What do people that have contributed to the code base get? Who is getting money for this? I don't understand how you can go from an opensource project to a for-profit project.

With open source you let people use your code, and they let others - including you - use their code in turn. That's the payment, if you will. If you contributed to CM, then the availability of the rest of the CM codebase under a compatible license is what you get.

As for profits - nothing stops you from taking the rest of the CM code base and trying to make it a business, in the same way the CM devels are doing now. And if you do, you won't have to pay the CM developers (or the kernel devels, or user-space tool developers and so on) any more than they have to pay you.

I'll be more impressed when it's capable of printing a vaccuum tube...

Printing a metal-shelled tube shouldn't be that hard.

Printing the vacuum, on the other hand.

Attach a small fan to it as an air-printing attachment, then turn the power plug 180 degrees so it runs backwards. Do I really have to think of everything around here?

Scientific journals often charge authors; and it's more common among closed journals than open access ones. And the publication fees are not trivial sums either; Journal of Neuroscience, for instance, charges about $1000 per article. They also charge $125 just for accepting a submission, non-refundable whether you get accepted or not.

Provided that a developer can find and afford a "good, modern C compiler" targeting a given platform.

The thread is about application development on general-use PCs, which means Intels compiler, the MS compiler, gcc and the like on x86 or ARM.

As an addendum to the parent (I, too, have a background in ASM programming): You're working at such low level of detail that any application of non-trivial size becomes extremely difficult to write truly effectively. You just can't keep so many details in mind at once. And when you need to work as a team, not alone, interfacing code becomes a nightmare.

So of course you abstract your assembler code. You define interfaces, develop and use libraries of common application tasks, and just generally structure your code at small and large scales.

But at that point, you are starting to lose the advantage of ASM. A good, modern C compiler is a lot better than you to find serendipitous optimization points in structured code, and it is not constrained by human memory and understanding so it doesn't need to structure the final code in a readable (but slower) way.

Small, time-critical sections, fine. Small embedded apps on tiny hardware, no problem. But ASM as a general-purpose application language? That stopped making sense decades ago.

Pointless comparison without inflation adjustment. If you do adjust for inflation, CPU's have become a lot cheaper as well.

Oh a few percent here and there; what could it possibly matter? On an unrelated note, I'm open for any job offers in the investment banking sector. :-)

The difference between $300 and $400 laptops is insane,

It better be, considering that it's a 25% price increase, with most of the value - screen, case, power supply and so on - practically the same.

What "good old days" where those? When you read the newspaper that conformed to your political viewpoint; the weekly magazine that covered any world events only as far as it affected you and others like you; watched only the TV shows that reinforced what you thought you already knew and believed?

It was just a link to a large fish landing net with a long handle. No idea why slashdot refuses that link when the other one to a box of matches was OK.

..and for whatever reason, Slashdot refuses to show the first link. Just forget it.

"it would be a lot easier to steal from a drone"

Steal from a drone?

First time around, order item (A):

Next time around order item (B): http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Strike-Anywhere-Matches-1-Box/dp/B00DII0BA0/>

Crouch in the bushes and use (A) to catch the drone. Then resell it on eBay. Use (B) to burn (A) to get rid of the evidence.

As many point out BASIC has a lot of problems, and it's easy to acquire bad habits with it.

So how about Scheme? Seriously; there's very little boilerplate code, and kids don't know the language is supposed to be hard:

(for-each sendmessage users)

Wear a mask. Not a Halloween prop or anything, but a medical mask, as you would wear when you are running a cold or something. No, it won't really prevent automated face identification, but it will prevent any casual recognition or incidental appearances in other people's online albums.

As a bonus, if you do happen to carry a cold or the flu at the time, you're also helping prevent the spread.

So, I'm not a fan of Google Glass, and I doubt I'd ever get one.

With that said, banning Glass while allowing phones is ridiculous. Every day on my commute, I've got dozens of people around me holding their phones to their faces. At a lunch restaurant I see the same thing. At dinner, in bars, on the street - you've got people fiddling with their phones everywhere.

They could be checking their email, posting to some social site, reading the news, playing a game - or taking pictures or film clips where I appear. I have no way to know. By comparison, Google Glass is much more obvious about it, with flashing lights and stuff to warn people you're taking a picture.

If these people really are concerned about their customers privacy, they'd forbid smartphones, not eyewear.