If you checked out the demos, such as bananabread, emscripten is fully capable of doing javascript threading.
That is, any work that does not need DOM access can be done on background threads.
The "freezing" and "time slicing" are not particularly interesting objections. Any application that has to interact with the DOM has the same issue, which is why JavaScript hasn't solved it on the main thread, apart from the perfectly reasonable approach of event based code. And yes, this means using setTimeout and requestAnimationFrame on the main thread. Big deal.

The objection to highlevel language? Really not interesting. Might as well apply that to perl, python, ruby even java has a runtime JIT for its bytecode, and while I don't know much about "portable" NaCL, I imagine it does too.

JavaScript JITs are not a significant portion of the program's overhead. You may be able to do better in NaCL but at the loss of browser support, cross-platform support, integration into the whole universe of existing JavaScript, extensibility by other scripts/addons and even readability (yes, I've read through emscripten generated code when debugging. not high on readability, but certainly higher than assembly).

https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki#wiki-body

I don't see any limitations there really in how they are applying it. Demos that work on IE, Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari on any chip type.

I don't see a need for pnacl.

Even last year azakai was reporting emscripten output was running at 2x to 3x of optimised C.

There's a few things I guess it'd be nice if emscripten had like native 64 bit integers, but there's a Firefox bug on adding that to javascript w/ actual patches, so I imagine it'll get added to all the other browsers eventually.

Well, he's probably a bit bored in there. And the yard is a bit grubby. Might have been hard to find the sticks again.
But if you watch the video, it shows him picking up a stick again that he dropped when the cashew wasn't close enough.
It also shows him picking up a random stick in the yard, and resizing a stick that was too large to manipulate the cashew.

Well, carbon composites aren't as durable as steel either.
I don't think there's much risk of empalement. I think they do act much like the composites, esp when coated in epoxy.

Random googling yields:
http://www.menziesbamboobikes.com/strength-and-durability-of-menzies-frames.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_bicycle
and
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/how-to-build-a-bamboo-bike#slide-1

A few of these claim greater durability than steel. I find that hard to believe, and I recall he was mentioning delaminating issues similar to carbon fibre.

http://durianrider.org/2011/05/28/bamboo-road-bike-review/
This review seems to claim better durability than the bikes he tries.
Although the bamboo pieces do look stockier than a carbon fibre.

"This is one bike you can really ride hard and not have to worry about chipping the 2mm carbon downtube"

So, dunno, actually sounds pretty cool.
I do know that steel frames are heavy and tiring to use.

From chatting with someone who was working on the bamboo bike project, my understanding is that its advantages in no particular order were:
1) Much lighter than steel, although of lower durability
2) Novelty
3) The epoxies used to hold the bamboo together and reinforce the bikes could be cheaply shipped in quantity to bike shops in Africa where bamboo was readily available but machined steel bike frames were not.

Presumably a steel frame, despite the weight, would last longer, but might be harder to repair in some areas.

I don't really know too much of the project, but I think the first world bamboo bikes were more about novelty.
I don't think the bamboo bike is even that much cheaper than a carbon composite bike since the shops aren't mass producing.

Foxit has its vulnerabilities too, although it helps that it isn't as commonly used.

While I do resort to Evince and if absolutely necessary, Adobe (usually just for some work form PDF), I've found that most of the time I can get by with the new PDF.js functionality in Firefox.

http://hackademix.net/2011/12/07/hulk-want-pdfjs/
https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/

PDF.js plays nice w/ NoScript these days btw. It used to require whitelisting the site (ugh).

I agree the same problem exists with absentee ballots, which are also excessively used and encourged, I think.

Getting an absentee ballot though is still a multistep process over a period of time. Not something you can just buttonhole someone in front of a computer to do. It seems to me online voting simplifies and expands something that is already a problem.

Especially if it became the defacto way to vote, so you couldn't even excuse yourself with "I just prefer to vote on election day in the polling booth"

Agreed. Not a fan of that either.

I just feel that online voting expands the problem and simplifies the abuse.

Even if an online voting system could be implemented in perfect security, I'm still bothered by the fact that the voting booth is supposed to be influence free.

If you go vote, people pressuring you have to stay like 50 metres away from the polling place.

There is no such protection in online voting. A church could put the computer, oh, right in front of the altar and have the congregation line up. Heck. There's a lot of concern about buying votes (personally I'm thinking if you think someone will stay bought for $100 against their conscience, eh, welcome to try). But that whole situation changes with online voting. Again, can have people vote right at their workstation for a bonus in the next paycheck.

I'm sure there'd be proposals of laws against it, but, enforcement is still an issue. Esp since pressure can be as simple as peer pressure.

BTW, on the buying votes front, supposedly each campaign is spending over $1000 per undecided voter in swing states, w/ actual impact of the ads being very hard to measure. Amusing.

Reminds me of all the concern about rich people being able to self-fund campaigns. Should ask Meg Whitman how that worked out for her.

That the judge found improper.

So. Not only a contract they wanted to make binding without any user agreement, but also a contract where the language could be rewritten after you agreed to it, without having to sign off on the new language.

Ah. So it was that. I was just speculating in my responses, but here sounds the voice of someone who apparently experienced this :)

Oh. As well as import duties, you guys have both tate and federal VAT. That's not as much as ludicrous external costs, but, as well as costs imposed in producing the SSD, there are presumably costs throughout the system imposed by it. So, isn't as simple as just comparing a $100 SSD in the US to a $150 SSD in Brazil after the various VAT.

I suspect if you add all the costs together that can be thought up (regulatory, VAT, component import tariffs, possibly higher shipping costs, maybe higher business tax rate...) that you'd probably end up with something close to what those locals are charging, and that it isn't just a vast conspiracy.

Otherwise, maybe you should get in the SSD business :)

Oh. Another source of costs you guys might have. Regulatory compliance. Sometimes just getting things tested and approved can be very expensive.

... price war, not trade war...

To elaborate, the reason I think it is both, is that barring some barrier to production of SSDs that makes it likely that anyone who could produce an SSD would do so in collusion with existing manufacturers, it seems likely that a small trade war would ensue, causing an eventual value to be settled at that would be a bit above the final cost.

I think people in Brazil are ignorant perhaps of how much import duties might harm local manufacture, just as those in the UK are (apparently the Raspberry Pi foundation was until they actually tried to do it).

In the case of Apple, Apple controls the production of all iPads, so certainly it seems likely they would set their UK price to just slightly above what it would cost to bring one into the UK, since it isn't like iPads can be produced in the UK, even if it could be done cheaply (and it can't due to the taxes). So, they'll charge the cost it would take me to send some to the UK plus a small amount above that for convenience/labour of doing so.