Well, the whole idea would be to have simple snapshots of every file version without having to re-implement every application I use.

And it sounds like the answer to my second question is no. btrfs works in the same way. The snapshot is at the filesystem/subvolume level, and if you want to find all the versions of a particular file you basically have to find the file in every snapshot that exists and diff them all.

I love btrfs. I just don't think that it solves this particular problem, and neither does any other linux filesystem. The fact that nobody has implemented this on linux doesn't make it any less useful.

He never said he was happy with Windows Server's versioning.

He did mention sharepoint, which does retain a version on every file save.

I'm well aware that zfs and btrfs can be told to snapshot the entire filesystem as often as you want to fire off a cron job.

While I agree in principle and I'd love to see states get rid of marriage legally, I do think that it will take a lot more reworking of laws to make it happen.

For example, in Pennsylvania any number of random people can buy a house together and each own a portion of the property. However, only a married couple can buy it such that they each own 100% of it. The practical difference is that if one property-owner has a lein in the first case, then the lein remains against their share of the property up to the value of that share even if that owner dies. However, in the case of a married couple if one member of the couple has a lein against the house and the other does not, then upon their death the lein does not remain against the house because the other owner already owned 100% of it and the dead owner is simply struck from the deed.

So, there are likely situations where marriage does get special treatment that need to be resolved.

However, I do agree that there isn't any situation handled by marriage that could be legally handled in some other way, and I'd love to see marriage become purely a cultural/religious/etc arrangement with no legal basis at all. You could still have standard contracts for property ownership among couples just as there are standards for contracts for buying/selling houses, and individuals could enter into these or modify them as they see fit.

Can you make it snapshot anytime a file is modified? Also, can you easily find all the snapshots for a single file? Or do you just have 3 million subdirectories where a given file might or might not change between any random pair of them?

Can ZFS actually do versioning on every file close? I know it can do snapshots, but of course btrfs can do that as well. I'd think that the goal of a versioning filesystem would be that versions are captured anytime a file is written, not just when the admin hits the snapshot button, or once an hour, or whatever.

As far as I've seen the COW filesystems only do snapshots when they're asked to, and I'm not sure they're designed to scale to the point where you have billions of snapshots for millions of files.

Isn't that a bit like saying that there were HUNDREDS of programmers involved in combing over every line of that software. Do you really think that it could contain a bug?

You're suggesting that the principle that is the reason that all software contains bugs be the bedrock of jurisprudence?

Perhaps, but the intent of the writer isn't nearly as important as the intent of the congressmen who voted for it, likely not having even read the entire thing.

When you write laws that are hundreds of pages long, it will be like writing software hundreds of pages long, and there will be bugs. The solution to legal "bugs" is to fix them, not pretend we're computers. That is what the court did.

If Congress really intends for Obamacare to go into a death spiral, they can always pass a law to make that happen.

because, as noted earlier, 3>2. Equal protection is an issue where two groups that are equally situated are treated differently. For marriage, there is no difference between a gay couple and a heterosexual couple. There is a difference between a couple and a larger group, however.

The litigant needn't be the entire group. Marriage is a fundamental right, subject to various restrictions, such as consent and consanguinity. Yesterday, one of the restrictions, at least in some places, was that the genders of two of the spouses couldn't be the same. Today, it's fine nationwide if they're the same.

The restriction to look at now is whether the marital status of each spouse in the marriage at hand is single. Today it has to be. But there's not a good reason for it. (As already mentioned, administrative convenience is not a good reason). So why can't Alice, who is married to Bob, now also marry Carol? Bob isn't marrying Carol; the A-C marriage would be between two people only. You're treating Alice differently merely because she is already married.

It's also not a fundamental right, as polygamy is not part of the traditions and collective conscience of society, except for Mormons.

Marriage is a fundamental right and is extremely broad. Restrictions on marriage, such as requiring the spouses to be of opposite genders, or of the same race, or of the same religion, or of compatible castes, etc. are not inherently part of marriage and are certainly not part of the fundamental right of marriage.

Also, today's events make it clear that tradition is irrelevant; polygamy is practiced today among many groups, and has a long history back into antiquity. Same sex marriage was known in the past but was far more rare.

No, we're Americans, but that fact was established by the Treaty of Paris instead.

It will certainly be a massive pain in the ass. But administrative inconvenience is not an adequate justification for denying people their fundamental rights or equal protection of the law. It'll take a while, but just as this took a while, but in time polyamororous marriages will be legally recognized.

Exactly, which is why GMOs, like antibiotics, should be used very judiciously, not strewn about all over the place!

That depends on what the "new economic opportunities in an area for certain kinds of people" actually are. If we're talking about gentrification in Silicon Valley because of high programmer salaries then that's probably OK. If we're talking about gentrification in South Africa because of apartheid then that's not OK. Gentrification in historically-black neighborhoods in US cities is somewhere between, and the degree to which it's OK depends on how much of the difference in affluence can be attributed to the lingering effects of segregation.

Every instance of NSA surveillance that affects even a single person within the borders of the United States is illegitimate and illegal (specifically, a violation of the Fourth Amendment).

No doubt Apple will use this improvement in high-demand technology to justify a price hike.