actually, go back to 1994! Timex Datalink

Also not to mention that MS produced it's first "smart watches" in the mid 90's (Timex Datalink) in cooperation with Timex, and also the SPOT watches from middle of the last decade. Not exactly market success, especially the second one. But MS was working with watches, tablets, PDA's etc. back when Apple was a just few dollars away from collapse and bankruptcy

Timex data link watch (developed in partnership with MS, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) that had synchronization capabilities with Outlook/Schedule+ in the early 90's, sync'd up via barcodes flashed on the screen of the PC. In the previous decade, SPOT watches ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) that offered limited data and IM capabilities through FM radio sub carrier signals. I owned on of the datalink watches for years, worked very well and reliably. Handy. The SPOT watches looked interesting to me tech wise, but couldn't justify the service cost.

We should remember that even though they weren't exactly world beaters or "killer apps", that MS has more experience with watches than any of the large tech vendors, including partnerships with existing conventional watchmakers. They could very well be the first to get something close to the right balance here, and the fact that they appear to be making it compatible with ALL of the major smartphone platforms is an encouraging sign. We shall see.

(former Navy nuc operator here) Although the direct technical skills from my time really don't apply. The idea of the "block diagram level" knowledge in your mind and the basic troubleshooting process instlled in me there in my training has served me VERY well over the course of my IT career. Not to mention the broad (not necessarily deep) mechanical system knowledge of things like power, HVAC, emergency generators, UPSs, etc. Data center infrastructure has a lot of similarity (at a smaller scale) to safety systems at a nuc plant. Yeah, not broad based the way the article says, but for my more specific part it worked for me!

I had thought Slashdot was a bastion for the (mostly) technically competent and (mostly) intelligent. Thanks for dragging it down mods....

No, government doesn't create the problem, but they allowed it to start and allow it to continue

Sometime in the late 70's, government's started bribing large companies using huge tax breaks, relaxation of regulations, land grants, etc. using taxpayer money. This has led to very little except badness and a culture of auctioning business locations to the highest (or lowest?) bidder. Nothing good has come of that atmosphere and it's continuing to get worse. How to stop it though?

In some way every third party vendor does this. Anything that can potentially complicate their installation or support gets eliminated, rather than configured in a way that is appropriate or best practices. It reduces their support cost and increases their profits. Overspecing hardware and network resources for their app is another area where this is done.

Good point, remembering back now. Was also the source of a lot of instability because of crappy video drivers especially early. That's what drove a lot of the unidriver model or generic low level driver stuff that kinda became the plumbing of "plug and play", took a while to get there in away that worked decently. I for one was very happy when they got print drivers out of kernel mode, so many stability problems there too.

Chicago was what became Windows 95, DOS was present as something vaguely like a "kernel" although that definition doesn't fit well. The 32 bit mode stuff was layered on top of DOS. NT4 was the first shipping version that used the NT kernel with the Win95 interface, that was codenamed "Cairo" and was really mostly a shell update using the NT 3.51 underpinnings.

Um, Win95 predated NT4 by a pretty significant amount of time. I remember beta'ing the wn95 interface on the released NT 3.51 though

This really isn't much different than what nature would have ultimately done with the water right? Just accelerated mechanically. Not much different than what we would have to do for long duration space travel or colonization either.

All sorts of automated security updates and patches during the regularly scheduled maintenance window. Couple of key things that make it work: 1. A valid and representative DEV environment or host(s) to vet and test deploy the updates using the same methods as production hosts. 2. A solid alerting system for when the inevitable couple of hosts fail and needs help to get running again. 3. A qualified and responsive on call person to review the results at or near the end of the maintenance window to make sure everything came back online properly and take action where necessary. It doesn't so much eliminate the after hours work as to reduce the volume of the after hours work to a level manageable by a single qualified tech.

Ensure true available choices and competition among consumer level ISPs and nearly all of these problems take care of themselves. Allow local monopolies on a broad scale as we have now and we give the power to do this to those ISPs because you have no choice to take your business elsewhere. The "Libertarian" self regulating market can work, but only if monopolies are not allowed.