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Comment Re:VR again? (Score 1) 202

Oh, we all know what the killer app is: the same one that vaulted the VCR and the internet to ubiquity.

Why bother with VR goggles? Cut out the middleman/women and just develop a headset that directly stimulates the user's brain's reward center. With that you can corner not only the porn market but the cocaine/marijuana market and the flappy-bird market as well.

Comment Re:LOL .. 0.9.0? (Score 1) 173

Because people don't trust software like Microsoft Windows or Epic Systems's EPIC or Autodesk...no sir, no one trusts commercial software.

An excellent refutation of a point that was never made. No one would trust closed-source *BitCoin* software. Hell, a lot of people don't trust open-source BitCoin software, which they can audit as thoroughly as they want.

Tell me, when you get done fapping to open source is the napkin you use for clean up GPL compatible?

Tell me, does being an obnoxious prick on the Internet improve your life in any tangible way?

Comment Re:I would like to know (Score 1) 76

Mac OS X recently added very aggressive disk caching (it will use any free memory for disk caching), and it dramatically improves performance, even on machines with super fast SSDs.

Recently? I was under the impression that this was how MacOS/X (and indeed most non-ancient flavors of *nix) had always worked. Was I mistaken about that?

Comment Re:Service can unlock (Score 1) 93

Given that Tesla, Inc. knows the position of all its cars at all times, what is the benefit of stealing one? If you then drive it for any length of time, the police will track it to your location and arrest you. OTOH, you could try to sell it for parts, but I doubt the Tesla parts market is large enough to do that anonymously; most likely anyone interested in buying said parts would know they were stolen and would report you to the police.

Comment Re:Obligatory xkcd, and rirst post (Score 1) 248

Here's the main reason I don't use Vim (or Emacs, for that matter): it's a "stateful" editor. Insert mode? Command mode? Etc. etc. I can do without.

Stateful editing is a bit tricky to get used to, but once you've wrapped your mind around it there's a payoff: In command mode you have (at least) 26 commonly used commands available to you via a single keystroke.

In an editor without states, you either have to hold down the command key (or some other meta-key) to indicate that what you're about to type is a command and not a literal letter, or you have to (horrors!) use the mouse. Either way, it's slower than just being able to press a single key to activate each command.

Comment Re:There's a reason people argue about vim and ema (Score 1) 248

Do people in fact still argue about vim vs emacs?

It seems to me the the vim-vs-emacs wars ended in a stalemate decades ago, and everybody who participated is resigned to the fact that nobody will ever switch from one to the other. Meanwhile, all the young'ns are using IDEs anyway, and have only a vague idea what vim or emacs is, so they don't really care enough to argue about which is better.

Comment Re:LOL .. 0.9.0? (Score 5, Insightful) 173

Do people expect someone to take seriously a piece of software to manage financial transactions with a version like that?

Apparently people do take it seriously, so it looks like the answer is yes.

Staying in the 0.x range for a long time is typical for open-source software -- a lot of packages don't go to 1.0 until they have been in use for many years. It doesn't necessarily imply anything bad (or good) about the reliability of the software.

If BitCoin was commercial software, no doubt it would be up to Version 7 Professional Platinum Collector's Edition now... but then again, if it was commercial software, it would probably be closed source, and therefore nobody would trust it enough to use it, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Comment Re:No low end market (Score 1) 100

There is no low end application here. A secretary is never going to use one of these things.

A secretary is never going to use an XBox either, and yet they manage to sell plenty of them.

The only likely users are techies and early-adopter types.

Maybe -- it will depend entirely on how compelling the experience is. If it's seen as boring, or nauseating, or socially isolating, then you'll be proven right. OTOH, if it's really fun, there's no reason the technology won't spread as the technology matures and prices decrease.

Comment Re:sure, no problem (Score 1) 245

That's known as a data diode, and it's a great idea (and can be done at higher speeds than RS232, if necessary; e.g. you can do something similar with an Ethernet cable).

It does have one big limitation, though -- it won't let you control the system from off-site. If that's okay, then great, but often off-site control is something that you want to have, not just off-site monitoring.

Comment Maybe you could (Score 1) 245

>Or maybe you could isolate control systems from the Internet.

Yes, maybe is the keyword there. Set up everything to be nice and air-gapped, and maybe some joker won't bring in his malware-infected laptop the next day and temporarily hook it up to your "secure network" in order to transfer a file over.

Or then again, maybe he will. Who knows?

Comment Re:This shouldnt be a surprise. (Score 1) 516

Sarius, I didn't say anything about the Republicans that they wouldn't happily acknowledge about themselves. "Wealth redistribution" is one of their primary complaints about Democratic policies, and they would certainly see the proposed tax as an egregious example of that.

As for whether Democrats are better or worse or different or whatever, I don't think I want to get into that discussion with you, it's old and tired.

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