Define "forward thinking." Microsoft has been paranoid against following the inevitable trajectory of all tech companies since day 1, and has invested heavily in all the right areas to prevent it from happening. But it still happened anyways. Maybe one day it will wither and die, but be lucky enough to be re-born as a different company that strikes gold in some new area, like Apple was (and countless other defunct tech companies attempting a similar strategy were not). But for now Microsoft is still making tons of money at being Microsoft.

That's the problem with this kind of award, it turns it into a contest which seems rather gauche. "Oh yeah, well this person got shot in the head, beat that!"

Isn't that as it should be, after working and saving all your life?

You ignored: "This wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago" even after you quoted it! Some disparity is desirable (since people bulk up savings for retirement) but why has it grown so fast and so large?

I can tell you this, my dad worked at a company extremely similar to where I work, and he is enjoying a retirement I will never have, at least without extreme sacrifice now which he did not do. He got a full pension and pre-medicare healthcare benefits - both things that my employer has cut since after I hired on here. I tell him about it and he's kind of surprised. I can't blame him personally. But in general old people are just cruising along assuming nothing has really changed and "what's the matter with kids these days" that they're racking up college debt and not settling down, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they're sucking up everything in sight just by honoring the promises they made to each other back when, while failing to set enough aside to pay for them.

Good info. 26 Mbps up would really open some options such as watching DVR content from home while on the road, or sending links to self-hosted video to family instead of youtube where they will get blocked for copyright infringement. I made my dad a video for his birthday and he never saw it because I put a beatles song behind it.

The challenge will be keeping the peace within for the long term, and meeting external threats.

Neither are guaranteed to be easy.

When you get the sorbet, if it doesn't please your palate you can put it on the pallets and ship it back for a refund. Two birds, one stone. ;D

Times change. Europe will be undergoing big changes in the next 50 years. The EU is barely holding together now in some respects, and the Euro itself is in danger. Such military concerns may become necessary again in our lifetime. We haven't reached the end of history yet.

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser

Terrorism appears to be a small problem in the West since it is under control and active measures are being taken. The result of that is a regular stream of arrests and prosecutions of would-be terrorists in many countries, such as the US and UK. If you want to abandon all efforts at suppressing terrorism, then you should expect truck bombs at public events and massacres at shopping malls as other parts of the world experience. It isn't magic rocks protecting you, it is intelligence work and police work.

FTFY

I was consulting this article that says 4k content will shift to H.265. (Although it also claims H.264 4k video would be fine at 45 Mbit/s, so who knows).

Anyway, 100 Mbit is still less than 300 Mbit, and Internet streaming is surely able to be upgraded to new encodings more easily than cable or satellite broadcasts, for example even if only a few people have new sets that support the encoding.

Why would content be produced when there is no way to deliver it to most people? I think it's pretty obvious that Internet streaming will lead the way in 4k video distribution. Heck, I'm not a huge fan but I would really love to watch a football game on a 60", 60 fps 4K OLED display. People will pay good money for that.

I'm even hopeful that something like OnLive (i.e. playing games rendered remotely) might become finally feasible.

Are you implying that us android users wouldn't be "up in arms"?

No implication is needed, we can see quite plainly there is very little outcry over this, just as there wasn't before. Android users simply accept this is the way things are, in a way they do not with any Apple problem whatsoever.

The iPhone barely functioned as a phone when it was introduced. Remember: "You're holding it wrong."

Yes, I remember that quite well because it was mostly incorrect. It turned out that most other phones also suffered from Death Grip. Solution - don't try to squeeze juice from your phone.

But also, it applied to the iPhone 4 - which was a number of years after launch... The first iPhone was fine as a phone.

Just Googled it and it looks like cell tower triangulation is accurate to about 3/4 of a mile

In practice it was more like about 1/2 block which was quite usable.

These days in combination with WiFi scanning non-GPS location is good to within 50 meters or so.