Solipsism isn't "post modern".

You find it as a proposition in Plato and Descartes.

Privilege:

- Never worrying about a DWB
- Not being followed in every retail establishment you ever enter.
- Not looking up, almost every day, to a stranger clearing their throat and thinking, "Oh, no. Here it comes again."
- Not being patronised and told "We'll be getting in touch" - with the tact and manner that is used to dismiss school children.
- Never dealing with the understanding that half the people you see, day in and day out, every day of your life, have the word "nigger" float across their minds in your presence... most quickly and silently editing themselves.

This silent editing. That's the reality of "post-racial" America. But it don't take very long to know which ones entertain that ugly little epithet, however briefly.

It goes on - a thousand little pains that you almost don't feel no more... But you will NEVER be considered for THAT job. Even though you are more qualified and experienced.

You don't hate history? You are open minded enough to try and understand people that you don't agree with? Then read "Black, Like Me", by John Howard Griffin. It's 50 years old. But don't you dismiss it on that basis - and if you think it isn't as true today, in the north as in the south? You just don't understand how history works and just how recent even Reconstruction really was.

Again, reference the topic of the JE. ;-)

Yep, an SSD on my i5 makes WoT play at "highest detail" just as good as it does on my i7 using a conventional HDD, they both have the same video card and ram but without the SSD the i5 is practically unplayable (especially if you want all the eye-candy). It also loads the O/S and game faster than the i7. However durability is a bit of a concern, my first SSD shit itself without warning after 3 months, it was replaced under warranty and has been running for about a year now without problems. "Windoze" gets a lot of bad press but I have to say the is a remarkably simple and useful tool for determining the best way to spend your hardware upgrade money.

XKCD's "Time" is ending?

You know what this means...

Only one thing!

RAGNAROK!

That is the pro-MS spin, on the publicly produced history - written up by Helen Custer as history and accolade. Like all lies and cover stories, it has verifiable elements of veracity.

She was paid on MS dime, and published by MS press.

Victors write the history, YMMV, etc.

PRISM was the "VMS.next" Cutler was working on. Three aims separated it from earlier VMS, from which it was strongly derived/forked:
- 64 Bit
- Portability for RISC
- Posix

All of these are targets for which DEC released various "OpenVMS" versions, beginning in 1990.

"'Simply put, I don't think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.'"

He really doesn't follow the implications far enough...

FIFY

"Simply put, I don't think a free society is compatible with an organisation like Google or Facebook in its current form."

Right you really are on most of this.

You cite imitation, derivation, improvement and tribute as the way that progress is made, in the arts and sciences. I actually advocate that.

But in the instance of Microsoft as a company, there are endless back-room rip-offs, double crosses and secret handshakes. They extend from (at least) QDOS through VMS and VINES to SGI (Rick Belluzzo, look closely) - right to the present day: Nokia and Win7 stink to heaven. This was a weird deal in the back room, if ever their were one.

Nokia is essentially a subsidiary of MS, without the legal tripwires. They ditched a successful if future challenged business, to sell devices by the folks behind Zune and Kin.

I know of at least TWO Sr. Execs at MS, who were dismissed because of flagrant sexual harassment, who each went to "penitence" jobs at minor MS partners, only to surface 6-9 months later in Sr Exec jobs at Nokia - where their function relates to Microsoft, corollary partner to their former roles.

Gates stole BASIC, in the beginning. Everything thereafter followed this pattern.

He stalked an innocent unarmed man, down the street, then shot him.

Those are the relevant facts.

Both of them are rabid, hard-right supporting Zionists.

Spitzer isn't a "human rights" kind of guy. He just cares about "dollar rights".

And duplicated work belonging to DEC, and went through losses in court because of it. Yes.