Hello,

Driver support, which was mature under XP because of its longevity, took a hit when Microsoft released new models for Vista and was late in delivering its DDK. On the other hand, driver support in Windows 7 and up have been pretty mature. In the case of Windows 8 to 8.1, my employer was able to get away with little to minimal updates of our software, which uses filter drivers, for compatibility with the new version of the operating system. The level of compatibility had previously been rare in Windows for us.

As far as hardware goes, the difference between specifications for Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 has been pretty small. A 1 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM and some disk space were the basic minimum requirements for each, if memory serves. Don't expect it to run great on that kind of systems for all uses, though, but it will run.

And, yes, a new version of Windows usually means new features, both in terms of hardware and software. So, it's not a bad idea to try and time your hardware upgrade cycles to coincide with Windows releases if you want the latest shiny bits, which, as you noted, third-party devs are developing for.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Did you mean Windows 95 or 98? Or perhaps were you thinking of Office 97?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

How do you know what the growth rate in the 50s and 60s would have been had the tax rates in the US been lower?

I only deal in empirical evidence. The warnings about higher taxes killing GDP growth are demonstrably false by comparing observed results over the past 70 years.

What's that about being ignorant?

Imagining things that might have been does not count as presenting evidence.

It is stupid if you are paying credit card rates. The US government pays insanely low interest rates and a few times, they've been negative! If someone pays you to borrow money, you'd be stupid not to take it.

The problem is that those interest rates change; our debt is revolving. When the interest rates go up, we're going to have to have to pay down the debt while our interest nut is climbing. So either we'll be showing a higher risk of default or we'll devalue the dollar; either way, the interest will climb even more. This has been repeated dozens of times in history. Every time a country has tried it, with the possible exception of Japan right now, it has ended badly. And most economists think that in Japan is about to hit the wall -- they're going to be our canary in the coalmine.

Really? Doesn't seem that that far out of line.

Really? You're not very good at math. Average from 1950 - 1969: 17%. Average over the past five years: 15.22%. (17 - 15.22) / 15.22 = 11.69%. Twelve percent higher seems like a lot to me.

Now taxation per capita, adjusted for inflation, is way up.

So is income, which is why I, and the chart you linked to, and anyone who understands economics, uses percentage of GDP.

And spending is even growing faster...

By all means, cut spending. I'm all for it. Until we get there, though, we can't just not pay our bills.

instead of trying to preserve the high tax state?

Historically low total tax as a percentage of GDP in a very long time. Lower than most of the first world. What high tax state are you talking about? 'Cuz it's clearly not the US.

And, we are running a gigantic deficit. We have to pay our bills, because paying the interest on credit cards is stupid, period. So, cut spending, then we can bring taxes back down to the current level.

And may I repeat: Historically low total tax as a percentage of GDP. Far lower than during the 50's and 60's, when we experienced the fastest sustained GDP growth rate of any first world country *ever*. So any Laffer Curve argument you want to make would just make you sound ignorant.

Tim Cook Says Apple Can't Read Users' Emails,

No he didn't.

Apple previously said that even it can't access iMessage and FaceTime communications, stating that such messages and calls are not held in an "identifiable form." [Cook] claimed if the government "laid a subpoena," then Apple "can't provide it." He said, bluntly: "We don't have a key... the door is closed." He reiterated previous comments, whereby Apple has said it is not in the business of collecting people's data. He said: "When we design a new service, we try not to collect data. We're not reading your email."

He said they cannot read iMessage and FaceTime, and they are not reading your email. That is a very important distinction. It might be one he was hoping you would miss, and you did miss it, but he did not say they can't access your email.

And I'm not blowing sunshine up his skirt. I came here intending to kick him in the balls (metaphorically, of course) for lying, but he didn't.

Pro-tip: If any system includes a password recovery mechanism that allows you to get back messages, then the administrator of the password recovery system can read your back messages.

