I've noticed in recent years that the verbiage used to describe quantum physics has changed; when I was a kid, they would use passive words that made it sound like awareness of a state caused it's destruction rather than today when they seem to be more clear that some states require interaction-with-side-effects (measurement or interference) to obtain the information. Yay progress.

That gif reminds me of a thought experiment: Imagine a person living in a 2d universe that happens to be on a flimsy, square piece of tissue paper loosely attached to a square, wire frame. The piece of paper is placed in a rocket and launched into space. Now it's at rest in a pressurized capsule, and for things are normal. The 2d man is running around kicking a ball obeying 2d-physics in his 2d-universe but subject to external forces from the surrounding 3d universe. So what will he experience when someone taps or nudges the frame and sets his 2d-universe rotating or drifting? How will he explain why sometimes the ball seems to experience more or less friction? If the paper ripples enough, will the ball seem to blink out of existence?

In 2011 they speculated the universe might have a slight spin to it. But what if it is also moving and/or turning/rotating on/along one or more axis. How would we perceive that?

Also, given their skill in escapology, how many mice actually managed to make it off the ship?

I think you missed the "continued development" in my original post. I don't see Windows 8 as an end-product that Microsoft actually cares about - like it didn't care about ME or Vista. They don't care about end-user adoption. Pushing it out provides a costing point for the post-Windows-7 development, it increases income (think about all the people who bought a Windows 8 license when they buy new hardware and then go out and buy a Windows 7 license for actual usage), and it lets them claim OS-every-X years rather than OS-every-2X years.

A secondary factor in each case is the chance to push critical new tech (drivers in the case of ME/Vista, UI in 8) but again that's all about numbers.

As I see it - two possibilities: Nobody in engineering, design, creative or marketing at Microsoft could see or express the pending clusterfrak - even after ME and Vista - or the suits at the top saw something in the numbers that outweighed the potential harm. In any normal company, that would be crazy - even to the extremes of New Coke - but Coke weren't living in the same luxury boat that MS has quite managed to sink ... yet.

Windows ME, Windows Vista, Windows 8.

Folk-wisdom is that these were all mistakes - because they were awful, and we ask ourselves "why would you sell this P.O.C"?

But I don't think people really stop to think about that. Yes - the Coca Cola company reversed course after less than 3 months, but not because of popular backlash, because of the bottom line.

And yet - here we are on Microsoft's 3rd "New Coke".

Not least because, while PC sales may be dry at the moment, MS has a cornered market there that ensures they're going to make most of cost back simply on people buying PCs, and even if those people don't actually use Windows 8, that doesn't hurt Microsoft; infact, if some portion of them go out and buy a replacement, older, MS operating system, that's still good on the bottom line.

If Microsoft have decided not to release Windows 8 and continued development to the next version, there would be this big gap on their books and the actual development cost of Windows 9 would appear much greater.

My take is that it's not a mistake, it was a calculated gamble to manipulate the books.

Bear in mind that it's the degradation of normally smooth artery walls by, e.g., high blood pressure that enables plaque build up. What happens if they impact a plaque deposit?

I ask because the treatments might start to get expensive if it's not quantified before people start using the treatment and J. Edgar Pure-Butter-Diet takes them to court over their "contribution" to the arterial furring that put his head in a jar.

I think it would be more accurate to say: Not enough like magic. People want a box they can say "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot" to, not a need to learn multiple new pieces of software and talents.

Frankly, anyone who says that you can be printing useful stuff within minutes of unpacking a 3D printer either (a) is a 3D cad expert, (b) has already found downloads of the things they want to print (c) works for a 3d printing company.

That's why, at shows like CES etc, 3d printing manufacturers show case ... chess pieces, cups that they never put hot liquid in, and eifel towers.

When people get excited about 3D-Printing, it's because they are envisioning Picard saying "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot", or because they picture themselves inventing a thing that solves that problem that's always annoyed them, or because they see themselves upgrading the plumbing, wiring and gadgetry around the house. Or they're a parent with delusions of making cool stuff for their kids.

Then they find they have a friend who already got a 3D printer and discover that with do-overs and experiments, it costs more - in time, money and hair - to make whatever it is that you want to make than it would to just go take James Dyson to dinner and see if he would make one for you.

3D printing is not taking on because people have cognized that it's in it's infancy, pathetically pointless and utterly wasteful of time stage.

Affordable, extant desktop 3D printing lets you make PROTOTYPES, moulds, plant pots and coasters. It's useful for NOTHING unless you have some skill/talent as a design engineer (I don't!) and it also turns out that you kinda need to be a cad/graphics artist if you want a remote chance of designing anything that won't end the way of a digitally conveyed gorignak.

Today's 3D Printing tech is to accessible, open-source, desktop manufacturing what the IBM 402 is to accessible, end-user open source software development.

Microsoft's figures have always been ... dubious, all these numbers demonstrate is that almost nobody actually /buys/ their software, especially their operating systems. Most of their historical sales figures are PCs sold, and the upgrade pressure just hasn't been there the last few years, people are busy upgrading their tablets, phones, media PCs, etc, and Microsoft don't have any of those eggs in their basket -- because nobody buys their operating systems.

Squeee! Microsoft have disc^H^H^H^Hinvented REPL! Now to enable it in IIS, Exchange, and - hell - Metro. Its not like it could have any security implications.

I held out until Feb of this year before finally having to install an ad-blocker. Sure, a site like demonoid was relatively good about it's allotment of ad-space. The trouble is that most of the ad vendors are coke-fiends; the coke is money-for-ad-space. They get you hooked, and then they dial back the revenue and "work with you" to find a way to drive revenue up again. Or rather, increase their margin and get you back to what they were originally paying you. Which is why it always involves more, bigger, more aggressive ads, and never toning it down.

+++ATH0
LOAD "SKYNET", 8, 1

One of the reasons I find myself needing a password vault is the bizzare array of password policies out there today. Take Chase Bank, for instance, who only allow alpha-numeric characters.

But the worst part is often the why: In an effort to assist you in securing your password, some sites want to perform password validation server-side. Just stop and think about that for a moment. Why would a website exclude characters like apostrophe, percent, semicolon, etc, from a password field?

Well done: In order to assist your security today, I'll be storing your information alongside a plain-text history of your passwords - you can trust us! Now, obviously, if we allowed funny characters into those passwords, all hell could break loose. But by restricting you to easier to crack passwords, and then storing them in plain text too, the only risk is if we screw something up in the code that checks incoming passwords. We just proved we're smart enough to have already thought of that!

... you couldn't type either of those on it.

llàstima

... we've been recommending disabling Java since the day Java was born.

Braben's back, Look who's back.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous