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Comment Capitalism (Score 1) 663

I'm sure this has been said before, but we probably won't come run out. It will just become increasingly expensive, until the point that other renewable energy becomes more attractive. As per the last 2 "oil ceilings" around $120 (one of many examples) WTI (or was it Brent? I can't remember), it would seem that currently energy prices for trucks, planes, and consumers can't support >$120 price.

So basically, this problem is going to solve itself, and we won't run out of oil, because we will (mostly) stop digging for it when it's too expensive, and use something else.

The only risk is that energy companies take the profits from oil and re-invest it in making cheaper drilling techniques instead of alternative energy, and then we really do run out before we can use oil to find an alternative (since most certainly any research is going to require it). But that's pretty unlikely, considering "oil" companies are already investing in alternative energy to become "energy" companies.

Technology

Submission + - 4D Printing: Objects That Make Themselves (bbc.co.uk)

iONiUM writes: "From the article: "Many are only just getting their heads around the idea of 3D printing but scientists at MIT are already working on an upgrade: 4D printing.
At the TED conference in Los Angeles, architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits showed how the process allows objects to self-assemble."
There could be many applications for this. Definitely a cool step forward."

Comment Specificity? (Score 1) 586

I honestly can't find exactly what jobs are being killed. What jobs exactly are even considered middle class seems to be highly contentious and subjective.

Can anyone point out to me an exact list of which jobs are reducing by technology? I, personally, don't consider a manufacturing job to be middle class, for example. And, it would seem, neither does wikipedia: "The following is a list of occupations one might expect to find among this class: Accountants, Professors (Post-secondary educators), Physicians, Engineers, Lawyers, Architects, Journalists, Mid-level corporate managers, Writers, Economists, Political Scientists, Urban planners, Financial managers, High school teachers, Registered Nurses (RNs), Pharmacists and analysts, etc...[8][34]".

Idle

Submission + - Google did not run over a donkey (thenextweb.com)

iONiUM writes: "From the article: "Here’s a story you don’t see every day. Google on Wednesday has gone on record to deny reports that one of its Google Maps Street View cars killed a donkey in the Kweneng region of Botswana. Seriously, we’re not kidding: the story got big enough that the company actually had to waste resources dispelling the speculation."
How long until they have a similar debacle, but surrounding a human instead?"

Comment Was the gun legally obtained? (Score 4, Insightful) 2987

I see a lot of posts in here about banning guns. They are far more controlled where I live (Canada), but rest assured shootings that happen in Canada are always with black-market guns. It's not the people who legally purchase and register firearms doing these things, it's those who obtain them illegally.

You may argue that making guns harder to get, like here, reduces this kind of thing. That may be correct. But no matter what, people can get anything, and they will, if sufficiently demented, do something bad.

What's the answer to that?

NASA

Submission + - Cassini and MESSENGER to be Shutdown? (nasaspaceflight.com) 1

iONiUM writes: "There's been a lot of rumours today (including twitter) that Cassini and MESSENGER projects will be shutdown due to the new budget, even though they are still functional. Since they are still operating, maybe someone else can start communicating with them, to at least continue to get data? Maybe even a private company could buy the rights?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft may have some Windows Phone 8 momentum after all (networkworld.com)

colinneagle writes: Now armed with a phone that isn't immediately obsolete, Windows Phone 8 is picking up a little steam. It won't displace Android or Apple anytime soon, but at least the figures are headed in the right direction.

Sales of the Nokia Lumia 920 are better than expected, according to a financial analyst, and have caused him to raise his predictions for WP8 sales drastically for 2013. Ilkka Rauvola, an analyst with Danske Bank, sent a note to clients in late November predicting 36 million Windows Phone 8 smartphones will be sold in 2013, up from an earlier estimate of 23 million devices.

At the annual shareholder meeting in Seattle last week, CEO Steve Ballmer said that WP8 was selling at four times the rate of WP7 phones during the same period last year. Numbers from Gartner don't quite back that up, but they do definitely point to an upside. In Q3 of 2011, Microsoft sold 1.7 million WP7 devices. In Q3 of 2012, it sold 4 million.

Of course, context is everything. Nokia still sold more Symbian phones (4.4 million) and RIM sold twice as many phones despite being in a death spiral. Still, it helps. Every little bit helps. Nokia went from one carrier (AT&T) to three (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile). Now what they need is positive momentum, as opposed to being the last phone standing after Android and Apple kill off the competition.

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