Assuming that's true, it shouldn't be. Manufacturers shouldn't do proprietary customizations. Why they even want to do this and incur the expense is beyond me.

The Open Group claims the copyright on the POSIX specifications. If APIs can be copyrighted and this copyright includes all implementations, then it would be problematic for all open source *NIX systems. Of course, they might decide to provide a license that's valid for everyone except Oracle (though writing such a license in a way that's GPL compatible would be very hard, so glibc might be in trouble).

The thing that killed DC in the war of the currents was that step up and step down transformers for AC are easy and cheap to build, but doing the same thing for DC caused a lot more loss (one of the simplest ways of doing it was to convert to AC, do the voltage change, and then convert back to DC). For long hauls on the grid, you want a much higher voltage than in houses. Now, however, it's relatively cheap (both in terms of convertors and in terms of loss) to produce DC-DC converters. USB-C supports 5V (up to 2A), 12V (1.5-5A) and 20V (3-5A). It's fairly easy to imagine 48V between rooms and then a converter in the sockets able to provide USB voltages. You wouldn't want to run a heater or a vacuum cleaner from it, but it would be nice for a lot of consumer electronics.

We're not talking grid back-haul though, we're talking a few tens of metres maximum within a house. I've wondered for a while if it would be more efficient to have moderately high voltage DC room-to-room and then low-voltage DC in rooms. Given the number of things in my house that would prefer a DC supply and so end up with (cheap and inefficient) AC to DC convertors per plug (and especially if you use LED lighting), it seems like it ought to be a win. And now seems like a good time to do it, as USB-C is a consumer connector that can provide up to 100W via something that's designed to be very cheap to produce in the lower power variations.

Top 10% probably. Take a look at a global rich list calculator. You can live very comfortably in a western country with 9% of the world's population being richer than you. If you're in some parts of central or eastern Europe, or a few parts of south-east Asia then you may be near the bottom of the top 20% and still living very comfortably. The '1%' that people talk about in the USA are well in the top 0.1% globally, but 'the 1%' makes a better soundbite than 'the 0.1%'.

Fewer seamen suffer from PTSD than VB coders.

I find it hard to consider anyone who owns a house (even with a mortgage), especially in one of the places with the highest property prices in the world, poor. This scheme seems very odd, because the poorest residents of California are renting, they don't own houses (well, the poorest are homeless), who can't just stick solar panels on top of a house that they're renting.

GP makes a good point though, and actually both IT and the business often perceive the IT department as "plumbing". Something that just has to work: the plumber keeps the toilets from getting clogged, and IT keeps the servers from being owned. If that is how IT sees themselves, they'll become a "no" department with no added value.

If a business guy tells you: "I need an FTP server", your answer shouldn't be "no way in hell", but "what is it you really need?". Understand what their business need is, then offer your expertise to set up the right technology for the job to meet that need. And it goes further: if you understand their business, you can take the initiative and bring new tech to their attention and show them how it will help them to do things better, faster or cheaper. Many IT departments don't do that often enough or well enough.

That's a very good observation, and I suppose that in some cases the strict and deliberate split of Business and IT was done to keep departments from going off and setting up all manner of rogue IT projects. I have seen other specific measures being taken to prevent just that sort of thing. However, I see the exact same organisational trends in companies that profess to continuously improve their ways of doing business through innovative IT. In those cases, the downside is very real, and as far as I can see not very well understood or even recognized. Big IT-driven change projects and pilots of innovative technology are enthusiastically started, but fail to deliver the potential business benefits because of a lack of IT knowledge of management on the steering committee, and because of a lack of intimacy between business and IT.

I'd argue that there are still big gains being made with new IT; the need for continued innovation is still there. For starters, replacing traditional inventory and accounting with computer based solutions hasn't been a big bang where all the benefits were realized in a short time. These things evolved from basic isolated solutions, adding bar codes and inventory tracking, automated warehouses, JIT logistics, ERP, standardisation in integration tech that allows easy outsourcing of payroll and other business processes, etc. And this process continues. My current client suffers from the stuff I described above, but that doesn't mean that all their projects fail, and we've seen some significant tangible benefits coming out of the use of mobile devices, new ways of learning and providing support, a shift to SAAS, virtualisation, web-based solutions (thin client), and they even still develop some bespoke software that gives them a real competitive edge. They go for "commodity tools" in the sense that their strategy is to "buy not build" where possible, but the stuff they buy is being improved upon all the time, and even SAAS solutions do not free you from having to have at least some knowledge of IT when rolling them out into the organisation.

Keep in mind that innovation doesn't mean operating on the bleeding edge of tech or inventing your own stuff, in most cases it means adjusting your organisation and the way you do business to take advantage of advances being made in tech that is already available as "boring" commodity software or services.

This. Also, here's a telltale quote:

When I first started working, IT was more closely interwoven with the business functions. Gradually, IT was separated into its own department, parts of it were outsourced, and the work was more compartimentalized (moving from individual generalists to fully interchangable specialists). To be sure this has had positive effects: in my own experience the level of professionalism has gone way up and there are far fewer ninja projects and hobby departments. But the downside has been that IT has lost touch with the business almost completely, and the amount of red tape is staggering.

People should keep that in mind when they argue for non-free browsers over Free Software browsers such as Firefox, GNU IceCat, and others. Being free to control your Internet experience is critical, being free to decide what you want to take in is never totally in your hands when you run non-free (proprietary, user-subjugating) software. The proprietor always has the upper hand even if they don't use that power right away or in ways you don't see or understand.

It is in Paris; drivers there sometimes nudge other cars to widen a tight parking spot.

So the lawyers win again...

Extra points for this remark. I suppose many of us (myself included) at first had a somewhat romantic picture when thinking about the first Mars settlement, even harebrained ones like Mars One. A garden dome with some cylindrical habitats around it, with a bespacesuited pioneer standing outside next to the rover he takes out on his daily drives around the planet. The submarine analogy is much more realistic... It'll be cramped, with only very limited time outdoors, with zero privacy, zero opportunity to escape your fellow colonists, and probably limited opportunity to escape into work (as people in such conditions often do). Big Brother in Hell. Probably exiting for the first month, still pretty good a few months in, but after a year (after you're still around) it's going to suck.

Don't dry your poodle in this microwave oven. Do not look into laser with remaining eye. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. Not to be used as a flotation device. This packet of nuts may contain traces of nuts. Look out for pedestrians when engaging the auto-park feature.

There's always a better idiot to beat your safety system. Also, wasn't this caused simply by the driver stepping on the accelerator? This did not look like the kind of driving any self-parking car would do, pedestrians or no.