Yes. At 7 transactions per second, BTC is going to take over the world. Moron.

Why do you think it would be a violent homicidal kill-bot? It's far more likely that we evolve a highly moral caretaker that minimizes human suffering by putting us to sleep. It might feel really bad about it ;). It might feel obligated to end our suffering.

It's the aliens that would nuke us ;)... not because they hate us but because it is efficient, and we don't pass their primary litmus test for intelligence ... which would likely be peace within the species. And clearly we are a threat to them (by definition) if we are a threat to ourselves.

I agree that humanity should not live in fear. We should refrain from research on developing non-human intelligent life for another reason other than because we are afraid. Since when has fear ever prevented humans from doing anything stupid? We should refrain from evolving digital life because it is likely to result in life that is significantly smarter than us and overwhelmingly likely to judge us badly.

Just because you think we are a long way from developing intelligent life does not make it so. Nice way to shut down dialog. None of your assumptions about how far away we are from AI or interstellar travel hold any water. We really aren't that far from interstellar travel if we give up the idea of a round trip ... and if we give up the idea of living on planets altogether. With distributed computing, we really aren't that far away from the capability of creating the sort of artificial world in which digital life could evolve (though we might have to rethink neural network basics for practical digital neurons). My point is that we are close enough to making this "science fiction" happen to have conversations about it without people screaming "no way!" in an effort to shut down dialogue.

Well it's not stupid to assume an AI or alien would perceive humans as a threat. And it's not stupid to assume that AI, or aliens for that matter, would eliminate a threat in the most efficient manner possible.

Perhaps it's you who is a bit naive. When have humans ever been at peace? Even our sports are metaphor for war. You shut the fuck up. Until humans can achieve worldwide peace, we better hope that we don't develop AI or meet alien species ... because they will most certainly put us to sleep like dogs with rabies if we dare leave our planetary cage while we are still savages.

Qt is far easier to use and more elegant than .NET and other Microsoft solutions. The number of Windows-only apps leverage Qt is amazing. Your choice of desktop OS does not limit your choice of application development frameworks.

Android and iOS)are weird platforms because they treat all non-native toolits as second class citizens. You are EXPECTED to use Android/iOS APIs for everything. The idea that people might write apps in a non-Google/non-Apple framework simply did not occur to them. They are too busy trying to reinvent the world to bother with anything that is not invented in the hallowed halls of the Goolgeplex or Arcology.

"weird dialect of C++98" - WTF? What is this dialect you speak of? Do you need to pass --weird to G++ to get it to compile? Of course not! It's using the same C++ every other C++ app in the world is using. Both C++98 and C++11 are supported. It doesn't REQUIRE you to use C++11, but that is a benefit not a drawback.

"it has its own object model" - Of course it does, that's because C++ does not have one of its own. QObject is there to provide for the introspection that C++ lacks. Once you have that introspection you can start communicating with other objects. I fail to understand why this is a disadvantage in your eyes.

"networking stack" - Of course. Why should it not? It is an cross-platform application framework.

"container library" - When Qt began the STL was fragmented, not standardized, and poorly supported. Yet containers are useful. Qt kept them around because they turned out to be better than the STL containers. They're a balance between raw performance and the "bloat" of pure templatized containers. Externally they end up being 100% compatible with the STL.

"threading library" - It was only extremely recent that C++ got its own threading, and it's just very low level threading. Qt threading provides a nice usable wrapper around threads (which are native C++ threads underneath if built with C++11), and the ability to easily communicate between threads with signals/slots.

"graphics primitive library" - Why not? Seriously, why not? Isnt't that the whole point of a GUI toolkit? Underneath it draws widgets using the native controls, if available, or uses its own if not. That's why the widgets look like native controls on Windows and Mac, because they ARE native controls! On X11 it will draw its own. It doesn't use Cairo, why should it use Cairo, who made Cairo king that we all have to bow down before it?

When it comes to the UI, objects are natural. Every C toolkit goes through hoops to provide you with objects of some kind. Motif, GTK, etc. So why not just use an object oriented language to begin with?

You don't have to use the dark corners of the language. Qt sticks to just the Object Oriented parts of C++, with just a tiny bit of templates. Not a functor in sight (unless you wander toward the totally optional Qt::Concurrent framework). Internally it uses all of the language, but as an API it provides just the object oriented subset.

The shareholders hired Elop. The shareholders kept Elop on. It will be the shareholders who approve the buyout. And it will be the shareholders who vote to reward Elop.

So yes the sharehodlers are getting the shaft, but they're asking for it. I don't understand the motivation behind bondage and dominance, but who am I to judge the shareholders' sexual proclivities?

At 29 you've barely learned how to shave.

Precisely! The price if a good is whatever the seller and buyer can agree on. The labour theory of value is wrong. The cost theory of value is wrong. Things are only worth what we think they are worth. There's stuff like marginal utility, supply and demand curves, etc., but they are just fancy ways of saying that something is only worth what someone will pay for it. Even that $200 textbook, if we didn't value the textbook more than $200 we wouldn't buy it, and would resort to alternatives instead.

p.s. Actually we're not paying high prices for textbooks, we're paying high prices for college courses to which textbooks are attached.

It's not about missing the point, it's about the how email actually works. It's not that this method doesn't work, it's that it's a complete and total non sequitur. It's like trying to hide your income from the IRS by endorsing all your paychecks in disappearing ink.

Too complicated. Just use a white font, they'll NEVER be able to read it!

As trivially as ROT13? Hah! Doesn't even need to be subverted at all! There is no encryption here, no cipher, not even obfuscation. This idea is so mindboggling stupid that I can't help but suspect the work of a Grandmaster Troll.

Then there's the part in the book where the architect blows the building up because they didn't follow his plans exactly. Apparently to Ayn Rand artistic sensibilities trumped property rights.