Oh, crap. That must be why there's a camera crudely duct taped to every oscilloscope we've ever ordered. We were given strict instructions to NEVER EVER EVER remove them for ANY REASON EVER because the were EXTRMELY CRITICAL to the operation!

I do. It was a pivotal day in the history of the organization.

His first action as the CEO was to immediately fire anyone who was in any way, shape or form connected to the GBLT community and issue a public statement that says "Fags should use Chrome or IE. Google and Microsoft like you perverts for some reason, but we don't want any of that here." Within a week, he had diverted a substantial portions of Mozilla's revenue to anti-GBLT orgnizations and publicly backed candidates who actively oppose gay rights. There were unsubtantiated rumors he would be working to remove code contributed by GBLT developers from Firefox, but those turned out to be just rumors.

Oh wait, no. That didn't happen.

He gave some money to a cause he supports a few years ago that a lot of people disagree with (including me) and didn't apologize for it.

But I can see how it's easy to get those two things confused.

That's what's going to happen to all the XP machines (that haven't been air gapped already) where I work.

Most of the XP holdouts are lab equipment. (Oscilloscopes, Arbitrary Waveform Generators and the like.) They were already air gapped, anyway.

There are a few machines that run old development tools needed for production. (As in factory, not web services.) They will be left connected long enough to catch the last batch of updates, then relegated to USB storage and optical media for data dransfer. (With sensible precautions, like disabling autorun, of course.)

Fortunately, those projects will not be around forever and will slowly be replaced with newer versions that run on Windows 7 and/or Ubuntu 12.04. (Maybe 14.04.)

Next on the todo list, Ubuntu Server 10.04. It's number is up soon, and that one will be a lot more obnixious to get rid of than XP was.

I'm glad to see that I won't be seeing "See what your friends are building in Minecraft. Connect your Facebook account today!" plastered all over Minecraft anytime soon.

(Incidentally, f*ck you, Netflix.)

I recently bought a 2014 model year car. But they gave me a 2013 model since "they had a few left in stock that they needed to get rid of, first." Regrettably, since this is completely normal in the car industry, I have no recourse.

Ah, so it saves them the trouble of writing the LGPL wrapper around it. Good to know.

If you're a developer working for a company and you have your choice between an MIT|BSD library and a GPL library that, on a technical level, work equally well, it's a hard sell to choose the GPL library.

Consider...

"Well boss, if we use libfoo, we'll have to disclose our source code since it's GPL. There are ways around it by doing things like writing LGPL wrappers and dynamically linking it, but we'll have to distribute THAT source code, instead. Plus, you may want to run this by legal, since the developer has outright refused to sell non-GPL licenses..."

Versus...

"Well boss, if we use libbar, we can just use it since it's MIT. If we make changes to it, we should contribute them back, but we're not obligated to do anything except keep their copyright notice."

With that in mind, is it any wonder projects like llvm and musl are popping up and gaining the support of large companies that use them?

As other people have said, the advantage is speed.

Of course nobody is expecting this tech to replace silicon based chips anytime soon. There's obviously a lot of R&D to be done and, let's face it, nothing may EVER come of it. That's just how science is. We don't know in advance what theories and tech will pan out.

As for leakage between structures? I'm willing to bet we don't need perfect isolation. Just enough isolation that the interference is predictable. (Much like electrons in silicon...)

The comment was meant to be sarcastic, to point out that suggesting a system with a 4-5 year support cycle to someone who has hung on to an XP system since 2001 is a fairly silly suggestion. (And to be fair, Apple has gotten a fair bit better about support cycles lately. Maverics and Mountain Lion run on Macs from 2007. Lion will get you back to 2006, though I don't imagine that one is long for the world.)

The only way I know of to accomplish that feat involves a few parts from your favorite computer parts retailer, a visit to the OSx86 project and a lot of dremelling.

Indeed. In fact, just the other day I updated my Mac OS 9.2.2 G3 to Mac OS X 10.9.

I really don't understand why Microsoft is so quick on the draw to kill off their old products with no warning and alienate their customers.

The RadioShack near my school had a large selection of components, including some old-school 74-series ICs. (74AHCxx, if memory serves, but still.) There were very likely catering to CE/EE students who needed parts.

I have not seen a RadioShack since then that wasn't 97% consumer electronics with a few bins of parts at the very back. My usual RadioSshack visit goes like this:

1. Walk in.
2. Walk past all the cell phones. (1/2 of the store, usually.)
3. Walk past all the cell phone accessories. (Another 1/6th or so.)
4. Walk past all two or so blu-ray players and TVs they sell.
5. Go into one of the three alcoves that the parts and Arduino stuff are consigned to. (One of the others is consumer electronics, the other is audio gear and cables.)
6. Don't find what I need.
7. Walk out.
8. Order the part on Amazon/SparkFun/DigiKey/Mouser

sudo ln -s /bin/false /bin/cake

Having had the misfortune of using the infotainment centers in some modern cars, that's a fair point.

That would be if the Windows Update team designed it, yes.

It would also idle for half an hour while the update installed.

I can see this being useful for people who get to work at 9AM and stay at work all day until 6PM.

"My car will be at [business address] between the hours of 9AM and 6PM. It is a [color] [year] [make] [model] with tags [tag number]."

Is this better than having a parcel dropbox at home? No.
Is this better than having them leave it with the leasing office? No.
Is this better than having them ship it to you at work? No.

But not everyone has those things.