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Comment Re:Wozniak - the real reason for Apple (Score 5, Insightful) 51

It's too convenient to just write off Jobs. The truth is somewhere in the middle, as it always is. The idea that plenty of others could have done what he did is just too dismissive. When he died the company was worth a third of a trillion dollars. Not just any sociopath can pull that off.

Comment I don't disagree. But... (Score 3, Insightful) 95

For their money, large companies want the proverbial throat to choke - even when they've never successfully choked the throats they've paid for. The footprint of open source in these companies often grew through bottom up implementation. The moment that somebody has to pay an ongoing support contract, it will become a financial and strategic decision. That means vendor management, tech and vendor downselection, risk analysis... the best-effort maintainer isn't going to fly.

If I were a betting man, I think the result would be a decline in usage - and that might be fine. If the model isn't working, that definitely needs addressing. But the companies most able to afford licensing are probably the ones least likely to pay for it.

Comment Re:Psilocybin? (Score 1) 27

There's legitimacy to that. Taking a potentially dangerous drug under the supervision of a doctor who knows how things are supposed to work, what side effects look like, with drugs of consistent purity and dosage, has a lot of advantages over winging it with stuff made up random chinese chemicals and toilet bowl cleaner.

Unless you're talking about cocaine etc. brought to the penthouse by a personal assistant or something. Plenty of ultra-rich celebs have killed themselves that way.

Comment How is the lack of govt information relevant? (Score 3, Insightful) 82

Assuming it's remotely true (and there's good reason for thinking it isn't), it still means the FBI director was negligent in their choice of personal email provider, that the email provider had incompetent security, and that the government's failure to either have an Internet Czar (the post exists) or to enforce high standards on Internet services are a threat to the security of the nation (since we already know malware can cross airgaps through negligence, the DoD has been hit that way a few times). The FBI director could have copied unknown quantities of malware onto government machines through lax standards, any of which could have delivered classified information over the Internet (we know this because it has also happened to the DoD).

In short, the existence of the hack is a minor concern relative to every single implication that hack has.

Comment Re:My TV is a monitor (Score 4, Informative) 78

A little computer with Mint on it does a great job accessing streaming as well as my NAS. And it doesn't report my activities to anyone.

What are you using for the streaming services? Netflix etc? A web browser?

If so, that's a complete non-starter; it fails the ease of use expectations of watching TV of the wife using a remote control to turn it on and make it go. (and honestly it fails my own expectations for that matter too; having to reach for a keyboard or mouse to watch a movie or stream a show is just clunky). It also limits you from watching content in 4k.

At the moment, I've got a RokuHD of some sort on one TV, and an nvidia shield on another one. Plex, netflix, f1tv, and a couple other things on both of them. The TV remote can fairly seamlessly control the TV/soundbar and the attached box and it works well, and passes the usability test, but both devices are still more ad-laden than I want.

I've also got computers and consoles hooked up to TVs for gaming and what not, but i find them utterly miserable to use for streaming. Their is no app for linux that I'm aware of. And even the app for Windows is regularly just complete ass to use, and its a PITA to switch from plex to netflix and back etc, and using them with a remote control is pretty trashy. So I've been using the aforementioned boxes for streaming as the least awful way to run things for some years now.

But if there's a better way now, I'm listening.

Comment Re:Coming soon off the back of this (Score 1) 113

Doesn't have to be a credit card. A class III user digital certificate requires a verification firm be certain of a person's identity through multiple proofs. If an age verification service issued such a certificate, but anonymised the name the certificate was issued to to the user's selected screen name, you now have a digital ID that proves your age and optionally can be used for encryption purposes to ensure your account is only reachable from devices you authorise.

Comment Mars is still the goal (Score 1) 73

The Moon is target practice. We need to get away from innovative bespoke engineering, into industrial mass production with continuous improvement. To do that we need to fly often. Mars just doesn't have the launch window availability. The biggest part of the challenge is that we were born in the bottom of a deep well. To toss enough stuff out of the well for a long journey is critical. Boosters that reliably fly on time often and cheaply enough to get ships and fuel out of the well. Ships that carry fuel into orbit and return over and over since the vast majority of the material we need to send out of the well isn't payloads or ships, it's fuel. Kilotons of fuel. Once the factories and processes are set up for that going far beyond the Moon is fairly easy. But with a narrow opportunity every two years that's not going to happen in a human lifespan. It's not enough refinement cycles per year.

I see this accelerating the Mars objective, not deferring it.

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