People have been making their own substandard parts long before 3D printing. I've seen things made from wood, resin, plaster, and even papier-mâché

That's the "routing problem" I mentioned.

This is entirely the thing. Loki games can or at least could be coaxed to work on Linux with Loki_Compat libraries, but last time I tried to run Alpha Centauri for Linux even that wouldn't work — and I'm even still using X. But add to that, the Linux versions of games are frequently inferior. The Loki games are included in that, for example in AlphaC for Linux you cannot ctrl-shift-a automate formers only near their supporting base. Fast forward to a more modern game like Civ VI, and there's a huge slew of features and even leaders you can't get access to with the Linux version. Meanwhile, the Windows version runs better on Linux than it does on Windows.

I haven't heard the OS/2 thing, what's that about? I figure it failed because Microsoft was already doing "good enough" with Windows, plus NT had relatively meaningful security and OS/2 didn't.

I like having serious conversations on Slashdot at least as much as the next nerd, but arguments on Slashdot can only be taken slightly seriously today. There's a lot of people here who are not arguing in good faith.

I'm in the US, and I remember news articles about this idea. They passed quickly. If you wound up with a textbook with such ideas in it presented as anything other than a possibility which had been or could be researched, that is unfortunate, but it is not indicative of anything widespread.

Nobody is denying that at all. Nobody is even denying that there was a global cooling article fad. What was different about the global cooling scare from AGW's broad scientific consensus is that it didn't have broad scientific consensus.

Some times there aren't any marked crossings for half a mile. Perhaps this could be seen as a school-bus routing problem, but saying "use the crossing" is only reasonable sometimes.

I could see anti-authoritarianism. Most actual jews that I've met have been nice people. The government of Israel, however, is vile.

OTOH, I don't see any sane way to deal with the situation. The comment "surround the place with hazard tape and stay away" has a lot going for it.

32 bit OS's coming back because no one will be able to afford 4GB :-)

What happens when all car manufacturers are displaying ads?

It's spreading...I just read something or maybe I saw it reported on YouTube...about Jeep doing this very same type thing....advertising something, I forgot exactly what it was...but was very similar to this.

To clarify my own statement. I mean not going to yield results proportional to the amount put into them. You can double the investment and not get double the return. I think this is reflected in the wacky P/E ratios we see in the market for AI related stocks.

The massive amount of capital put into AI is not going to yield results. There will be mostly losers and only a few winners. This is assuming AI sticks around and is the paradigm shift that many people believe it will be.

If it's entirely fake, just a bunch of nonsense that people wasted money on, then it will pop quickly. But if it's somewhat real, like the dot-com boom. We'll see society transformed, and a lot of failed businesses, some of them very stupid, scattered along the information superhighway.

If this is a bubble like the housing bubble. Well, remember that even though a lot of people were underwater on their mortgage. Those homes never went to zero. It was worth something to someone, but there were a lot of people who lost everything in the exchange. And a handful of people who profited a great deal.

So expect that GDP will go up, even when the AI bubble pops. And that the middle class retirement accounts are going to be absorbing most of the hit. Because someone else, probably someone very rich, is going to still come out ahead. They almost always do.

Fair enough - it is easy to forget just how much real functionality there actually is in these stacks. It is nice to live in a world where a handful of lines of glue code yield a rich application.

However, there is a lot of stuff that does not *need* all that and generally isnt worth the trade off for many/most users. There is also the reality that all that to frequently gets delivered in the laziest way possible. Rather than a few shared libs that the OS could map into multiple virtual address spaces, we get everything having its own copy, because its 'easier' if less efficent. It is a question of what you optimize around.

Look at an older house, every single door with be hung/framed and all the jointing will have been done on site. Look at new house, every door will be a pre-hung door. We incur the costs of packaging, shipping, stocking an array of sizes, to de-skill the install and save time. Its different optimization.

Software is not different, if RAM is expensive people will find ways to use less of it. What is special and uniquely good about software is we get to keep using it as long as we want. If expensive RAM drives development of memory efficent stacks, well when RAM gets cheap again (it will eventually) we still have the more efficent software, and we can pile even more debatable features on top...

Your lack of perception is irrelevant.

And now we see what it stems from, a total lack of logic. Run along now.

For some things you don't even need ChatGPT. If you're having the flu, it would be really nice if you just call the doctor to get the prescription instead of having to pay a visit where the doctors says "Yeah here is the prescription, bye and come back if it doesn't get better". Sometimes you really don't need a long diagnosis.

What meds for the flu?

I mean, there is Tamiflu (sp?)...but that's really only effective if you catch it at the beginning.....but the best diagnosis is generally, treat the symptoms, plenty of fluids, rest and let it run its course...

Flu is viral....so NO ANTI-BIOTICS....no matter how much the patient bitches and asks for them....

You left out the robots. Enslaved to do what when the robots are cheaper?