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>Almost 80 percent of licenses canceled

Looks like what IBM tied. IBM allowed some people to stay on Microsoft Office, the 'some people' were VPs and a few 'important' people. That turned into a disaster.

Eventually almost everyone started requesting M/S Office Exceptions, and many were granted. Other people revolted. IBM then gave up and went back to M/S Office.

To do this correctly, convert everyone, from CEO, Board Members down to the lowest level of person. No exceptions.


My first thought was "defend itself from what ?", but in this new ages of drones, I guess it could be an issue.

IIRC, doesn't Ireland pay the UK for some type of defense ?


> defend itself from what ?"

The article addresses this unfortunate attitude: the whole premise of your question is, "well they'd have to go through these other countries first, so not our problem".

It's a bit like if Kansas refused to pay anything towards the defense budget because any hostile powers would have to go through all those other states first.

But, as the article also notes, air and sea power are things. If a hostile power decides to fuck with one of the many undersea Internet cables that make their way to and through Ireland, what's Ireland going to do about it?


> It's a bit like if Kansas refused to pay anything towards the defense budget because any hostile powers would have to go through all those other states first

That's Spain's current position in NATO.


I don't entirely disagree, but at least Spain does have some semblance of a real military, even if it's underfunded.

The Russians have actively sabotaged undersea cables belonging or connecting to NATO countries. What have they done about it?

In general, states like Kansas are dependent on Federal money anyway, so they they don’t really contribute much. 10 states basically support the Federal government from a tax perspective.


Kansas would probably spend very little on defense, if it was a sovereign state.

Defense spending is not virtue signaling. It's money countries may have to waste if they feel threatened. But if there are no credible threats, it's better to lower the taxes or to spend the money on something that actually benefits the citizens.


Drones, and hostile ships fucking around with transatlantic cables and pipelines.

>IIRC, doesn't Ireland pay the UK for some type of defense ?

No, we do it for free.


What if UK would be one to invade them?

The UK already occupied the north of Ireland.

Come and take it then.

What, again??

Um.

See Irish history vs. the UK.


We know the current supreme court will end this.

But the big question is how will this be enforced ?

What happens if the parents became citizens after their children were born. Will the children be deemed non-US ?

Also I know many people who's children were born in the US but parents were from Ireland and not US citizens. Either on a tourist visa or work visa or undocumented. Some kids have been here for over 50 years.

Will this only be enforced if the child has the "wrong" skin color ? That is what I expect.


> We know the current supreme court will end this.

Do we? The language of the 14th Amendment is extraordinarily clear:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

I agree it's possible that the Court will just throw it out. But at that point, what meaning does the constitution have? How are any of our rights protected if the Court can just void the plain language of an amendment?

Crazy stuff.


The meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is flexible enough for them to decide whatever they want it to mean.

They found some bullshit way of negating, "a well regulated militia". You are completely correct this will be the focus.

Textualism when they want to uphold it, originalism when they do not.


I don't think they have the balls to end it. I think they just decide that adjudication on the case takes 4+ years, they sidestep making any real decision, and they hope and pray the whole thing goes away with the next administration. In the mean time, the Trump admin continues to do what they want, with the fig leaf that they promise they will listen to the court.

The court will probably look at the meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

It's extremely uncommon for the court to issue an opinion with such large repercussions.

Even if birthright citizenship is overturned (which I find very unlikely), I would expect it to be narrowly defined so as to apply only to children born of parents not present legally in the country - and likely with a specific carveout for those who overstay visas and such, as those people are clearly subject to US jurisdiction by virtue of the application process.

The absolute largest change I would expect would be to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents illegally entered into the US and have never had a visa of entry permit of any type whatsoever.


> those people are clearly subject to US jurisdiction by virtue of the application process.

But the wording doesn't apply to the parents, it applies to the baby: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof", not "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and whose parents are subject to the jurisdiction thereof".


FWIW, I think that's a strong argument.

If the argument hangs on one interpretation of a single word or turn of phrase, when there are multiple interpretations, it is not a strong argument.

> The absolute largest change I would expect would be to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents illegally entered into the US and have never had a visa of entry permit of any type whatsoever.

That's the vibe I get.

However, I don't see a definition of jurisdiction in the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" that would make this workable. How do you see this being resolved?


> How do you see this being resolved?

