To clarify, OS X was descended from NeXTSTEP, which was built on Mach and BSD.

I agree, and I am a big proponent of service architectures, and yes, I force myself to use the term "microservices" because it seems to be the popular one these days.

There isn't anything new about service architecture. You put a network call in between two pieces of code and suddenly you need a queue for the interface to be robust. Once you put a queue in front of code, you're handling messages, and in particular, you're handling messages that can arrive more than once. So you need to ensure your handlers are idempotent. Then you need to stitch together a reporting database of some kind to serve queries that supply the data for the UI. Which should mean that your services publish events -- pub sub is another pattern that has been around for a while. All of that work wins you the ability to compose a large, complex system out of very loosely coupled, autonomous pieces. When it works, it's great. It usually doesn't, however, because teams don't have the maturity, habits, or expertise on hand to see such a project through to completion.

Nothing about it is "new," except to the inexperienced web programmers I coach who don't really understand service architecture -- who also usually believe that you can achieve microservices just by taking parts of your existing system and putting a web interface around them. Sigh.

All that to say, there are some definite benefits to service architecture that shouldn't be discounted just because "microservices" is yet another tech trend to have been fed through the meme machine.

The value of something isn't tied to it's ease of duplication, at all. Property is not the only lens by which to view value. For example, property rights are not in play if I hire someone to clean my garage.

I don't know if you can. In the real world, duplicating objects is impossible. However, duplicating information in computers is essentially free. Therefore, I'm not sure that simulating the notion of "property rights" on a computer even makes sense. It certainly doesn't make sense if it costs DRM to achieve it.

The means by which they revoke permissions after the time limit must be transparent. DRM fails to meet this criteria.

Building a business model around time limits requires you to take rights away from the consumer. You can't justify online video "rentals" if they cannot be built transparently.

Diversity does not mean tolerating bigotry directed at minorities. It's crazy that you talk about tolerating disagreement when Eich is the one who donated money to criminalize what he disagrees with.

I'd say the killer feature is pure remote management. You don't need to physically manage your systems anymore.

I'm the opposite. I can't stand lacking the ability to dig in and change software when I don't like the way it works. It's rare that I actually do, but there's a huge freedom I get from knowing that when I need to extend the software, I can.

It's common for commercial software to not do what I want it to, either. I'd love to have a working amazon instant video client for my Android phone.

I think the alternative minimum tax kicks in at some point and imposes a (hefty) flat tax structure.

Crusade : Babylon 5 :: Frasier : Cheers

Babylon 5 ended at the finale of season 4. Not sure what you're talking about :)

I think you're confusing "other stories set in the same universe as the show Babylon 5" with "addendums to the story of the show Babylon 5"

Right, most programmers aren't that great; there's a bell curve. When you encounter a poor programmer who dooesn't have a degree, you might be inclined to think that's why. I'll see your anecdotes and raise you one: I once saw a guy with a PHD in comp sci write a single 10,000+ loc function.

At some point in your career, everyone is their own snowflake. I'm never going to compete against a candidate that is my equal in every other way but has a degree.

I'm fortunate to be a programmer, though, because it's one of the few industries that has woken up and seen what a worthless institution our higher education system has become.