"an open group of companies who run open source programs" who are seeking to "committed to working together in order to overcome" the challenges of using FOSS

If the megacorps want to get involved in the advancement of FOSS, they have an incredibly clear path to do so: Paid Development. They can fund it themselves, if they want to decide what gets built next. Or, to get a little creative, how about this: Put together some training materials for corporate legal departments explaining that companies can legally, safely, contribute code developed on company time back to FOSS projects. Put together a promotional campaign to convince corporate bean counters that contributing code back to FOSS is a worthwhile investement of company resources.

In short; help channel money into FOSS, either directly or by clearing the red tape that keeps us from creating and kicking back enhancements built for the benefit of our companies. Hey, maybe lobby congress for a tax write-off for code contributions to 501c3s.

Developers contribute to FOSS by giving of their greatest strength, development. If megacorps want to help, they should give of their greatest strengths; money and bureaucracy.

(and yes, I know, they think telling people what to do is their greatest strength, but they've got another think coming when it comes to telling FOSS developers what to do)

Indeed. The newfound ability to do very bad things always relates to operational capability.

Next this needs to be done with what we call "autism". There's a reason it's called the "autistic spectrum"; it's a MUCH bigger but nebulous target than schizophrenia. There's so much symptomatic comorbidity that the diagnoses would be funny if the consequences weren't so depressing.

Aside from the other thread arguing that they were still guilty of unethical behavior whether anyone criticized them for it or not, there's another potential bit of misdirection here:

What if Snowden's means of raising concerns had nothing to do with e-mail and he only used verbal or hard-copy means, and the NSA knows it?

In 2001, William Binney, an NSA investigator, began blowing the whistle on NSA warrantless surveillance. He went through official channels to his superiors, then to Congress, then to the major media. He was harrassed and prosecuted by the government, and ignored and maginalized by the major media. He has kept at it for the past thirteen years.

In 2010, Thomas Drake started blowing the whistle. He was also prosecuted, harrassed, ignored, and marginalized.

In 2011, Ron Wyden began warning the public about the secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, as loudly as he could without violating his clearance to be on the Intelligence Committee. The major media ignored him.

In 2013, when Snowden released his docs, the major media finally started listening to Binney, Drake, and Wyden. The establishment's treatment of Binney, Drake, and Wyden is why Snowden had to follow the path he did.

The President of the United States has said that these programs should change. Programs that Binney, Drake, and Wyden tried to warn us about through official channels. Programs that we still would not know about if Snowden had gone through official channels.

NSA officials were unable to find any evidence Snowden ever had.

This is essentially the "I do not recall" equivalent of paperwork investigations.

The essential question here is whether the NSA can conclusively deny that Snowden never raised concerns at the agency. Since if he did raise concerns, he probably would have raised them to people personally, a document search is not nessesarily going to uncover whether he did.

What will uncover this conclusively is a simple interview of NSA and affiliate company employees and especially supervisors who worked with Snowden. But since such a set of interviews would either a) reveal that he did raise concerns, b) involve people having to sign their names to untruths, or most unlikely c) reveal he really raised nothing, then I think it's easier for the NSA to just pretend that a half-assed email server word search constitutes an appropriate investigation.

Education? ... Yes! Why it's great for education! In fact, it's the future of the classroom! And don't forget, Oculus Rift is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!

But seriously:

And if we can make virtual reality every bit as good as real reality in terms of communications and the sense of shared presence with others, you can now educate people in virtual classrooms, you can now educate people with virtual objects, and we can all be in a classroom together [virtually], we can all be present, we can have relationships and communication that are just as good as the real classroom

Classroom teaching is a bug, not a feature. It is a side effect of the fact that our earholes and eyeballs are connected to our skulls, and until recently we had to put them in the same meatspace where the teacher was talking and showing pictures. Once you step into the no-physical-presence-required realm of using a VR headset, you can release the restrictions imposed by the simultaneous physical presence requirement.

One simple example: Lecture halls, with their tiered seating -- those are designed that way because we can't see through each other, not because it is better to be sixty feet away and at a thirty degree angle from the teacher.

And how about discussions? Hierarchical, collaboratively moderated, store-and-forward discussion threads are much better than "realtime whoever gets the teacher's attention before the bell rings." We've been using the latter because that's the best we had for thousands of years.