Exactly that.

Hello, Seagate rep? Yeah, we're gonna need a freaking exatabyte to store our new hadoop engine data--yeah, the ones with the ready-to-sort web page script filters.

How many? How many does a 53' semi-trailer hold? Really? Yeah, here's the PO #.

You're talking about sales models, not the wholesale carriage that telcos, actually datacom providers, are supposed to render. I'm not talking about parochial harrassment of companies, rather that regulated utilities ought to be scrutinized at both state and federal levels. The for-profit model that most utilities have changed to was a mistake. Shareholder profit, rather than the basic needs of basic infrastructure to be a world-class connected republic, is the rule.

We're almost a third-world-quality connected country in the US. Consideration for ALL of the connectivity needs, from central switching right down to the WiFi in your home/office, cellular data transport, to tip-and-ring telephony needs to be made where the jurisdiction makes sense: central to the last few inches. The Feds are awful at the last few inches-- states much better. Decency issues are another topic for another time.

You ignore the public utility regulatory agencies of the 43 states that have them. This entire morass came after the TCA of 1998 and subsequent revisions of the FCC rules and regs brought on in the post Judge Greene rulings that initially broke up the Bell System.

Public utilities had to deal with all of these regulatory authorities, and then calculatedly lobbied to create US Federal control so that they'd only have to bribe-- I mean lobby and render campaign contributions-- to one target instead of so many. In-state vs Intrastate vs Interstate issues helped hold them to the floor.

NYC is not a regulatory authority. NY State is, as is the FCC, and to a smaller extent, the NTIA.

Decentralization was good for several reasons: rights of way and easements are local, even personal issues. These are last-mile issues. State issues concern everything from keeping infrastructure support fair and even (including low-profit/sparsely populated areas) to zoning policy, and so forth.

The FCC has evolved what was once called "data communications" as a separate classification, away from telephony. Now these things are the same, but the public's needs have evolved. Decentralization isn't so much meaningless as it's the ability to tailor historical infrastructure to locally evolving needs, and is better democracy.

  It's time to conflate consumer communications into a single mandate, IMHO. It has to service we consumers, whether in urban, suburban, or rural areas. Whether it's a text, phone call via wire or cell, or a browser session, it ought to have to meet a set of basic standards, where consumers have well-known and flexible rights.

You're not alone, but then again, neither are they. The new world order is to host your own store, and reap the rewards, control your clientele, and do so in the superficial PR mechanism of controlling bad stuff, where the actual motive is more like: profit and gleaning market trends.

Altruism is NOT Google's business model.

Part of the problem is: device drivers and the morass of problems you get when you try to get hardware device makers to think in non-Intel terms.

Even if you got Win 8.1 to work on ARM, there's more than one ARM family to deal with, not to mention reference chipsets that are almost insanely different. Windows and Microsoft are pretty glued to Intel, although at some point, ARM starts having the density of Intel CISC and mini-CISC (Atom) and then uses more power, and becomes less useful.

Testosterone.

They believe that if others sell their stuff, they make money. Apple believes if they sell their stuff, they make money.

It's all about who they believe pays the bills. Apple: end-user. Microsoft: businesses. Linux: cheap is good, free is best. Very simple.

Apple is very user-focused, while Microsoft is very business-focused. Apple wants to control your experience very thoroughly, whether you like it or not. Microsoft is more laissez-faire.

You can't change three characteristics of current tablets: their form factors are convenient, but not that of a notebook or desktop, their keyboards have gradients of: suck, and their native power is curtailed for general purposes because of the form factor. As battery technology gets better, you can sustain more CPU vs battery drain.

But the keyboards have been shades of useless, unless you get a bluetooth keyboard or USB etc that allows for additional work product to be performed on a tablet.

Microsoft is entirely late to the game as you suggest, but tablets make more sense to their sense of their clientele and like many times before, they'll work doggedly to improve a product to better its appeal.

Were I a Microsoft shareholder, I'd be happy. But I also know their sins intimately, and I'll NEVER be a Microsoft shareholder from my sense of ethics.

Entropy: it's not just a feeling-- it's the law.

Ever seen an older Airstream? Think that's dust?

Metals oxidize, if all a bit differently. Rust and oxidation are essentially synonymous terms

Oxidation will eventually render them useless. Rust never sleeps.

acrimony.h not found in module main.c

If you can code two extra genes, dozens, even millions more aren't either untenable or impossible. Artificial base pairs may end up becoming great suites and symphonies of behavior.

Alternately, bio-engineering becomes the discipline where YOU're the actual compiler.

make me

I realize these are volunteers. I'm exactly this kind of volunteer, but in a different sub-discipline. I'm booked, and understand how others have their own motivations. Yet strong classical coders are good in most endeavors, and this is one (the entire encryption chain) that needs serious review, as the others are worthless without cogent and secure code.

It's also pretty shocking that such madness even exists, save that open source can be like government, fixing only the things that people really bitch about, rather than infrastructure components that are decades old, and older.

If people paid attention to core components like they did the Linux kernel perhaps there'd be a lot of noise, but a lot of better code.

Yo: Linus-- you listening? Kernel ain't crap without other components that work and are rationally safe. Cut loose a few of your homies to do some maintenance-- the bridges are collapsing.

Your knowledge of history is poor, but I'll agree that the motives of domestic policy are sincerely suspect. These values are NOT what my ancestors fought for, however, and so this is a change.

We were once tribes and warriors, and now instead of multiple gruesome battlefields, executive play war conquering each other and us on a battlefield called Greed Capitalism.