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Comment Re:And this is why Linux will never win the deskto (Score 1) 555

OK, cool. Keep that attitude, and maybe we can stop "usability" from getting in the way of actually getting things done. Lots of simple things are easier on Windows than on Linux. Problem is, when you want to do the unusual things, that's when it gets impossible. Linux? Of course it's possible. Spend enough time, and you can swap any part out for something you like more. There are a dozen ways to do most things, and you get to research and choose which one you like. I like that. Now, if I'm going to play a game...reboot into Windows. Lowest common denominator OS for a lowest common denominator activity, and it works beautifully for that (unless the dev used a 32-bit number to represent the RAM in your machine, and the game refuses to start with your -{big_number} amount of RAM).

Comment Re:And this is why Linux will never win the deskto (Score 1) 555

you can *not* do that with even two versions of the same linux distro a year apart from eachother.

Hyperbole. Of course you can, if you design the software to handle that. One of my employer's pieces of software is compiled on SLES10 (from 2006) and runs on current Linux distros without a hitch. Code from 5 years ago compiled with gcc 2.95, and I'm sure that I could have that running both on a Linux release from 2000 and one from 2014.

Now, if you've got a programmer that doesn't have that as their specific goal in how they compile and package the software, then there will be a problem. With non-commercial software that's distributed by the developer as source anyhow, what's the reason for them to take enough care in packaging it to support forward-compatibility? If their software is popular enough, they know it'll be recompiled for inclusion in every new distro's repository anyhow, so they won't focus on supporting the goal of wide compatibility of the binary.

Comment Re:Boycott will end this in less than a week (Score 1) 204

Yeah, because peering sucks. It will be the ruin of the Internet! Nevermind that peering saved the Internet when people were predicting the Internet would crash in the late 90's early 2000's.

Peering cuts both ways. A company like Netflix wants to reduce their cost of transit by peering. But then they have to make sure all those peering points are up to snuff. The mistake Netflix made was to let some other company handle peering for them. A company that had existing settlement free agreements with the target networks.

I suppose Netflix could have backed off and gone pure transit, but it would have created other problems.

Comment Re:so... (Score 1) 158

Netflix would be streaming a video that may take 4x the bandwidth and 4x the storage for them to keep around, so I'd be paying them to do more.

My ISP is being paid to transfer a capped volume of data to me at as close as possible to the speed that I'm paying for. If they increase that cap or increase my max transfer rate, then we can start talking about them getting paid more as well. Otherwise, it's not an equivalent comparison.

Comment Re:Humans are not only not the only intelligence (Score 3, Insightful) 152

All megafauna is intelligent or it wouldn't have made it this long.

All megafauna have a combination of adaptive traits for their environment, some of which may be traits that we'd categorize under "intelligence". Intelligence isn't a scalar value. We might be able to measure its components by providing tasks that measure the presence and efficiency of specific capabilities of the brain and call the geometric distance from the 0-point "intelligence", but different animals will fall within different places in that multi-dimensional space. Some animals will have better scores than humans, in some dimensions. I'd posit that humans would have the greatest geometric distance from "0", though.

Comment Re:Women in the drivers seat`? (Score 2) 482

That's why I've never understood why some men whine about "always having to make the first move." It puts us in the driver's seat.

I used to complain about it because I didn't want to be in the driver's seat all the time. I wanted women to approach me as often as I approached them. That's still what I'd want out of dating.

I've never understood why some men want control all of the time. Give it a rest every now and then.

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