You have no sense of risk management and would never be the operator of a major hazard facility. These kinds of things are (fortunately for us) regulated.

EMACS is just a text editor.
GIMP is just a photo editor.
Mozilla is just a web browser.

Having an system for plugins / addons / new extensible functionality doesn't make any of them something they aren't.

Systemd is an init system where I've installed it. I don't you know where you get the idea that it magically does all the rest of the stuff without someone wanting it to. It's not like there's hidden covert code somewhere in PID1 that will sneak in a DHCP request when no one is looking.

Occam's Razor would show that people in general lack the incredible foresight needed in your scenario.

More likely case: Free upgrade! Did you hear that? Free!!! I must buy this now because I'll get something for FREE.

Woooooo.

How about you ignore the phone GUI then? I mean it is completely optional in Windows 10. The logical conclusion is you must just be a masochist.

Surface 2 requires a signed bootloader so that limits your abilities quite a bit, but as for spreading crap there's a bit more info that needs to be considered:

Microsoft's certification for OEMs have the following requirements:

Windows RT: Secure Boot enabled.
Windows 8: Secure Boot optional. If Secure Boot is shipped it MUST be user selectable in the BIOS. If Secure Boot is shipped it must be enabled by default.
Windows 10: Secure Boot required and must be enabled by default. Wording about Secure Boot being user selectable has been removed!

That last part is the key. Only a few idiots were spreading FUD about Windows 8 and secure boot. But with Windows 10 the FUD now suddenly leaves you at the mercy of any OEM.

Windows OEM certification documents don't say that it will not work anymore, but rather don't ensure that it will.

Windows RT requirements for OEMs included the requirement that Secure Boot is enabled. *** Potentially bad for linux.
Windows 8 / 8.1 requirements for OEMs included the requirement that Secure Boot if available must have the ability to de-disabled by the user. *** Good for linux.
Windows 10 requirements removed the wording that the user must be able to disable secure boot. *** Potentially bad for linux.

See, we're offshoring as fast as we can and when we can't do that we bring in more H1-Bs. Hell, I'm starting to see them in non-technical fields like entry level business analysis.

The real solution is protectionism and an end to the H1-B visa program so you don't need a 4 year degree to do something that can be learned in an afternoon. As long as companies use that degree qualification as a quick and easy way to get H1-Bs for free you'll have kid's drowning themselves in debt out of desperation.

then somebody else can pocket it. Either for their own pet project or as tax cuts.

but saving up for a down payment on house is already impossible in my neck of the woods. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

There's a ton of basic science getting done for that $150 mil you're ignoring. I don't even get too made at the F-35s. At the end of the day it's all just socialism. Military Spending is about the only way we lower castes have ever managed to pry money away from the 1% (not counting a few minor victories with Unions that really only happened thanks to the Cold War).

Eisenhower talked about it in his memoirs. He and a bunch of progressives created the Military Industrial Complex as a way of redistributing wealth. It was the only way he could keep the US Economy going instead of grinding to a halt when the 1% took everything for themselves. As I recall he was guilty over it and thought the harm done was worse than the help, but the only folks I know doing OK right now have gov't jobs that either are or depend on the Military...

Yep, extreme optimism is just as much a part of the illness as extreme pessimism, both extremes are disconnected from reality.

Would you say a financially comfortable american with terminal cancer is 'better off' than 99% of the world? - Of course not. Same thing with depression, depression is not self pity, it is a mental illness that has fuck all to do with the size of your wallet. As Robin Williams demonstrated, sufferers are unable to endure living even when swimming in money.

I'm not having a go at you personally, most people who don't understand depression have your dismissive attitude. I suggest you try educating yourself on the subject because odds are you will encounter a loved one with depression at some point in your life and it's handy to know what to do after telling them to "cheer up" doesn't work.

As for TFA, I don't find it surprising that "start up" people have a high proportion of manic-depressives, the manic phase of the illness is characterized by extreme optimism.

Shameless plug for a good cause

Datamining is just a computation, an arbitrary computation. It has input value(s) and an algorithm which depends on computed intermediate values and finally an output(s). There is nothing special about the data that datamining works on which differentiates it from any other kind of data within that framework I described. This is the wonder of homomorphic encryption. It DOES let you do aribitrary computation without decrypting the data.

That's not the same as doing arbitrary computation on data whose general semantics you are totally ignorant of. Is it numeric data? Is it text processing? What is its format. Sure, you have to know that level of detail but that's like saying "this string is a pssword". Does it get you any closer to knowing what that specific encrypted password is? It does not.

Yeah but your counter argument doesn't account for the sheer scale of what VISA and the banking system do compared to Bitcoin. OK the banking system uses more electricity, but what is the amortized cost on a per transaction basis? That's the question. Accoring to TFA the answer is VISA is HUGELY more environmentally friendly and cost effective than Bitcoin and, and this is the point, always will be because by design Bitcoin makes it harder to obtain coins depending on how much processing power (energy) is being expended to obtain those coins at any given time.

http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

If all bitcoin machines went solar however, then we might have a different outcome. The practicalities of that, given that Bitcoin assumes distribution of computing power, are not in Bitcoin's favor either.

It has been my experience that many women enjoy and are actually better than men at UX design. The best books I have are authored by women and when I pass ideas or problems by others, women often bring better insights and ideas than men.