MattCruikshank

Do they control the Trademark "Google"? Do they control the Domain Name "Google.com"?

Do they control the default Search engine for Android? For Chrome?

Did they pay to be the default Search engine on iPhone? On Firefox?

Are those rare resources? I'd say yes.

And you're conflating "illegally-maintained Monopoly" with "Monopoly." Whether they got there through using illegal tactics or not is a separate question from whether they are a Monopoly now. 90% - is that a high enough market share to qualify as a monopoly, when their annual revenue is like $224 billion? What percentage would be enough to convince you? Does it need to be 100%?

Great, now they won't mind so much when we break Search out of Alphabet, because it's a monopoly... :D

...and the stock falls 8% in after-hours trading.

I'm not looking for a $3000 camera that I can install Roblox on.

I'm looking for a $300-$500 camera that has a better-than-cellphone sensors, and better-than-cellphone optics, and as an actual Android device can trivially talk to the apps I share photos and videos on.

I also want to upload to Google Photos automatically. And have the ability to share to Facebook Messenger, post to Facebook Wall, live stream to Instagram or Youtube or whatever... It adds up, pretty quickly.

I'm surprised there aren't Android Cameras? At a reasonable-ish price?

Like a Pixel 6a is $249 new right now.

So, where's that same caliber of hardware, but as a camera-first?

I mean... He's been directed by absolute A-list directors, opposite absolute-A++-list actors... Yeah, I'd definitely call him A-list.

* Footloose - How many movie-featured songs get played at MORE weddings?

* Apollo 13 - directed by Ron Howard

* Mystic River - directed by Clint Eastwood

* Sleepers

* X-Men: First Class

* A Few Good Men - directed by Rob Reiner

* JFK - Oliver Stone

* Murder in the First

* She's Having A Baby - directed by John Hughes

* Planes, Trains and Automobiles - directed by John Hughes

* Animal House

* Balto

If you count the random cut-ins, maybe.

I feel like A Few Good Men would do really well.

It was probably Amitabh Bachchan at one point, right?

Sure, but what's the Basis Set movie? If you only had one actor in a movie, and you wanted to have the most connectedness in it, you'd choose Sam Jackson right now. (The one from Pulp Fiction, not the one from Ted.)

But what if you could have TWO actors in a movie? Would Sam Jackson (again, the one from Jurassic Park, not the lawyer) still be one of them? Or is it possible that in aggregate, there are two actors who would achieve a better connectedness than Sam Jackson (the one from The Long Kiss Goodnight, not the one who was in Veronica Mars) plus one of those actors?

What if you could have THREE actors in a movie?

Or what about, who is the perfect sidekick for Sam Jackson (stop asking, yes, of course I mean the one with the purple lightsaber, not the one from In Time)? Who, if you add them to a Sam Jackson (the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., not the Mean Girl) movie, gives them the most aggregate connectedness?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Also, who's the Kevin Bacon of Bollywood?

Mandatory Scientology Joke:

That's impressive - I didn't even know you could hook an e-meter up to a tree!

I honestly thought of typing that one out here, lol.

You have the camera... I have the monitor... How about I flash QR codes? Oh, the camera is on top of the monitor, facing the room? Well, at night, I could FLASH the monitor full white in binary, and you can see the light on the chair and wall, right?

I'll leave the disc head on the sector number. You read the disc head position.

I'll exit my function on a time modulo a number to encode the remainder. You see what time you were called, and can decode the remainder.

I'll warm the CPU to a temperature... you read the temperature...

The list goes on and on...

"The Exfiltration Manual"...?

I want to write a super pedantic book showing every way I can think of to move data from here, to there. In the same program, or between programs.

Global variable.

Parameter to a function.

Pass a functor/lambda, get the value.

Environment variable.

Registry.

File.

Store it in a ping response.

VRAM texture that you write and then read.

Database.

REST server.

I'm pretty sure I could come up with a thousand ways.

But... why? Why do I want to write this book? Why has it been on my mind?

Looks like an 80s video game.

So, this was a horrible idea I had back in 2012...

"Save A Kid"

It costs $100 to buy the game, and it's $15 per month to play.

When you pick a character, you get to pick a Country of origin, and then an age and a sex. Then you get to start customizing, by looking for a character that has a given race or religion, if you care about that. For newbies, I'd definitely recommend picking a character that speaks a language you can speak fluently. And if you're an Expert, you can play a character that has different Disadvantages. It doesn't give you any bonus attributes, but you get bragging rights for playing one of them well. There's like, Orphan and Kid-With-AIDS, and then there are harder ones like "Scarred by War" where the kids have missing limbs, etc. Anyway, newbies should probably avoid those at first.

So, anyway, it's kind of like The Sims, or a Tamagotchi, or Farm Town, or something.

You log on every day, and depending on the character you picked, you either get an email, or maybe a voice mail or a video mail. The character tells you about how much it appreciates the new computer and the food. The first couple levels, it's all about gaining Health Points. You can totally nerf your character by spending some of your monthly allotment of extra gold points on buffing the kid's parents, if he has them. The parents start generating more gold points on their own, which makes it a lot easier to play. Some people even buy buffs online, which I think is cheating, but for a newbie, it's an easy way to keep your kid alive.

Anyway, you and your friends can make a clan, and all play characters in the same village. I've even heard that some really crazy rich players can buy buffs for the whole village, like a potable water and electricity system.

There are Events in the game, where like the country the kid is in goes into War. That sucks, because sometimes you lose your character, and the game is perma-death, which is lame. They do a really good job making the game realistic, because sometimes you even see in the news that the real country is in war. Most of the time, they just make stuff up though, because most of the wars never show up on TV, but your character won't shut up about them.

Anyway, it's a sandbox game, which some people don't like. But the AI is incredible. Your character will like ask you how they can keep their food from spoiling, and if you look it up online, and explain to them how to do it, they can save some of their food. Or like, how they can build a windmill from scrap metal.

Anyway, you play the same character as long as you want to, but most people get bored after the kid has a job and their own family, and they start over at level one. Restarting costs another $100 though.

The game developers say if too many people play the game, they might even run out of characters to play. I don't buy it. They'll always make up some new War, or some world-shattering Disaster like a typhoon or something, and then a bunch of new characters will open up. Expansion packs, and all that.

A lot of people play this game like 40 hours a week, or something ridiculous. Some people say that playing this game has changed their lives or whatever, and they give up their jobs and play it full time.

Anyway, I guess you can already play most of those mini-games in other forms, but until they package it up in a nice box that you can buy at Best Buy, and they set up some dedicated servers, and set up a scoring ladder (good grades in school, etc.) and maybe some achievements ("high school diploma", "got a job," etc.), oh and a nice technical support line to answer questions and give advice, I don't think the game will really take off.