SpaceX is doing 'IT' cheaper? For 'IT's that are smaller, simpler, shorter-ranged, shorter-lived, based on existing tech, etc, sure they are. SpaceX is the bees knees. But that's like saying my RC car outcorners an F1 and costs like a million times less (based on a proposal to limit team budgets to $40M/year).

I don't say this to diss SpaceX: good research and bypassing institutionalization while fostering engineering creativity is a good thing. They're doing good work. Engineers just know there's no free lunch: Good engineering costs a lot and good fundamental research in unfamiliar physical domains (pressure, temp, chemical composition, forces) costs much more. What's more, established entities pick up constraints: safety rules, regulations, etc. As SpaceX's ambitions and constraints grow, so will their costs.

The cliche about rocket science wasn't coined for nothin'.

(in a moment, I'll be regretting (again) commenting to slashdot on anything involving NASA or rocket science... Slashdot never ceases to amaze me with commenters' delusions that they're qualified to bitch about other technical realms).

Small subset... LOL.

CS101: Using live data as a primary key is bad database design in part because of the risk of two records wanting the same key.

Yet DNS does this. Artificial scarcity (and any alternative of gloom and doom) is a byproduct of an intrinsically flawed design. Call me crazy, but names, companies, etc all manage to cope despite redundancies by us resorting to more keys than just the name.

Inertia means DNS names being unique is a 'problem' unlikely to be 'fixed'. But don't trumpet $1.4B (ballpark -- 140M domains, $10 apiece) being charged users as a necessary evil because of domain squatters.

Until PDF's got to be easier, grad school with internationals gave me a lot of exposure to pirated books out of China, India, Brazil, etc. Everything matches except for the paper quality (had a faint-formaldehyde smell).

Books have cloned quite nicely for centuries. And there's preexisting laws to deal with them. Copyright, however, never superceded the doctrine of first sale. And yet now we're getting sold digital media that copies easier but is denied via other channels.

Three reasonable non-pirate use cases come to mind:
- buying and selling used content.
- transfer of an estate's content (who gets my vinyl when I die, vs. who gets my itunes catalog when I die)
- transfer of content purchased for a minor child, when that child is old enough to open an account (13 or 18 or whatever). News recently had this with a content buyer vs. Steam. This varies from the 2nd because derivative data (characters, experience, etc) makes 'just buy a new one' deeply unacceptable without transfer of that additional data.

Space exploration is to sea exploration like ... well, like hard vacuum is to getting stranded on a beach:

There's (forgive the pun) astronomically less chance of surviving a fuckup in space.

Going on fifteen years of wishing computer geeks would learn that ROCKET SCIENCE HAS THE 'ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE' REPUTATION FOR A REASON.

Yeah, one of my least favorite enterprise circlejerks was watching IT and InfoSec debate endlessly 'which email do I trust' and 'not doing an external survey because it involves clicking a link from an email' etc.

What about Hurricane and FuckinHumid? Are they the seasonal equivalent of a Hobbit's 'Second Breakfast'?

I mentally and emotionally left ubuntu behind when this 'train wreck' started, and have been churning along with Mint and Debian (for servers) getting most of my love.

This clarifies what the intent is for Ubuntu. More importantly to me, it resonates in a way that win8 and 'just like tablets and the new windows' never did -- this hints at a unix / X11 / 'network is the computer' mindset, where the UI and the data/computation are decoupled in ways that add flexibility, rather than straitjacketing power users.

I'm still hesitant, but I'll give Ubuntu a second chance based on this. Personal cpu/data devices and UI portability / flexibility wouldn't suck -- As long as Canonical sticks with a goal/plan for the UI being a realignment-to *AND* extension-of tablet UI design concepts, and not just carving off the complexity, or rearranging shit to be win00b-friendly.

Oops. GP actually used the word correctly -- google it, break out a dictionary or just rely on these quotes: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/apprehend.html

And ethics can't be figured out by polling for people that don't mind a concern/problem.

Yup. I really depressed some friends who were priming themselves to quit corporate and start up when I asked what their 'moat' was? A: The WHAT? Me: The moat... the barrier to competition? What is your 'secret sauce' that keeps some megacorp from letting you do all the hard work defining your niche, then asking a team to reverse engineer your product? What's the secret they'll never master, the patent, the copyright? It's like a moat around a castle. A: Um... uh...

They're still corporate drones, but they did create the project as FOSS. It's doing ok, they're happy and busy and one of them parlayed that project into a good raise at another company closer to what he loves.

OTOH, I know another guy who embraced a project that went big. Megacorps are good at balancing 'how much to reengineer' against 'can we just hire/buy the underlying code and talent'?

LOL, GP invokes strawman (all regulations are a liberal conspiracy) on your side of the argument. P responds with ORLY?! So you claim his answer is another strawman. That's some serious drain-bammage, bro. Do like P suggests and change stations, quick!

Seriously; if libertarianism is about being unencumbered to a point where every environmental, health or safety misdeed is allowed under the dual banners of 'capitalistic self-interest prevents abuse' and 'caveat emptor', it's even less viable than communism. But you may already know that. I've noticed that extremism tends to be pushed either by nutjobs, fools, or people knowingly working the Overton Window. Which are you?

Apologies in advance for the 'when did you stop beating your wife' tendencies to that question.

Anyone else read that second url and think it ended 'cybermen'?

customizability is not the crux definition of a PC. I can't tell you how many ways I've had laptops unupgradeable over the years (NEC UltraLite, anyone) but they've all been PC's.

I don't really have a dog in this hunt, btw. Haven't decided whether I consider a pad a pc or not. I say 'not' when it involves software compatibility, ability to edit word docs, etc. But when I start getting into how I'm using it, it starts to feel like a business device used personally for computing and that acronyms down to business PC. When I'm at home and surfing, that's home PC taskage. When my kids take a turn, it's a game PC, etc.

It's a candy mint / it's a breath mint.... fuck it and accept that netbooks, notebooks, smart phones, desktops and smart appliances are all PC's. The acronym PC is dead, long live the acronym.

they didn't. 2 of the 3 pie's fat slices involve the OS.

From http://www.microsoft.com/investor/CompanyInfo/SegmentInfo/ServerAndTools/Overview.aspx
"Server and Tools product and service offerings include Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio, System Center products, Windows Embedded device platforms, and Enterprise Services. Enterprise Services comprise Premier product support services and Microsoft Consulting Services."

To be fair, you're both going semantic and offtopic: rerun this argument like the monty python spanish inquisition script, and say that OS and business and servers are the cash cow yadda yadda...

Bloatwarepad is subsidized, just like Zune was.

Already been done -- Anyone remember that 'olestra' stuff? Inverted-molecule fat for fat-free pringles? Stuff died a dismal market death when word came out that it tended to cause 'rectal leakage'. Or, as Dave Barry said: "Warning! BUTT DRAINO!"