I have a landline. Sort of. But it's not copper. The last mile is fiber that carries my phone and my internet.

...laura

Plus you'll be stuck for 3 hours in a TSA queue.

Maybe. Still, it's nicer to listen to a dreamer than a naysayer, even if the latter is right. I miss the optimism mankind used to have.

Again: the idea is not to convince individual parents, but to change culture. Starting with the schools, perhaps. It won't be just your kid being without a cellphone then, will it? Sometimes it really does take a village...

That's why the author proposes a culture change; obviously you're not going the change anything by being the only parent to follow his advise. Thankfully, parents and educators are becoming more aware of the negative effects of cell phones on kids, and this article hopefully will add a little more fuel to that fire.

A little while ago cell phones were banned from primary schools here in the Netherlands. Since the start of this year, they are banned from high school classrooms as well; schools can choose how to implement this (for instance: let the kids keep their phones in their lockers, and allow use during breaks). Not a complete break with cell phones, but it's an important start.

Companies would rather hire young people because inexperienced people are cheap. Hence also the huge numbers of H-1B and TFW visas - despite the hype, people knew damned well that the only reason Microsoft built their facility in Vancouver was so they could hire temporary foreign workers once they had exhausted their H-1B quota in Seattle. Cheap, do as they're told, work 70 hours a week.

When my current employers show me the door (or I walk) I know I'll be unemployable in tech at 62. So be it; I've had a good run and have a huge backlog of other things I want to do.

...laura

Maybe. Before we had Office 365, Office did not need any selling point besides the fact that everyone else was using it. And before we had Office 365, we often had document management systems that were actually any good*, and allowed easy sharing and managing access to documents. But it seems we have largely forgotten about those**

*) Sharepoint is definitely not one of them, I'd hesitate to call it a document management system of any quality.
**) Thanks to Sharepoint.

LibreOffice is there for the using. And no we don't need this cloud crap.

Absolutely. That is not "a problem", that is its purpose. They've floated similar ideas in the EU with regards to free speech, and it is the same approach they have taking with banks being tasked to police illicit transactions.

All these sites have been shadow-banned by the usual search engines. I'd love to see one so I know what to watch for.

...laura

What technology did you have in mind?

We have far better control systems and radios and things, but making rockets that don't blow themselves to kingdom come if you look at them the wrong way is as hard in 2024 as it was in 1977. Or for that matter, 1969.

...laura

I'll disagree a little bit: we have heavy lift rockets bringing mass to orbit at a greater rate than any time in history and new larger and more efficient rockets on the cusp of being brought to use, with next generations planned for the future. Space launch technology -- the actual raw launching of mass to orbit, where it can be useful -- has advanced. And mass to orbit means more fuel -- if we really wanted to get something out there faster.

And that's where our statements arrive at the same conclusion: there's little need to do anything but super efficient deep space probes. While I can quibble with your implied assertion about newer technology not making a difference in ability, in a practical sense given our funding of deep space research, the big tech upgrade has been to data collection devices and communication. We'll have to have way cheaper lift capability before extra fuel to cut time off a project makes any kind of sense. But it is now at least plausible as an option.

(Also, this appears to be the only thread that isn't making Trek or Aliens jokes)

Sounds like it merely found a bunch of pro-choice protest posters, and perhaps mixed them up a bit.
(And before anyone starts: I'm very much pro-choice)

If you use proprietary code or software that infringes on something, worst case is that you have to pull the software and find a replacement; the person who sold you the software is liable for the infringement. If you use FOSS however, the buck stops with you. That's the value of companies who sell you FOSS software (by charging you for support and maintenance): they provide a legal shield as well.

I've had some experience with this, and the main issue our company had with using GPL code (or even GPL software) was the fear that the piece of GPL software itself was in violation of some license, either not wholly compliant with GPL or worse: incorporating some proprietary code. As Legal pointed out, the company was already successfully sued once for copyright infringement, for using an infringing piece of FOSS in the company.

Releasing our GPL-based software under a GPL license was never much of an issue.