At a much higher level, this court seems to be attempting to slowly and carefully reign in the power of the federal government.

I expect that there will be enough of a headline here for the Trump administration to hold it up as a victory, while being so narrowly defined that it will only apply to a relative handful of individuals.

The court's interest here is most likely a precedent that will be applicable in subsequent cases. It could conceivably end up establishing a new, weaker form of Chevron deference where ambiguity is interpreted in the light most beneficial to the People.


I think the court is trying desperately to avoid having to rule on anything and will slow walk this until it hopefully goes away, while giving the admin virtual carte blanche to do what they want.

I can see why you'd say that, but I'm actually thinking on a longer timeline. They've been trending that way for almost a decade now, and seem to be accelerating a bit. Most recently, the overturning of the Chevron deference doctrine comes to mind, and that was in July 2024.

If they do the same thing to Republican presidents then I'll believe it's principled. I haven't seen much sign of that, though.

Like, whatever happened to the major questions doctrine? Feels like that should apply to a bunch of Trump's actions.


> It's extremely uncommon for the court to issue an opinion with such large repercussions.

Like Dobbs (Abortion), Bruen (Guns), Students for Fair Admissions (Affirmative Action), Loper Bright, Destruction of the voting rights act, Trump is king, etc

This supreme court issues at least one opinion with massive repercussions each term, every term. I simply don't know how you are under the impression that they care about repercussions in the slightest. They don't much care for rationale explanation or precedent either.


> What happens if the parents became citizens after their children were born. Will the children be deemed non-US ?

There are already laws about that. IIRC, all minor children become citizens when a parent is naturalized.


That seems fine, but what about Adult Children ? And maybe their children.

Their parents had them and some became citizens once they became adults (kids 18+ years old).

If ended it will be a big mess I think. But if they do end it, maybe this rule will be applied starting 'today', not retroactively.


Hannah Arendt's 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism in the chapter titled "The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man" discusses how European countries did this after World War I and the results of those efforts.

The court will do as European countries did after the first world war: people of certain backgrounds and having some kind of stateless or refugee status will be deprived of any birthright. Left unchallenged, this will eventually lead to mass de-naturalization and deportation or, for those with no country or whose country refuses them, indefinite detention in some kind of "displaced persons" camp.

>how many people are really going to read it directly

For me probably very few if any :) It does not help I moved to my site Gemini (the real gemini, not google's thing) a year or 2 ago. Not that I blog much anyway.

But I hope some future digital archeologist may find our blogs and get a view into what non-corporate controlled people thought :)

Note, I find Gemini and Gopher far easier to maintain then anything on the WEB. FWIW, I mirror my items on gopher.


Excel is where it is due to a kind of mild bait and switch. In the DOS and OS/2 days before Windows 95, Microsoft told Lotus and other software companies OS2 was the future, not windows. So Lotus when all in on OS/2 with its spreadsheet.

Then came 1995, M/S released windows 95 and at the same time they had a full software suit running on W95. It took Lotus a while to get a W95 version out. I think the same happened to Word Perfect.

So here we are, too bad Libreoffice was unable to do the same with Linux. But now people are so entrenched I doubt they will only change if forced.

Also, years ago IBM tried to get people on LibreOffice and off M/S, it failed miserably. Many Orgs. in Europe is trying now, I hope they succeed.

BTW I wonder if we are heading down the same path with github ? I hope not but seems we could be.


Lotus had a close working relationship with IBM (and was eventually bought by IBM) and IBM is as much or more to blame for "OS/2 is the future" than Microsoft.

People were aware that Microsoft and IBM were starting to disagree on OS/2 as early as 1990 and Microsoft released Win32s, the first preview of Win32 APIs running in Windows 3.1, in 1993 (when OS/2 released the first obviously "post-breakup" OS/2 2.1 and Microsoft also released the first version of Windows NT [3.1] to truly signify the breakup). The writing was on the wall in advance of 1995 and companies like Lotus had a couple years of opportunity to build Win32 applications in advance of Windows 95.

It seems hard to call it a bait and switch when the writing was on the wall as early as 1990 that Microsoft wasn't confident in OS/2.


> I don't know what to do about it

1. No smart phones for the child before the age of NN, me I say 18. A Smart phone makes a great High School Graduation gift.

