While the guys with Neanderthal brains are out at bars trying to get laid, I'm living a comfortable, safe, and happy life. While they're getting exposed to STDs, drugs, accidental pregnancies, rough divorce settlements, paying child support, spouse abuse (either as the perpetrator or the victim), defaulting on their home because their spouse talked them into living above their means, etc. etc. etc..... I am living in a small single-bed apartment alone, making good money, playing video games (mostly MMOs) for social interaction, and listening to music to tame my biological cravings.

Not to mention, my choice not to reproduce helps the population problem -- at least in the span of a few decades, if not the long term. There is not a single problem that humankind has that can be solved by making more people. In fact, making more people does exactly the opposite for nearly all of our problems; it makes them more severe and reduces the length of time we have until those problems erupt into global catastrophes.

I don't *want or need* a woman. I don't *want or need* a romantic relationship with anyone. I don't want kids. I don't want any of the associated problems that come with either. It's been completely wired out of me.

I am basically an exact description of the type of person the study was about. And yet, I am not unhappy; I am not unsuccessful; I am not a loser. I am an environmentally-conscious, socially-reponsible citizen, supporter of my community, dedicated employee, educated voter and participant in the political process, and I have my fair share of social interaction, too, on the order of 6 to 8 hours per day on MMOs. Just because I don't touch the people I socialize with doesn't somehow make me diseased. I am a very social person. I am "socially intelligent". I can pick up on body language cues, implied meaning in conversation, the intent behind vocal intonation, the significance of a touch. I deal with people in meatspace for eight hours a day, and people in virtual space for another 6 to 8.

Medicine and academia has a tendency to call anything abnormal a disease, or a problem to be solved. Sometimes change is for the better. Sometimes the status quo is the worse of the two worlds.

In short: I would prefer to continue to be who I am, in the situaton I am in, rather than be the epitome of "masculinity" as this researcher thinks I need to be, even if I had the means to become that. And quite honestly, I'm pretty sure I do have the means to become that, if I put my mind to it. I don't put my mind to it because *it's not how I want to live my life.* Who the fuck is Philip Zimbardo to tell me that my life choices are wrong, especially when, by all the objective measurements that his ilk thrive on, I am of a far greater net benefit to society than many of the so-called "masculine" men he thinks I should be?

The relevant software products that are getting extensions sideloaded into them -- Firefox and Chrome -- are both open source. If a vendor like Lenovo wants to put ads in your browser with an extension, what do you think is going to happen when Google shuts off outside extensions in Chrome? That's right -- they're going to ship a fork of Chromium and call it "Lenovo Browser" and make it the default browser. You read it here first, folks.

The solution, for consumers, is simple. Don't use the pre-loaded OS installed on your system. Use a program to get your product key back, then wipe and reinstall from the original OS media. Or if you happen to be able to tolerate a non-Windows OS, just install one of those.

It's also worth mentioning that, as long as Chromium or Firefox is open source, people who want to use ad-blockers will be able to use them, no matter how hard Google tries to stop people from using them. Even if Google used their might to convince Mozilla to take Firefox closed source, another community fork would spring up to maintain Firefox and keep it up to date.

These companies need to understand that you can't strong-arm an idea. Open source code is basically an idea, and as long as there are people, there will be people who are building open source projects that do things that make you lose money. If that keeps you from getting any sleep at night, tough cookies. It's exactly the same reason that we can't defeat terrorism no matter how many people we kill. You can't kill your way through an idea, unless you kill every last human on the planet. This is especially true when tightening your grip makes people want to do that thing you don't want them to do *even more* -- ad blocking has this characteristic to it, too.

Linux is definitely a success story, both according to its original author and many in the community. However, it's not *the only* success story of a widely-used open source OS kernel other than Windows.

For example, the OpenSolaris kernel (and the rest of the operating system) is free software and open source, mature, well-tested, stable, and has a pretty large install base. Solaris is a different matter entirely since it's no longer open source, but the community that used to be behind OpenSolaris is still very active on e.g. Illumos, SmartOS, etc.

Sure, OpenSolaris is no longer a legitimate contender for the desktop (there was a time around 2006-2008 when it was more or less on-par with GNU/Linux on the desktop, believe it or not!), but it's still widely deployed on servers for all sorts of tasks, and it has an incredible compatibility story, too. You can run binaries compiled in the early 90s on a modern SmartOS machine. The Linux devs would just tell you to recompile from source, after fixing any build errors.

And let's not forget that (Free/Open/Net)BSD are also widely used. Again, their viability for *modern* gaming/desktop use is pretty limited (though some would argue otherwise, they're still way behind Linux, if for no other reason than proprietary games only run properly on a "real" Linux kernel), but *BSD OSes are used in a lot of routers, home servers, and yes, production servers for pretty important websites and web services.

