Custom solutions are great. They do everything you need or want.
Until you need upgrade them to work on the latest os upgrades and find out that the company that wrote it no longer exists. Or no one left understands how it works.

We lost a large number of machines simultaneously because of a power event. That is when we discovered all the unforeseen dependencies. Storage system wants dhcp to boot. Dhcp is a vm that lives on the storage system. Password vault is on the storage sytem so you cant make changes etc.

I suspect Delta was able to get all their machines up and running by themselves. Im sure deltaâ€(TM)s junior it staff was running around with USB sticks and fixing machines. Their senior IT staff was busy trying to bring up the dozens of applications needed to be able to all the things.

Ms would not be able to help on the slightest with either running around to machines or start understand interdependencies. It would take days or weeks just to explain all the systems needed to run delta.

Iâ€(TM)m sure that after the money request failed, the scammer slowly walked down the street, looking at the ground singing a sad song. But then as he continued to sing, he began to realize that he has more options. He stood up straight and smiled, confident that he could fix his voice modificator and find a new target! Now confidently swinging around light poles, smiling and looking up to the sky, the camera panned up and back as he finished his song.

- We have the source code. We donâ€(TM)t have a version of the compiler that will work on that source code and no one knows which version is needed.
- We have the source code. We think that the compiled version we are is different than the source code we have though.
- We have the source code but itâ€(TM)s uncommented. Itâ€(TM)s also on paper. Weâ€(TM)re not sure we have all the pages.
- We have the main source code. Thereâ€(TM)s some support programs that were written in Algol and ibm 370 assembler that we lost the code and compilers for.
  - We have the source code. Itâ€(TM)s in these boxes of 9 track tapes.
- We have the source code. The compiler is refusing to run because itâ€(TM)s missing a license code tied to the cpu version. The compiler company went away 30 years ago.
- We have the source code. The compiler refuses to compile the source code and weâ€(TM)re not sure why.

You're assuming that the government would be a fair referee. Looking at the current government where all decisions are politically based is not encouraging. Rewarding political allies and punishing others are the way all decisions are made. Government already has an outsized influence on business today by passing laws to favor lobbyists. Yes, let's let that cancer spread by giving government total control over all business decisions.

Can we think of other governments which also control their country's businesses to determine if that's a good idea? Like China, Russia, North Korea... Yeah, those economies appear to be working A-OK. Lets do it!

I'm not a microsoft apologist, quite the opposite, but Excel and it's imitators (google sheets) are fiendishly useful tools. Excel in particular can be used to do a number of things that you don't expect from a spreadsheet (live feed dashboards, remember the flight simulator built into excel?). With the addition of python support, I suspect we'll see it being used even more by the high-end computing/scientific communities. While their may be better tools to do a thing, if you know excel and can use it, more power to you.

Using a DB to share large files is just as silly as using excel.

One of the companies I worked for would purchase (large expensive) used drives/arrays. Occasionally we would find financial or medical information stored on them. I'm surprised at some the large names that apparently skipped the sanitizing step. I wonder if some unusual event happened in those cases that caused the company skip that step. Did the Omaha branch office closed after firing all staff and bean counter rushed to sell everything off without telling IT department?

Bill: "Hey Bob the Beancounter - those Omaha racks with servers on them that you sold last week... who did you find to clean them?"
Bob: "Um, what do you mean by cleaned?"

> We have this little thing called taxi medallions..

Those medallions are indeed now very little... as in worth very little compared to what they were previously worth. WFH and Uber/Lyft effectively made Taxis an endangered species.

In Chicago, about a decade ago (pre-uber), a medallion was worth north of $350,000. People used them as an investment vehicle (see what I did there?). Drivers bought them with plan to eventually sell and retire. They were rare, no more were being made, and you could buy and sell them on the open market. And whoever had one could use them to operate a taxi to generate even more money. A vehicle with a medallion was run 24/7 by three different drivers/shifts to maximize the medallion's profit.

Now Chicago medallions are worth about $11,000.

Over the long time slashdot has existed, there have indeed been many good polls. They're out of ideas. Suggest one if you have it.

My suggestion - Paper or Plastic? Reusable? Can't afford to buy anything.

The customer is â€oenot profitable â€oe for John Deere. However if heâ€(TM)s seeking warranty service, John Deere is reimbursing the dealer for parts and labor. Possibly at lower than standard rates, but the dealer is still likely making a profit for the repair work. The fact that the dealer no longer wants this customer speaks to the character of the customer, not that he is not profitable.

Napster ceased to be interesting the moment they were shutdown. It's another corpse on the side of the information superhighway. Trying to revive it and turn it into the walking dead rarely ends well. These jargon laden press releases cannot be aimed at mere mortals. I think they're trying to find more investors to fleece.

"Hey, I found this exciting web3 space that's developing a thesis and building enduring value!"
Mere mortal Bob: "What the f* are you even saying?"
Rich Tech Bro: "Sh*t! I gotta get in on this - I can't remember the last time someone tried to develop a thesis! Web3 - I don't even know what web2 is and this is newer! This gonna be huge."

Whales, dolphins, seals are all part of certain culture's source of protein. All of these are essentially unchanged over thousands of years.

"No food that you eat was around a few hundred years ago". I may not have eaten dolphins, but I have eaten crabs, lobsters, clams, frogs, gator, venison, and have eaten a large share of wild berries, mushrooms, and have eaten (as I suspect many of us have as "allowable" byproduct) insects.

Bats may not be part of my culture, but as covid has proven, they are part of other culture's protein plan.
--
We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!

There are some. Wild caught fish such as salmon, cod. Ocean mammals such as whales, dolphins, seals. Crustaceans (lobster), frogs, alligators, clams. Wild game such as deer, wild turkeys, quail, bats. Mushrooms, wild berries. Countless other undomesticated animals. Insects.

Some of the above exist in both farmed and wild varieties(eg turkeys). The wild versions of the above are largely the same for easily thousands of years and are still widely eaten.

There's a difference between "production" and "development". Neutering root is very useful on a business "production" system. It's also useful for general staff in an office setting. Staff who deal with the public and exchange spreadsheet with the outside and have to be aware of spearfishing ... or drive-by downloads. For IT staff who are (in theory) trained professionals the ability is there to disable the option. This is needed when people, who know what they're doing, are trying to Get-Work-Done.

Our production machines no longer allow access to the root account. This is quickly becoming the standard for prod machines.

Of course the problem comes when companies try to remove the ability to turn off protections. And then your IT staff spends time trying to work around or bypass arbitrary roadblocks.

Your car could spy on you... and notify the police who could then issue the ticket for speeding, distracted driving, and all manner of things. It could even supply pictures/movies of you breaking the law.

Dystopian Big Brother future.