I still use XP because I haven't had the money to upgrade properly. My experience with Vista and 7 has been on work computers, friend's computers, etc..

xkcd has it covered as usual - I got used to launching stuff very rapidly by hitting Winkey + R + command + Enter. If I had to launch paint, mspaint. Windows update annoying me in the middle of a game? sc stop wuauserv.

Now the run function has been replaced with a "search bar" where I have to filter through a list of things when I already know what I'm looking for. (The names of these commands haven't changed since Windows 95, probably earlier.) I can't just rapidly launch command prompt and have it work because it'll hit a permissions snafu - I have to run as Administrator and authorize that via UAC because far too many idiot users installed bad crap on their computers and Microsoft compensated by adding in safeties that are good for your average end user but completely unnecessary for me.

Firefox has done the same thing. Oh hey, we're gonna add new functionality like tear-off tabs! Also, we're gonna have no actual option whatsoever to disable a feature that you may not want. People should not have to code extensions to disable stuff like this.

I'm a firm believer that if functionality existed previously (barring an extreme example like the xkcd comic), you should be able to restore that functionality. I'd get it if stuff was unnecessarily cumbersome due to legacy support (like how OSX made a lot of apps incompatible), but this is all really basic UI support that shouldn't take an inordinate amount of time or resources on the developer's end to continue to support.

Yeah, that goat farmer with an RPG in Afghanistan is an imminent threat to my ability to post shit to the Internet.

Right, isn't a lot of this stuff done by figuring out how nature does it and then artificially replicating that process? Like gene therapy via retrovirus, for instance.

Maybe William Shatner has started ghostwriting for Slashdot.

Exactly, and that's because Apple treat their customers like shit in the long run. Everything is locked in and locked down.

A piece of hardware where you can't swap out the battery or facilitate easy repairs is an affront to the consumer.

Selling out the last vestiges of their journalistic integrity in exchange for page views.

It hasn't been said yet, but make sure to secure everything as strongly as possible. An amplifier or speakers in the back of your vehicle can quickly turn into a head-crushing projectile in the event of an accident if not properly secured.

Yep, just like how The Pirate Bay got raided that one time and now they're gone forever.

Kim Dotcom has way more money than a bunch of technically literate Swedish dudes. He'll do the same thing TPB did, though. He'll rebuild the site and make it as difficult as possible to take down on a technical level.

I recall Reader's Digest having an article about something similar not too long after 9/11. Basically, they said that if an attack hit Congress while it was in session, the entirety of the Legislative Branch would be paralyzed because, well, the whole country would have to have emergency elections. They advocated electing "backup senators/representatives" who would live in their home state and otherwise work a normal job who could be called up in such a crisis.

"Point of Sale".

But yeah, it can go both ways pretty much.

It'll just turn out to be a massive waste of money.

Hell, you can even take your average user and have them look at a website... almost no one takes .biz, .info, .us seriously. .com, .net, and .org is where it's at.

Is it a bad thing that I read the description and realized I'm basically the opposite of all of those things?

Fuck it, there's probably nothing to this study anyway. Scientists don't know what the fuck they're talking abbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb

When I told people that the space shuttles still had stuff like floppy drives and basically were equipped with computers from the 70s-80s, there were very confused. Why isn't NASA running the latest hardware?

It rings true for governments and business alike - reliability and stability are important, and "good enough" is king. There's a pretty decently big local hardware store (7-8 figures of business yearly) that STILL uses the custom cash register and inventory software that they ordered in the 80s. Why? "It works, and unlike Windows PoS our software doesn't really crash or fuck up."

Easy way to put it - if you play the "incoming message" sound from AIM, most people would recognize it. That's significant cultural impact.

Government can't steal the $10,000 in twenties that you have buried in a watertight container under your uncle's barn.

You can't exactly print out Bitcoins and stash them somewhere, now can you?

Cash is the ultimate form of privacy.