I would imagine the FreeBSD Foundation's Executive Director might have reasons for wanting to run a modern DE on FreeBSD.

I remember a possibly apocryphal tale from many years back that Larry Ellison demanded Oracle's internal payroll was run on alpha quality software because he believed in "Eating our own dog food"

Are speed cameras a type of license plate tracking? Seems like it to me.

You would be surprised how long someone can languish with ill health. The chances that you will just 'drop dead' without a lot of suffering from bad health choices is pretty slim.

I do lots of walking and hiking. It's pretty hard to hurt yourself and our entire neurophysiology is based on it.

Which unfortunately I can no longer find.

If anyone can find the URL in the archive or a clone I'd love to re-read it.

Here's what Gemini says about it when I queried "In the early 2000s, slashdot user kiore wrote a satirical comment about the prospect of a microsoft linux. Do you know about this comment?

Yes, absolutely! The user kiore is a well-known, long-time Slashdotter (a senior software developer based in New Zealand) whose satirical take on "MS Linux" became a legendary piece of lore within the community.

Back in the early 2000s, when the tech world was obsessed with the bitter rivalry between Microsoft and the open-source community, the idea of a "Microsoft Linux" was the ultimate paradox. Kiore leaned into this brilliantly by writing a mock release note/review detailing exactly what a Linux distribution engineered by Microsoft would actually look like.

The satire perfectly captured the specific tech anxieties and Microsoft tropes of that era. Some of the most memorable gags from the comment included:

• The Installation Process: It required multiple reboots just to get the command line up, mimicking the clunky Windows installers of the time.
• The Kernel and Licensing: The Linux kernel was technically there, but you had to "product activate" it within 30 days or the system would lock up.
• File Hierarchy Hijacking: Instead of standard Linux directories like /bin, /usr, and /etc, everything was forced into a massive, tangled folder named /My Documents.
• Command Line Changes: The standard root user root was renamed to Administrator. If you tried to use standard tools like grep or awk, you'd be met with a friendly pop-up dialog box asking, "Are you sure you want to search this file?"
• The Infamous Registry: Instead of editing text-based config files in /etc (one of Linux's core advantages), kiore joked that Microsoft had somehow managed to graft a binary Windows Registry right into the Linux kernel.

It was a masterful piece of "News for Nerds" satire that perfectly predicted how Microsoft might try to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" open source. Ironically, decades later, with the release of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Microsoft Azure heavily relying on its own internal Linux distributions, kiore's joke ended up feeling strangely prophetic! I don't remember the pop-up box but details of a simple joke I spent 10 minutes has faded after 20 years or maybe someone else suggested it. BTW: I am no longer a software developer. For a few years I was a comedy producer, now I'm on hiatus until at least the southern hemisphere summer)

We should value honesty.

"Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers,"

The Gravis Ultrasound ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), as well as other soundcards which *USED WAVETABLE SYNTHESIS* were available.

Yeah, FM-synthesis sounds like a robot. The SNES SPC-7000 was wavetable. The Sega Genesis used a Z80 for FM synthesis. A GUS card was supperior to the SPC-7000.

If you want to know how good the music is, either run DOOM in DOSBOX with a correct GUS Wavetable patch set (which will let you know how *ACTUALLY GOOD* the music is). Alternatively, the Doom & Doom 2 remaster on Steam has an actual band covering the actual tracks. That also sounds awesome.

Lol; I guess the author wasn't aware of the state of the art in 1993 if that's what they wrote.

At least we would have a carbon neutral source of electricity

That just means our security was good. You little anecdote isn't actual data.

Won't? It hasn't happened the last 30 years. Thinking this will change is insanity.

As the first poster mentioned, it's already too late for that - parents taking ownership has been a failure.

The last time I walked into a gamestop nobody had heard of COVID.

something they have no authority to forbid!

There is absolutely no way the FCC (or any government agency) has legal power to block firmware updates on already-purchased hardware.

A stock kernel on an MRI machine?

No, I don't want that level of DIY on any equipment that is critical to anything.

Almost nobody runs stock kernels. Stock kernels are used by distributions to build their own kernels.

That MRI machine is running on a 1.2 kernel. Maybe 2.0. It's separated from the hospital network by a firewall.

If the MRI machine is getting attacked then a LOT has gone wrong already.

"Sounds like they're trying to make a ladies bike"
Wow, that's some 1pth century anti women on bike BS right there.