headline is sensationalism. Either you spoke or you didn't, and this sounds like speaking to me. Otherwise, he was "just a little bit pregnant".

If anything sinks the Xbox One it's going to be Microsoft's stance against indie developers. But this isn't a new development; it's been a long time in the making.

I've got a friend working for a successful indie developer who also happens fairly extensive contacts in the industry. There is near universal antipathy towards Xbox Live and Microsoft. The company has been so unfriendly towards small developers that even those who've enjoyed considerable success have said they'll never work with Microsoft again.

The reasons are varied. Microsoft gives developers no freedom. They dictate launch dates, pricing and promotions. They're inflexible with multi-platform releases, often prohibiting a release if it was previously available for other platforms. The approval process is slow and painful, with issues often being arbitrary. And despite that, games often launch with glaring bugs, which indicates an overburdened and apathetic certification team. On top of all that, Microsoft is stingy with sales data, so that in my friend's case they had to wait a month or two before they had any indication of how the game was selling. Not that they would have been offered any options to boost sales.

Unfortunately, this crap seems to have spilled over into Windows Phone which is why only games from big publishers ever end up with the Xbox Live connectivity. And therein lies the problem. There seems to be this arrogance to Microsoft that they've always got the big developers to fall back on and so the indies are irrelevant.

Based on what my friend has told me, however, the future isn't the PS4. Sony has gotten better, but they're not great. Nintendo has been making great strides over the past year to lure indie developers but it seems to be too little too late. Nintendo didn't consider them crucial back during the success of the Wii. Most indie developers apparently struggle to be profitable on Android, so that basically stunts the growth of Android-powered consoles right out of the gate. So you're left with iOS and PCs. iOS continues to be attractive, even if it comes with it's own host of issues, one of the big ones being restricted to touch screens, at least for now.

According to my friend, one of the most profitable platforms for them has been Steam. They don't have to deal with much in the way of profit sharing or licensing. Steam let's them do whatever they want, set whatever pricing they like and even give away as many free download coupons as they like. They get immediate and timely updates on sales. And the platform gives them access to one of the biggest gaming markets out there.

This is Microsoft's biggest problem and it will eventually bite them in the ass. Everything else is kind of irrelevant as it's an extension of everything else already present in gaming. But growing up as a PC gamer there's something satisfying about gaming's return to the platform.

Hawkeye: Dear Dad, I am not dead. Stop. Hope you are the same. Stop. Thinking of selling my golf clubs? Stop. Spending my insurance money? Stop.

Eliminating wings is not the way to acheive light weight

No, but it is the way to get something down a highway lane. Yes, you could fold the wings; but that makes the transition to and from flight mode more of a hassle.

It's obviously not a bicycle. It's still cool though, and here's why.

You could fly this as an ultralight aircraft. Whether or not you could street it is another matter; but getting rid of the wings is the first step. Having the propellers enclosed in a cage is nice too.

You wanted a flying car? OK, no go; but this could be a flying motorcycle . It could soar over regulatory hurdles.

The intended implication was that people would go back to snail mail because it's harder to tamper with; not that some guy would go postal.

We had absolute power (or close to it) and we know what that does. Here's a disturbing thought: What if the Internet is just unworkable? What if it's just too tempting for *any* caretaker to avoid using as a giant eavesdropping machine? What if people start opting out en masse?

Somewhere, a postal worker's ears just pricked up.

How do you know it's not government cheese?

Total nonsense. Dunkin Donuts has much better coffee than Starbucks,

Well, all subjective of course. I've heard DD is good; but I'm not interested in Donuts or the fast-food atmosphere. Maybe I'll try them the next time I'm on the road and am going to sit in the car and drink it anyway.

Really, it's gotta have flavor though. Yeah, like everybody says 'bucks is burnt; but it's not dyed brown water. I think some people are kidding themselves over "the subtle flavor" of coffee where the barista ground up one bean and put some food coloring in there.

Given the choice I'm at a mom-n-pop that's got a good reputation. The coffee tends to have flavor without being burnt, the atmosphere isn't standardized according to corporate guidelines, and staff quickly elevates you to "regular" status with surprisingly few visits.

Nothing else around that looks good or cheap quick coffee at home? Starbucks and I make no apologies. Snobs can suck it.

You have no idea how good Starbucks is until you try the abomination known as Folgers Crystals. If anyone was wondering, yes , you really can tell the difference. I thought, "it might not be the best thing ever, but coffee is coffee". Nope. I lowered the level of the first cup half an inch with great effort. I tried to pretend that I could save money for like... a minute. Then I dumped it down the drain. I went back to the Italian Via from Starbucks. Bear in mind that I prefer Kenyan from my own machine-- but it's broken. The Kenyan costs me $0.50 to make myself. The Via is $1.00/cup, and the dreaded crystals were something like $2 for a 7-pack. If I can't find a new machine I like, it's Via or Tea.

Anyway, yeah. It's burnt. There are worse things. Far, far worse. The so-called coffee you get at fast-food places or from machines in waiting rooms. No, I'm not saying Starbucks is the best thing on the planet. I'm just saying you forget how truly dismal the state of affairs was in American coffee before they came along.

"If the citizens are not vigilant, I fear we shall be frequently misquoted" --George Washington

What a lame ass piece of junk

She'll make point five beyond the speed of light. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself.

Aside from it being a longer route, I thought one of the reasons they decided not to dig there was volcanism.

Given tendencies over the last 5+ years I predict nothing will happen. Few will bat an eye if Snowden gets extradited, tried and convicted.

Every time some scandal has surfaced it's followed the same pattern:
1) It's dismissed as fabrication until evidence surfaces. The day I heard of this spy program the reports were all pointing out that everyone was denying this program existed.
2) The story is trivialized, the talking heads can't understand why the story persists and dismiss it as opponents trying to vilify the president. I've heard this repeated time again on CNN and elsewhere.
3) Dredge up some action from the prior administration to establish moral equivalency. There's a lot to blame Bush for, and he helped enable a lot of the problems we're seeing now, but a lot of stuff unfolding doesn't come close to being on the same level. If it had been we would probably had seen riots in the streets.
4) Dismiss it as one of those things that just happens or attribute blame to the prior administration. This, again, another attempt to marginalize the situation as overblown. I've noticed as tendency to see every little bit of news as evidence the story is a fabrication even when the pieces clearly don't add up. If Bush had been president these same people would have latched onto these stories with all fervor and demanded his hanging.

That's the fundamental problem here; how blindly loyal people are to Obama. The most telling aspect is that people were taking to the streets in protest during Bush's rule over less and now they're conspicuously silent. It goes to show that all that was more about ideology than any real principle. The problem isn't that people were complaining then, it's that they're not doing so now. Without question Bush had his own flock of sheep, but conservatives were generally a lot more critical towards him than I'm seeing with liberals and Obama today. The Tea Party, before being co-opted by Republicans and turned into a joke, came to rise during the Bush administration. And that's when they aren't also making a joke of the Green or Libertarian party.

For a wide variety of reasons Republicans have been in turmoil because conservatives don't feel they're being properly represented. One of the big reason being that they don't like being forced to tick off every conservative box. I've yet to see a similar response to Democrats, they certainly seem unified to a fault. When, for example, a liberal site lavishes praise on someone like Barney Frank, corrupt and having had a hand in the real estate bubble, you've really got to question the legitimacy principles. If you can't identify the problems in your own party and find good ideas in others, there are some real problems.

I will acknowledge that the response on Slashdot has been far more balanced than I've seen elsewhere. I'm actually impressed because it's a far better environment for discussion than it was back in 2008.