It didn't do anything for David Crosby or Jerry Garcia.

I wouldn't worry about another great bombardment from the asteroid belt. It has a total mass less than 1/10th of 1% of that of the Earth and Ceres makes up a quarter or so of that. We might get dinged a bit but I find it unlikely that something is going to change the orbit of Ceres and send it into the orbital path of the Earth but at the same time not having enough gravitational effect to pull Earth from its own orbit. Much less something being able to strip us of our moon but leaving us unaffected.

Not to say it couldn't happen but it seems so remote that I wouldn't put any money on it.

True but it may not have to be a direct collision. I wonder how close a one solar mass star would have to get to Earth to pull us out of orbit enough to effectively turn Earth into a lifeless planet.

Does anyone have simulation software that could be used to handle these kinds of questions? Windows/Linux/OSX, it doesn't matter.

I'll get back to you when you can stay on topic for more than 3 sentences.

I'm sure they spent loads of money to lobby to make our current system of laws beneficial to them. They used their huge pocketbook to game the system to make their pocketbook massive!

Just remember, you can't buy what isn't for sale. If companies are able to buy their way into writing legislation that means that there is a deeper problem in play here and attacking each company over each incident is like not seeing the forest for the trees.

No one will get anywhere by attacking Apple (or Google or MS or IBM or GM or Boeing or Lockheed). If there is a deep rooted problem of this nature in the system then the system needs reformed. Going after those who offend loopholes in that system isn't very advanced. It's not much different than a dog chasing his own tail.

Yeah, we've all heard guys tell stories like this. It takes me about 20 seconds before I mentally paint an "L" on their forehead.

Ok. So you've never let something get away from you that turned out to be huge? I'm sadly one of those guys with a big "L" on his forehead. I have a good friend who did a website early on in the history of the web and he made an absolute killing for a guy just turning his hobby into a business. Part of his success really wasn't the site itself but also who he partnered with and that added value to what he already created. He left this venture after about 15 years and while I think he'll go on to other things I'd like to think he's well enough off that he won't have to. I could have been part of that but at the time I thought it was something that may have made beer money but I didn't expect much. At the time it was also a hobby site more than anything else. Oh well, such is life.

It wasn't "the mother of all demos" but it was a close second.

What was first?

Maybe part of the Hollywood sign. If not, then check in the Alamo... in the basement.

If you haven't noticed, there is a small but serious trend to remove the "idiot" from behind the wheel. I'm sure this won't be on the lots of your local dealer in 2020 or anything but make no mistake, human error is an element the industry is working to minimize to the point of removing the human.

What exactly is the non-racist explanation for that lack of proportionality?

Oh, you mean like firearms that count for less than 1% of all firearms deaths being the targets of an aggressive firearm ban? Or a 100% natural drug with a great track record on safe use in the long and short term being prohibited while another drug that is a thousand times more lethal is sold to anyone who can flash an ID to prove that they're over 21? Or being able to watch the real life death of another human on TV while scenes of nudity are strictly forbidden?

You're seriously looking for logic in our social norms on "proportionality"?

It's hard to take all the facts from this not being a first party participant and while I wouldn't be surprised to find that race played a role I also would be even less surprised that this has to do with bomb making. Oddly the peanut gallery around here likes to scream and moan when we talk about the lack of real chemistry sets today but now that this same metric is brought into the class room with the potential or a race element it's just racism and nothing else?

This is the exact type of knee-jerk reaction that is keeping us from solving real social problems.

you will be the battery, coppertop

The battery life is definitely going to suck in that case.

Imagine how piss poor the battery life is going to be on those. Sheesh.

Fast-forward to now, and laptops have caught up. SSDs killed the boot advantage, and new form factors made possible by the same techniques that worked in the tablets have closed the size gap. If I can get an 11" laptop that does "real computer" stuff, boots instantly, and runs quietly and comfortably in my lap... I don't really have a use-case for the tablet anymore.

Or we could just be a bit more forward thinking and see that somewhere on the horizon* someone's just going to slap a keyboard and wireless mouse to a tablet and make it a bit easier for people who prefer that way of doing things. In this way the machine can be made into what's needed at the time without having to own two machines that do the same thing just in a different form factor.

* You know, like HP had on the TC1100 over a decade ago...

The question here is the lifespan of the tablet industry. I'm replying to someone who's claiming that the "major issue" with tablets is that they suck at content creation. This has nothing to do with desktop computers in any fashion.

The major issue is that tablets are great content consumption devices for watching video or reading but piss poor content creation devices.

This is like comparing the number of people who own music versus the number of people who play music. "Content creation" hasn't been on the radar of most people since pre-recorded media has been made available at a good price point. I remember being about 12 or 13 years old with a Commodore 64. Of the 6 other kids I knew at the time who owned computers about 5 of us could code simple games and such. That's roughly 85%. How many kids can code today? The difference is that for a 12 year old pre-recorded media was too expensive and my parents weren't shelling out 20 dollars for the latest SSI title every other week.