Stalin? a blip.

That's probably because Stalin preferred to kill people instead of incarcerating them. It's estimated that between 3 million and 60 million people died during Stalin's regime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin.

I don't have any hard facts concerning China, and so can't rebut your assertion, except to note that you don't offer any numbers of your own for comparison purposes.

And, hey, let's not count the dead in any case, right? After all, they're dead, so who cares?

Now. How can anyone argue that there's no such thing as "brainwashing", or that it only works on stupid or ignorant people?

Well, there's brainwashing, there's stupidity, ignorance and then there's just outright dishonesty, which is what you appear to be engaged in with your hyperbole. Sad that you got modded up, though I certainly understand it. That 3-digit UID pretty much makes all the youngins here swoon, I imagine.

Regards,

dj

The problem however was that the ARCNET daisy chain had a fairly short maximum physical length before you got signal degradation.

No offense, but, I NEVER deployed ARCNET in a "daisy chain" configuration, EVER. ARCNET, by definition, was a token-passing network, deployed upon a physical star topology [1], and was VERY flexible with regards to cabling..., and it MIGHT have supported such, but *I* never used it, ever, in such a configuration as you state.

We ran RG-62 coax, from end nodes, to active hubs, in the early days, and occasionally split those with 4-port passive hubs, which, while allowed, DID limit overall cable length. By specification, any active to active run (whether end point or active hub ) run could be up to 2000 feet [2], which was one of the great things about ARCNET back then: You could use the same coax cable, everywhere, so long as you abided by the overall length per network segment rules. And, 2000 feet is a LONG distance, in the real world, especially when you're running cable to tie together buildings on a campus, for example. I could do that, with ARCNET, and DID, using just RG-62 coax, and judiciciously-placed active hubs.

I, for one, welcomed Ethernet when it became affordable. I had become so tired of crawling through ceilings and fishing down walls whenever someone moved to a different office

No offense, but that's not a failure of ARCNET, as a cabling system, but rather, a failure of planning, I think. Certainly, I had my share of "cabling angst", back in the day: Ran *miles* of ARCNET coax cabling, NO lie. Later, the same for Ethernet twisted pair: CAT 3, then CAT 5, when I had my own business, I finally subbed it out, because I couldn't do it properly: I couldn't cost-justify the time, labor, nor tools needed to do it properly, for my customers, myself. So, I gave all my cabling jobs, back then, to a small, local company whose owner I knew, and I knew they'd do a good job. Never asked for a kickback, nor anything other than they take care of my customer, and remember me for referring them. Never got a ounce of business from him in return, but it didn't matter to me: He does good work, and so my customers were well served, as I wished.

However, to wrap this up? Regardless of time, network cabling is just something to be done. In the OLD days, we did it ourselves, as part of being nerds, we ran the cabling, connected it, tested it - how else were we going to connect everything, and be sure that it was done correctly?

Now days, it's just another "thing", like electricity.

Still, I *miss* those days, you know: Networking was NEW, and people appreciated it... ,

Regards,

Notes:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCNET

[2] ibid

[3] This note has no reference. However, I have, in a filing cabinet, the complete specifications for ARCNET, as published by Datapoint Corporation, circa 1980. Send me an email at djloweathotmaildotcom and I'll scan them and email them to you :)

And underwent surgery in order to get rid of glasses as they were the worst annoyance in my life [1] - so there's no chance of me using this product [2].

Of course, Google Glass has NOTHING at all to do with vision correction, per se... so, this objection is a complete non sequitor, due to its irrelevance.

People don't realise just how much these things are going to negatively affect you

they are going to cause irritation and issue with our hair

Not irritation with our hair, Precious! ANYTHING but that!

and the side of your head

Which side? Not the right side, Precious!

That's my take on it all. The wearable aspect is just a poor substitute for what we have been "promised" in fiction.

And, what, exactly, is that? Have we ever been promised good hair, non-irritated hair, somewhere in fiction? If not, I suppose that I'm fortunate: None of the glasses I've ever worn have irritated my hair, and, I suppose, at this late date, I'm fortunate that I still HAVE hair, which remains unirritated, despite the ongoing presence of glasses, Google or otherwise.

