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I have kids and I am quite the opposite. My interest in them is very occasional. Teaching anything takes a lot of work and they're typically not interested anyway. Most of the experiences they have at school, I have no real insight on. I like to see their interests develop, and I notice that my youngest would probably enjoy partnering with me on some things, but that is it. I'm sure that puts me on some spectrum, but that is how I feel and, whenever a few other dads I know take their guard down, they have a lot of similar feelings - but they cannot state them, because they have become socially unacceptable.

Note also that a lot of what we consider "fatherhood" is a Western construct of the last 150 years, with falling birth rates and diffused wealth. Things were very different when families were poor and sprawling: fathers simply did not have significant time to spend with all their kids, when they had a dozen of them and were out of the house most of the day for work. Significant bonds would be developed only while working together, later in life.


I reckon "old hardware" is likely to be more reliable of "new hardware", generally speaking... If we could fix how they get energy, these things could probably go on for centuries.

Well, we don't know about them, do we? Technically speaking, some alien might have already plotted the entire Milky Way hundreds of years ago without telling us.

Indeed. In the case of music-obsessed boomers, that saying rings true in a very literal way.

I don't think SP2 made much of a difference in the popularity of XP. It was already dominant, and it's mostly remembered as "legendary" because it had become the target platform for every hardware and software vendor on the planet. Windows 98 was too flaky to engender any serious friction to upgrades, and Windows 2000 was not consumer-friendly enough; XP effectively unified the consumer and professional desktop markets, and became the gold standard.

SP2, if anything, slowed down adoption, since it threw a bunch of spanners in the way of third-party code. It was probably necessary, just to stem the flow of bad press, but no mean a key in XP's overall success.


It was not that bad. I remember when SP fixed a bunch of issues with bluetooth, and windows CD burning program was better than any of the Nero Burning ROMs, cause those became unusable overbloated.

Also, technically XP was Windows NT 5.1, so it was built on a solid basis.

Whereas 98 was still in the kinda DOS-based 9x line.

And I fully agree with you to not mention Windows Me.


Windows Me was some weird marketing attempt at squeezing more life out of the dead-end '9x line. I honestly don't know who, in their sane mind, would ever pay for such a thing.

> I don't think SP2 made much of a difference in the popularity of XP

The general knowledge was to wait until the SP were stable. This was hard. 4.0 had SP6, 2k had SP4.


I guess it depends on the industry, but most people would happily run anything that had undergone a single round of patching. And plenty were so obsessed with the latest and greatest that they would jump at .0 releases without a care in the world - which is how Vista got its reputation, for example (the .0 was pretty bad, and by the time both builds and ecosystems had improved, people had decided to stay away).

Did you engage any lawyer/solicitor? Companies don't care about individuals, but they do fear lawyers.

My experience with lawyers helping me respond to other lawyers is "Stop interacting with that person".

Unless I'm spending way more money, I'd expect any company to fire me as a client as fast as legally possible if I threatened them with a lawyer.


That's effectively how it was in European countries, when TV was nationalised. Then everything became about extracting as much money as possible from consumers, and here we are.

Er. IIRC, Spolsky was involved in creating VBA for Excel. Which was arguably orders of magnitude more popular (and still more widely deployed and world-supporting) than Java.

In the 90s, as a program manager. And it's a big difference between building an application and a platform (I've done both) when it comes to API design.

There are dozens of equally "bad" regimes out there. The point is that invading them and/or killing a ton of their people is not the solution. Iraq: made things worse. Lybia: made things worse. Afghanistan: didn't make things any better. And this even before we discuss whether working inside a framework of agreed rules for international relations, instead of just doing whatever we feel like, is a good thing even for the "alpha nation".

Iran is obviously not innocent (nobody is), but their population is currently being hit for no particular reason beyond "Israeli vibes". That's not a broken clock being right, that's a broken clock telling the wrong time.


There are dozens of equally "bad" regimes out there.

"There are dozens of murderers out there. Who cares if Bob murdered"

The point is that invading them and/or killing a ton of their people is not the solution.

I literally said this, so thanks for agreeing with me.

Iran is obviously not innocent (nobody is)

No one is innocent! John has speeding tickets! Therefore, Bob killing people isn't a big deal!

--

The entire point of my comment was that supporting Iran by saying it is "good" or "innocent" is insane, whilst conversely, "war isn't good".

Are you arguing against this premise?


I think you're trying very hard to look for reasons to condemn people who think this war is stupid and illegal, under the pretension of gatekeeping what one can reasonably be opposed to what.

The main point remains: this war is stupid, illegal, and immoral. End of story.


I've been very specific about what I'm saying.

Your response highlights how some are unable to live with the nuance of reality, and require black and white, binary viewpoints of the world.

I have said that Iran is a murderous, evil regime, while simultaneously saying war is not right here. I have said that my issue is with people trying to claim that Iran is a poor, innocent actor, instead of simply saying they do not agree with this war.

From this you infer weird things, simply because I presume you need Iran to be good, innocent, for the war to be wrong, bad.

It's not binary.


> I have said that my issue is with people trying to claim that Iran is a poor, innocent actor,

I haven't seen any of these people.


I infer, you presume - we all know what you're trying to do, and it's pretty sad.

Opus Dei is an issue but it's not the only 'cult within a cult' in the Catholic Church, not even the first. They just happen to be the most recent fashion. Popes have always had to balance the power and influence of this or that organization - franciscans, dominicans, benedictines, any one of these (and more) had to be contained at some point.

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