This.

I can't believe that on the "News for nerds" site, the above comment is hiden somewhere with score 0. Yes, LWN is about the only subscription which is not only worth paying for, but where you can literally see that the money is spent on a good thing, on an effort of tracking the changes, documenting things, etc.

In a related news, Alphabet wants to protect its data as much as possible:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyro.slashdot.org%2Fstory...

It is quite interesting to see these two stories in the front page near each other.

I agree with your post. Just a minor nitpick:

> Massive duplication of data. Joining dozens of tables to get commonly needed data

You are contradicting yourself, aren't you? Keeping the schema in the normal forms means adding more joins to the queries.

I guess that amongst 72M iPhones sold in 2011 you can find at least 17M identical ones. Apple sells only few models at a given time, and the variability is not that high (the SoC sourced from two different foundries is probably the biggest difference).

I highly doubt C64 is the best-selling computer of all time. Wikipedia estimates 10M-17M C64s were sold. It of course depends on what is a computer: for example, many smartphones have CPU(s), memory, storage, and even display. According to this page, in 2011 Apple sold 72M iPhones: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com%2Fstati... . Also, 10M Raspberry Pi computers were sold till 2016: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.raspberrypi.org%2Fbl.... I guess Arduinos have similar numbers, but they are hard to track because of clones.

The magnetic strip can easily be erased by a strong magnet (e.g. a neodymium one from a broken HDD). I erased the one on my credit card myself two years ago. However, I have since discovered that there are still payment terminals in Europe, which use solely the magnetic strip. For example, the highway toll gates in Italy and France.

I was not talking about not being able to reach the other device on the third layer (IP). My point was that even though we have perfectly good _application_-layer protocols for file sharing (CIFS, which GP thinks should be blocked), we are still doomed to share data between our devices using a third-party public cloud over HTTP[s].

Why would we? There are plenty of usable protocols for service discovery, file sharing, instant messaging, etc., but because of NATs and firewalls, everybody is doomed to use HTTP[s] to some public cloud service instead. The fact that I cannot easily copy photos between my laptop and a cell phone of my friend laying on the same desk and connected to the same WLAN without coming through the remote cloud service is pretty disappointing.

Yes, Google is unusual - they do listen on IPv6 SMTP, but they reject the incoming mail as possible spam way more often than when it is being sent to them over IPv4. I had the same problem, and I had to explicitly force IPv4 for outgoing SMTP to Google in my Postfix configuration.

> it's an acronym for 'dynamic host configuration protocol,' and is a key building block of network management.

The above explanation is a clear proof that Slashdot is not a "news for nerds" site anymore.

Probably by writing a reply.

I voted 2-3 years, because this is when I last assembled a PC. Then I have realized that the microcontrollers are also computers. I guess I have built 5 to 10 Atmel AVR-based boards for various DYI purposes during the last year.

Maybe this one will be next:
http://xkcd.com/695/

Why limit yourself to the X11 clients? I am perfectly happy with mutt (www.mutt.org). It is _fast_ (especially with local mail storage), does what I want it to do (I don't need calendar, for example), and can be used everywhere, including remote ssh session from my Android phone.

But it seems my requirements are different to what the OP needs.