I don't believe that Linux is the only winner in the battle for having a viable FOSS operating system based on a FOSS kernel. It's definitely the best we have when it comes to playing games and watching video, but that's because a lot of the proprietary elements that want to protect their content are only willing to support platforms with a huge landslide of installed users, and *BSD and *Solaris/Illumos/SmartOS are definitely not that.

But it would be irresponsible for us to judge winners and losers solely by their ability to present a nice GUI, since we use software for a lot of things that don't need a GUI, or can provide their GUI via a web app (and run that web app on whateverOS, be it Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, etc.), and can very viably be hosted -- with high performance and security to boot -- on *BSD or Solaris derivatives.

My IT shop waits at least a few weeks, if not months, before deploying updates. For critical security updates they usually wait about 2 weeks after the patch tuesday that it comes out on. For everything else, they eventually roll them out, but it can take a very, very long time.

I'm not sure exactly what kind of testing they're doing, or if they are just waiting for users to download the patch and see if it breaks things (resulting in a rollback from MSFT), but we never have the latest and greatest anyway.

Honestly, I can't really blame them. There have been countless "bad" updates out of Microsoft in recent years, that break certain programs or BSOD the system or even make it unbootable. However, I don't have a sense that the testing they're doing on these updates internally is adding any value. Probably best just to take a "wait and see" approach: if the update isn't pulled in 2-3 weeks after it lands, it's probably fine.

Exposure to radiation from space is probabilistic, and there have been many more living human-hours down here on Earth than up in space. Isn't it reasonable to assume that at least a handful of people have been unlucky enough to just *happen* to get bombarded with an unusually high amount of gamma radiation, having the same thing happen to them?

And then there are all these new-fangled manmade sources of gamma rays that we've been blowing up and/or using for electricity since the 40s...

If you're going to reference a pop song ("haters gonna hate"), you chose the wrong pop diva. Rather, you should have used the more apt "Call Me Maybe" by Carly-rae Jeppsen (which is one letter off of "Jeppesen"):

Hey, I just bought you
And this is crazy
But here's my WiFi
So update me maybe?

The problem isn't that they are relying on a single vendor, nor that they chose iOS over Android, or anything else silly like that.

The problem here is that they are using technology that's functionally tested for basic consumer use in a situation that suggests (and may soon require) a mission-critical level of software and hardware certification.

A lot of people (business people / decision-makers, mostly) don't seem to understand the difference between consumer-oriented hardware/software and safety-critical hardware/software.

Safety-critical hardware/software is designed, developed and tested with security, safety, and stability principles that are not only there "in theory", but are also tested for in practice, with a rigorous validation program that ensures the correct operation of the system. On the hardware front, the device is built to higher standards, such that the core chassis of, say, an iPad-like device would be able to withstand more shock than a consumer-oriented iPad with an Otterbox on.

If an airplane goes into a sudden roll or dive, causes the iPad to go flying across the cockpit and shatters the screen, what then? The pilots need the information in that device to be able to know how to follow the proper procedures to continue flying the aircraft safely. Without it, they can take their best guess and rely on instincts on how to operate the systems, but you cannot expect every pilot to memorize every contingency procedure. That's why the EFBs exist in the first place.

If you can't ensure that your tablet electronic device is at least as rugged as a hardback book, you shouldn't be using them on an airplane.

The problem is that there are few or no vendors of extremely rugged hardware/software solutions that are available in a thin and light form factor akin to an iPad. The safety-critical rugged device sector is 5 to 10 years behind the state-of-the-art consumer device space. That's because it takes many more months to design and ship a device with a much higher level of physical and digital assurance of correct operation. The airlines seem willing to take the risk of failure of these consumer devices, because they would rather have the latest features, like capacitive multitouch, ultra-slim design, retina displays, etc. instead of using something whose technology was state-of-the-art in 2008, but is built like a brick, both physically and software-wise.

We've seen MANY first-hand examples of consumer electronics devices from ALL vendors having extremely dangerous stability and security bugs that would render the device inoperable for the use case the airlines are using it for. We can't take the risk that this important tool will be unavailable when they need it. AA and other carriers need to stop using iPads as replacements for the flight bag, and either pay for the R&D for a proper rugged replacement, or go back to paper.

I'll conclude by saying that the EFB/flight bag is, in my opinion, a safety-critical tool aboard all except the most sophisticated airplanes (e.g. the Airbus A380, which has a computer built into the cockpit on an LCD screen that actually tells the pilots what to do to resolve problems). The airlines are taking a big risk by implementing this with consumer technology. If they "do it right" and work with a vendor that produces rugged industrial mobile devices, it will cost more and have a much longer development cycle than shipping iPads. The devices will almost certainly be heavier, have less "whizzy" displays and UI, have a shorter battery life, and be harder to upgrade if additional features are desired later. But they will have a MUCH higher level of assurance that their correct operation, both hardware and software-wise, will continue to be available in the case of an emergency when they are needed most. It still won't be impossible that they'll break, but it'll be much less likely.

