I'm afraid of the ***lack*** of fragmentation in Android.

I believe that Linux's success is directly tied to it's fragmentation.

When a early Linux distro is hard to use (mailing lists), a much easer one comes out (Slackware). When a different Linux vendor goes insane (SCO Linux), other vendors can remane sane. When a different linux goes expensive (RHEL), affordable forks spring up (CentOS).

Fragmentation is what keeps Linux safe both-from-and-for things like systemd. If systemd turns out great - fragmentation is what allowed early adopters to use it so it gained traction. If systemd turns out to be horrible, fragmentation is why other linux distros will survive that experiment.

TL/DR: We need more fragmentation. The mobile world would better if I could choose to run Ubuntu-Android, Fedora-Android, Samsung-Android or Google-Android on my phone.

Ah - so instead of deporting them, it'd be cheaper to just hire them :-).

Well - it kinda is!

Often people rant about wanting a "gold standard" for currency -- though that's a bit foolish because gold is rare enough that it's pretty easy for the richest banks to manipulate prices.

What the penny could give us instead (if they allow people to melt them) is a *zinc standard* for our currency! Where the value of a dollar is tied to an amount of real-work (the amount of work to mine and refine zinc) -- a mineral common enough that it'd be harder to manipulate than gold.

The main way the math falls apart is that the value of money isn't linear.

The difference between nothing vs winning (or losing) $1 doesn't change most people's lives at all.

The difference between nothing vs winning $10,000,000 changes most people's lives a lot.

The difference between winning $10,000,000 and winning $100,000,000 doesn't change most people's very much. (In either of those cases, they can do whatever they want, and the rest of the money is just some number in some online video game called Schwab or Fidelity).

With a non-linear value curve like this -- lotteries actually make sense -- they're win/win for both sides.

Lol - I see this article is tagged 'sodomy'.

Is that the cool way to pronounce 'systemd' these days?

.... I don't want people to get comfortable with people thinking policies/bills/etc are the right way to protect privacy.

Far better, for privacy, if technological solutions (email encryption) protected the privacy of email.

If it's just protected with bills like this, it does nothing to stop programs like the DoD/NSA's "collect everything" projects; and from there it's only a small step for one agency to assist parallel reconstruction to get around the warrant.

Better for everyone's privacy if the bill stated "You have no expectation of privacy for unencrypted email. Any unencrypted email is free for anyone - law enforcements, ad-agencies, spammers - to read. If you want it private, encrypt it.".

The tools exist (GPG, S/MIME). It's just that no-one uses them because they trust policies to protect them instead. If the policies would change, every corporation would insist on encrypted emails by default -- and the email tool vendors would quickly make that the easy/default option.

Even less surprising, considering that they're a registered corporation; with a big business in merchandising.

And most corporations use VPNs, etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11...

Personally I think they jumped the shark at Perl 5. My favorite Perl by far was Perl 3 -- when it was a better awk+sed. Now every language seems to want to follow the C++ trend of moving away from it's original strengths ---- and glomming on some really bad object-oriented model on itself during the late 1990's ---- and glomming on some really bad almost-but-not-quite-functional programming features during the 2010's. Seems the programming world would be a better place if the tools focused on their strengts, and didn't all try to be some "oooh, I'm object oriented too", "oooh, I'm functional too" game.

Ironic thing is that I probably would have bought a Surface RT if they unlocked the boot loader.

It looked like a nice tablet. I just couldn't stand the OS.

And (rightfully, it seeems) figured it'd turn into abandonware just like all the other alternative-CPU-windows's from history. Note that Windows used to run on DEC Alpha, Tandem MIPS, Itanic, etc.

Annoying how top comments are all stupid jokes, so I'll hijack it. It's already known that âoeBallooningâ Spiders Use Electrostatic Forces To Generate Lift

That sounds like the source of the portability issues right there.

Perhaps that OS vendor could encourage more complier writers to support compliers for that platform.

At least here, "copy" (I assume that's what you mean by ctrl-c) happens automatically when you select a region of text by clicking and dragging the mouse. In that sense, the left button *is* the button you're looking for.

And "delete whatever is selected" (is that what you mean by ctrl-x) can be done by pressing 'delete' -- or if you're goint to replace it with something else, just typing that something else -- so it doesn't need a button or keyboard shortcut.

Just because one compiler for one platform fails to support a popular C extension doesn't mean the library isn't portable.

You can always choose to complie on that platform using one of the compliers that *does* support the extension.

If Microsoft would unlock the boot loader now, heck, even I (who dislike most microsoft products except their keyboards and mice) would probably be happy to buy a Surface RT.

Seriously - I like the form-factor of the device - and the price. The only thing that stopped me from buying one when they came out was the OS.

Request for Microsoft --- now that you're abandoning it --- please unlock the boot loader.

s/is/was/

This proposed law changes that.