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Comment Re:CEO says his company's product is amazing (Score 1) 49

Yes, it's got a long way to go. Unfortunately, at least SOME of the changes are (currently) on an exponential growth curve, and people have very poor ability to project those. (And also at some point "limiting factors" will manifest, which aren't significant during the early part of the rise.)

There are quite plausible scenarios where we are still in the early part of the exponential growth curve. Nobody can prove whether this speculation is true or false, but we should be prepared in case it is true.

Comment Re:Related (especially the Alibaba story): (Score 1) 52

That kind of thing is something that centrally controlled economies are prone to. It's the mirror image is the problems experienced during the "Great Leap Forward". Market driven economies have different problems (monopolies, concentration of power in the hands of the greedy, etc.) . I'm not really sure which is inherently more deleterious. Perhaps it depends on details of implementation.

Comment Re:Really getting sick and tired (Score 1) 157

Unfortunately, the data isn't consistent. That's why they need to make corrections. The question is "Do the corrections make it more nearly accurate?", and that's really hard to demonstrate. When there's too much noise in the signal, it's really difficult to filter it out without losing the signal.

Comment Re:Minimum specs on Steam are clear, and pretty lo (Score 3, Interesting) 65

"minimum spec" for a game isn't supposed to mean "technically runs but no one will actually be willing to play it that way"

Maybe not in your opinion, but it has always meant that, and always will. Marketing departments are a thing.

Comment Re:Transitions (Score 2) 241

Yup. And I've got my USB (A) to DB9 serial adapter handy.

Which is unreliable in many situations. I worked on several projects that had issues involving intermittent data loss on a DB9 port, and every time the culprit turned out to be a USB/DB9 adapter. When we'd install dedicated RS232 cards, the problem went away.

For laptops, the answer to this kind of thing should be a standard space where a customer can specify what ports he wants... you get X number of standard ports, and then you can choose what goes into one or two available spaces. But you're just not going to see that happen with manufacturers, even if the customer is willing to pay a greater cost.

Comment Re:Teenage gangs and gateway crime? (Score 1) 56

I get so tired of hearing the school systems stress technology so much, because they are inevitably 20-30 years behind in their understanding of how to best utilize it, leave alone secure their systems. I always fantasized about teaching a computer class that didn't even touch a keyboard for the first half year...

I recall Windows 3.51 was quite secure for the time. But once they merged the DOS branch of the OS with the NT branch, things got a lot worse for several years.

It's good to hear AWS has never been hacked because just about every other company with data has been. A lot of people rely on AWS, and what you are saying is accurate and if they are running their systems correctly, there can be a reasonable expectation that they will be secure. That's nice to know.

Comment Re:Teenage gangs and gateway crime? (Score 2) 56

> What I learned is that teachers have literally no time for anything.

The school system in the U.S. is notorious for this. Teachers get so much stuff dumped on them, much of which has little to do with actual teaching. It's a truly thankless job that cannot be fixed by dumping more money into the system. It's fundamentally broken. There are plenty of good teachers, but their effectiveness becomes more and more fettered every year.

Source: father of 4, and husband to a school teacher

Comment Re:Adapter (Score 1) 241

A USB hub is just annoying to lug around and even more annoying to assemble.

I like still having one or two USB-A ports on my laptop, but I can't say I've ever been annoyed by having to "lug around" a USB hub (with a gigabit ethernet interface) in my laptop bag. It weighs around an ounce.

I also think the article complaining about shit like mice, keyboards, and headsets is a bit out there, since any of this crap connected to my laptop is connected via bluetooth which has been around over a quarter of a century and has been ubiquitous in laptops for at least 15 years.

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