You are right, of course, that it has to be a collective effort. However, your mental mistake was in saying that nothing you do will matter. I absolutely agree with you that bringing our population (globally!) under control is the most important step we can take. I absolutely agree that the rate of growth of our consumption of fossil fuels is going to cause us to hit a "brick wall" in, AT MOST, a handful of generations -- if it doesn't happen to your kids, it'll happen to your grandkids, I'm almost certain.

This brick wall is basically the point beyond which, obtaining cheap fossil fuels for electricity production and transportation at a rate that meets demand is impossible. In 5 year old terms, "everything will start getting extremely expensive." I have no idea what is going to happen at that point. Resource wars? Massive investments in nuclear power and electric cars shore up "business as usual" for another few decades? Fusion power becomes economical and saves us for the long haul, provided that we're all willing to convert to electric cars? I don't know. I just know that it's going to be bad, especially in the short term, as food prices spike and people can't pay their gas bill to get to work (if the gas station even *has* any gas).

When it comes to matters like this, every little bit DOES help. Every person who is convinced that they need to do their part by conserving as much energy as they can is setting an example for the rest who are happy to keep rollin' coal.

In your situation, by far the greatest damage you've done to the planet and our collective resource supply was to bring those three children into the world. United States citizens consume more fossil fuels per capita than all but 12 countries, but most of those countries have extremely small populations with high median income, so they're hardly a drop in the bucket. I guess you could have done worse by raising them in Qatar, but it's still pretty bad.

Honestly, I could care less about your SUV. I'm not one of those wackos who would try to force you into an abortion when you had more than 2 kids, and I certainly wouldn't want any harm to come to them now that they're a part of the world.

All I want is for you to *accept responsibility for your own choices and actions*. If you're willing to man up and admit that you *could have*, in retrospect, contributed less to the world's problems by *not* having 3 kids (and having, instead, 2, 1, or 0), and if you're willing to carry forward the message to others that the need is urgent to ensure that *everyone* contributes a little bit to making the population problem better, and NOT worse (which is unfortunately what you've done, whether you think it's significant or not), then you're on the right path, SUV or not.

I know that we can't all be ideologues and that sometimes we can't practice what we preach because of the realities of life. I don't know you, and for all I know your children were "a coincidence" (not planned) and were triplets, which can happen to anybody. But taking responsibility for yourself is a necessary prerequisite before you can start telling other people (such as the China you harp on about -- and rightly so) that *they* also need to quit reproducing like rabbits and cut down on fossil fuel consumption. Otherwise they'll just laugh at you, point at your 3 kids, and go get their wife preggers tonight to make the problem worse.

No, I live in a place where most people have Verizon or AT&T with limited data, because the alternatives have horrid coverage. They pay huge monthly bills for ant-fart-sized data plans, like 5 or 10 GB per month for an entire family.

They have unlimited data or extremely high caps on their home Internet connection, sure, but I haven't seen any of them unraveling 25 miles of structured cabling with them as they drive from their house to work.

I had a huge response typed up here that I was ready to send, but I realized it was laced with ad-hominem, and I wasn't able to find a way to write it that would be free of statements that could be interpreted that way. It is very, very hard to write about someone else's lifestyle -- especially when you disagree with some of their choices -- without being offensive. So I'm not even going to try.

Instead, I would like for you to take a deep breath, change gears, open your mind, and watch this lecture by the late and great Professor Emeritus Albert Allen Bartlett of University of Colorado at Boulder. Remember that he was a very distinguished and respected scholar, whose statements in this lecture are completely fact-based and inevitable consequences of mathematics. Please do not let any opinion in this thread, mine especially, distract you from the message of knowledge that Professor Bartlett wishes to deliver to you posthumously with this lecture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

RIP Professor Bartlett, and may you learn something useful from this very insightful Professor of Physics.

You are assuming that the standard image deployed to every employee contains all of the desired software solutions, and that no one could ever conceive of or imagine a world where a new piece of software might exist that could make their work more productive.

That's an assumption that I've found to be false in 4 out of the 4 jobs I've ever worked, over a career of 12+ years.

Can't tell you how many times my coworkers, who have limited data but know I have unlimited data, have asked me while we're out and about if I could google something, or ask me to turn on my wifi hotspot.

There is a definite and obvious use case for unlimited or very cheap data when "anywhere" (where my specific definition of "anywhere" means, typically, on the road, or at any number of random retail establishments or private office complexes in the Baltimore metro area / suburban sprawl). Landline-backed WiFi is rarely available, and where it is, it's not free, or too slow to be useful.

