Linux has many great apps and tools, but they're scattered among an absurd number of collections and desktops. Sadly, Linux will remain relegated to devices that cannot begin to show its potential because the community refuses to face the truth that the general public will never accept a fragmented OS. The 'don't like something? Fork it!' mantra you hear everywhere is just a self-serving rationalization of developer ego ('Lo, a new feature-- and a distro to highlight it!) who lack the strategic intelligence to develop a model of OS development that can integrate many features and apps as alternatives within a standard model.

The site pretended to be a cloud personal library catalog and book recommendation service, but you couldn't distinguish between books you owned, read from the library, or simply wanted to read, without creating your own categories. It was completely oriented towards selling books, and individuals existed to provide free reviews. I gave up on it several years ago and transferred my library to LibraryThing, which actually does everything Goodreads claimed to do. There are a number of free online services that do as much these days. Good riddance of a manipulative corporate pretender.

The future of DVD and Bluray isn't streaming, for the same reason streaming isn't the future of cinema: they serve a different purpose. Streaming is about on-demand viewing, but physical media has ownership, availability, versioning, quality and archival functions that streaming cannot provide.

I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who boast that their computer or multimedia devices lack functionality. About 85% of all movie titles are unavailable via streaming during any given month, which underscores the roles of physical media ownership. Netflix has actually been decreasing their streaming totals recently to invest in self-made movies and series, and this won't be changing any time soon.

Hopefully we won't get to the point where the number of people who exclusively view media via streaming justifies arguments to completely abandon physical media. Capitalism being what it is, the number of 'big media' corporations controlling streaming services will rapidly dwindle to a handful of giants, who will then be able to dictate what entire cultures view, and will be free to charge as much as they wish. Pure streaming is a profoundly dystopian future.

This was a test of the car, with a safety driver present as baby sitter. Since there could not have been a failure of the safety driver without a failure of the car, attributing fault to only the human is a textbook-worthy example of fractured reasoning. Don't tell me the car isn't an agent to whom blame can be sensibly assigned; the AI of the car is presumably capable of making decisions about its environment in such a way to safely operate within it, or it shouldn't have been there in the first place. It utterly failed, which is an important fact to have on record for future evaluations. What gives, NTSB?

As one who has struggled with weight issues, I wholeheartedly agree with most of the article. But after pointing out that the metabolic set point derails most dieters in the long run, the conclusion is:

  "Aamodt recommends mindful eating -- paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain's weight-regulation system commands"

If the set point is a major component of the problem, how will listening to it help? Shouldn't the conclusion be that we need to learn to change the set point, not be mindful of a process that resists change?

Microsoft has a long history of releasing badly designed products- MSDOS 4,Windows Me, Vista, 8.0- and with the shift to updates, the public will lose their ability to vote with their wallets. Microsoft will do whatever it likes, and you will accept it or be unpatched. Microsoft has succeeded in ensuring that the customer has no power or voice.

And everyone here is cheering it on...