@suetanvil @loke @ne1for23 What is K?

@Stoori @micke Well that's an interesting data point. Pretty much confirms my suspicion that bloat is -always- business-model-driven.

@Stoori @micke My main horror at it all is that they seem to be fishing for a precedent to the effect that a "public option" is necessarily at an unfair competitive advantage against private incumbents. Or is precedent not a thing outside the Anglosphere? Even if not, they seem to want the public image of the public sector to be the universal 800 lb (363 kg) gorilla that dominates everything it touches.

@rafial @ajroach42 Boot to anything would be the ultimate antidote to constant updates, therefore it would be seen by the business side as contempt of business model, and therefore it won't happen.

@rafial @ajroach42 I have a HomeWorx (a set-top box for broadcast TV) that takes longer to boot that a vacuum tube TV would to warm up. It's as if the digital revolution has more than cancelled out the gains from the solid state revolution.

@hypolite @deutrino

Code I advocate is, businesses have a right to attempt to safeguard trade secrets, but hackers have a right to attempt to reverse engineer technologies. Reputable engineering careers, like reputable science careers, would be "publish or perish," with more emphasis this time on perishment of research than that of researchers. "Legit research (AND development!) is published research" would be a good social norm. Otherwise society becomes a cargo cult.

@aral "When a feature can be built" be sure to specify that you mean "can" in the engineering sense, not the economic sense. I've often speculated whether user-respecting computing would somehow violate the laws of economics, even if offered at a staggeringly high price. Thank you for proposing to force the question. I wish you well in this pursuit.