FedEx essentially does make their own trucks - they buy from white box suppliers who have very narrow margins. Ships are similar. Planes probably have slightly higher margins, but they still will buy used.
Getting computers from the cloud companies is very different: most cloud products (aside from server rentals) are not in competitive markets.
False equivalence. FedEx isn't building the servers here, either. But they do have their own maintenance for their fleet. Thus the better analogy would be if FedEx outsourced fleet management & maintenance to Hertz or similar.
With trucks etc. there are still independent companies that can fix those and transitioning to a new provider is straightforward. With IT in cloud there is a strong vendor lock-in.
I tend to come to the same conclusion. we communicate in characters forming words or sentences, symbols, and whitespace. As you indicate, text can be imprecise, but a good author knows how to phrase a sentence such that its meaning is better understood by a reader through varying techniques
But operating systems are free to map the same read only memory pages (e.g. program code) into different process address spaces. This is an optimization that running processes are generally completely oblivious of. But it only works when e.g. the program code is mapped into memory from the same file. If every program has a private copy of the same library (even if it's bit for bit identical), the operating system doesn't have enough information to pull this off.
At the level he is at, he is clearly doing it because he likes doing it. Maybe to build a little bit of recognition to help sell his books, but I doubt that it's a big factor.
"When doing your training under a tree in the forest or out in the open, you
will not find a privy already built. So, using water from some convenient valley
stream or river, clean yourself off with sand. Since you do not have any ashes at
this time to cleanse yourself with, simply use two sets of seven balls of sandy soil.
The way to use these fourteen balls is as follows: after having removed your robe,
folded it, and put it aside, you take soil that is sandy [rather than dark earth], shape
it into balls about the size of a large soybean, and place these atop a stone or some
other convenient place, with two rows of seven balls each. Then, provide yourself
with some pebbles that can be used for scouring your hands. After that, you relieve
yourself. After you have finished relieving yourself, use a wooden or bamboo toilet
spatula, or some paper, to clean yourself off. You then go to the edge of the water
to wash. Make sure to take three of the balls with you to clean yourself. Put one of
the balls in the palm of your hand, add just a little water, mix the ingredients
together until their consistency is thinner than mud and quite soupy, and begin by
cleaning off your genitals. Then take another sand ball and, preparing it as before,
clean off your buttocks. Again, prepare a sand ball as before and, in the same
manner, clean off your hands."
