No. It is usually rare that a minor update version that is an official release will fundamentally stop working altogether. Sure, maybe some quirks are introduced, but generally the product has been tested enough that it is 95%+ working and most users either won't encounter or can work around the deficiencies.

On the other hand, official releases of VirtualBox can just flat out break to the point you can't even start some of your VMs, or crashing the entire VM is just the matter of running some common piece of software. The next release can be months away and when it comes, it may fix your original issue and introduce another equally as crippling to your ability to use the product.

NB: This isn't an attack on the VirtualBox authors, who obviously produce a great product used by many with few resources. But the lack of testing or beta releases literally mean I roll back more than I roll forward - not out of personal preference but because I am forced to just to use the product - and that is what I mean when I speak of the upgrade gamble.

I user VirtualBox all day every day for fairly complex tasks, and it has performed admirably, yet it is sorely in need of QA help. Major releases happen with auto-update notifications and then you realize that your old snapshots can't be started, using a debugger blows up the VM, sometimes snapshots don't save properly even though it looks like they did, etc. etc. Then you have to dig out the last working version, which came out 6 months back, to get up and running again.

Aside from this "upgrade gamble", which I put squarely on a lack of beta releases, VirtualBox is fantastic. Hardware accelerated graphics with full Aero support, fast virtualization, shared clipboard and files, attaching USB devices - it's everything you need in a friendly UI that anyone can work with.

It'll be a tragedy IMO if it's left to rot.

For anyone interested, I find the last stable version to be 4.3.12 (on Windows).

How, if we stumbled across intelligent life, would we be able to recognise it?

No, just further and further away from your original universe.

Next you'll be telling me you can create operating systems in less than 15GB!

Sure. Literally, it did not.

In context? Switch out some of the nouns and verbs, and you get:

s/they/women/; #(men can get raped too) s/google glass/short skirts/; s/Glassholes/Sluts In Short Skirts/; #update pejorative s/punch/rape/; #update verb s/America/Saudi Arabia/; #helps my metaphor

You get:

Unless Saudi Women can make their short skirts less sexy, people are still going to want to rape Sluts In Short Skirts.

Sure, literally that does not justify it because they don't use the word justified.

But who are we kidding here? You insert a victim-blaming aspect into a situation that involves violence, but want to pretend that gives no justification to the perpetrator.

You're not fooling me.

It's good to see the same fallacies dragged out over and over again. Helps cement the fact that wrong people aren't wrong due to being misinformed, but because they choose to repeat the same mantras to themselves over and voer again. I think I understand why the world is so full of violence now.

Oh look... Someone justifying assault by implying that the victim is an asshole. Meanwhile, people who justify assault are..... Not(?) assholes?

That's a very valid point, but let's not pretend that you couldn't have the benefits of OnStar without most of the nasty privacy issues. A limit on data retention, clear indication when the device is listening in, and not selling subscriber data to the government would resolve a lot of the criticism.

Blade Runner is a Frankensteinian tale about creation revolting against its creator, questioning the meaning of death, whereas Do Androids ... is about empathy as an essential human quality in a world where everything is artificial. Much of the novel is about Deckard's desire to buy a pet, required for spiritual fulfilment according to the religion of Mercerism. Death is as unimportant to the book as Mercerism is to the film.

I wonder if it was "only" metadata due to actual intended restraint or mainly technology limitations at the time.

Hang on while we all switch to encryption you can have a back door to. Once again you've proven yourself trustworthy!

Is big gov most eager to turn into our worst enemy or their own? It's hard to tell.

That's only true if you're surrounded by arseholes.

Eh, it's not like Blade Runner was a faithful adaptation either. For one, its theme is completely different from the book. Still, it's one of the best SF movies and one of the best adaptations ever.

Wrong, and wrong.

Yes, thanks for stating how security fixes are supposed to work, in case we all thought Microsoft was going to slap a bandaid on it and call it good.

No. Why are you referencing a completely different vulnerability not even managed by the company? Because they're both vulnerabilities? Because there's a risk someone didn't fully fix an issue once therefore no-one can in future? Newsflash for you: Microsoft has fixed vulnerabilities with the same root cause multiple times oflver the years.

Do you know of any others?

It was not a design bug Do you even know what you're talking about?

*shrug* I guess I wouldn't roll straight to production...

Their *3 month* timeline.

Google is between a rock and a hard place. Either they disclose and stuff gets fixed, or they don't and *we don't know if it would be fixed when MS said it would or not*.