There's a certain irony to AOL dial-up being shut down in September, given they gave rise to the September that never ended.

I work for a software company in the UK. About six months ago, they laid off about 50% of the R&D dept with the idea that AI can do the development work instead. Then in recent months, they took the axe to the services and support teams with the idea that AI chatbots can answer customers' queries. We've seen support teams of 10 reduced to a team of 2. Some support teams are now down to one person, who are having to manage 100-200 tickets for the product they are responsible for. Literally no contingency there for holidays and sick days. Nor did they run any of the AI stuff in parallel with humans to see if it was as effective as providing ticket resolutions. Our customers were already getting pissed off at the declining level of support due to other non AI-related job cuts over the past couple of years; they're going to be really pissed off over the next few months and will probably start pissing off.

Sky TV are absolute bastards in that regard. Whenever they re-bid and won the rights to show Premiership games, they put up the cost of all their packages and not just the Sports package to cover the cost of their winning bid.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who didn't expect a joke in trinary.

Two languages I've used every day in my job for the past 30 years.

There were no dupes on the first page.

The one I use at work is at least 18 years old and still going strong. Sure, the silver coating has worn through in a few places, but all the buttons and the scroll wheel still work. I expect it'll still be working on the day I decide to retire, which is 10+ years away.

I hear you. I'd much rather have a season be 8-13 well-written, tightly-paced episodes than dragged out over 20+ episodes of which some are filler and barely advance the story.

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further."

"Oh no! Anyway..."

Yes, but enough about Slashdot...

I'd say it's a bit disingenuous to say that Red Hat just repackage software developed by others. Red Hat QA that software and pass any code fixes back upstream. Red Hat also develop a few projects around the Linux ecosystem and are one of the main contributors to the Linux kernel.

And they're not selling the software but support of said software.

Java Runtime Environment?

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened."

When basically Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu were the only streaming services in town, it reduced those looking for pirated content, as it was more convenient to log onto Netflix than find a working torrent. Also, didn't hurt that paying $10/mth for content you wanted to actually watch over $100/mth for a cable package with a load of crap you didn't was a good deal. Slowly though the content providers got greedy and, wanting a piece of the streaming action, pulled their content into their own walled gardens. Now, do I see my entertainment bill creep back up to the price I was paying for cable by subscribing to each service, rotate and binge through each service or start looking for torrents? Content is consumed far faster than it can be created by any one service, so how are you as a content and streaming provider going to keep subscribers hooked for month after month?

2-3 streaming services I'd say was the sweet spot. If you're a content creator, you sell to one of them. You've got your money now, it's their headache to get enough subscribers to cover the infrastructure costs for streaming and re-coup what they paid you.