2. Only internet access from a desktop computer with a hosts file that the child cannot change. That probably means no Microsoft Windows PC. See: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

eazy-peezy


You either don't have kids, or your children are adults.

It's impractical in today's world to raise children without access to devices like tablets and smart phones. That's like having a sugar-free, no TV, hand-sewn, ect, ect, household.

What's more important is to know what your kids are getting into, making sure they are comfortable discussing what they see, and teaching them independent decision making skills.

For example, a few years ago, my then seven-year-old complained to me about all of the Jesus videos that were popping up on Youtube. I told her to thumbs down them, and now Youtube no longer suggests them. She also knows that if other kids watch Jesus videos, that's their right and to keep her mouth shut.


I'm curious, what were the "Jesus videos?"

Videos about Jesus aimed towards children. She never showed them to me. I'm assuming they're either Bible stories, "Jesus loves you and died for your sins" kind of things, or otherwise typical American evangelizing towards children.

We aren't a religious household, but we do occasionally expose our children to religious things because we live in the US and it's a big part of American culture and my extended family. For example, when my oldest was into ancient Egypt, I watched the 10 Commands (Charton Heston Movie) with her, then read Exodus with her. I also explained that this is not literal history but that some people believe it is, and that she shouldn't discuss religion at school.

She saw the videos shortly after we read Exodus, so I wonder if she was searching for for clips from the 10 Commandments or things about Exodus.


>> Hmm I can't find any porn on the internet, better ask around

> Sure Timmy I'll send you porn, but it's illegal and I'm taking a big risk here so you gotta do something for me, also you can't tell anyone

You've failed to solve the porn problem and now you've created a larger grooming/CDM problem.


You can add porn sites to the hosts file yourself.

The point that people are making is that while restricting overt internet porn does remove it from sight of a lot of kids, it will also continue to circulate as "samizdat" through whatever filesharing mechanisms exist. When I was at school someone got busted for distributing BBS porn on floppy disks, no network required. Now we have terabyte SD cards.

This samizdat is already in existence and the principal way my kids access inappropriate content.

Peer to peer, or peer to creepy pedo, is how the stuff gets passed around regardless.

Do you have any idea the sorts of things kids send via SMS?


Absolutely true. When I was a kid a few people got in trouble for drawing and circulating pixelated “porn” on their graphing calculators. You can’t stop teenagers from being teenagers.

hosts file isn't even the correct tool for this job. I don't know why this is being suggested a serious solution. I can add domain names and chose which IP address they resolve to. It can't even block websites.

If I didn't know any better I would assume you are spreading misinformation to put children into an unsafe situation


Yes I know this is technically true. One could use iptables, but it is easier for people (users) to do this instead of getting iptables / pf or whatever configured. It is one size fits all.

FWIW on my W541, Slackware I get

i^5 = 61917364224 j^5 + k^5 + l^5 + n^5 = 61917364224 27 84 110 133 144

Slackware W541:

real 1m6.703s

user 1m6.658s

sys 0m0.002s

Output is the same, which is aloways good. But times are slower because I am on a ~10 year old system :)

So I gave it a whirl on sdf.org's Debian system Debian 6.1.140-1 (2025-05-22) x86_64 GNU/Linux kenel 6.1.0-37-amd64

real 1m9.615s

user 1m9.595s

sys 0m0.016s

That system is a true multi user system and had 54 users logged in when I ran it. So I think it is better than I expected.

FWIW, I believe my first paid job was on a 6600 while in college, but it could have been a 7600. There were upgrading the system from the 6600 when I was there.


I guess he is looking directly at IBM's cash cow, the mainframe business.

But, I think he is correct, we will see. I still believe AI will not give the CEOs what they really want, no or very cheap labor.


> The social contract between large companies and employees has been broken for years now. US companies are optimized for quarterly earnings

I started in tech in the late 70s. I can say this break happened during the Reagan Years with a bit of help from the Nixon Years.


I'd attach a different name and org to that change - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#General_Electric

I like this type of music when working and other things, that does not get many mentions. And they play a decent amount of Brian Eno's stuff.

http://www.echoesofbluemars.org/

I think their bluemars stream is great.


Wow! I had no idea blue Mars was still around. I've been looking for an alternative to soma fm

When Blue Mars disappeared, echos appeared to play the same music :)

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