SoylentNews

Wanna hear a network joke?
 

This will be the first time I am allowed to vote in it as a registered Independent here in CO.

If you think you're not allowed to vote in the Primary then you may be mistaken.

Several states have moved to open primaries for 2020 so be sure to check yours! Primary information by State

Be sure to vote if you can!

Background

Microsoft suddenly realizes . . . OMG . . . the internet is NOT just a fad, as Bill Gates had famously said.

OMG, web applications on browsers could make non-Windows platforms competitive! OMG!

Microsoft scrambled. Needs a browser. (classic) Mac already has good internet connectivity baked right in, and a couple good browsers (at that time). Microsoft finds company SpyGlass that makes the SpyGlass browser for Windows. Microsoft buys SpyGlass for $100,000 up front, plus royalty percent of sales. Renames the product Internet Explorer. Guess how many copies of IE are ever sold? Zero.

Microsoft then, over coming years, spends $150 million on IE to develop it into a 'great' browser, if you're a Windows only developer. With addictively great features (if you're a Windows developer). To create a Microsoftized "internet" that excludes non-Windows systems from running web applications. Windows developers (the monopoly) will naturally target IE as their favorite browser. Especially since it has such addictively great sugar coated features.

To further cement a Microsoft-only internet, there is IIS and Front Page.

(aside: Front Page has a four page license agreement, among its terms is that if you create a web site using Front Page, you cannot ever disparage Microsoft, Expedia, and a list of other Microsoft properties. Thus if you visit any web site, and it has tags in the html header section indicating it was created by Front Page, then you know just how credible that web site is when it comes to Microsoft.)

It's like a story of evil, upon evil, upon evil.

Fast Forward

IE loses. Standardization wins. At some point FireFox share goes over 50% and suddenly Microsoft is in panic mode again. IE share is declining. Also this new upstart Chrome browser is gaining market share. So in panic mode a 'kinder gentler' IE that is a bit more standards compliant: IE7.

But not good enough, so IE 8, IE 9, etc. Each becoming more standard compliant. But Microsoft find this is hard to do when the very purpose of IE was to break standards compatibility.

Then Edge, which is an admission that IE has failed. A humorous TV ad by Microsoft about how IE sucks and Edge isn't quite so terrible. You should try it.

Recently

Then Microsoft throws in the towel on Edge, and change its guts to Chromium.

Wow.

Rewind 20 years

Edge is based on Chromium. (Microsoft's doing)
Chromium is based on WebKit. (Google's doing)
WebKit is based on . . . (Apple's doing)
Konqueror.

Remember KDE 3? About 2000. (Before the pooch screw of KDE 4?) It had this cool browser called Konqueror.

In about 2000 I remember reading this on the green site.

First comes the Navigator.
Then comes the Explorer.
Then comes the Konqueror.

Wow. How true those words turned out to be!

How many billions going forward would be saved by cutting SLS from the budget? Maybe that's a good place to start?

And get Mexico to pay for the wall! He vowed to do that in his campaign.

And don't build a wall along the Southern border. Build a Wal-mart along the length of the entire Southern border. Workers can come in from the south. Shoppers can come in from the North to buy foods high in fat, salt and sugar at low, low prices.

Remodel the current SLS hardware into a novel restaurant.

"The black ledger was a fabrication... It was never real... the ledger was never introduced as evidence... The ledger was completely made up... the black ledger was a copy of a document that did not exist... the black ledger was not a contemporaneous document, and likely manufactured after the fact..."

Ah, but this one is my fave

"All fees Manafort got were wires, not cash."

Democrats... whaddya gonna do?

They even try to make Steve Bannon look electable

This graph shows how they did it*, as a team, not in opposition.

You have the power to undo this. Use it or lose it!

*Even though I'm using a "Bernie" thing, it still shows what happened, I don't expect much from him either. You gotta change the water in the congressional hot tub at least once every hundred years.

Dear Mr. Trump,
For your cyber convenience, here is a selected subset of Bash exit codes I have compiled just for you:

1 Operation not permitted
2 No such file or directory
13 Permission denied
25 Inappropriate ioctl for device
29 Illegal seek
31 Too many links
32 Broken pipe
52 Invalid exchange
57 Invalid slot
62 Timer expired
67 Link has been severed
69 Srmount error
74 Bad message
78 Remote address changed
87 Too many users
95 Operation not supported
111 Connection refused
113 No route to host
117 Structure needs cleaning
125 Operation cancelled
126 Required key not available
128 Key has been revoked
129 Key was rejected by service
130 Owner died

The primaries are phony distractions, the real purpose being to launder dirty money through their 501(c)s. Too often the most popular candidate is not the nominee. And now you sure can't trust the count [not that you ever could]. There's no transparency.

If any liberals want to be on the ballot, they have no choice but to go indie. Like anyone else, they can win if enough people vote for them. That's just how simple things can be.

Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance On A $199 AMD Ryzen Laptop

This $210 AMD Ryzen laptop may well be the best-value business notebook ever

Motile 14" Laptop: Ryzen 3, 1080p, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD ($199)
Motile 14" Laptop: AMD Ryzen 5, 14" 1080p, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD ($299)

MOTILE 14 Review $299 RYZEN 5 3500U Performance Laptop Amazing Value! (10m40s video)
$299 MOTILE 14" Performance Laptop Emulation Test - RYZEN 5 3500U (11m50s video)
External GPU On A $300 Walmart Laptop! MOTILE 14 + Radeon RX590 (10m52s video) (lol)

These $200-$300 laptops have a stellar reputation compared to the $80 landfill-tier EVOO 10.1 tablet that Walmart is associated with.

The main problems are probably single-channel RAM (although at least it can be upgraded), apparently a crappy Wi-Fi card, no USB-C charging, and they are Zen+. It's possible that Zen 2 "Renoir" could allow 4 or 6 cores in place of what is currently 2 or 4 cores, although it would take a while for prices to drop down to these levels.

Personally, I might take a break from laptops and try building a small form factor PC using Zen 4 (AM5 socket), which may be released in 2021. AM5 should support "mainstream" CPUs with at least 24 cores, possibly 32 cores.

Also, @krishnoid, Lenovo 100e is at $99.

You're right it's all about narrative and I'm gonna push it for all it's worth: Biden is doing terribly!

At 62% reporting it's Sanders and Buttigieg leading the pack. Warren following. Biden in 4th.

Iowa Live Results: 2020 Democratic Caucuses

UPDATE: 71% reporting, Buttigieg has extended his lead by a little but it's still very close.

Candidate Pct. SDEs Del.
Buttigieg 26.8% 418.73 —
Sanders 25.2% 393.52 —

Update: 85% reporting, Sander's popular vote edge shrinks to 700. They're both sitting at 11 delegates so it looks like it'll end up a tie.