Depending on how much performance you need, we have this already with virtualisation. Amazon is betting their reputation on the secure isolation between EC2 instances. They communicate over high-speed network. Fast, by network standards, but certainly slower than a function-call.

This sort of thing just makes you look ridiculous.

Let's not forget GPUs. They seem to be able to turn an extra billion transistors into real performance improvements far more effectively than CPUs. Good news as long as your workload is GPU-friendly.

This isn't universal. Here in the UK, it's expected that the university library will have you covered. That's part of what your fees are for.

It's possible for a game to stream data from both the optical drive and the hard-drive in parallel, improving reading throughput. GTA V did this. But most games do indeed seem to treat the disc as essentially a hard-to-copy auth token.

I wonder why they don't just press CDs. Much cheaper than shipping Blu-Rays, no?

Do your homework. They did think it through. It's essentially an application of Freedom Zero.

I agree that 'optics' sounds rather silly and unnaturally technical, but none of those words can really replace it in context. They did it to avoid bad optics is far more compact than They did it to avoid a negative public perception. The closest I can think of is 'PR', but that's narrower: it applies to companies and NGOs, but not to governments, government institutions, or people.

There's little sense holding out hope that we're spared from determinism, hoping to carve out space for conventional free will, but it makes little difference for our purposes here. Even if the brain is somehow non-deterministic, you can do a reasonable job of simulating it using a deterministic machine: just pick seed values using some pseudorandom scheme, to pick from the set of candidate outputs of the non-deterministic machine. You'll get a valid output.

With respect, it absolutely cannot, but I'd be curious to hear your line of reasoning here.

I share your scepticism, for the simple reason that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but it's not the case that theoretical computer science demonstrates the impossibility of a useful-but-imperfect bug-detector powered by learning techniques.

Indeed, we know for a fact that such systems exist: human programmers' intuitions.

Other than jurisdiction, scale, and anonymity?

Perhaps what's really new here isn't so much the Internet network itself, as the rise of 'platforms' like Yelp. Similar issues arise with Uber, AirBnB, and all the rest.

Yeah, you said. My points remain.

This You're not really buying hardware meme is getting rather out of hand. The old Google/Facebook treat you as a product, not as a customer line makes some real sense, but you're taking things a bit far.

Unlike many other major tech companies, Apple doesn't derive revenue from advertising and data-mining, but from selling products. Yes, the product is locked-down and it runs proprietary software.

Where does it end? You're not really buying a bicycle, you're buying the ability to cycle to places, which just happens to include the requisite hardware as part of your purchase?

Yeah yeah. AC comments on Slashdot are consistently of far worse quality than those posted by 'named' (generally pseudonymous) users.

You two ACs (if you really are two different people) have been 'conversing' at the level of unruly children.

The Internet-tough-guy nonsense? Heaven spare us.