It's a bit hard to get outraged at MSFT when GOOG has been doing the exact same thing for the last three or four Android versions.

VLC on Mac + Apple TV let my wife and I stream DVDs during our honeymoon without any issue. AirPlay Mirroring sends an on-the-fly re-encoded stream to the TV, so it generally doesn't matter what format your content was in originally: if it can show up on your monitor, it can show up on your TV (with a few exceptions).

That said, for the purposes of this summary's question, he'd likely be better served by something like a Steam Link, since it has wired connections for his keyboard and mouse (it can also work with Bluetooth peripherals), can operate wired or wirelessly on the network, is built on top of Valve's In-Home Streaming functionality that is already proven, and has confirmation from Valve (check near the end of the article) to be able to stream any content, not just content from within Steam. Plus, it's just $50. Chief downside: it doesn't launch until November.

Related products or ideas:
- Razer Forge TV/Android TV (seems to be limited in terms of what it can stream, may not have ports for peripherals)
- Wireless HDMI (can be expensive to get low latency, doesn't do anything for peripherals)
- Wireless USB hub (can be expensive last I checked, no clue how good it actually is)
- HDMI over Ethernet ($20ish, but doesn't help with peripherals and requires your home is wired up)

I had been planning to put my next gaming rig in my media room, but at this point I'll wait for a Steam Link and will tuck the gaming rig somewhere out of sight in a distant room (sadly, no server closet or a convenient place to put one).

" IE turns 20 in less than a month, which is ancient in internet years,"

No, IE is not 20 years old. IE 11 bears no resemblance to IE8, which bears no resemblance to IE3, which bears no resemblance to IE 1.5.

This sort of description is like declaring the 1978 Saab 900 was anything like the 1994 Saab 900.

There have been 11 major versions of IE. Better to state that the name has been around for 20 years, or a product named that, but then we have to consider that 'Windows' has been around for 29 years. Does anyone even consider 'Windows 1.0' from 1985 is anything like current Windows, and shares the name only?

Lazy writing, worse thinking.

Not only that, but if we introduce the idea of eliminating mass ownership, it also has the potential to mitigate some of the concerns regarding the range of EVs. Namely, if you don't own the EV, then "recharging" it is as simple as swapping the entire car out for a fresh one. A fresh, driverless car could even meet you en route to your destination to make things even simpler.

Granted, it doesn't cover every use case (e.g. family road trips with lots of luggage would be a hassle still, since you'd be transferring that luggage as well), but it would cover a number of them, such as overnight trips to places that are cheaper to drive to than fly to.

Yeah...the whole premise of the summary is built on a comparison between dissimilar products intended for different uses.

If what you're interested in is streaming content, including games, from a PC to the TV, then Valve lets you stream to another PC on the network for free, or else offers the Steam Link for $50 if you don't have an old PC laying around. Which, as you said, is significantly cheaper than the cost of an Xbox One. Plus, all of Valve's stuff works across platforms, rather than being locked into Microsoft's ecosystem with Windows and Xbox.

And if what you're interested in is a PC wrapped up in an appliance/console-like experience, then Valve's partners will soon be offering Steam Machines ranging in price from about the cost of an Xbox One up to the cost of a super decked out gaming rig.

You don't need a Steam Machine to stream, and if all you're interested in is streaming, then frankly you'd be better with a Steam Link anyway, since it works on platforms where the Xbox app doesn't live and works for content that's outside of the Xbox app. But for people who already run Windows at home and have an Xbox One, the addition of streaming is a nice value-add, so I don't want to ding them too much.

That's not destruction of property, that's maintenance of property. Want a better analogy than the soccer ball? If your neighbor parks in your driveway without permission you can probably have him towed. What you can't do is take a 9 Iron to his headlights.

I'm not attempting to prove you wrong. As I said, other than quibbling over some of the subjective claims, I find your objective assertions to be generally accurate, even though they're misleading in how one-sided they are, just the same as when news reporters cherry pick statistics to suit their narrative. Yes, they're factually correct, but you're using them to paint a misleading picture of reality

I've already provided specific examples of that sort of behavior in response to and in relation to you numerous times (including in the thread you just linked), and I will not be drawn into yet another worthless discussion where we rehash those same points again.

The first DuckDuckGo search I did turned up our last discussion. But thanks for jumping to wrong conclusions that are easily disproven and then basing a series of false accusations on them. I've come to expect nothing less from you.

(quick aside: while I know others have multiple accounts, this is my only one, and the only time I post as AC is when I post sensitive information)

Anyway, I have no intention of getting dragged into another discussion with you. You and I have already said what we want to say to each other, both in that last discussion and in the one that preceded it (which is linked from the last one). I have nothing more to add, and I'm frankly not interested in hearing anything else you might have to say.

Have a good day.

I don't know that I'd call it "inexcusable". Maybe "ill-advised". He was using a shotgun, and given that he was almost certainly shooting at a steep angle with a line of fire that was clear of any targets that could suffer collateral damage, by the time the pellets would have landed, they'd be no more harmful than hail the size of shot pellets. Which is to say, not dangerous.

For some additional facts regarding shotguns, the effective range for most sizes of shot is just a few dozen yards, since at 50 yards out, the pellets will have lost over 3/4 of their energy and over half their velocity. Again, given that he had a privacy fence and waited until it was over his property, we can assume a steep angle, meaning that they'd basically go straight up and then just fall back down harmlessly, but even if we assume that he aimed just barely high enough to clear the neighboring house, shot pellets are unlike bullets in that they don't have spin from barrel rifling to keep them from tumbling out of control, so they lose the VAST majority of their energy to wind resistance. By the time they'd have fallen enough to actually hit a rooftop or window, they'd have spent almost all of their energy, rendering them harmless.

