dj2stein9

It's not. There's an under-appreciated NPM module which is/was shared by Socket.IO that only handles the low-level WebSocket protocol for NodeJS:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/websocket.io

You can use that, and the built-in WebSocket object in modern browsers.

Water pipes, phone lines, and electrical lines are built into your house too and you're not usually forced to sign up for the monthly services if you don't want them. Fiber would be the same way, the lines would be in the ground before the buildings are erected, and you'd be able to sign up for service if you want it.

You don't typically call publicly owned infrastructure a monopoly. Public utility companies are created to prevent exactly what's going in broadband internet service.

If the city owned the lines, it would put all ISP's on a level playing field and enable broadband competition for the first time. They wouldn't be able overcharge you 10,000% mark up for the price of bandwidth anymore, and they'd have to compete based on the quality of their service.

leap frog to mars rather than sending a shuttle through earths atmosphere.

But you still have to get the human through Earth's atmosphere and out of orbit anyways. Once you're out of Earth's orbit you might as well coast all the way to Mars because landing on the Moon doesn't gain you anything.

Ah, this site was fun while it lasted http://fuckthensa.neocities.org/

> People need jobs to provide for themselves and their family.

No, these people were seduced by promises of a big payday for copying other people's work -- plain and simple. There are so many tech and gaming companies to work for in Silicon Valley that I just don't believe it's possible to pick the most egregious one simply by accident.

I really don't feel sorry for anyone who work(s)(ed) for Zynga. This company milked the whole "social gaming" bubble for every drop it was worth. Every game they made was a clone of this or that, and they used every spam trick in the book to get more clicks, and every single employee at that company knew 100% full well that they were part of a modern day ponzi scheme that would blow up once Facebook become uncool.

I would've been tempted to modify the lift such that the entire desk could retract into the floor, leaving an open area when it's needed.

You just described every member of the Baby Boomer generation that I've ever worked with.

    you are guaranteed nothing important is only stored locally.

Why stop at Obamacare? It's much, much smaller than Medicare, Social Security, the US armed forces, DHS (+ all the related bureaus), the Federal Reserve, IRS, US Treasury... essentially the entire US government is a collection of dysfunctional bureaucracies that extract wealth from citizens in the form of taxes, give it back to corporations in the form of subsidies and tax refunds, and give citizens next to nothing in return.

This is what bureaucracies do, they grow, more complex, more political, more expensive, and exponentially harder to dismantle. Everyone knew that once Homeland Security was created it would become a sprawling, pervasive, and never-ending drain on the country. Eliminating it now is probably out of the question because it would be substantially more costly (politically and economically) than keeping it running.

Basically they've taken the script of the TV series "24" and used it to turn the entire government into a giant anti-terrorism organization that cannot locate or defend the country against any terrorists. But year after year the programs are always "underfunded" and so the bureaucracy grows and gets worse at doing its job... It's a perfect storm of stupidity and ignorance that has no benefits other than keeping the system going for no reason whatsoever.

I think if your intention is to encrypt your video content then you really have no business being on the web in the first place. Just build a native app and do whatever you want, and stop trying to bend open standards to be compatible with your business.

http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com is the best real-time bitcoin chart that I have found so far.

Have you even tried transfering money around with bitcoins? It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. The price of bitcoins is irrelevant and uninteresting compared to the way it facilitates transactions. It is incredible technology, potentially the most disruptive technology ever invented. And if anything the recent press will ultimately make more people aware of bitcoin, and perhaps lower prices will convince more people to try it out.

I don't believe the argument that a deflationary currency, by itself, will make people not be willing to buy things. Consider a savings account - why would anyone take money out of their savings account to buy things? If all you need to do is keep it in the account, it will make more money, so why spend it?

$700 Billion for banks. $2 Billion to convert all cars to electric. Something smells fishy here.

Any idea what the total volume (in $) traded per day is?

Except you don't typically hear that about public utilities. Have you ever heard someone argue that their sewers should be sold to private corporations to operate because that would be cheaper?

    Private enterprise can do it so much better! Capitalism!
    Why do my property taxes keep rising and my broadband
    isn't getting any faster?!?

Can we also get something like this going in urban and suburban areas where cable/dsl ISP's underserve and overcharge for their broadband internet. Let's just take these government-backed monopolist corporations out of the loop entirely and treat internet communcations the same way as municipal electrical lines, sewers, and roads.

Except none of those things can realistically kill every person on the planet. Nuclear war would maybe be the only threat I think has a higher likelihood of making mankind extinct than a meteor, which is why graphics like this scare the crap out of me:

http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/NuclearWeapons_4fa46...

You should talk to the author of GORILLAS.BAS

I don't know about you, but I'd watch the heck out of a dramatization of his Pi speed breaking record.

This may in fact be the case for this new Xbox. That at least would be reasonable.

If you take all Canadians 18-65, you'd maybe have 20 million in sales. Apple sells that many iPhones in a month.

FYI, in case the author sees, on MacOSX the key combo Right + Ctrl switches desktops, so shooting fireballs doesn't work.

Agreed. I think this hire by Google is largely for PR.

If Google was very serious about A.I. I think they would have just acquired Jeff Hawkins' Numenta and his neuroscience crew, who have real, practical "brain-building" experience.

Alan Turing was treated really, really horribly by the government of the UK. I very much doubt he would like to be honored by the exact people who persecuted and destroyed his life.

That would also show how far right wing the Republican party has gone.

The salaries for technology workers in the Waterloo Region are so horribly depressed compared to other parts of Canada, and the US, that no half decent developer will stay there. If they have half a brain they'll move to San Fran and easily earn 3-4 times more than they can earn in Waterloo.