Bad guys use the toilet too. They also eat and sleep and such, and we could argue that this does indirectly help them make better malware. So?

This post kind of reminds me of H.G. Wells' Time Machine. That book describes a future in which human society is split along two evolutionary paths, albeit different from the one described above.

Mod parent up. Virtualization isn't the latest-hardware-resource-hogging-thing like some other pieces of software, it's been here since the 60s. There already are projects for paravirtualization-oriented (micro)kernels on embedded architectures (namely ARM), many of them based on the L4 family. They aren't exactly made for the mobile market yet, but with the proper hardware support these could really rock on OS-level power management and security.

AT&T did a documentary on the (then) present and future of computers, narrated by William Shatner. It's similar to the videos in TFA. Youtube link goes here.

...without efficient static memory, mostly because of the CPU-Memory gap. A faster CPU would require the memory and the bus to keep up at a similar frequency. That's already a problem, and even if that were possible then it would lead to increased power consumption using dynamic RAM and frankly, I think that's the last thing we need.

So faster CPUs will only be a viable alternative when we manage to get something like those memristors they keep talking about. Until then, it's larger caches and higher-frequency DRAM.

I agree with that, but developers often sacrifice portability for performance, that's a fact. CUDA isn't any more portable than assembly, yet it can improve performance a great deal if used correctly. IBM Cell processors can be programmed at assembly level, which is why a Playstation 3 can perform better than a PC, marketing and everything else aside. When a computer architecture like those mentioned is odd enough that the compiler isn't able to optimize, you just have to go there.

Your argument would hold if DirectX were portable. I don't really see it running natively anywhere except Windows and Xbox.

I really don't understand some people's aversion towards assembly language. Yes, sure, we all want a user-friendly programming environment, but not when it comes to squeezing all we can out of the hardware. My two cents.

He does make a point though. Some of the best releases I played last year or the year before (like Machinarium, Trine or World of Goo) came from small companies. I can't remember when was the last time EA made a really enjoyable game, like those mentioned.

"Google is working on a service that finds information before a user has even started looking for it."

Isn't that called advertising?

Wouldn't that be a bit rough for such a drone? And by that I mean: flying in such conditions is rougher than flying a 747 in Earth's atmosphere. How will they be able to come out with something efficient for this problem? Just wondering.

I'm sure Mr. Spock would agree with that.

I hope this won't be the case. Sounds like a real nightmare to me.

(If anyone is wondering why, Tanenbaum dixit: "NAT violates the most fundamental rule of protocol layering: layer k may not make any assumptions about what layer k + 1 has put into the payload [...]", and that's only the tip of the iceberg)

... it just smells funny.

Seriously now, what?

No, C++ is not just "C with classes". It's "C with classes, templates and a whole load of other features" (some of them were even included in newer C standards). Don't underestimate its power. I prefer C to C++ myself, but only because I work on projects that are better suited for C rather than C++. The latter just scales better for larger stuff and is a lot better for abstraction, that's all. While I'd always pick C over C++ for low-level programming.

I find this one to be the most rigorous.