No, but it is heading in that direction, if you run the Gnome desktop (why would you do that to yourself anyhow?); see gconf

Also, check out systemd. That's going to be fun to administer. >_<

California was debating requiring a serial number on home made guns independent of how they were made.

Actually, the legislature passed that. But, in a fit of sanity, governor Jerry Brown vetoed it.

Anyone familiar with California politics will realize how extrordinary that is. B-)

No, Elon Musk was actually at a point where not only these companies were in risk of bankruptcy (noting also that he personally guaranteed much of the debt of these companies too, not to mention having fiduciary responsibility over the debt of these companies as CEO), but that he even was in debt at this time too.

You are simply wrong. He was very much at risk of personal bankruptcy too and definitely losing everything he had.

I'm glad to know that you are so cognizant of the future that you can possibly anticipate that nobody in the future will possibly develop any sort of technique or capability for capturing or restoring intelligences and personalities of those who currently are alive, may have been in the past, or will be in the future.

That is the kind of prophecy that really requires some sort of religious faith.

I'm not asserting that such technology will ever be developed, but it is silly to think it could never happen too.

I would tend to disagree with your assertion. There is something a little different in terms of a soul, or self-awareness, or however you want to describe that thing which is an intelligence. It is more than merely a pile of facts and data.

While the physical structure which is me is certainly a pile of data stored as DNA and developed over time that is my lifetime and the various environments I have lived in, not to mention my memories, there is much more to what is "me" than just that physical structure and data. There is also much more to "you" as well.

This is BTW one of my largest complaints about those who talk about artificial intelligence being something other than a bunch of tools which mimic but never achieve actual intelligence. Those who claim self-aware computers are just around the corner and a few years or decades from being developed don't have a clue as to what actual intelligence involved. This includes those who try to make claims as to how big of a computer must be to have human-like intelligence.

Data without that intelligence is meaningless, which I guess is the point I was trying to make. Yes, that thing which is "me" or my children for that matter does represent a huge pile of data, but I am more than just that data.

I wish the internet was any good at preserving information. In reality, I have lost far more data to network servers, including some rather important information, than anything I've ever lost from moves, water damage, or even fire. As a medium of information exchange it works really good, but it does a damn lousy job of preserving data for more than a few years. It is also odd what information does get preserved, as some things sort of stick around and persist for a very long time, while other stuff goes away... and I can't predict at the moment which kind of data will persist in terms of content I've generated.

The only kind of information that I've been able to preserve on the internet for certain is stuff that I am very active in preserving. It really doesn't get saved in multiple locations though.

...it appears that four mountainous regions on the rim of Peary crater at the Moon's north pole may remain illuminated for the entire lunar day, creating peaks of eternal light.

Not quite. Unless I'm more mistaken than usual, even those peaks go dark during a total eclipse of the Moon.

Agreed about anecdotes. However, I can say that I have to reboot my Windows 7 PC weekly because of serious degradation in performance. I have installed a fair bit of software (the PATH can no longer be extended) but there's only about three games (Freeciv, Kerbal Space Program, Elite: Dangerous) and no apps, toolbars or junk. The rest of the software on there? MariaDB, Ingres, GRASS, QGIS (OSGEO is basically Cygwin, so I've now three incompatible Cygwin distros on Windows), HOL 4, Active Python, Active Perl, Erlang, Rust, Blender, PoVRay, BMRT - the sort of stuff you'd expect to find on any PC, nothing fancy.

And Netscape. Which is a horrible resource hog and is honestly not usable in its current form. I have abandoned all efforts to get Chrome usable. I'll probably deinstall both and switch to Amaya. Which barely does anything, but it does it tolerably.

You mean to tell me that the US doesn't even trust the other Five Eyes nations' spy agencies to be able to do this?*

*Yes, I know, to get round legal restrictions, it was very normal for the US to spy on the citizens of the other four and to exchange that data for information collected on US citizens by other members of Five Eyes. However, we now know all the agencies DO spy on their own citizens, routinely. So the US can ask GCHQ to wiretap British citizens in Britain, it doesn't need to spy on Britain itself. This behaviour suggests wheels within wheels.

