Patent 6,990,453 was issued in 2001.

The problem with that thinking is that when you're wrong, you're wrong enough for it to more than wipe out your takings. That's basically Mandelbrot's message in The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets.

Oh, for crying out loud - this is absurd. Derivatives are *not* fraud. They can be used in fraud, but so can any other instrument.

Something you don't understand is not automatically bad; it's worthwhile reading up on options and why they are actually a rather good idea before dismissing derivatives as a dead loss.

"Buying land in Iceland" becomes a *better* idea as their economy worsens. It's not about a financial investment at that point; the fact that you can get more for your money is only a good thing.

As long as there is someone who needs a better vehicle *for themselves*, there is someone who has an incentive to pay for development. Development would continue, just under a different financial model.

Just the process of compressing the video for the client will add latency. You can't squish an HD frame instantly. You can't decode it instantly either. While analogue TV was still broadcast in my region, you could flick between digital and analogue and the digital always lagged behind - yes, it was buffered, but that's a necessary consequence of the technology.

A big part of what OnLive claim to have cracked is the video compression latency. They claim a ~1ms lag each for compression and decompression. They've traded off compression ratio to do it - from memory, it's something like 150%-200% more data on-the-wire than you'd expect for comparable quality traditional video compression.

It's really offensive from an engineering viewpoint as well. All the same components have to be there (game client computer with expensive GPU, game server, internet connection to carry multiplayer messages), but you have to add an extra computer (the "thin" client),

Except that instead of being used for gaming (say) 10% of the time, the game client machine can be used for its intended use *all* the time. It's actually a more efficient use of that part of the hardware, especially when you consider that these are going to be rack-mount machines where the power cost is a direct incentive on the owner to make them as energy-efficient as possible, rather than the traditional Alienware space heaters you usually see.

add extra messages across the network for the controller, and of course, pipe a video stream across the internet instead of a monitor cable. It's just not efficient. Even if the service is pitched at casual gamers who can't be bothered to install a game and want instant gratification, it will be equally damaging to all the other customers on that network because they have to share their bandwidth with people streaming HD video.

This part is entirely true. The flip-side is that if BT provision more bandwidth for their ADSL customers, they *have* to make it available to their LLU customers as well, so everyone might benefit.

It's not clear whether the Laser Weapon calculator assumes atmospheric losses for the full throw, just for the first 100km, or not at all.

Alternatively, if the first thing they learn is that they *will* have to learn new languages, and that they can't rely on a single skill-set to carry them through their career, that's got to be a good thing.

nobel motives

Hah!

It matters not one whit how many studies show result X.

I disagree. It might not matter as to result X, but if you're interested in assessing the quality of the research being done *in general*, then it's vital, especially if (like here, and in a whole bunch of pharma cases) you've got a correlation with a vested interest. Peer review does miss things (well-faked data, for instance), so while it's important, what is more important is not just repeatability, but studies *actually being repeated*.

radar disk repairers

There was an interesting study done (which typically I can't find right now) into microwave techs, which basically found that they only ever have daughters. Ok, so it's not exactly "suppurating pustules", but it's interesting nonetheless.

Even people whose heads are hit by 100 watts of much stronger photons (sunbathers, cowboys), they do just fine.

Skin cancer is really, really nasty. You should have picked a better example.

On 512MB machines, I set Java to use 256MB or even 128MB....

Gah. Way to miss the point.

Can you please explain the specific problem that you are experiencing with regards to running java on low memory machines ?

I'm not, nor am I picking a my-ecosystem-is-better-than-yours argument. I'm simply pointing out that resources are not unlimited, and that implying that they are, and that resource management therefore is unnecessary, is unhelpful. There's *always* a case where, if system X used *slightly* less resources, outcome Y would be possible.

Sure. I'm not having a go at Java here, I just think that saying "resources aren't a problem - but they're effectively limitless anyway" isn't a decent counterargument.

In your case, you control the host. I often might not, and have to be able to assume that if my guest says it has 512MB available, then I can commit ~512MB and not suffer, no matter who's running what else on the same host.

While I agree completely, the logic is not to stop the plot at the gate. The idea is to force anyone who wants to play pop-goes-the-jumbo to use a method that won't be detected; in theory that means that either they won't bother (in which case yay! it worked! but we don't and can't know about it) or they'll have to use a method that's cobbled together and unreliable (in which case some dolt sets their pants on fire and the world laughs).

I think you missed a sarcasm tag somewhere there...

Machines typically have 4 GB of ram nowadays.

Just a nitpick, but I really hate this argument. For starters, while physical machines might have more RAM than they need, virtual machines often don't. There's still a very powerful drive to get memory footprint down for VM usage.