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Comment Re: 16:10, it's about time (Score 0) 112

Putting PCs into a single quality class against Macs is shameless Mac sophistry. The range of quality in PCs is so wide that there is no meaningful measure. It's a pointless comparison as well unless your purpose is to firm up your need to feel Macs have an unassailable superiority. Nothing really wrong with pointless pleasures, but the smugness informed by this particular one is too irritating to pass.

Comment Re:To understand the basics of computers (Score 2) 493

Exactly. Too many people had to learn how computers worked because their use was geared to how they do work under the covers, as opposed to abstracted to "just work" for users who consume those services. You only need to know how filesystems work if you are working at a storage vendor or an OS company, or contributing to open source projects. Those people know how they work emphatically. We do not need to live in a world where the users of computers understand the intricate details of how computers work. Abstraction should be the norm. When your typical office worker goes to open an Excel document, they should be presented with their excel documents, and other places they might be stored (such as removable media). They do not need to see the entire hard drive's storage structure. You shouldn't be able to browse to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\ from the "open Excel file" dialog box. This change is a good thing.

You shouldn't *need* to browse outside the Excel data sandbox but sometimes you might really want to. Say an excel file has landed, for whatever reason nutty or not, in some random directory. One of the reasons I cannot abide snaps or any of its cousins. In attempting to protect the system from fools we don't want to restrict the activities of innovators. My machine is my machine, not the property of Excel. Okay yes we want self-driving cars to stick to the planned route from A to B, but we may want to switch off the autopilot and take the scenic road P along the River Q.

Comment The most terrifying words (Score 2) 69

Why do we cling to this naive delusion that corporations can be trusted with the public interest. It's really too much to ask when they have so much more important things to attend to. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: The nine most terrifying words in the English language: I'm from Acme Corporation and I'm here to help."

Comment Re:Buy Votes (Score 1) 379

It's your money only as much as the money you owe your health insurer or your ISP or your device manufacturer, the power company -- and on and on. You may grumble about what you have to pay those private interests -- that serve to provide lives without work for the very wealthy owners -- but you don't harumph that it's "my money". It's money you *owe* for the protection, maintenance, and development of the fabric on which *your* money depends. It's not taxation that's theft; the theft is accepting the value that government provides without paying your dues. Like tapping your neighbor's cable.

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