light3

Its quite funny how the smartphone revolution will finally make VR devices viable.

Ubuntu seems horribly bloated, and the installation takes forever. Try Knoppix livecd, they have a pretty quick program to flash the installation to an external usb. Plus you can get all the latest debian packages.

What are the chances Putin didn't write the article?

>Lisp is a language that was ahead of its time, but there are language features now that seem beyond Lisp's grasp.

Interested to hear your views, can you provide some examples?

I agree with you that governments can be very suboptimal, but that doesn't diminish the existence or usefulness research as a public good. Some research can not be readily commercialised, but nevertheless form basic building blocks for other innovation, in such cases government funding is crucial.

I don't think the provision of public goods are a moral choice, if anything it is an economic choice, where its subsidy is justified by two things: the benefit of the public good outweigh its costs, the general public will not sufficiently fund public goods out of their free will. The degree of benefit for the future is sometimes not measurable, however if the past is any indication than it has definitely provided major contributions to innovation.

See definition of public good(economics):

In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others.[1] Examples of public goods include fresh air, knowledge, lighthouses, national defense, flood control systems and street lighting. Public goods that are available everywhere are sometimes referred to as global public goods.

>why would you give in to your "competition" and make games for their "console"

Because these general purpose "consoles" have grown tremendously in power while decreasing in cost, they have the potential to take market share from Nintendo. Nintendo consoles used to be one of only a few avenues for kids to play games. today there are smartphones, tablets and PCs which all have comparable price to the gaming console.

>In what way is homeschooling to suit a parent's utter stupidity not a prison?

Have you considered the case where the parent is not 'stupid'?

>Are Ikea desks that can be made at 1/5th the cost but last 1/10th as long representative of the forefront of technology?

I refuted the example of technological progress being use of pneumatic tools, just look at car manufacturing, they're are an essential tool.

>Your entire arguments are based on the unstated assumption that electricity and computers are required to make anything that is on the forefront of technology.

No, my basic assumption is that education and freedom of thought are required for progress. The Amish have neither.

The phrase "re-inventing the wheel" comes to mind, the definition of progress is moving forward from the current, not artificially handicapping oneself the past and then working back towards the current. My statement is extremely easy to refute, but I see no examples in the article which show they have advanced the forefront of technology.

There is no doubt that these people are creative and tinker, it just seems to me that their efforts are wasted, or at least extremely sub-optimal.

But they are not contributing to technological progress.

try alibaba.com