Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score 3, Interesting) 69

We saw the same sort of thing when Jobs returned to Apple and brought the legacy of NeXT with him, but because computer hardware had managed to become a lot more commoditized, general purpose, it was not as much a hardware issue as a software/OS issue. They maintained a virtual machine environment to run classic System within OSX to again allow those with investments in software for System to be able to continue using it (and to allow it to be used when there wasn't a version written for OSX specifically yet) but they certainly weren't looking to perpetuate the original Macintosh line once the models running OSX had supplanted them.

Everyone always forgets about the Carbon API.

There was a way for several years that app developers could target Carbon for their MacOS 9.x apps, and they would magically get OS X features when OS X became a shipping thing. It was an absolutely brilliant transition strategy - I believe when they introduced Carbon, they said "all future life on MacOS will be based on Carbon" which wasn't exactly true when they launched the OS X native "Cocoa" libraries, but they pulled off one of the easiest transitions between two fundamentally different operating systems, and the only people that really had a problem were QuarkXPress customers because Quark decided to be assholes about it and try to squeeze another $800/seat out of people for a new version of XPress where the only thing they did was run it through a compiler targeting Carbon. Just like they did when PowerPC came around and they charged $800/seat for a PowerPC native version of the same Quark XPress 4 with absolutely no additional features.

As it turns out, there's a reason why the publishing industry was more than happy to shitcan that company in favor of Adobe InDesign.

Comment Re:remove health care from jobs in the usa the wor (Score 4, Informative) 212

Here's what really tightens my jaws: if you take the average health care premium that you pay for employer-provided health care insurance and add that to the medicare / medicaid taxes, it probably comes out pretty even with what the medicare cost would be for single-payer healthcare.

It's not like private health insurance somehow gets massive discounts or something - Medicare sets reimbursement rates for procedures, so the care costs what the care costs. Hospitals love Medicare billing because they know what they're going to get, and they know they'll get it.

Private health insurance is a fucking leech attached to the money artery. How can anyone every expect an efficient health care system when you have profit-seeking entities in the middle of it, extracting money out of it while adding the only "value" of bureaucratic runaround and trying to dodge paying due to an "out of network" radiologist that you didn't choose and were not informed of looking at your x-ray in an in-network facility as listed on their own damn web site.

Their business model is to extract the most premiums they can, while paying out as little claims as they can. They exist to create inefficiency, and profit wildly for themselves. And we're all paying for it, for no reason at all.

Comment Re:Curious catch 22 (Score -1) 212

Well then you better stop using any products that come in factory-built packaging like glass bottles and aluminum cans - that is unless the glass is hand blown and someone custom-rolled and welded that aluminum can together for you.

If not, then I guess you're secretly fine with not doing things by hand that robots are better at.

We've automated the manufacture of things before and the economy didn't collapse. Don't be such a chicken little.

Comment Re:Interesting change (Score 1) 75

According to Statista 53.76 million Americans traveled internationally in 2024. That's 15 percent of the population. Besides the pure numbers, business travel matters to our economic prosperity. Isolation is bad for business.

https://www.statista.com/stati...

Real 'Muricans don't leave the ol' US of A. Anyone who regularly travels beyond driving range of their home town is suspicious, frankly.

(Meanwhile, I got the extra-thick passport booklet and have made a good try at filling it with stamps.)

Comment Re:Great at finding bugs with a caveat (Score 1) 92

" And AI whipped it up in a few hours of me going back and forth with it."

This is the key. You are no doubt, a capable programmer, and you used this tool to do more work. Which is what most good tools do. Woodworkers don't buy chair making machines, etc. So many are touting that you can just say, "I want an app that does..." and get that app. Or that a junior programmer can suddenly be far better.

I see a weird future where junior programmers are going to be lured into a very bad place, some senior reject the new tech and become comparatively useless, and some seniors become fantastically productive.

Comment Re:We used to mine these materials in the US (Score 1) 143

Yes, because suddenly everyone in the mineral extraction industry started listening to Greenpeace all of a sudden, but only on this one sector of minerals.

Or, and just hear me out for a second: the minerals that could be bought from China were cheaper than the minerals we were extracting and refining here in the US, and economics made the decision like it always does.

Which is more likely?

Moron.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Mach was the greatest intellectual fraud in the last ten years." "What about X?" "I said `intellectual'." ;login, 9/1990

Working...