You mean to tell me that the US isn't all caught up in the US-UK "Special Relationship" stuff?**

**Most Americans were unaware there even was one and get horribly confused when the British talk about it.

Linux is indeed better. Not because of Open Source (the code doesn't care) but because it has fewer bugs (about 0.1% of the bugs per kloc), non-intrusive strong security (rated EAL 5+ on conformant hardware, conforms to B2 Orange Book standards), superior multi-processor support, superior memory management and superior networking.

Graphics? Not an OS issue. That's a GUI issue. Never confuse how something gets data with what it then does with it. The GUI is not central to Windows (as demonstrated by console mode startup, but should be obvious to anyone running it as a headless server). The core OS functions are, and always have been, resource management, virtualization, security and stability. (Filesystems are virtual layers on top of physical disks, so are resource management and virtualization.)

Linux is better at the things an OS is meant to do. Windows has an adequate GUI, but the OS is abysmal. Besides sales, the only reason the game industry likes Windows is that it has useful libraries - DirectX (an alternative to the functions the GUI itself provides) and easy access to GPU functions (bypassing the OS altogether, running on bare metal).

The reason Linux doesn't have these? Look in the mirror. The face you see was quite capable of working on GGI, KGI or Linux Framebuffers, of helping in the Berlin project, of submitting patches for SDL or Avagadro, or even hacking Wine to improve support for DirectX, CUDA or other graphical features.

I'm no innocent myself, but I own up to my guilt, I don't blame the OS (which IS innocent).

Windows 10 IS Windows 9. Microsoft engineers are even still calling it Windows 9. The source tree is the same, there have been no major changes.

What has happened is that Windows 9 has been getting very bad press and is still riddled with bugs. Instead of releasing a version number nobody will buy and would only have to patch almost immediately anyway, OR getting slagged off for Yet Another Delayed Release, Microsoft is renaming it version 10 and delaying the release until the bugs are sorted.

You will observe Microsoft has been talking up Windows 9 for some time, but now all talk (and apparently all memory) of it has ceased. Newspapers suffering amnesia is amost acceptable. Slashdotters??? WTF??? I'm sorry, but there is no-one in or around IT that has a single, solitary excuse.

There have been cases of Boeing 777s and modernized 737s developing unexplained system faults. Do not be so sure that RFI was not to blame. These have had much worse reliability than other Boeing models in recent years and as no other faults have been offered by Boeing as explanation, it is illogical to simply dismiss the one fault we know about as unrelated to the unusual number of abnormalities and crashes specific to these two models.

Obviously, Boeing has no interest in being honest about the problems they know about, be they software or hardware. Nor are they likely to Open Source anything, so there is no possibility of scrutiny by an independent party.

Simple logic (and self-preservation) says they have an unattributed defect capable of causing catastrophic failure, and a defect that can potentially cause catastrophic failure, therefore fixing the defect is essential.

The cost? The cost is insignificant. Boeing is hardly poor and is quite capable of covering the airlines' cost as this is a manufacturing defect. The airlines? They're making enough money that they can afford riots on board when seats are tilted. Besides, this is the cost of doing business. There's a price for bad decisions, all other sectors (except, apparently, banks) are expected to take the rough with the smooth. If several go bust because they chose unwisely, that's how life in business goes. You pay your money, you take your choice. Besides, they'd still be doing better than the German in Last Crusade.

If I went into business and made bad choices, would you be telling people to ignore my expenses? No? Good. If I'm not fit for purpose as a businessman, I've no business expecting support. So why should Ryanair, a notoriously incompetent company, deserve better? Because they're too big to fail? Not a good reason.

Unless it a) is not an actual increment in safety, and b) is not the only imposition the FAA makes. There's also c) the estimate is a wild underestimate of the true cost (the FAA has an incentive to underestimate cost). Given that the air carriers are complaining so much, I think the FAA is probably low balling the cost and maybe exaggerating the benefit as well.

All you need are some windows that open in flight. Problem solved.

I've found that there are really no issues with regards to running a new OS for long periods of time. There was a time when regular reinstalls were a part of my regimen but that is long past. I reinstall only when there's a specific need. That doesn't mean I just put up with a slow computer either, I demand very fast performance from my systems. A reinstall just isn't needed to maintain that.

Likewise, components have gotten much better, and upgrades more incremental, so I've found the need to buy new hardware that would necessitate a reinstall to be less.

My guess? This person either has crap on their system that causes issues, or this is just a "magic incantation" they've always done for supposedly better performance without understanding or examination.