Good, but even better, require that the bodyguards of politicians only be armed with this sort of vaporware gun. But then, I also want to require that federal politicians and EPA bureaucrats can only use cars that get better than average mileage according to the CAFE standards they impose on the rest of us.

What a lot of idiots like Animats just don't get about Arduino is that Arduino managed to get a fun package out on the market anyone can get started with and can get started with without having to rely on the type of people who snort derisively at anyone who cannot tell resistors apart by smell.

Just buy a kit and you can experiment for fun in a way that is fun and does not involve the need to first lean how to measure voltages until you want to.

Yes there are countless other systems out there, both more powerful and invariable connected to communities that are exclusive rather then inclusive. Ask on an Arduino forum for stuff anyone knows about as beginner and you get an answer. It is the same reason Linux beat BSD and PHP beats say Java or Ruby. Not because they are necessarly better products but because more people can get started with them.

Plenty of people who mess with these kit robots just want to mess about, use them as toys, have a bit of fun. They don't need massive parallel processing or sensors with miles of range, they do not dream of making a spy bot. They want to have a toy that follows their hand or make their own beer cannon or just see some leds light up. I know to anyone who has a full soldering stations it might sound incredible but for the majority, first having to spend a weekend soldering a kit together is NOT what they want if they buy a diy robot kit. They want to spend maybe an hour at most and then have something that moves. From there they may or may not advance. 2D SLAM? Jezus Christ Animats, just how sad are you as a human being?

Most people don't want to instantly have to develop the next generation mars rover. They want to have some fun! PLAY. If you like remote control aircraft, you start with a simpel plastic model and have fun and MAYBE someday you will go further OR NOT! Maybe start with a click and play model train set like Kato and MAYBE one day move on to making your own tracks from scratch. MAYBE. But from beginner to expert there is a lot of room for simply having fun, for enjoying toys at the level you are comfortable at and are willing to spend the time learning. And Arduino sits there are the beginner entry, middle level, open and welcoming and not demanding people first follow a 4yr electronics course to get anything done and because of that it is a massive hit. And it is getting people involved in messing with electronics who never would have before and it is GREAT!

And in the background are the forever alone losers trying to point out there more powerful toys with impossible to read manuals and secret society forums where you can only post if you first lurked for two years as an apprentice.

It is kinda sad in a way because it is just basic business sense. You want to sell something, you got to make it accesible. Arduino is the next step up from Lego Mindstorm. They got what made Mindstorm such a gigantic hit, an open accessible friendly platform where you can either remain as a fun loving beginner or use as a stepping stone.

And forever aloners like Animats will be crying "but we got more cpu power" as the rest of the planet has fun.

This argument starts up every time somebody had to pay their plumber 80 bucks an hour to fix the toilet, their fility stinking filled with shit toilet. They then think the plumber doing a job they never ever want to do themselves, is rolling in it and the IT being their shit but piles of money.

As if that 80 bucks is pure profit. Meanwhile the daddy plumber knows just how much of that costs goes to cover unpaid hours, taxes, insurance, tool costs etc etc. And he also knows how much Mr Doctor and Mr Lawyer charged him for his children's delivery and to deal with that frivolous lawsuit.

So... what is he going to want for his kids? The same as himself in a world where just getting by is the same as being a loser OR to aim for the top?

And don't for a second think that Bloomberg is interested in the fortunes of the public. He just wants more plumbers so he can pay less, same reason his kind wants immigrants to bust unions and high wages. Sure kids, all become plumbers and wave bye bye to 80 bucks as the competition sky rockets. And then you look longingly at IT graduates making high wages because nobody learned how to code anymore.

Simple piece of advice for live: NEVER listen to a billionaire, they didn't get rich by looking out for other peoples interest.

I'm not confusing anything, the parent is. He wrote "the world's CO2 emissions" (which implies the total), not "the world's excess CO2 emissions" or "human CO2 emissions." Given all the emotion and hyperbole around this issue, I think it's important for language to be accurate.

That can't be correct. Total human emissions of CO2 only account for about 3% of the world's CO2 emissions, so do you mean that American cars and homes account for between 1/4 and 1/5 of that 3%?

Google, so far, only uses the info to target ads to you. Not really a bad thing. I would rather see a targeted ad than one for Maxipads or Viagra.

I think you are missing the point here. The awkwardness and privacy concerns arise from the targeting: e.g. when a middle-aged guy gets a targeted ad for Viagra. Or, in my case, when some Google research about STDs later gave me targeted ads for STD tests.

If I make crap out a thoroughly horrid turt and you then buy it and goble it up... what exactly should be my motivation in creating a better turd?

You bought Windows8. You like turds, you are not a focus for further development because they already got your money.

8.1 is aimed at the people who haven't been eating shit for months on end. To try and get their money too by polishing the turd.

What do I use? Linux... yeah... gnome 3. But at least MY turd is FREE!

I OS makers made cars, we would all be riding bicycles.

That is basically company owned dealerships, they have existed for a long time and the decent ones were a FAR better deal if you just wanted a good car for a fair price with good service.

BUT it ties the car company to the vagaries of the local car market including having to worry about brick and mortar store issues like location.

For a very common large scale car maker, it is barely do-able. For a niche market? There is in Holland 1 Ferrari dealer. But that is not the issue because people in the market for such a car don't have an issue traveling a bit in their luxury car and are in any case likely to be living in the west part of Holland (the store used to be in Utrecht, which is almost dead center for the economic heart of Holland).

