rob05c

That wasn't an insult. Jonathan Ive is a brilliant designer, and Microsoft is smart to create a public image if they have an equally brilliant designer.

It sounds like Microsoft is trying to market him as the next Jonathan Ive. Which is not to say he isn't.

"As long as it's not me that's hurt, that's okay."

Totally not what I was saying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Right. It also does DNS poisoning, URL word analysing, deep packet inspection, and VPN identification & blocking. I meant it only directly blocks the worst IPs, as opposed to directly blocking all external IPs.

I do wonder whether a US Firewall will be worse or better than China's. On one hand, the US is presumably less autocratic. On the other, we have 10x the defense resources.

Well, it depends how they do it, right? If they just block DNS, yeah, people who care can simply tunnel out. It still hurts, as the average non-caring citizen's knowledge is stunted. But not as badly.

If they block IPs, and closely monitor outgoing tunnels? Then it's a lot harder to get out.

I suspect you're right, they'll probably just block DNS and the worst IPs. It's easier, and DNS gets the 99%. Even The Great Firewall only blocks the 'worst' IPs (like Twitter).

The US is a two-party system. First Past The Post voting ensures a vote for a third party is wasted. No significant percentage of people will ever vote for a third party (excluding transition periods between party systems).

The current ruling party is widely recognized as less warmongering and less surveillance-state than the other party.

Americans aren't completely inculpable. Our societal inability to work together (see: Prisoner's Dilemma), combined with our unwillingness to risk contentment, contributes.

But I fail to see how American citizens have any real say in the government. We present a "democracy," but the two-party system is a thinly veiled autocracy.

I'm not sure whether I agree. I don't generally believe in violence.

But the average American won't rebel unless they are actually starving, no matter how much they're repressed. As long as they have their McDonald's and Reality TV, they aren't willing to die over a little warrantless wiretapping.

"Bread and Circuses" is far older than America.

Personally, I simply can't afford it. I have to work 9 hours a day, and even if I had the time, a trip to march on Washington DC is very expensive. I suspect most Americans that care are the same.

the darkest of the dark ages

I agree this is a dark age for freedom, but to put things in perspective: Mao, Lenin, The Inquisition, Genghis Khan, Victorian Imperialism, Feudalism.

The current US Congress, the CIA, Hoover's FBI, et al may be tyrannical, but Obama is no Mao.

I fear Tyrannical Governments will create an "American Internet," a "Chinese Internet," a "European Internet," and a "Rest-of-the-world Internet."

It will happen quietly, and no one outside the tech community will know until it's too late.

As an American, I wish news agencies would stop conflating the US with the CIA. It suggests US citizens generally approve of their actions.

The "US" did not bug Merkel's phone. An agency under the Executive branch, which is above the Rule of Law, which is drunk with power and paranoia, who considers American citizens the enemy as much as foreigners, bugged Merkel's phone.

It would be like saying "Syria uses chemical weapons." The Syrian people had little to do with it, and the American people have little to do with this.

I was just as shocked to see John Cornyn on the list. Shock and awe.

Recognize that BMW/Daimler/et al really don't want true self driving cars.

They don't have a passion to, but they must. Capitalism forces companies to adapt to competition, even when it isn't in their individual self-interest. BMW has to, because if they don't, Toyota will.

Companies make necessary self-defeating choices all the time. Newspaper companies have websites. Barnes & Noble sells e-books. The Empire made the Death Star.

I think Capitalism is a pretty broken concept, but I think this particular facet of it tends to work.

Also, laziness. Knowing proper protocol doesn't preclude procrastination. "I'll lock everything down tomorrow."

I don't know how common my sentiment is, but I'd be far more inclined to eat crickets than cockroaches. I psychologically associate roaches with disease. Crickets are just another insect.

I realize this is irrational, and that fauna which feed on garbage like rats and roaches can be farm-raised in sanitary conditions. I'm still not going to eat a roach.

One where the ratio of a circle's circumference and diameter is not equal to pi

You don't need a different universe for that. You just have to be in Indiana.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

"You're getting warmer. Kip — I think they eat meat." - Have Spacesuit—Will Travel

How do you know dogs don't have repressed desires?

3. Are we alone in the universe?

With regards to this question, I highly recommend http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-well-never-meet-ali...

He makes a compelling argument.

I agree, but I realize not everyone else does.

Same goes for Windows.