Regards, mostly in jest,

dj

Notes:

[1] Trust me, I understand: I've worn glasses since I was 4 years old, and, now, at age 48, I've had to adopt progressive bifocals. However, my objections to Google Glass have NOTHING at all to do with my having to wear corrective lenses in general.

[2] I'll never use it, because of the privacy issues involved.

everything else was a bigger PITA

Not really. Back then, Ethernet was purely CSMA/CD (and later CSMA/CA), and at 10 Mbps a heavily populated network segment could quickly become saturated. Compare that to ARCNET, which, although it only ran at 2.5 Mbps, was token-based, and so scaled much better as nodes were added to a segment. In fact, overall throughput on an ARCNET LAN was BETTER than that of Ethernet then with equal numbers of nodes per segment as the node count increased.

Later, Ethernet networks would move to twisted pair at 10 Mbps on Category 3 twisted-pair wiring connected to Ethernet concentrators (what you youngins all call "hubs" now)... and performance was easier manage due to centralization of the wiring at the concentrators: You could lower the node count by adding network cards to the server and then having each one connect to a concentrator, and then judiciously daisy-chain concentrators together to increase the node count per segment.

NetWare made this easy to do, as it handled all of the routing internally. Later, it supported IPX load balancing at the server level, and you could have multiple NICs in a server connect to the SAME segment, which helped a LOT (http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/ana19941201.html - from 1994, and WOW do I feel old now).

not to mention how one bad spot or flaky terminator could take out an entire LAN whereas with Ethernet if one went down it didn't break.

You seem to be confusing the protocols with the infrastructure. "One flaky terminator" most likely refers to the 52 ohm Thinnet terminators used in 10BASE2 networks.

In any event, once the first 10Mbps Ethernet switches became available, and later 10 Mbps/100 Mbs switches, concentrators and NICs, and prices dropped both for the switches, concentrators and NICs, the end for Token Ring and ARCNET was near.

Still, in the SMB LANs that I installed and maintained back then, I preferred ARCNET over Ethernet or Token Ring, for its lower overall cost, better scalability and reliability at the time. I used to joke "You could run ARCNET on a pair of (metal) coathangers if you had to!"

Regards,

dj

The corporate world believes that it is immune from petty things like laws that apply to the rest of us.

The corporate world believes that, because it *is* immune to the rule of law, especially here in the US. Having bought off politicians, who then create laws to benefit them, how could they believe otherwise?

(until governments start aggressively targeting corporations for violating the law).

That will never happen: Governments are now so co-opted by corporate interests that they are, in effect, simply tools for them, to further their goals.

The game isn't just rigged, it's now completely controlled. The people that governments were created to represent are now ignored, for the most part, and all of your representatives are corrupt, in one way or another.

Sad, but true.

But, you ALL deserve it: You've gotten exactly what you deserve, here in the US: By your neglect, lack of attention, care, towards your government, at all levels, you've allowed this to happen.

The US was founded upon one simple idea: The rights of the individual should be paramount. The Constitution, its Amendments, were crafted towards that. And of course, it's not the exact fault of any one of you reading this that this has failed. Rather, it's the culmination of YEARS of work, on the part of the greedy, the power-hungry, the mad, to erode the foundation of our country, which was, and IS: The belief that WE, as human beings, CAN, and SHOULD, be able to be free, to live our lives, exercise our skills, knowledge and intelligence to benefit ourselves, our families, our friends, first and foremost,as good people, kind people, with the idea that, in so doing, as good, decent human beings, we would ALL benefit, as we did so, EACH of us, then, now, and in the future, as we lived, trusted, and grew.

Our Founding Fathers created something beyond themselves, and gave it to us, and we as a people, as citizens, neglected it, let it pass into the hands of people that care only for themselves. That framework, as crafted and captured, however imperfectly, within the US Constitution and its Amendments, to permit us our lives, liberties, our pursuit of happiness, has been pre-empted by those that we've elevated by election, time and time again, to the point where such election is no longer under our purview or control.

We are now a nation of servitude, indebted by design, by laws crafted to create and ensure such.