But it is FAR FAR easier to serve all you need to serve with a web site and a service van. If Tesla has to open a shell company in every state, in every country in every county/province, that is a LOT of shell companies. And why should it? Amazon doesn't have to do it. Why should car dealers not face pressure from web stores? Especially since dealers COULD have a unique location issue, fixing your car.

This is clearly bought law. The US has the right to bear arms. Stop killing kids with your guns and kill yourselves some politicians instead. Or are the guns you carry just to compensate for your small penisses. Come on US, show us why you got more guns then citizens.

http://www.scroogled.com/

This campaign of lies funded by MS is now a double lie because MS unlike Google isn't open about it. Everyone knows gmail scans your messages. Nobody knew Skype does the same.

THAT is why it is news and deserves to be repeated over and over to shut up all the MS trolls who were so happy to spout the scroogled fud.

Step on his feelings. This kind of thing needs to show up on their (annual) reviews, and their performance should be derated. That doesn't necessarily mean fired, but their performance evaluation should be penalized. That would generally mean a failure to get COLA increases, to say nothing of merit increases. If they have 10 year old skills, then their wages should be frozen as of 10 years ago. If you don't have annual reviews, your company has a problem. That's what managers are for. If they're not doing their job, that should show up on their reviews as well.

Are they worried about hurting this guy's feelings? This isn't a daycare. Are you worried about this guy leaving for another company and taking valuable information with him? He's not going anywhere, no one else would hire him with skills that old.

If you have a company that mature without either annual reviews or management that feels that they should manage, your company has a dire problem and you should get out of there. The way you phrase this makes it sound like it's actually a government position, and sadly that is more par for the course. Now you know why people don't like paying their taxes.

The recent bomb attack in Turkey near the Syrian border had as its target civilians who belong to the same group as Syrians government. They are ANTI the syrian rebels who are now in their town.

There is no such thing as a "Muslim", while to the outside world Islam tends to be presented as one faith (against the world), internally their are many divisions some of which are based on simply which region you are from. And those regions have little to do with todays borders.

The real danger so far is not so much ONE country falling into civil war, but it inevitably spreading as groups outside the first country taking sides and for it then to spread until it is warlord against warlord.

Only the British ever really managed to contain it with their moto of: 'Don't fight or we will kill you'. Remove the "evil" dictator who is supressing the groups and you soon find yourself with out of control groups willing to spend the next 1000 years fighting each other of patches of sand.

Pretty much as Europe was btw until finally after WW2 the EU was formed because constant war was to costly to business. And we in the EU with over half a century of peace still hate each others guts and universally resent the institution that has given us over half a century of peace.

As Douglas Adams said: People are a problem.

You seriously compare free account ever created for whatever reasons to active payed accounts... You must be dense. Why not compare the number of all WoW accounts every created, including during free weekends. And even then it doesn't compare because WoW is only on some occasions free to create an account while Maple story always is. You just confirmed to me the level of intelligence of F2P losers once again.

So basically your argument is to waste a HUGE range just in case one of your coders can't code and can't do basic transactions?

And your "fix" fixes nothing because underflow can happen at negative numbers as well. Basically if you are a coder, you are a lousy one because you took a design decision based on ONE possible occurrence. What if you reached the lowest limit of a signed int and deducted the WRONG amount? You would have fixed NOTHING. Worse, you "fix" the wrong thing that doesn't fix anything rather then fixing the true error, which is that you are both deducting the wrong amount AND more then the game logic should allow.

In any transaction type code, where the amount can't go negative (there is no debt in Diablo as far as I know) because you substract ANY amount, you first check that the amount can be deducted to begin with.

Your an idiot and shouldn't be let near anything more complicated then a stick. A small one.

This is a trivial issue and it has been solved countless times. By any banking software for instance. Really... deducting an amount where the result may not be less then 0... goddamn, I never thought I would encounter anyone who considered that a challenge who also didn't wear a helmet indoors.

To activate Linux, you either:

• Got to blow a Penguin
• Burn the American flag.
• Pay Darl McBride 999 dollar.

Any questions?

Like fish. Any other questions?

Although the parent is rather obviously trolling, Google has a bit to learn about marketing. They are after all the brainiacs that launch social hubs by generating massive publicity and intrest for it, then letting people in only slowly so that by the time most people can actually use it, the hype has completely died off and the early birds have left because the places were deserted.

Google Glass has a simple answer for both power and battery life and price and reception. It is called a wire, the kind of wire that is attached to headphones. Gadget freaks already carry a large battery, a powerful cpu etc. They also are highly likely to carry a pair of headphones. So... why is Google Glass not equipped for decent headphones or a wire?

Simply connect it via USB to a phone. Then you use the touchscreen on the phone in your pocket, use its cpu and its reception without wasting battery life on a short range radio that has to deal with close promiximity of a human body (always plays merry hell with bluetooth).

I think Google was terrified that the device would be to nerdy and not hip enough but lets face it. This will only appeal to the terminally uncool and that is okay because I long since given up on the idea that any woman will go "meh, why not, just how bad can it be" by just seeing me and would be perfectly at home... but I also like my gadgets to be functional and a gadget that is out of power before mid day, isn't functional (or do you think that as you use a device, battery life goes up?).

Nice try google but either invent a battery 10 times more efficient then current tech or break out the wires. And really, WHERE ARE THE EARPLUGS!

because there MIGHT be 1 woman out there crazy enough but if I am seen with these glasses on and STILL talking in my phone... forget it... oh wait, she just texted me... oh. right... oh well... send me a pair over Google, seems I don't need to worry about how it will look any more.