The telcos can give us excuses all day about why we can't have unlimited or very cheap data, but eventually they're going to have to figure it out. There is a ridiculous amount of pent-up demand for cheap cellular data, or any alternative that gives you instant broadband-speed data at your fingertips almost anywhere. WiFi, WiMax, and all the other alternatives that have tried to be it, have utterly failed to come even close because of a lack of coverage. The only alternative we have today is grandfathered unlimited on Verizon & AT&T if you need tethering, or Sprint/T-Mo if you don't need tethering.

No, $10/GB is not insanely cheap. $0.10 per GB is closer to the order of magnitude I'm willing to pay, with $0.01 as the ideal. I think the telcos haven't unlocked pricing on this level for the masses because they're too busy swimming in their $10 bills, not because there is an engineering brick wall that would prevent them from doing this.

I have nothing against paying by the gigabyte. I'm not at all married to the idea of unlimited. I just refuse to accept paying such an outlandish fee for a gigabyte of data, when 1 GB is almost nothing with today's content-rich web apps (auto-playing 1080p videos, images, huge .js applications, etc.) In fact, some websites can easily make you spend $1 or more in a couple seconds by just visiting a company's homepage, and while the page is rendering and you're fumbling around trying to tap the close button, you've downloaded more than 100 MB of video, and spent upwards of a dollar. Not cool, but it happens.

I think, to determine the price per gigabyte, we should back into it by determining a reasonable price for one second of saturated average throughput (SAT), which should be set to the expected downstream you'd get if you're downloading at "saturation speed" (as fast as the LTE modem can go with the current bandwidth available) for one second.

For Verizon LTE, SAT would currently be something like 20 Mbps. So that means you would be downloading 20 Megabits in one second. To download one gigabyte, you would have to download continuously at 20 Mbps for 400 seconds. If we set our one-second SAT target price at $0.0001, this means you could currently charge $0.04 per gigabyte, which I think is a great price.

However, the price per gigabyte should go down the higher the bandwidth. The goal is to prevent any one second of SAT from costing too much. So if they doubled the LTE bandwidth to 40 Mbps SAT, to maintain our target one-second price of $0.0001, we'd have to charge $0.02 per gigabyte. By measuring the user's bill according to what we consider to be a reasonable price for 1 second of SAT, the carriers will be adjusting the price per gigabyte to be lower and lower the more bandwidth is available. This is something consumers want (and need) to see.

Compare this to the current model, where 1 GB of data has been the same since 3G days. Even though we have many times more bandwidth and capacity on the mobile networks than we used to in 2003, we're still billing customers $10 per GB. That, I think, is completely unreasonable. The only reason this has happened is that the carriers are trying to get their customers into the hundred-millions, so they're dividing their limited resources by a great deal more handsets than they had on the network in 2003. I don't agree with this model one bit. It means that us early adopters are now effectively subsidizing the cost of the network to provide service to millions of new customers, because our data is not getting cheaper even though capacity is skyrocketing to never-before-seen heights. If that capacity had been reserved for us, data *would* be $0.01 per GB today. And to add insult to injury, each of their *new* customers are *also* paying this outlandish fee.

The telcos are making money hand over fist, posting record profits every quarter, with an accelerating profit curve. They are riding the gravy train while the rest of us get to eat cake (in the "let them eat cake" sense). It's an extremely unfair distribution of wealth and resources.

And yet, despite all this, Google Fi plays right into the hands of the carriers, offering absolutely nothing new or noteworthy in the pricing department. Indeed, it seems like Google is trying to take a sip from the gravy train, rather than offering a few drops of it to the little people.

Don't be ridiculous. The *core* of Linux can run fine on anything, but to actually do something useful, you need more hardware. "Can run" and "can do what I need to do with it after it's booted" are two different things.

The people saying that Linux can run on anything are right. So are the people who are wishing that the Compute Stick would come with at least the same hardware as the Windows version. What if they want to do a little more than just browse the web? Linux definitely has the programs available to do something a little more resource intensive. It seems unnecessary to tie the hardware to the software.

No -- modern web browsers (IE 8+, Firefox since a long time, and Chrome since its initial public release) are sandboxed off from the native platform to such an extent that you cannot access the native code environment or the local filesystem from JavaScript. Even if you tell the browser that you trust the site, a modern browser is not going to allow you to access the filesystem or call Windows APIs from JS.

You can do a lot of useful things with JavaScript and HTML in a browser like Chrome, but there are still a great many tasks that are desirable and important which can't be done in this environment. For example, automating a workflow in Microsoft Office.

And for heaven's sake, if you're an IT administrator and reading this, please, please, PLEASE stop forcing users to run IE 6/7/8 and nothing else. At a bare minimum, install and support Firefox ESR. It is not in your job description to take pleasure in your users' suffering. ;)