As a Hoosier transplanted to the Golden State, I read that exchange as a gorilla beating his chest:"Me: Alpha Ape. You: monkey poo…" Everyone has grown up around people like that. So I don't think many people took the guy specifically as a Texas archetype.

Taking a guess here: (1) recording the addresses in order to make educated guesses about how the BIOS(?) works wasn't actionable; (2) sharing those educated guess with a 3rd party (who wasn't involved in the original transcription of addresses) also is not actionable but (3) sharing the guesses plus the actual list…

The issue with Gordon doing further work on reverse-engineering seems like a "Chinese Wall" situation from an old L&O episode: the left hand can continue the work of recreating the IBM code that the right hand discovered ONLY AS LONG as rightie doesn't communicate directly with leftie about what rightie discovered.

While watching the scene where Joe and Gordon are writing down the hexadecimal addresses one-at-time (I hope I've got the jargon right) I had to wonder: how were they validating their work? Doing all of that work just once took them 4 days; double-checking the work using the same method would take just as long, with…

For the record, the Internet had already existed approximately 15 years before HCF is set. It's unclear to me what Cameron was "predicting" when she mentioned computers connected through a common set of protocols.

The repetitiveness of 24 is why they run pilots for other shows as parallel sub-plots. Who knows, Dana Walsh — Wanted could've been bigger than Prison Break if Fox had ordered it to series.

Wow. If you think I've been using ad hominem arguments it's only because you self-identify with the criticisms I've made. How many times have I directly attached any of my criticisms to you? I think this post holds more instances of my using the pronoun "you" than all other posts I've made in this thread. (Excluding…

Cool. Does Tyrion ever meet Danny? Do they get along? What else happens? I don't give a damn about spoilers, so spoil away…

Right. Like Lee Pacey's character said, it was a "window that (was) closing fast." IBM was late to the party, but because of their marketing clout there was a real danger they'd dominate yet another generation of computing technology. And any innovation during that(this) generation would be quashed.

It's difficult to know what your "hot button" terms are. I sensed that "prosperity" was one of them (bingo!) and I took a flyer at guessing what you meant. And now I detect that we're going to disagree about what "fair" and "job creators" mean.

It depends on the connotations attached to "prosperity". For a person who thinks of "perfect socio-economic equality" whenever they hear "prosperity", then sure, economies of scale aren't going to achieve an unmeasurable ideal like that. I've always understood "prosperity" to connote "the greatest standard of living…

Thanks. I thought that was *probably* what you meant. So Asimov did occasionally insert irony into his essays. Interesting.

"Eugene" could be made to fit. Not with a marginally-famous-modern-comedian connection but with the "Death of a Salesman" connection. ("Hey, I told you he was gonna *die* in the title", ba-rump, bump. "But seriously, folks…")

So Sarah's a stone in your stream, Vic? Of all the gall.

Wicked, indeed. But which O'Neil are you referring to? I'd like to hear more…

Indifference to operating systems: wasn't that why Apple reduced the price of Mavericks to $0 in the first place?

Actually, I paid no attention at all to whose post I was responding to. So I researched "underpants gnomes", found the South Park episode describing the joke on the Wikipedia. I've never had the patience to actually sit through a South Park episode, but the "underpants gnome" gag sounds similar to Seinfelds (sp?)…

Draper's description of advertising's purpose was to persuade you to buy something you didn't know you needed yet. If there weren't people like Draper generating demand, demand which spurs production and production where economies of scale lead to low prices (I'm sure I skipped a bunch of steps there), we'd all still…

Ironically, AMC has reviewers in the same position that Joe has Gordon. Nobody wants to stake their own reputations on someone else's unproven proposition.

This weekend I rented "How to Succeed in Business, etc" just to see Robert Morse in his prime. He was remarkable: winning personality, flawless comedic timing… and moves. He didn't have it as tough as the Dancing Execs during the "Brotherhood of Man" number, but with the workout he endured every night he had to have…