It's been a sh*show beyond belief with the applets, JNLP, stuff requiring older Java, browsers disabling support and all kinds of ancillary nonsense. Office for NT 4.2 (the first 32 bit one) runs on modern Windows with no shenanigans and it comes from more than 30 years ago. But nope, some older java is blocked beyond belief. They pulled even the Internet Exploder from Windows 10 with some update (WTF?).

Eventually the most straightforward way to run some Java code needed to manipulate some hardware ended up being a Windows 7 machine. Which then I replaced with a Windows 98 one which is spooky how quick and light it is, and bonus it doesn't have any security prompts you can't disable (no, I don't need to be told 1000 times that if some code comes over http it's unsafe, it was unsafe too the first time I clicked yes).

I'm amazed that 16% of respondents feel in control. I'm just curious if they know something I don't about countermeasures to take; or if it's a matter of what they don't know.

The prior non-core items were optional and relatively clearly marked; but when they decided to go 'AI' that went out the window. Being able to grub around in about:config for anything that has 'ml' in it does, depressingly, put them ahead of the options of some of the competition; but it shipped on by default and without controls in the normal-user UI. Seems like 'AI' really does something to the decision making even of people who should know better.

Kodak's demise is a little overstated just because they have been reorganized several times; and 'Kodak' is sort of the dump entity. There are still a variety of applications for being competent at thin film chemistry, including semiconductor fabrication, just not so much making 35mm film. So Eastman Chemical got most of that. And some of their medical and otherwise higher-end optics and imaging stuff also got spun off, with the business of not terribly optically interesting cameras under heavy threat from apathy and cellphones left at Kodak proper.

They certainly didn't do desperately well; or they'd probably be somewhere more along the lines of Sony in terms of 'who builds CCDs worth disclosing the provider of?'; but the reorgs appear to have been aimed at separating the more viable business units from the liabilities. Probably so the latter could be tied to the pension plan.

PBS is primarily (85%) privately funded. It will continue to produce shows like Masterpiece, Nova, Frontline, and Sesame Street and people in places like Boston or Philadelphia will continue to benefit from them.

What public funding does is give viewers in poorer, more rural areas access to the same information that wealthy cities enjoy. It pays for access for people who don't have it.

By opting out, Arkansas public broadcasting saves 2.5 million dollars in dues, sure. But it loses access to about $300 million dollars in privately funded programming annually.

Well, I'll have to admit, I didn't have "learning that someone on Slashdot believes that the Cold War was a myth" on my bingo card for today.

Seriously, the idea that we know all the practically important physics there is is the kind of thing only somebody who's never done science or engineering would believe.

You seem to be confusing "wanting to get rid of communists" with "wanting their countries to be poor and dangerous".

Industrial R&D is important, but it is in a distrant third place with respect to importance to US scientific leadership after (1) Universities operating with federal grants and (2) Federal research institutions.

It's hard to convince politicians with a zero sum mentality that the kind of public research that benefits humanity also benefits US competitiveness. The mindset shows in launching a new citizenship program for anyone who pays a million bucks while at the same time discouraging foreign graduate students from attending universtiy in the US or even continuing their university careers here. On average each talented graduate student admitted to the US to attend and elite university does way more than someone who could just buy their way in.

Absolutely, it's not even a set fee for whatever purpose, you're basically engaging in a global bidding war to push your transaction. And even so, higher fees don't translate into any higher capacity at all, and these kinds of transactions are just the ones that are bound to come in insane bursts when the market shifts, it is hard to imagine something worse than blockchain for the stock market.

About the only thing the Chinese cars don't do better than American cars is meet our absurd addiction to cupholders.

Exactly as many people are listening to them as recording them.

Where would we deport them to?

There's no difference, the blockchain is just a very inefficient database. It uses generally an ungodly amount of resources, has HUGE latencies and extremely low, unscalable transactions per second capacity.

That will just mean media is no longer produced in New York.