Yeah, it never really got off the ground though because incentives weren’t aligned. Everyone wants you to sign up on their site for data hoarding reasons, not to use an identity from elsewhere.
More actual interaction between end-users and programmers makes the end-users better at reporting bugs and describing what they want (and at having an idea how complex a certain request actually is).
Because the multiple translations from customer wish to project manager language to backlog items are all lossy.
DOS programs generally were like command line apps today (but simpler, obviously). They did a thing, then exited. Or they showed their "TUI" (as we'd call it today), and when you told it to exit, you got back to the DOS prompt to start the next program.
TSRs were a special kind of program, that instead of telling DOS "I'm done, here's my memory back", said "I'm done for now, but don't unload me", so their memory stayed allocated/used. And you got your command prompt back immediately to continue your work.
TSRs usually hooked into an interrupt like the keyboard interrupt, intercepting a hotkey to re-activate the program (so you could browse your address book while you were in your (text mode) word processor; "kind-of" multitasking), or they offered a service to other programs (like the mouse and CD-ROM drivers).
There were all kinds of things that ran as TSRs. Virus scanners (hooking into disk write/reads), modem tools (showing "RING" in the corner of the screen when the modem detected an incoming call), note-taking apps, address books, you name it.
Despite being a German signal, DCF77 can be received all over Europe, except the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland and for some reason, Crete.
Building it out and maintaining it isn't free. And per a friend who's been selling consumer solar installations for years in the North East and gotten disillusioned: the equipment maintenance, repairability, and replacement story isn't great at the company they last worked at and results in a lot of environmental waste. One of the reasons they left. Of course, this is just second-hand information - I don't personally have much intuition for how widespread the issue is.
Every gallon of gas you use was produced far away, shipped halfway around the world for processing, and shipped back to you. Even if you are in the US, we basically don’t have the equipment to process our own gasoline from the crude we produce.
This means that millions and millions of machines have to be maintained, shipping lanes have to stay open, infrastructure has to stay profitable, distribution has to stay easy and cheap. The web is invisible to the end user, but it is massively complicated and expensive to upkeep.
Solar, once you have the panels you have to clean them every once in a while, and replace a failing panel every once in a while. But they produce for ~30 years after being made once.
So it’s funny to argue about environmental waste in this way. It’s an issue, but everything in a solar panel can basically be recycled and we are seeing the facilities start to come online as the first wave of PV panels starts dying off.
Residential solar doesn't make that much sense from a system point of view - it's a lot more expensive than utility grade solar for the same amount of energy, but with the way the energy market works retail electricity prices are much higher than wholesale prices and that makes the upside of rooftop solar a lot bigger for consumers.
"Host your own identity"
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