I'd actually be more concerned about any pellets that ricocheted off the drone, since they would have the potential to be significantly more dangerous than the ones that missed the drone.

Not so. It depends on the circumstances and local laws.

In many states, the question of whether or not it's legal to discharge a firearm within city limits is left up to the cities themselves to decide (and we don't know whether the homeowner was even within city limits, since he could be living in an unincorporated part of town outside the city limits, for all we know). And even in cities where discharging a firearm within city limits is unlawful, almost all of them would carve out an exception (whether written or unwritten) for a homeowner defending their own home. Moreover, in most (all?) states, firing a weapon into the air is not, in and of itself, illegal. After all, that'd make quail hunting, duck hunting, skeet shooting, and other similar activities illegal too. It's generally "random" or "celebratory" gunfire into the air that's illegal.

All of which is to say, shooting into the air is not necessarily illegal, and it's entirely possible that the contents of that card may provide evidence to support his case.

No, that would still be destruction of property. The fact that it's on your property does not give you the right to destroy it. If the neighbor's kid kicks a soccer ball over your fence does that give you the right to slash it with a knife before you return it to them? Of course not.

And that makes it OK?

I see nothing wrong with it, actually. People want — and have a perfect right — to know, who they are about to trust with powers over them and/or their businesses. And the higher the position, the greater the powers and, consequently, the greater the extent people might go in their investigations.

The "opposition research" is just another facet of this. If it is legitimate for all of us to study, how Donald Trump parted with his ex-wide 30 years ago before we hire him, it is certainly legitimate for a would-be employer to check criminal history of a candidate, or inquire, whether he has done something, which may betray certain things about his character or judgement. Did he torture animals? Is he prone to binge-drinking? Has he burned the national flag? Is he a racist, sexist, or communist?

So long as private employers' hiring decisions remain their own, they ought to remain free to base them on whatever considerations they please — with the specific (if regrettable) restrictions imposed by the law, of course.

Well clearly I'm not going to have such studies to hand, not sure how you would study such a thing

Well, you made a wide-reaching statement about a certain fact. If you can not cite anything to confirm the fact, your statement remains unsubstantiated and the "fact" — highly suspect.

there is inbuilt racism / nationalism in CV selection

I can believe that — and in my not-so-humble opinion, those concerns ought to remain up to the employer as well. Both from the principled standpoint — being free must imply freedom to be wrong, as well as practical — the war on thought-crimes, waged in this country since the 1960-ies, is even less winnable than the coterminous war on drugs.

Unjustifiable? He's spamming.

Proving him wrong? He's generally not wrong. He's attempting to mislead people by being selective about the information that he chooses to present.

His claims are mostly sound (I'd quibble over a few of the more subjective ones), but he's only presenting information that supports his product, while ignoring similar information that supports competing products. He's presenting this as some sort of a rivalry between hosts and ad-blocking extensions, and only talks about the benefits that hosts has, when the truth of the matter is that each of them has different capabilities and excels in different areas, so they're best used in a complementary fashion, rather than mutually exclusively. There are a number of things that ad-blocking extensions can do that hosts can't, but you'll be hard-pressed to get him to acknowledge them. Likewise, you'll be hard-pressed to get him to acknowledge that ad-blocking extensions may be a better solution for certain people who aren't technically-inclined and would have trouble using a tool such as his (assuming they can use it at all, since his tool doesn't run on OS X, for instance, last I checked).

I had a long back-and-forth with apk a few months ago. I largely agree with him, except inasmuch as he sets it up as an "either/or" rivalry between extensions and the use of a properly configured hosts file, rather than recognizing that extensions and hosts are best used in a complementary relationship with one another.

For instance, there are a number of features that extensions can do that hosts simply can't do (e.g. outright removing elements from the DOM so that they doesn't waste screen space), yet apk was reluctant to acknowledge those benefits in the discussion we had, though he was very quick to acknowledge the things that hosts can do that extensions simply can't do (e.g. blocking malicious traffic outside of the browser). He's not wrong about the benefits of hosts, but it makes it a bit hard to take him seriously when he's only willing to acknowledge facts that point towards the benefits of his product and is quick to dismiss valid use cases that don't align with how his product gets used.

As an example of that, when I suggested that one benefit of extensions was how easily they could be recommended to and used by non-technical users, since they're widely compatible and setup generally consists of just clicking a download link, he continued to insist that hosts was easier to setup, use, and keep up-to-date, and held up his product as proof of that fact. He didn't have an answer for me when I pointed out that his software can't run on my primary PC at home since it's booted into OS X. Nor, would I imagine, would he have an answer for me if we started discussing iOS, since users don't have access to the hosts files, whereas they do have access to extensions.

Meanwhile, you're engaging in what appears to be a non-ironic use of ad hominem to suggest that someone isn't skilled enough to make their point. Ouch.

I don't agree with the murder of unborn children either.

Well, you may not, but the country's laws see nothing wrong with it — and it certainly is not considered "murder". And yet, what you do with that same child only a few years after he is born, is suddenly a matter of police concern. That's the inconsistency — in the general thinking, not yours — of which I'm trying to raise awareness here.

I am not trying to claim [...] I think

Wouldn't it be nice, if people applied their opinions on rearing children to their own children only?