Rumor has it The Feds played Yoko at the Waco TX Standoff in an attempt to irritate them out of hiding, and it may have been what triggered the suicidal outburst. But I've yet to verify that rumor.

so the "Dept. of Don't Be Evil" can plot their evilness growth curve.

Why the hell are we still stuck using Javascript...

Because it would take a large group of organizations to cooperate and work together, which rarely happens. Closed source wants to lock out competitors and open source wants to each be their own kings of their own little hills for bragging rights. (Almost nobody really works for "free", they all want either money or credit/status.)

I'd loooove to see a GUI-friendly markup language that is either far less dependent on any scripting or application code for the common desktop-like GUI idioms, or at least is not heavily dependent on ONE language, like JavaScript is per DOM.

But it's probably too big a project for a small group of geeks to get right (or to make good enough to gain traction). Rich GUI kits are not easy to implement. Plus, it probably has to be backward compatible with most of the existing HTML stack. The separation of applet and HTML page is part of what killed Java applets.

Great, until the robots get the e-b0la computer virus.

There's a secret Yoko Ono tune on the buried ET cartridges.

and neither work

...Warm Fusion anyone?

And don't forget the crow NY-Times had to eat in an apology to R. Goddard after claiming rockets wouldn't work in the vacuum of space.

http://www.popsci.com/military...

Actually, I was just going to warn you that you forgot to redact your name. Then when I read that you'd already noticed it, I got curious about that used oil analysis. Seriously, what's the deal with the diesel oil and/or canola in your Corolla?

We now also know you drive an '00 Corolla and live in Walnut Creek, CA. By the way, why do you use diesel oil in your gasoline engine? I put the same stuff in my TDI...

Wait -- and why is the oil analysis guy talking about canola?!

"and get off my lawn!" BZZZZRP, **poof**

It's not like 10 years ago it was enjoyable either to use a dumb terminal, and quite frankly I doubt it's improved (I think they were SUN dumb terminals connected to something I can't remember). These days you're still going to compete over resources over a extremely high latency link (relative to computer performance). Not to mention the increased use of graphical elements in the UI.

It's worse... these days we're making our dumb terminals using AJAX.

Why don't you expect that you can re-write the code on the dozen micro-controllers in your car

I do, and I have (or more precisely, I paid somebody else to do it for me). In my case, the guy had to remove the ECU and de-solder the memory in order to flash it; on newer models it can be done thorugh the ODB II port -- I consider that to be an improvement.

Incidentally, you can get a lot more horsepower out of most turbodiesels that way.

On other cars from the same manufacturer, some people re-flash their window control module so they can roll down their windows using their keyless entry. My car had that feature already enabled, so I didn't need to mess with it.

or your refrigerator

My refrigerator is old and dumb. But if it weren't, I would indeed expect to be able to hack it.

What about your cable box?

When I had cable (against my will -- only because the cable company charged less for internet + TV than they did for internet by itself that year) I used an HDHomeRun with a CableCard.

your DVR?

I use an HTPC specifically because I can program it!

your DVD player?

It's a drive in the afore-mentioned HTPC.

How about that PS3 your kids play?

I boycott all Sony products (especially Playstations) as a matter of principle. I was starting to consider forgiving them for the rootkit, but then they removed OtherOS. Sony is dead to me.

Your ethical criteria is arbitrarily created to castigate Apple for doing the same thing that hundreds of other manufacturers have done over the last 100 years.

Nope. I apply the same standard to everything else I buy.

I'm genuinely worried acceptable new products will cease being made (which is, of course, the reason for my rule in the first place).

You probably own a few dozen processors which are similarly handicapped by the manufacturer to function as an appliance.

Try me.

Exported by what? For all you know, I might be trying to look for the damn things using strings on the raw block device!

Yes, new packages will need to support both for a while, but this is a tiny fraction of the work to create and maintain a new service. It is a very small price to pay in order to get some breathing room and a graceful transition period.

See, the problem here is that your whole concept of the issue is mistaken. You're talking about supporting both "for a while" during a "graceful transition period" when the issue is that people don't ever want to switch. Not now, not after a "transition period," not 1000 years from now -- never. The issue is that lots of people see SystemD as fundamentally wrong, bad, incorrect, doubleplusungood, and anathema to the "Unix nature." A "graceful transition period" will not and can not fix that!