no, it will not make a great htpc.

its not open, no one can trust anything google does and there will be a catch, and then it will be eol'd and abandoned.

have people really not been paying attention to all the things google has lost interest in, over time? why would this be any different?

they are not a reliable vendor of anything. they change courses and leave you stranded. and there is always the spying, spying, spying.

I'd never buy any more google based hardware. that would be stupid!

whores makes lots of money.

if you want to whore yourself out and turn the clock back on privacy and individual rights, sure, go right ahead.

I consider google workers to be whores, too. and facebook. people who can convince themselves that they are doing good work, but really, they are turning back the clock on progress and freedom.

if you work for the surveillance state, you deserve your own private hell. I firmly believe that. I hope I am not ever forced to decide between caving in and working for evil companies vs putting bread on the table. I've seen MORE than my share of being out of work, but so far, I have not had to work for truly evil places. those that willingly choose that, those are the traitors among us.

most? not in my experience!

and there are huge strings attached. you have to promise (writing) not to due them for any reason, ever. you have to obey other rules (never say anything bad about them on forums, etc etc).

and if you are a contractor, you get walked out in 0 or 1 days, no severance, no nothing. last time I was let go (as a contractor) the manager didn't even have the common human courtesy to speak to me or give me the reason for the dismissal. total surprise, came out of nowhere (I was meeting my deadlines and my work was well received). yet, I got a call from the job shop saying 'pack up, tomorrow is your last day. no discussion allowed. bye.'

yes, the US is a fucking nightmare for employment. if you have not seen this YET, you will. get to a certain age and you'll find its nothing BUT this kind of bullshit.

we need a new new deal. companies are going back to their bad old ways, from 100 years ago. slowly but surely, they are. not good for workers anymore. you are a cog, nothing more.

companies in the US no longer DESEVE 2 weeks notice. the rules are no longer valid; they won't give YOU notice. don't give them any courtesy they won't give you.

there is no loyalty anymore, so why play old games that are no longer valid?

you are a cog. you are just a worker.

just leave on the say you give notice. business is business, tell them you need to do what's best for you and that means leaving today.

they won't give you the same respect they 'expect' from you, so don't give it to them (anymore).

sad that its like this, but IT IS. only newbies and fools have loyalty to companies, now.

'say it once.

say it twice.

three time's the charm.'

(the B guy)

a company I was at more than 10 yrs ago ran MS email. some of us ran unix email (I think I was into qmail at the time) and the sysadmin was a friend, so I was left alone and had my linux box do my desktop work. was not forced to use windows. back then, it was atypical, but we used a form of bsd in our products and so the unix guys were not a small minority. still, I was one of the few who used only unix email, for corp stuff.

one day I get an email from some marketing guy, then a few minutes another email from 'the server' saying 'xyz would like to recall email 123' or something like that. too damned funny - the email was sent, it was poped or imaped out and into my qmail system, then into my user agent - and this guy - via the server - is asking me to delete the message.

but - well - I already received and read it! does 'your server' want me to unsee it? is that even possible? ;)

no one else saw the email. they went thru exchange and exchange did dutifully delete it before everyone else could even know it was there. but there is no 'reach over and delete' when I imap that thing out and its saved in my maildir.

just too funny. the MS guys really do think the whole world is MS.

sounds good. a state full of Repo Men!

(can I have my plate-o-shrimp, now?)

no, you do NOT DESERVE any such 'freedom' to hate people based solely on a religious reason.

the idea of civil rights was to step in when businesses were NOT self-policing. time and time again, business owners do the wrong thing (they think they are gods and untouchable) and when society finally gets pissed off enough, then laws are enacted to force bad actors to behave.

except, in this case, they went the wrong way. it was not the will of the people, but the will of a very small minority who demands that everyone play by their 2000 year old set of rules; or at least how they think those rules should be understood and followed.

you know what's right and what's wrong. we don't have to teach you that. you know, in your heart, that discrimination like this is very wrong; but you use some twisted congnative dissonance to convince yourself that its 'a form of freedom to be able to hate anyone you want'. I guess it is, but there's a bright line between hating someone for their belief system and denying them service in a public store or setting. you can hate them all you want - till the cows come home. that's your freedom right there. you are not forced to party with them, befriend them, marry them or go to church with them. that's all allowed in a free society.

but the line stands when you deny them basic rights. it does not take much for a small town to band together and LOCK OUT sales of goods to people who are different from them. and this is exactly where we are headed if this set of laws is allowed to stand.

(after they leave, one clerk says to the other):

"funny! they don't look druish!"

(oblig)

well, I know 'jesus' as well as anyone does (ie, not at all).

my guess is that his legend would have him stand up against discrimination and hatred.

this is not political. not even close. its about hatred and any other veneer is a false one.

"love others as you would have them love you" would not be in favor of hate-laws.

I don't believe there ever was a jesus, but some of the ideas attributed to hims are quite stellar. too bad no one in any time (modern or ancient) has truly accepted this core belief.

see the real definition of 'left'.

#include "I_dont_think_it_means_what_you_think_it_means.h"

no one on the left would support a hate-bill like this. sorry, but you have no clue what left means if you think this.

actually, the laws and bills have not gone far enough.

some kind of visual indication should be included, so you know who the enemy is. maybe an armband. it could be phrased as a 'fashion statement'.

what could possibly go wrong with that? sounds pretty christian to me!

right now, the only thing they don't do is 'sell ink'.

I think she's the right person to help with that.

not much else, though. but if ink at a high price is your game, she's the lady to go see.

there is no more money in arduino hardware anymore. its a fact.

business model is hard. the value is the software and libs and user content (MOSTLY user content! its all about the libraries and examples that let us all do rapid prototyping).

I bought some 328 arduino italy boards when I first started, at $30 or so, each. maybe more, I forget. but they were expensive and I stopped buying them once I could do my own boards. and now, even my own boards do not make as much sense; since I can buy a usb nanon 3.0 board for $5. sure, it has crap ftdi fake chips on it (sigh) but newer ones are using non-ftdi chips and so that's good progress.

the size of a nano v3 module is great, its all there and its hard to argue with that kind of easy integration. but no one buys italy or official nano modules. they exist and i'm sure they are better made with real parts, but they cost too much!

I hope they can find a good business model. the arduino guys did a big thing to help the world get into controllers (major game changer; they deserve full credit) but now that chinese clones are out there, the hardware side is 'solved'. sad but true.

arguing over who sells the hardware is a lose/lose game.

lol, yeah KB not MB.

damn, how far we really have come. amazing when you think about how many orders of mag we've seen in our life time.