The beta interface doesn't make sense on any device.

I know Tesla doesn't want to have dealerships, but what if the talks had to do with some Apple Stores also becoming Tesla dealerships, at least in the states that are giving Tesla legal woes over selling directly to consumers?

Slashdot beta is a non-starter for me. Just a painful mess. I will not be using beta, and if classic goes away, I go away.

Apples SVP of Marketing indulged in a bit of uninformed hyperbole, surely this means Apple is doomed. DOOMED I tell you!

Every convention on a modern computer keyboard is there because of a gradual process of innovation. Some things are for the best, like the inverted "T" arrow layout, and some things are for the worse, like rubber dome membrane actuation, cylindrical keycaps, and pad printing.

There is plenty of good innovation from the DIY community, see deskthority.net (workshop section) for some great examples.

Cherry has a low profile mechanical switch, called Cherry ML, but even that would require a laptop to be significantly thicker than modern laptops typically are.

The problem with H-1B Visas is that they smell like indentured servitude. I say abolish them, and then create a visa program for skilled professionals that is not tied to a specific job or business sponsor. That way, the "guest worker" would have some actual bargening power and could change employers.

I don't think the online retailers would agree. The ISP is doing nothing to promote specific items or online stores, so why should the online stores subsidize your internet connection?

Regarding your first example, it is a machine that makes bread (I guess in various shapes) out of dough, but if you have the dough, a regular bread machine would be more efficient, and a regular oven would be even more efficient as long as you have a human available to kneed the dough. And many kinds of ovens work without electricity.

Regarding the second example, it is a machine that makes shaped chocolates, which will be poorly tempered compared to molded chocolates, and once again, you have to have the chocolate as an input. Setting aside for a moment the question of weather chocolate is an appropriate thing to spend disaster resources on; if you are in a disaster area, who cares if the chocolate candies are shaped like turtles? I know this is just an example, and your argument is intended to imply that the state of the art of 3D printed food is constantly advancing, it still faces the fundamental limitation that you have to have the food already, there is no forthcoming breakthrough that will synthesize food from constituent chemical elements. You know, other than regular old agriculture.

You know what a government is going to do if they have you and your phone? Take your finger, and press it to your phone, which legally they can compel (or physically force) you to do. All this talk about "Oh, what if the government has your fingerprint on file?" Please. That's overthinking it.

Too bad you can't designate one of your fingerprints as a duress fingerprint, which would cause the phone to wipe itself.

There should be a bounty for killing trollish patents. Usually, there are many targets who settle and sign royalty agreements with the patent troll before any target decides to fight them in court. First, all such agreements should be required to be public. Second, whenever a target successfully defeats a patent troll in court, all the future royalties that were previously agreed to should be cut in half, and paid to the party that defeated the patent troll. They should also be able to go after recovery of past royalties. If you are a patent troll, losing a case should be a financial death penalty.

Oh, I don't know, maybe with a hash function, like with every other passwork implimentation ever?

- But most importantly, HUMANOID SPECIES. Even Silicoids looked somewhat bipedal.
Which is very important if you're supposed to empathize with the species you're playing.
Among other things MOO3 managed to fuck up was the look of the game - most species now looked like bad modern art.
Practically all of them could be considered "repulsive".

I disagree. I bought MOO3 at launch, after following the development unfold for over a year before that. Existence of species that are not bi-pedal or humanoid was absolutely not the problem with MOO3, but rather it was one of the few actual improvements in the game. Unfortunately that was buried in a morass of unplayable drudgery, and the removal of the existing fan-favorite races was a bad decision.

One thing that would have helped, and I remember there being a big giant argument in the forums about this while the game was in development, was resolution independence. They made a decision to go with 800 by 600, and stuck with it. They rebuffed all the voices in the forums that were telling them that this was a stupid idea, and the result was a mess. The game might have been more playable (as complicated as it was) with a more thoughtful higher resolution interface. But they wasted development time on pie-in-the-sky grand ideas that were all eventually cut from the game.

If I was developing a game like this right now I would not have a public forum following the progress from the beginning. I think MOO3 was the first big game to take that approach, and the developers were constantly motivated to promise more and more features that never made the cut, and it took away from their ability to focus on the game itself in a more realistic manor. I think this can only work if the game is at a finished enough stage that the forum participants can actually play it during the process instead of just dream about it.

I have been addicted to Starbase Orion lately, which is currently the best Master of Orion inspired game on iOS. As soon as I have time to read the whole kickstarter page, I'll think about contributing, but I'd like to know how they plan on implimenting their multi-platform pass with iOS. I don't think that will work.

Care to elaborate?

Or are you just talking out of your ass?