You can make Linux look like anything you want. If what you want is a clone of your old OS, well, I can't help your aesthetic taste, but I can at least make you happy.

offtopic: It makes me happy how often I see other people mention Tiling WMs :). I think they're awesome (pun totally intended), and I think Windowing was a mistake. I think most people would agree if it weren't for, as Torvalds put it, "Better is Worse if it's Different."

I hope the trend continues to grow.

I came from Arch Linux to OSX. I find the tight integration between hardware and software...

I just went the other direction :). I agree, the hardware/driver issues are a pain. If you're using a desktop without wireless, you probably won't have issues. If you pick Ubuntu, any issues usually aren't too hard to fix.

If you're trying to install something like FreeBSD on a laptop with a non-broadcom card? God have mercy on your soul :(

That said, once you fix the issues, they're usually fixed for good. It's just the matter of the week of banging your head against the wall to figure it out. Relevant: http://xkcd.com/979/

It looks worse (I recognize this is subjective.)

Yes, yes it is.

If you're using Ratpoison, well yeah, it's gonna be fugly. Gnome 3 and Unity look pretty sharp though, and Compiz and Clutter are at least as good as Quartz.

In fact, if you think nothing short of an OS X clone is pretty: How to Make Ubuntu Linux Look Like Mac OS X http://www.howtogeek.com/45817/

"Linux is ugly" is an outdated cliche. It used to be true. It's not anymore.

I actually just switched from OS X to Linux about 3 months ago. I grew up with Windows, and started using Macs in college.

There were 2 big reasons I switched. (1) I wanted to build a desktop; the Mac Mini is underpowered and the Pro is wicked expensive. (2) Apple's competing in the courtroom disgusts me. I was a huge Apple fan, but I don't want to give them any more money.

Windows isn't an option to me. I love text and I love the POSIX shell. I find DOS abhorrent.

I don't really miss any conveniences. If you really want something pretty and easy, go with Ubuntu. It mostly just works. The only thing I really had trouble with was wireless drivers. I started with Ubuntu, and later switched to Arch with i3 (Tiling WMs are awesome).

Again, If you want something that's almost as pretty and almost as easy to set up, I highly recommend Ubuntu. Once you get settled in, I also recommend looking at Arch. Arch is a lot more work and learning to set up, don't start with it. But it's a better system once you have it configured your way.

It's been some work, learning Arch and fighting with wireless drivers. But I don't regret it. I'm extremely happy with my Arch+i3 system. It has Chromium, Steam, Minecraft--everything I need. I do wish Steam had more Linux games, but with the Steam Box, I think they're on their way.

ps. I don't recommend dual boot. I did dual and triple boot a few years back. It was just a big hassle. Get a machine and dive into Ubuntu. Good luck.

a programmer's text editor (such as ed

YES. Clearly the capricious abregation of Ed was where we went wrong. Let the faithful return!

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.txt

It puts power into the hands of the government.

True, in general. But the prison population is also overwhelmingly non-white, and non-white people statistically vote Democrat. Prisoners can't vote. As one of the two ruling parties in America, it would be in the Democratic Party's best interest to liberalise drug laws to augment the racial minority vote.

But the over-65 demographic is far more likely to vote, and with now-aging Boomers, there are far more of them.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/ (census.gov is currently down)

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Junior Spies are critical to Minitrue's operation to uncover Thoughtcrime.

Hitlerjugend membership became mandatory for Aryans in 1936.

Indoctrinating children, and especially getting children to spy on their parents, is essential for dystopian governments to function.

As far as JSON

I wasn't clear on that example. If he's talking about CSV, there's nothing wrong with that (though I wouldn't call JSON "bad"). If he's talking about delimiting text with the bell character, yeah, that's ghastly.

without context

I feel like most of the examples don't have enough context to make a fair judgement.

If it's just a small amount in one place, simple formats like CSV and JSON can easily be parsed, and especially generated, manually. If they're used all over the codebase, manual parsing would create a huge amount of duplicated code. There just isn't enough context.

When the time comes to build a framework you'll know it

You know it, but how do you know the old fart in the article knows it?

I think the question being asked is whether the old fart has wisdom, or is just a mediocre/bad developer who's been around a while.

I think the point of the examples, was to provide context for people to help the asker determine the answer.

tldr, You address the specific examples well, but I think maybe you haven't answered the real question.

a complete desktop environment

I agree. I wish more Tiling WMs came with a GUI application launcher, better mouse support for moving and resizing, login screens, etc.

Not everyone uses a Tiling WM because they're a masochist musophobe.