Where are these "remote communites" - are they viable or are they destined to be ghost towns? It is getting mighty hot in the West and dry too. You have power but no water. You have water but no food - because your market is too small and too distant for even Walmart to service economically.

The "faster horse" was never the point. The point was the labor and expense of owning and maintaining a horse. The early electrics never topped 10 mph. But they were reliable all-weather enclosed town cars that started instantly and without protest. The respectable middle-aged matron could handle one without the least difficulty.

Keeping loaded and chambered guns hidden about violates every rule of gun safety I was taught as a kid. They are never as hard for the youngest child to find. HalfÂasleep you will shoot your wife or your cat without thinking. No take-backs. No second chances.

Why is it that announcements like this always appear on Slashdot when the first day of an event is nearing it's close?

Look at silent films. There were horse drawn buggies and wagons in service well into the 1930s.. Nothing changes overnight. Especially in rural areas where roads were mostly rutted dirt tracks. Buggy whip makers ultimately transitioned into auto parts and accessories.

Walmart with its massive marketing muscle tried for years to make Linux a viable desktop alternative. Through a revolving door of cheap substandard hardware and distributions now long defunct. Sweepings off the warehouse floor. It never found a winning formula. Never sold integrated systems with a Linux compatible monitor and printer. No commercial games or other marketable software on its shelves either. It was ultimately reduced to warning customers yellowf flagged adds that Windows software was not compatible.

Microsoft was selling BASIC to the Fortune 500 in 1975. MBASIC was the first million dollar software product for the new micro machines - and Microsoft would go on to produce a whole suite of languages for the micro. Which attracted IBM. It would be Gates and Microsoft that would suggest DR and CP)M 86 as the IBM PC OS. Which everyone in the business assumed would be a 16 bit CP/M clone. But CP/M 86 was mired in development hell and the price would be a stiff $250 retail list. Gates promised timely delivery of a serviceable OS that could be sold for $50 - and retailed he rights to sell MSDOS to other manufacturers. Who would have commercially viable products on the market before the cloning of the PC BIOS. Ports of prestige CP/M software to the IBM PC was straight-forward and within a year or so there were solid entries in all market niches.

Slashdot published a near identical post about DucjDuckGo on Dec 26th. StatCounter's global stats for search show Google with 95% of the market, Bing 3% and DDG 7/10 of 1%. Which simply isn't all that impressive.

Not to rain on anyone's parade. But StatCounter's global stats show a 91% market share for Google, 3% for Bing and 7/10 of 1% for DDG.

In April the Financial Post estimated that there were 1.2 billion MS Office users. MS Office has evolved from the stand-alone Office suite of the 90s to simply one component of an mature integrated office system that scales to an enterprise of any size. This is where things like HIPPA compliance and collaborative tools beyond Outlook become important. The geek isn''t used to thinking like a clerical worker or an office manager and what is needed to be productive in this space.

When shopping for a new phone, customers look for deals from their local carriers, big box stores, and the online giants like Amazon Recognizable names with a competitive feature set. Obscure manufacturers, operating systems and unfamiliar apps aren't going to make the cut. I've side-loaded apps on a throwaway Fire Stick. Never onto a $900+ cell phone. Which simply must work come hell or high water.

Thomas Jefferson built Poplar Forest as a personal retreat and architectural experiment. The roof always leaked and while the hexagonal design made for a dramatic central core the angular interior spaces were hard to organize and furnish in any useful way.

Y'know, the Nobel is supposed to be awarded for work the recipient did in the previous year. Yeah, most of the time these days, it's not, but that's how it's supposed to work.

It was tried. But it lead to awards for work whch proved to be deeply flawed or inconsequential, It takes time to recognize the truly foundational - transformative - works in the arts anc sciences.

In Star Trek "The Enemy Within'" Kirk learned the hard way that without his animal instincts and ambitions he lacked the initiative and decisiveness needed to command the ship. A sound moral compass Isn't enough.

"TOTP App paired with a YUBI key." In less than a single paragraph you've left 99.9 % of your audience who want to ditch their passwords but are not hard-core geeks hopelessly lost about ten miles back.