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Google's entire "do no evil" bring your own identity to the job and all of that was pure marketing to hire better engineering talent.

Instead of monetising software sales, they monetised access to Free software performing an end run around the GPL by distributing access to it over the internet allowing them to make the public good proprietary google property. They threw out some crumbs at best.

Remember the un-publicised puzzles to paradoxically get media attention, hiring highschool kids with a demo that made the news because it made the news and all the rest of the BS. I guess it worked. Now they're big and bad and the Free software optimism is largely dead so they don't have to bother and now make killbots for the Pentagon.

Where else you gonna work? Go test the market, nerd.


>Saying "these two things are similar except one can be useful and one can't" is not a great comparison.

Launching a nuclear war is an interesting definition of "useful", not one I'd agree with and that exact scenario is what is being discussed.

So yes this is a perfectly valid and useful comparison in examining this particular, civilisation ending limitation.


When I started I learnt something about coding from VBA macros to automate excel.

Often that started with the macro recorder. Then you worked out what that "recorded" code/sludge did, removed the crud you didn't need or want, improved the logic and so on. I bought books to understand it better. Now you can ask a (different) LLM "what is this? why is it used? How would I?" etc which is probably a faster learning curve than books, newsgroups and old school personal home pages with good info.

I would have been quite surprised when I first used a VBA macro in anger just how far I would go down the rabbit hole. C, asm, verilog, Linux were no part of what I originally signed up for!

Some people will specialise in the equivalent of recording macros and go no further. And this will be fine for code that gets it done but doesn't matter too much in the other dimensions (security, reliability, usefulness without the authors' support, etc.) Much like VBA utilities inside companies that were useful way back when. Other people will want what they produce to be better, even good, and they will learn about floating point [1] and all the rest, much as I did. Probably learn pretty fast too. [2]

[1] https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.h...

[2] Working out how to write an excel vba webserver and using it to collect and and collate summary data from various divisions into reports was seedy as hell, solved the actual business problem (given ridiculous but intractable constraints) and isn't something you can record. We all have stories from a misspent youth that we're simultaneously ashamed and yet somehow proud of.


My 2005 saab

“ the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft's site; the "continue to function" clause was removed”

You sound like a shill trying to muddy the waters. It’s petty clear when they silently change their web pages to delete features sold that it’s quite deliberate or did they accidentally do that too? Do you have a direct or indirect relationship with microsoft perchance or just missed it in TFA maybe?


If you're talking about the modified web pages, then disabling the licenses is intentional. If you're talking about the original decision to use certificates around 2019, it is more doubtful. Sure, they would have known the certificates would expire, they could push out a small update to remedy that, and that they would eventually stop doing so. On the other hand, doing so seven or eight years later on a platform where they could probably wait another five years and expect Apple to do the job for them (i.e. Apple isn't going to maintain Intel support forever). That seems like an invitation for angry and potentially litigious users.

Far from it. I'm a "shill" for my own private cause of trying to point out that CA TLS is so bad it cannot be differentiated from malicious behavior and offers as a cover for it. Also, did you not read, "But Microsoft did and that's on them.". I have no relation to microsoft.

I agree with you. I hate that there's any mechanism with a built-in time limit that anyone can sell as a Good Thing to well-meaning but naive people.

Look we're using encryption; you like that right? More encryption == more secure == your peers will attack you if you don't like it.


But they’ve got you. Nobody uses Microsoft office turdware unless they’re locked in and have to.

You lose access to it. You’re cooked.


If you’re cooked because of Microsoft’s willful destruction of property, that just means it’s not a small claim anymore.

Destruction of property is a crime, and criminal cases are not in the scope of arbitration.

I actually have a retiree in mind to whom I’ll have to recommend LibreOffice https://libreoffice.org

You’re right, I’m sure nobody’s made any kind of mass activation scripts that you could find online and get a better experience than paying customers.

Lan? Still awesome.

For my kids' parties I have 3x OG xboxes. Each has 4 controllers. Plug them into a router.

12 player lan. Halo, Nascar, (6 player) crimson skies, mechassult.

https://www.teamxlink.co.uk/wiki/Xbox sort by per console and total players.

I promise they have vastly more fun all being in the same room playing each other all at once than anything with modern graphics.


It’s fine looking car.

It isn’t a fine looking Ferrari or even close.


not "get", build it with an esp32 & Tasmota (or whatever).

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010326236256.html


Would Pete get made fun of if he couldn't explain the difference between a member function and a method and why this distinction matters in C++ more than using the term understood everywhere else?

Go Pete!


Ok, after 5 days I think we can safley describe Pete as a muppet given the total inability of anyone to describe a meaningful difference between member function and method either dfinitionally or in understanding by a desired audience. (Arguably those who understand the latter are a proper superset of the former).

The C++ community default hostility to everyone always really sucks. Useless, counter-productive pedantry forms part of this - NOT the parent is has been polite. Yes I'm being hostile, to Pete, who does not exist. Bjarne does, he likes belittling people in public. The C++ community is not hostile to him about doing it. Should some of us be doing that sometimes?


Whats the difference between a member function and a method?


The C++ standard only ever uses the term "member function" for what other languages call "method", hence why it's pedantic to point it out.


C++ literature, it was common all the way back before the standard came to be.

Example, Turbo C++ manual from 1990, 8 years before the standard.

It is no different from several languages having their own meaning for functor, e.g. it has three different meanings across C++, Haskell and Standard ML/OCaml.

Or what mixins mean between several OOP languages.


It's not just this, it's everywhere. It's as though C++ is an alternative not to other programming languages but to the entire discipline of Computer Science. The cases where this results in C++ having its own weird names for existing ideas are slightly annoying but the cases where the same terms mean something else quickly become infuriating.

The choice (in C++ and then Java and C#) to pretend that these "member functions" are somehow part of the data structure also more or less guarantees that some students will end up confused about what's actually in the physical representation. Of course the "git gud noob" mindset of C++ doesn't see that as a problem :/


To be fair, C++ isn't alone in this, lets go back into the 1970 and 1980's and compare OOP languages, including failing ones, and FP languages as well, to see how common many of those terms have prevailed to modern times, in what shape and form.

C++ has plenty of warts to complain about, however complaining for the sake of complaining usually doesn't win attention.


I checked how Simula calls its object methods, but it just uses the term procedure as for normal top level functions. At least it shows that the term method is not universal.

I think that C had members, so members that are functions just became that. But then again, members that are types are usually called nested types.


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