The EU mandated microUSB charging ports on phones, thus reducing the "cable clutter" that existed 5-odd years ago.

Now, the EU is mandading the other end of the charging cable, the actual, physical charger is plugs into. Meaning, you'll only need a single charger, with a USB port in it, to charge your flip phone, your 4" mini-smartphone, your 6" phablet, and your 10" tablet.

Right now, each device has it's own charger, with it's own specs (how many volts at how many amps). And you generally can't charge a tablet using an older phone charger.

So you end up with a handful of different chargers in your drawer that you have to pick through to charge each device, or you end up with a drawer full of chargers you never use as you just plug everything into the most power charger you have (generally the one for the tablet).

Standardising on a single charger would eliminate all the extra chargers gathering dust in people's junk drawers.

I always preferred Role Master for this reason. Everything was based on percentages and tables. You only needed 2 dice (D10). And everything else was left up to the imagination. There were enough rules to keep everyone in line without getting bogged down in minutia.

Of course, the best Game Masters didn't both with 90% of the "rules" and looked at the books more as "guidelines" to keep the action going. The more talking, role-playing, and action, the better the session. If you spent most of your time trying to figure out "how do I ..." in a stack of books, you were missing the point.

ARMv8 supports both AArch32 (32-bit ISA) and AArch64 (64-bit ISA), similar to how AMD (and now Intel) CPUs support both x86 and amd64 ISAs.

Meaning, you can run a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit chip, and get access to all the improvements to the architecture, and it will run like a faster 32-bit chip.

Or, you can run a 64-bit OS on the 64-bit chip, and still run 32-bit apps, and get access to all the improvements to the architecture, and it will run like a 32-bit chip with access to a full 64-bit address space (for the OS, the apps are still limited to 4 GB each).

Or, you can run a 64-bit OS on the 64-bit chip and run 64-bit apps and get access to all the improvements to the architecture, including access to the full 64-bit address space within each app.

Or, you can mix and match the last two as needed. Which is what Apple is doing with their A7 SoC (64-bit CPU, 64-bit OS, mix of 32-bit and 64-bit apps).

There's a lot more to the ARMv8 architecture than just 64-bit-ness. There's a lot more memory bandwidth, there's a lot more registers, there's a lot of clean-up to the ISA, etc, etc, etc.

You don't need more than 4 GB of RAM to get improvements from running a 64-bit SoC. Just like you don't need 4 GB of RAM on the desktop to get improvements from running an AMD CPU in 64-bit mode with a 64-bit OS.

Ever considered spending $20 on a surge protecting power bar that includes RJ11 plugs? They're designed specifically for this, and go between the wall outlet and the ADSL modem.

Coupled with surge protectors on ask the AC adapters, you'd be set.

Not really, no. I've seen 30-year olds that make tweeners seem like model citizens, and 16-year old that make middle-agers seem young. While you would expect the older driver to have better judgement, I wouldn't count on it.

No, inexperienced drivers, regardless of age, are the worst actuarial risk. A 30-year old new driver is no better than a 16-year old new driver is no better than a 60-year old new driver.

And someone who drives less than an hour a week over the course of 20 years is really no more experienced than someone who drives everyday for the past 6 months since getting their license on their 16th birthday.

Age isn't an issue. Experience behind the wheel is.

Fortunately the syntax for the new nft utility seems to be easier to understand...

Compared to what? Learning Japanese using Russian textbooks?

You want easy-to-understand, look at IPFW or PF. Those read like actual English sentences, not gibberish like iptables/nftables.

About the only good thing nftables does is enforce the ordering of rules elements so that everyone's rules will be written the same; and finally get rid --of --that --annoying --CLI --syntax --that --iptables --uses.

Here's hoping the devs actually document things correctly and accurately, though. Considering their track record, though ...

Not to mention that a lot of Microsoft software doesn't use the "native widgets" available on the OS. Just look at every new version of Office on the (at the time) current version of Windows.

Come back tomorrow and you'll remember!

Link to a how-to or it never happened. :)

DRM module is available in Google Chrome on ChromeOS ... aka Linux. Running on x86 and ARM.

DRM module is available in the Netflix app on Android ... aka Linux. Running on x86 and ARM.

DRM module is not available in Google Chrome on any other Linux distro, though. Completely arbitrary limitation. Google Chrome is Google Chrome is Google Chrome, but Google limits the availability of the DRM module.

And ... how long would it take to upgrade from NT4 to XP to 7 to 8, and all the associated software, and hardware, and, and, and. And to complete all the training, and change all the workflows, and, and, and.

The IT budget is strictly for hardware and software costs (capital expenditures, licensing, etc), not salaries.

Salaries come out of the HR budget(s).

We're living proof that it's possible. Local school district, using diskless Linux in every school, roughly 95% of all PCs in the district are running Linux. IT budget is just barely over $100,000/year and that includes hardware and software. 14,000 students in the district, spread across ~10 towns, in 50-odd buildings. Only 14 IT staff, looking after it all.

We pay $0 for the OS and 90-odd% of our apps (we pay for a CAD program, a typing program, and some VC stuff).

Computers are diskless appliances, booting off the network, mounting filesystems off the local server, and running all applications locally. Thus, we get all the centralised management of a thin-client setup, but with all the power of a local computer (apps run on the local CPU, using the local 3D graphics card, pumping audio through the local soundcard, etc). Each one is under $200 CDN, with a quad-core Athlon-II CPU, 2 GB of RAM, and either nVidia or ATi graphics onboard.

They are treated as "disposable" appliances -- if one fails, sent it to maint, grab a spare, plug it in, carry on with your day. Replacement time for a hardware failure is under 15 minutes.

4 service desk staff look after 90% of the software side of things from a central office. 5 school techs look after the other 10% of the software onsite, and hardware issues. Then there's a video conferencing tech, a hardware tech, an electrician, some programmers and managers.

We're using Debian on the servers, FreeBSD on the firewalls and backups servers, and Xubuntu on the desktops. $0/desk.

Oh, did I mention we also have NX installed to allow any student/staff member remote access to their full Linux desktop from anywhere? Try that without licensing fees on Windows. :)

We went from paying several hundred thousand dollars per year in software licensing (Novell Netware, Windows, Office, anti-virus, Ghost, etc, etc, etc) to virtually nothing per year. It's been over 10 years now since we started the transition to Linux (2001), and the savings are HUGE!

Or an episode of Grimm.

Damned Wessen always getting underfoot!