But, all is NOT lost, even at this late date. Trust yourselves, and as you do so, believe in the gift of your life, each of you. And as you do so, KNOW that you share this moment in time, with so many others, so gifted, and that while life in general may not be fair, nor kind? You, each of you, can help make it so, if you only choose to do so.

Ignore those that promote fear, so that they may control you. They cannot help you, and seek only your subjugation. They want you to be afraid, so that they can offer the hope of release from that. Security, if you only give up your liberties, your free will, to them.

Theirs is the certainty that comes from slavery, and you'll only know it, when it is too late to mourn what you have lost.

Regards,

dj

That Ada prevails in all things?

Well, I suspect that you're being snarky, but you have a point. Sort of, in the sense that "If we can't trust the programmers to write good code, always, then we can force them to use a language that at least forestalls the worst of their blunders."

The real issue, of course, is NOT technical, at the programmer/developer level, for such a project. It's administrative, in the sense that, regardless of the chosen programming language, bad code that would allow this should NEVER have passed review.

Assuming that they set up such properly, of course, which apparently isn't the case.

And the latter, too, isn't a technical matter either, really.

Just my opinion.

Regards,

dj

None... The Internet has replaced the function of magazines.

. Your current +5, Insightful moderation notwithstanding, I'm afraid that I must disagree, for one magazine, at least, for me.

That magazine is Maximum PC. Now, before you condemn me for that, let me explain.

I subscribed to boot magazine, from day one.Still have them all, somewhere. When boot was replaced by Maximum PC, I just let it ride: For me, the value was in getting current information delivered to me, in hardcopy, that I could read when I wanted to, WITHOUT needing a computer, Internet access, to do so.

No distractions, while so doing, on my time, spent focusing on things that *I* found cool and interesting.

To generalize this: In my opinion, the very nature of the Internet, it's immediacy, it's never-ending progress, has blunted our ability to reflect, to consider... and, in a very real way, our ability to make good decisions: We are now bombarded by never-ending changing information, from myriad sources of unknown/unverifiable veracity.

Sadly, so many of you, as the parent poster, accept this as the norm. Static sources of information, regardless of truth, usefulness, are discounted, dismissed and disregarded on their face,

And, as I write this, I am reminded of this: "Those that cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". George Santayana, of course.

But, his admonition is even MORE urgent now, in "Internet Time", I think. In "Internet Time, what is current becomes the past, and is forgotten all too quickly, replaced, over and over, until there is NOTHING but a never-ending blur, a never-ending reaction to the present, and no past, no context upon which to rely, after thought, consideration.

But it doesn't have to be that way, you know. You CAN choose. You CAN decide. You can think, reflect and make decisions, and you CAN, each of you, do so with access to the best raw source of knowledge that we, as human beings, have ever created.

What you DO with that is up to you.

Only now, NONE of you have the excuse of ignorance: You have, as I write this, and you read it, access to much of the best knowledge that human beings have EVER learned and recorded, and that grows larger every day.

And it is YOURS, for the taking, for free, at your convenience, should you so desire.

I wrote here, previously, that what saddens me the most is that, having access to an ocean of knowledge, too few of you will even attempt to swim, much less set sail upon it, perhaps beyond its sunset.

But, it is, what it is.

Regards,

dj

Umm driving a car isn't a right.

Alas, if only we had an amendment in the Bill of Rights that clearly said the delineation of certain rights did not mean other rights were not equally valid ...

Alas, if only that were the only Amendment to consider. The Tenth Amendment mentions something about rights not ennumerated, I think.

People tend to dissect the Constitution to support their own beliefs, when in truth it needs to considered as a whole in order to fully appreciate it and apply it correctly.

Regards,

dj

Does that not simply lend credence to his claim of "the end of democracy in America"?

No, it does not, because at the Federal level, the government is not, nor ever has been, a pure democracy. It's a democratic republic.

Well, it was *supposed* to be that. Now it's more akin to a fascist state, where corporations pay federal politicians via campaign donations, lobbyists, etc., to enact laws to their benefit.

And, in that light, he, you, I and pretty much everyone else are in the same boat: We're all being slowly crushed, as individuals, by what the US Federal government has become.

I suspect that Mr. Card doesn't object to that, so much as he does the fact that he's not a member of the "winning team".

Regards.

dj