The Soviet "space shuttle" Buran ("blizzard/snow storm") was a successful implementation, that added automated takeoff-to-landing.

>>Why would you never EVER own it?
A simple matter of reliability and trust which goes beyond firearms. Given the choice between a simple machine and a complicated one proven to be less reliable with unknown points of failure, I will choose to rely upon a simple tool.

>>If this existed, it would be one more layer of protection so some kid can't shoot himself or some other kid.
if. if. if. I don't mean to be snide, but given a limitless list of other hypothetical situations anything could be anything.

Sorry, but I don't believe this for one moment.

A firearm must, above all things, be reliable. There is no indication whatsoever that the so-called "smart" features (whatever that is) have been developed to anything even close to acceptable real-world performance. Meaning "I pull trigger, gun goes bang every time." I've seen crappy fingerprint recognizing prototypes, some that require an associated bracelet or ring (works great until the battery dies...), GPS-enabled (no signal? stinks for you).

The police won't carry it.
The military doesn't want it.
Neither does the general public.

Of course it's a sample size of only a few but the gun owners I know (including myself) with whom I have discussed this very topic are agreed -- none of us would ever, EVER own a firearm complicated with failure points (aka "electronics"), which, I will add, could easily be jammed.

I say the study is propaganda meant to sway the easily influenced public herd, or encourage some politicians with reading comprehension issues to ignore the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.

>>read the fucking Mythical Man Month and realize that the death march is an idiotic way to do things which doesn't really work.

I disagree. The death march model works just fine -- *IF* you have a sufficiently large pool of new developers to replace the old ones dropping off along the way and *IF* your focus is short-term wins over long-term strategy. To wit: the entire video game industry (layoffs after a release, anyone?), the endless employee churn at all the major offshoring companies, "captive" on-site employees via H1b Visas, etc. This is just an extension of what is common outside the IT industry with low-paying service jobs.

If the only metric is cost, or if cost is valued sufficiently higher than quality (not uncommon), then it's all the more obvious.

Infrastructure for a subdivision (especially one this size) has costs. Clearing land, grading, cutting in roads, installing water, sewer, natural gas, electric and phone utilities, permitting, inspections, impact studies & statements, insurance, contracting, setbacks, advertising, etc. all adds up rather quickly.

For OSX, Apple provides a superb tool for simulating "bad" networks -- slow, dropped packets, high latency, or all the above -- called Network Link Conditioner
more info at --> http://nshipster.com/network-l...

That, or they'll be treated to a very delicious and moist slice of cake.

"I will never buy such a product".

That's the point. You may not have to. If, in exchange for watching a few advertisements a day, consumers were given a shiny new Apple iPhone300kTurbo for "free", or were given "free" cell service, that might be seen as an acceptable trade.
It benefits Apple by giving them evidence that those pricey advertisements they sell are reaching eyeballs.

Pure speculation on my part, btw. I have no inside knowledge (nor do I really care) about Apple's marketing or product plans.

"So few facts, so many opinions."

Welcome to Slashdot.

This is precisely the sort of action that could lead to encryption taking hold.

Personally, I blame the turtle, the one all the way down.

>>Getting these into the app store might be tricky, though.
But getting this into the courts will be a snap.

Certain recent high-profile apps store refusals (most notably, google voice) have drawn FCC attention. Apple cannot keep a walled garden forever.

>>A least Microsoft isn't taking picture of people's homes and posting them online without permission.

They don't have to -- if your home has been built or purchased in the past 30 years, it's likely the floorplan is already available online. Just check with your county/parish tax assessor's office. With many of them, just enter the street address and you can see a county tax appraisor's estimate of value beside a photo or two of the home and a floorplan drawing.

This information, in most cases is considered public information and is thus available free to anyone who can click a mouse. Worst case, a simple data scraper would yield an entire county's data in a few days.

So no, they don't have to drive around and take photos when photos are already available online, complete with a floorplan courtesy of the government.

...at 1/10th the cost ($30 vs $300)

good catch -- indeed, that was a goof. meant to write 66 but my fingers had other ideas. Sorry. But at any rate, I don't think the specific numbers are that important. The point was the new machine was computationally hundreds of times faster. But in actual use, it was slower in some areas that really matter, to the degree that even a young child noticed!
BTW, It's been a few years since I read it, but I believe this story is included in Abrash's book titled "Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book" since it's largely a compilation of his DDJ "Mode X" articles and a few others.

Yep, the early 486 with the clock-doubled processor. I had a DX2-80 *I think* (with a VESA local-bus video card so I could play Aces Of The Pacific in 256 color 800x600 mode -- woot!) and thought it was the cat's whiskers. Couldn't believe how fast it was compared to my lowly 33MHz machine @ work. And it only cost me $2300, what a great deal! And to think, now a $99 iPod Touch could run a PC emulator faster than that machine. That's serious progress.