Historically, yes. But I don't think it'll ever happen in tech. In tech, the same pool of 'superstar' workers that fuel the engine that is this hypercompetitive system are sure they don't need such things - and for the most part they're right, for now. Until they get just a little too old or they have a health issue and just can't keep up with the machine anymore. Some thrive on it - the psycho workers discussed above - and serve as shining examples to the others. Most of them also came from mid-to-upper middle class backgrounds or better, and if they heard about unions from their parents at all it was probably about those bums on the shop floor working to rule again - hearing about the (very real!) negatives of unions without knowing any of the (also-real) positives. That's why I've run into tech people who are downright Marxist in every other way give the 'Well, unions USED to be necessary but these days...' speech. So, you try to organize, and 75% of the workforce think it's an anachronism that will just make their lives harder. Not likely happening. Ignoring the fact that a couple major tech hubs (though not Amazon) are in right-to-work states, getting a new union off the ground might be hard. And I suspect that if a wave of unionization ever hit white collar work, the final move from management would just be mass offshoring. Me? I grew up with my dad in a union. It was a not-entirely competent organization with such joys as an illiterate leader, goofy rules, and an imperfect track record at doing much of anything... But when we had problems, or the 2-3 times work put him in the hospital, they were a huge help. A mixed bag.

Agreed! It's a great place, seriously. In fact, I'm trying to get there! I'm having trouble getting responses from there, but ohhhhh boy do the local Bay Area recruiters love calling me five times a day. At least most of the calls are decently targeted, but having to repeat 'no, I'm really not looking in this area' five times on each call is a drag.

That hard drive head also has many, many advantages that the tape head has to work around: It has built-in positioning (fly height) in an extremely controlled environment, a hermetically sealed box - some now with special atmospheres. The kinds of things you have to deal with on a head passing along a moving tape (contact, tape irregularity, some level of constant contamination) are very different from a hard drive head reading from a glass platter. Scale has something to do with it, but there's a lot of machining and operational concerns that the hard drive gets to 'cheat' a little on, even if HDD heads are pretty amazing in their own right.

You could go unnoticed in such a place. Or maybe not.

For us, I knew the game was up when the new (from a hot AWS-only company) data center director moved the goalposts for his AWS eval to 'only 20% more expensive than physical'.

Well, at least someone's finally admitting what it's all about.

As bad as this situation is for any user, this REALLY hoses up corporate. First you're saying that for critical patches you need to install a major update, which NOBODY in that world likes to do, might as well ask them to install a new version of the OS entirely. And THEN, 'oops it's actually broken....' with no idea of how it will be fixed. Another Win8 misstep for corporate they really can't afford.

One thing I think that's been missing from the commentary about 'how did TNG S1 ever make it' is this: I wasn't that old at the time, but I recall that era being extremely dire for TV sci-fi. We had, well, TOS reruns. And the occasional 13-and-out attempt by network TV to do a genre series. It rode that wave of support for a while, then it started getting good.

100LL is using real lead, at least for now. It's a matter of a lot of testing over many different engine types to make sure alternatives work properly.

You essentially can't use leaded gas if you care more than the slightest bit about air quality. Lead deposits wreck catalytic converters, which are important for cleaning up exhausts. And there are adequate if not great replacements for lead's anti-knock qualities... And we're really good at making hardened valve seats these days, so you don't need that either.

Whoops, that was me.

We always knew the larger content players would be JUST FINE with pay-for-access. That was only a small part of the problem.

The 64's power supply is an acknowledged weak point of a great system, so you put up with it. Use a 128 supply with an adapter instead.

Effectively dead. The major drivers behind it got massively patent trolled, and then the financial crisis hit, and Canon/Toshiba battened down the hatches. The feeling *now* probably is it couldn't be brought out before OLED or with enough of an advantage over LCD to make it worth it. Plus, without Toshiba in, Canon probably didn't have a consumer electronics partner and... yeah.

It's the 'destroy the company' part they shoud've objected to. You can be a patent jerk while actually having a working hardware unit - heck, it helps you not look like an actual patent troll.