Uh, wut?

Back in the EVIL PRE-PC DAYS--or, at least, the EVIL PRE-WINDOWS DOMINANCE DAYS--we cross-compiled our code onto at least half a dozen Unix variants, and Macs, with a mix of big- and little-endian, and 32-bit and 64-bit.

Only dumb companies built in dependencies on endianness or word size that made their code not work. Almost all the OS inconsistencies for us were hidden in a low-level OS-specific wrapper, except for the places where we had to use hand-coded assembler.

Most of the complaints I hear about Window 8 come from people who've bought a new PC, booted it up, and have no freaking clue how to use it. 'WTF?' they say, 'I thought this thing ran Windows?'

New machines with Windows XP were still on sale two or three years before they stopped supporting it.

And the reasons Microsoft have to keep supporting old versions are:

1. They make you pay for new versions.
2. New versions often suck so bad that no-one wants them.
3. They change the driver model so old drivers for crusty old hardware don't work.

If new versions were free, or actually provided enough value to users that they were worth paying for, rather than usually making users go 'WTF were they thinking?' this wouldn't be required. ME, Vista and Window 8 have all been crap that no sane person would pay for and made users stick to their old OS.

SpaceX need something to launch to generate the economies of scale required in the launch market to really slash launch costs (i.e by mass-producing reusable rockets and flying them a lot). This isn't a bad one, and it could be much cheaper than previous attempts.

Why would kids who've been butt-fscked by Democrats for years want to vote for them? Particularly for a woman who looks like their grandmother?

He does know he's not campaigning for re-election, right?

Or does he intentionally want to bankrupt Silicon Valley?

No-one in their right mind wants anything to do with US software products any more, because we've no idea how many backdoors they've built in, and can't trust them an inch.

It's supposed to land like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

You know, vertical and stuff.

It was coming down tipped over at 45 degrees, using much of the thrust for trajectory correction when it should have been used for slowing down for landing. So I'm not surprised it hit hard.

Yes, those of us whose systems have to run 24/7 for years at a time do actually prefer reliability over The New Shiny, thanks.

I finally had to try a version of Linux running systemd. Even the installer tends to say 'oh crap, I couldn't boot' and give absolutely no explanation of why. Real warm fuzzy feeling that gives me.

Only in the sense that the rest of the world had to OCR the printed source code if they wanted to use it legally.

Competitors.

Phone companies can only get away with crap like this because the government gave them a monopoly on parts of the EM spectrum.

But, hey, feel free to blame the EVIL FREE MARKET if it gets you hot in your pants.

Yes, except at times when non-official taxis would be charging higher prices to encourage more people to offer rides, you can't get an official taxi at all, because people making trivial trips are still using them because they're cheap, while those making essential trips have to wait.

Rationing is clearly better than letting prices rise for a while. Or something.

I uninstalled Flash long ago. Very occasionally I find a site that doesn't work at all without Flash, but it's rarely one I care about.

The worst thing are the 'mobile' sites which say 'ah, you're running iOS, so I'm going to give you a sane site that doesn't have any of that Flash crap,' so you know they can make their site run fine without Flash, but you go there with an Android device and it says 'ah, you're running Android, so i'm going to give you the Flash version' even though Flash hasn't run on Android for several versions now.

I heard the new SystemD Office word processor will be awesome.