I agree. This is my favorite book and I hope they do a decent job of it.

"The year of Net Neutrality"..... wait, we got that one!

Don't count your chickens before they are slaughtered.

You currently have no idea of what you "got", because only FCC commissioners have read the actual regulations they will be passing...

There are 300 pages of changes ready to change the internet you know today. Good luck with that.

What will make Windows Phone succeed is the same thing that will make OS X succeed and it mainly boils down to apps.

Microsoft already tried that though - they paid a lot of money to developers in order to bring many of the most popular titles to Windows phone from iOS/Android.

Even with that it will still not enough to track consumers...

What's better is dong it right. Like HTML requests or Email Messages, file systems should allow arbitrary metadata fields on files. Some standardized for specific purposes, such as file type. Others available for whatever the file format, program, or user wants.

For example, MP3's ID3 tags shouldn't have to be stuck into the content. They are metadata and should be represented as such.

The BeOS file system had this right. It just didn't have enough market presence to make a difference.

That simply means that these other systems share the same brokenness of not having a filetype as one of their metadata fields. Again it doesn't make confusing name and type in a single field a good thing.

And BTW if you're assigning responsibility, DOS just copied CP/M's naming convention of 8.3.

First of all whatever you do can't be worse than file extensions because they are a free for all, and clashes, especially of 3 letter types are common.

Secondly, it's a solved problem. MIME types have both standard types defined, plus a defined process for vendor extensions. Yes, via IANA.

Thirdly file types which have no additional requirements for registration, yet unambiguous are easy, by simply prefixing them with an already registered domain (usually reversed). e.g. com.google.whateverthefuckgooglewanttocalltheirnewfiletype.

You say that, but someone already thought of that.

Right. It's a single stack of software sold as an OS. If the extension is used as a concealed file type by one part (desktop) then the name is effectively that, and it's a bug to allow more than one the same.

I'm not saying that Windows should actually be modified to prevent this. I'm just pointing out the illogicalities that using file extensions as file types gives.

BTW, as a rif on your suggestion, EPOC32 (that because Symbian) had an interesting angle. FIle types were given by file system extensions "recognisers" that could tell file types by arbitrary means. So they could look at file contents (generally the first sector of a file) or file name. So you could look for an HTML header say, Indeed most file types have recognisable headers within them. For example I did a Gameboy emulator, and I wrote a recogniser to go with it that recognised Gameboy games by the string "(C)Nintendo" which was always at a particular offset in the file. Which my colleague found rather amusing.

In a lesser way, *nix tells the types of executables by examining the first part of the content. e.g #!/usr/bin/python

You can't claim authority here. I was programming assembler as far back as 1983.

What you mean by "misused" here is using the C++ parts of C++. Because if you do, you will almost certainly be slower than C. For example virtual functions require an extra level of indirection over C function calls.

And when it doesn't matter then no need to stray from Obj-c. There's no reason to have 2 OO languages in a project.

Shut the fuck up. I've already said more than once that the only reason people use C++ in iOS or OSX projects is when they are leveraging a library that's in C++.

Turbine bird deaths are a red herring. An estimated 10000-40000 birds die each year from turbines.

First of all, your numbers are plain wrong, by an order of magnitude.

But given any number, the question is - what is that number out of how many working turbines?

Because there are a LOT of structures, and powerlines, and other things that also kill birds as you mentioned. But you are giving us no idea if the number killed by turbines is proportionately higher or not, only absolute numbers with no means to intelligently compare...

All the intelligent reader has to do is mull over how many times they have seen dead birds beneath skyscrapers and other structures, and compare that to a rough average of at least a few dead birds per day, per turbine.

But then you are AC, so all you were really interested in is making up facts (most of those number s are suspect: and spin to make wind power seem harmless.

when you're going to shoot someone, you can see them and know what you're aiming at. I guess you didn't think of that.

I didn't think of that because I dismiss inherently ridiculous thoughts. All that happens is that a persons OWN WORDS are pointed out to others.

It's far more like I have a magic shield that reflects anything shot at me back at the attacker. Guess then who is responsible for the amount of damage received back...

You totally should be able to do something about it, and that something should not require you to become a private investigator, politician, lawyer, judge, and security guard.

Too bad that is the reality is that in fact that is the case. It is utterly unrealistic to expect ANY kind of public service like a police force to scale to handle the amount of trolling that actually exists - every other person on earth would have to be employed to handle this.

You claim it's a hardship to have to be " a private investigator, politician, lawyer, judge, and security guard". Well guess what, the internet solves that issue by training you how to be all of those things online, if it matters to you.

This behavior pattern - acting before thinking it through

And YOUR behavior, of failing to act until it is far too late, is what leads to things like gangrene and amputation in real life. It is FAR batter to take informed action quickly than action that comes far too late, or to become lost in analysis paralysis.

YOU were the one to claim that self-defense means you must be "a private investigator, politician, lawyer, judge, and security guard." How can you go through those stages WITHOUT thinking it through? The very act of doxxing or shaming is inherently not done without thought, because it requires thought to complete.

Nothing about what I've just said demands "having inherent trust in the system to do everything for you".

Except that you are advising in waiting for action that will, by the natures of scale of the problem, never come. It's hard to imagine what good that will do anyone, except for serving trolls very well indeed.

The Salem witch trial methods would still have killed many innocents even if witches did exist

But all that we are seeing in THIS case is someone pointing out what people are saying to others. So the harm done is directly proportional ONLY to the persons own actions.

Someone moderately clever will post horrifically offensive content under someone else's name, then "catch" the designated offender and post their info and purported crimes to social media.

So since that might happen one in 500 million times of ACTUAL trolling - so we should do nothing at all about real trolls that we can actually combat. Even though it can be disproved...

The good of the many and all that. We should not back down from preventing common crime because of a hypothetical.

The Salem Witch Trials were good thing. After all, there might have been some real witches there.

In this case you have people literally flying around on metaphorical brooms on Twitter.

If there had been actual witches eating children, are you saying they should have done nothing? Because that's what you are saying should be done in the case of people talking on Twitter about how they want to rape his daughter.

We aren't talking about witch-hunts here against people who have done nothing. We are talking about bringing consequences to people who in fact HAVE done something and expect nothing to happen as a result.

This is why we have police departments.

Come on, you realistically expect the police to handle every case like this?

This is no different from having a reasonable right to self defense to protect your life. If you are being harassed online you should be able to do something about it, because chances are the police will not are at least not nearly as expediently as you can. The earlier you take action, the more you cut off the really bad stuff.

that's a reason to fix what's broken about our system

What if what is broken is having inherent trust in the system to do everything for you?

Sounds like it is being fixed.

You seem to be very much agreeing.