I got an old Nitro 5 with a rickity old 500gig hard drive. Will a Crucial BX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD be a good Christmas present for it?

Probably should get something while prices are somewhat more reasonable.

That was more than I got. It’s part of the reason that the state I practiced in required 2 years as an EMT B before you could go to school to become a medic. At least you knew what you were in for before they spent the time on you.

Got news for you, medics and cops ain’t trained for dealing with dead people. The cops I worked around as a medic were some of the most squeamish people at messy scenes.

Nor are you trained to climb up out of a drainage ditch and explain to a Mother that her 13 year old son is dead down there, pinned under a 4-wheeler, and not me or god can fix it. (A tee shirt I got) Or a family about why their son and brother is hanging 30 feet up in the air by a rope. (Another tee shirt I got)

I got a closet with maybe a tiny bit more of my share of tee shirts. But I sure as hell wasn’t trained for any of them.

I tried it for a couple of months when it first came out. At that early point it wasn’t too bad for usability. But, after a decent look around it, I wiped it and went back to Linux on my laptop.

The kids WILL turn everything into a competition no matter what you think you are doing to prevent that. Humans are naturally competitive. Like it or not.

Yeah, that will work out well. I cannot think of a sport that is played in school that would fair to the girls if all sports were mixed teams. By the time kids are 13-14 years old, the boys are starting to get to be bigger, taller, faster, and stronger. And the disparity only gets worse as they age.

And one of the driving tenants of sports IS to teach competitiveness.

It’s become all about purity testing. From both the right and the left. And since any purity test can be anything that anyone wants it be, everyone is guaranteed to fail it at some point. And because the internet never forgets, something you said 20 years ago now is grounds for being purged. Without any thought to what that person now believes and how they think.

That was for show. And not to fix the underlying problems. If he cared, he would actually find and fix the problems.

I don’t think Musk much cares or ever did. The goal was to milk tesla for every last dime.

It’s getting harder and harder to afford high end computers. I have already decided my next new computer will be a mini desktop. They are noticeably cheaper, can be well spec’ed, and powerful with a small foot print.

Now if I could only afford a Framework…

Dude claims he can code. I want to see him personally make Doom run on a Tesla.

I’mma just going to sit over here in the corner with my AbbiWord and Gnumeric…

Order a Slate pickup. Buy what you want and only what you want. And add things later as you want or buy that tablet from amazon and a bluetooth speaker and install it yourself.

I think the issues is that you can’t pick and choose exactly what you want in your new vehicle. You can’t say, get just a simple AM/FM radio and get bluetooth. You buy a package of accessories.

So if you want just that simple radio, not only don’t you get the bluetooth, but you have to give up the power seats and windows too. It’s an all or nothing choice.

There was a time you would order your new car with individual accessories and then a couple of months to get it. I’m pulling for Slate to be successful and bring that freedom of choice back.

Legislation is a poor way to force populations into changing away from something they choose to do/use. As the saying goes “It’s hard to talk someone out of something they weren’t talked into”.

Example: See France or Somalia

All it takes is one big brother/sister that knows how to access a free or paid VPN and their 5 year old little sibling and all their friends will have it also. Despite the difficulty teaching them math or history, they DO learn very quickly and are fast to figure out new things that interest them.

Do you know what’s smarter and more talented the the UK government?

14, 402, 544 kids…

Gimme mah Cube!

And the wobblies and explosions are cool too!

I remember when Walmart sold boxed releases of RedHat and Mandrake. My first installs were fueled by $20 boxed releases at Walmart. I was so bummed when they stopped. But I could send away for Ubuntu releases on a CD for free.

Thanks to Trump, there appears to be some initiatives in Europe for governments to switch to open source. It seems they want to try and get out of relying on US companies for their technology. That would make a large jump in the user base.

They have tried before, and not had the best luck in dropping US vendors. Things seem to run out of steam at some point and they switch back. It will be interesting to see if things stick more this time.

I’m pulling for them to succeed.