I let my Linux Mint desktop slide way out of the support envelop while I waited for PC-BSD to become a viable replacement. I had a single FreeBSD machine running ZFS as my server, which had been rock solid, but I'd never run a BSD desktop before. Then in a single week it was "BSD everywhere" on my home network.
I embrace change on my own terms (which is not change caused by the Gnome developers becoming bored of their own architecture, or Canonical deciding that tablets are the new shit). PC-BSD features boot environments. This amounts to an "undo" key for your operating system. Batch patch? Nuke the fucker.
I can temporize for years, then jump in with both boots if the time seems right.
It's one of the worst things about computing culture that we still collectively tolerate: the notion that capability upgrades are welded at the hip to work flow "innovation". Install a new OS, you're guaranteed to get a mixture of both.
I'd vastly prefer the tick-tock model as practised by Intel (or the alternating new airframe / new engine model as practised by Boeing) where releases that muck with the established user interface change no underlying features / capabilities at all (so the only reason anyone installs the GUI refactor release is because you actually want to partake in the bling rebinding).
Hopefully BSD won't someday lose its mind like Linux did, in which your trusty tighty-whities suddenly becomes a full-body support corset (with no-one asked). Personally, I can handle the change from tighty-whities to rc.d boxer shorts just fine, thank you very much.
You must be a Ranger, and the OP a Paladin.
Me, I'm just a fighter, neutral and available as a mercenary (in case anyone's hiring)
I think the feathered reentry would still work at orbital speeds, it's just that the composite material from which SS2 is built can't withstand the heat. Putting heat tiles on SS2 would not work well as that would add too much weight, and they're still gonna have all kinds of problems with the tiles staying in place. So for all intents and purposes the feather reentry is strictly a suborbital design.
The most innovative orbital reentry design I saw was a proposal for using the rocket engine plume to deflect superheated air molecules away from the spacecraft. Yes you would need to use fuel for that but the weight of the fuel you would need compared favorably to the weight and complexity of a heat tile design. But then you have the problem of "what happens if the rocket engine fails to ignite", and the answer is that you melt. So it would be useful for unmanned vehicles that you can afford to lose to engine failure once in a while but not for manned reentry.
Because unlike Google, Apple has promised not to sell my info to advertisers.
Both Apple and Google don't sell eyeballs. They rent them out. That is far more lucrative that way.
Do we really want the advertising revenue stream to disappear for content developers and for all internet content to be behind paywalls?
If we view advertising as a net negative burden on cognition and productivity (there's scientific literature to support this view), and explicit, informed choice as a net human asset (there's virulent ideology to support this view), I'd have to say "yes".
The wheel-house of our lizard brain appears to be managing our past and future sexual entanglements. I personally suspect it doesn't do much else well at all. It used to have other valuable functions, but these have all been subverted. Dracula, modern society's founding mythology of lizard brain vs alluring predator, has now brought us the Twilight franchise.
Paywall or tweewall, name your poison.
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
