Assassination and a coupe it is. Thanks for the advice.

I lost all my Google Health data, my Google Wave data, my Google Buzz data, and my Google reader feeds

So, you're the one!

There's a term for XP: It's called "Fisher Price windows" and I'm happy those days are dead.

I did. I chose the company which does integration.

I used to be all for specialised apps, but these days I'm getting sick of lack of interoperability and trying to make things behave together. I could store contacts and backup my phone onto any cloud service, but really I could just tick the backup icon on Android and have it link to my gmail account. I search for a location on my desktop and when I get to my car I can automatically navigate from my phone because everything is linked in a common way.

Yes the privacy implications are huge. But really I'm getting sick of doing everything twice.
Likewise I'm about to drop owncloud which I setup years ago. Onedrive integrates with windows and all office applications seemlessly, as does sharepoint. Owncloud is superior in control and privacy aspects, but for me convenience is really starting to win out.

And that's why I use Google services.

UIs are drawn the same way regardless of how they look. There's no reason a pretty UI can't be in any way as fast or lean (reads: no bloat) as a plain boring grey window. It's akin to painting your house is a nice colour rather than everything in the same shade of grey.

Do you live in a grey house with grey walls grey ceiling gray floors and all grey furniture?

Ooh, you'd be great fun in a group of NRA activists...

I fail to see how the autonomous driving system producers would be any less "in the cross hairs" than a driver would be, if anything they'd be more so, in large part due to the "scariness" of the new technology.

A driver can have a bad day, suffers from normal human fallibility, etc. We all understand that. A computer does exactly what it's been instructed to do, always. If it's responsible for an avoidable accident then it's because the designers failed to consider something important, or simply decided that their algorithms had been refined to a level of acceptable risk (which, if the risks are 1/10thas high as for a human driver, is completely respectable - nothing is risk free, and engineers, like insurance companies are in the business of quantifying acceptable risk.)

The bus service may still be the "target of first resort", but it's going to be damned hard to fault them for using a system with a well-documented history of being considerably safer than a human driver (unless there's a competing, even safer autonomous system). And the first rule of lawyering is "sue the people with money". At present that's the bus service, because regardless of fault, the driver is just a working stiff. Google though - they probably make the bus service look like paupers. And especially early on Google et. al. will likely even be offering some degree of indemnification - something along the lines of "if one of our properly maintained autonomous systems is involved in an accident, then our legal team will help with your defense, and we'll cover N% of any penalties levied against you". (And if it wasn't properly maintained then the bus service *should* be roasted - just like if they made a habit of hiring chronically drunk drivers.)

the incident was 6 years ago, and FF has been struggling for longer than that. Losing Google and the revenue it brought was a big blow. I felt like they wanted him out and used that as an excuse. Not that people don't lose their jobs over stupid things all the time. It's just odd to see it happen to someone so high up. Usually their above all that.

There's still a tonne of things that Firefox does for extension authors like myself to make our lives easier. I've been toying with a Chrome port of my plugin but it's been slow going since there's so much networking stuff Firefox does for me that Chrome doesn't yet (and maybe never will). Heck, I can't even use the "let" keyword yet without hacking into Chrome's config...

There should have been plenty of businesses to buy up and use that hardware. There's never a shortage of people that could put computer hardware to good use. otoh I've seen economists talking about how in the 70s businesses spent 40 cents of every dollar on investment and now it's like 10 cents, with the rest going into the shareholders/investor's pockets, so it's possible we're just seeing the effect of run away parasitism sucking all the capital out of our economy (I think the quote was something like:"Finance used to be a way to get money into productive businesses, now it's a way to get money out").

But I think it's more likely that a lack of demand for Sun hardware existed. If you're selling something for 1/10 retail it's because nobody really wants it...

If all you do is consume Facebook and twitter, it might be okay. Some of us actually need a browser that allows us to do things. And have some idea of what website we're visiting. You might be surpised at what your get out of the way browser is doing.

Mirrors are pretty cheap too. I suspect the next war we're in will be very bright and shiny.

Sun was run out of business by cheap Intel hardware + free Linux devouring their core business (expensive high performance workstations and servers). Nobody makes money on Java. Even IBM doesn't. They make money hiring out cheap Indian programmers. That didn't leave Sun a viable product. Intel hardware + Linux (Lintel?) got too cheap too fast. It didn't matter if you're Sun box was 10x faster. I could roll out 100 Lintel boxes for 1/10 the price.

We're always ready to fight the last war.

I envision you reading this as a computer animation of the "New F-300 Destructagator swoops down to deliver a cost effective, high reliability, and multi-mission multi- platform fighter/bomber built expressly for the modern asymmetrical warfare environment, providing cost effective and decisive air and groundspace superiority for the warfighter of tomorrow, - today!