Grub2 is nice and beautiful when it works. Which it does, most of the time. But when it breaks or you want to do something non standard, it requires a much much higher level of expertise than GRUB did. GRUB was edit a text file. GRUB2 is secret hidden handshake which seems to be illegal to write documentation for.

This kind of thing is becoming standard practice in modern software, unfortunately. Firefox used to export bookmarks in an HTML file, which even the most casual nerd could edit (maybe I only want part of it, or I want to add to it... whatever). Then it became a JSON file or something, which I guess makes it easier for developers to write tools for?

We keep getting software that makes life easier for the developers and harder for the end user. This is only a good thing if you are trying to get rid of end users.

This is why I hate buying meat at typical US supermarkets. There are a couple of Latin American (one is Salvadoran, the other ?) grocery stores not far from me which have actual butchers in the store and the meat is always nice and fresh. The prices are also better than the sale price at any chain store. There are a few cuts of meat I don't recognize, but they have everything I want.

The tomato sauce I buy at Aldi's has no corn syrup listed on the label. It isn't the best jarred sauce I've ever had, but I'm going to doctor it up anyway, and you can't beat the price. I'm glad they have finally migrated to the US too.

Do they also provide catering?

And who will provide this valuable service to me when I want to protest against the Park Service?

So, based on the wording of the advisory, if I am using Office 2010 running on Windows 7, I am both affected and non-affected. How exactly does that work?

I'll head there right now to check out their reviews of Office 2013 and some medical billing software packages I am considering... can't wait to see what they have to say!

Software is not like movies, it is like cars. Stick with the well established analogies, people.

Seriously, software needs to be reviewed the way cars are... both for performance and functionality, and for aesthetics.

Different strokes for different folks. My teenage daughter, who had been using ubuntu 9 for a couple of years on a netbook, wanted nothing to do with Unity. Her older brother's reaction on first using Ubuntu 12 was different. "Microsoft should be embarassed", he said.

Lucky for you (and my daughter) Ubuntu can be installed with other window managers. If you don't like the Windows interface... too bad.

That seems like a good idea, but Microsoft must not want users to do this for some reason. Doing even a simple ipconfig /release (or renew) very frequently results in "adapter is not in a state to perform that command" or some other nonsense, yet performing the same through the GUI works just fine.

PowerShell works well for scripting these sorts of things, but for performing simple one off tasks, the complexity level is bit high.

But your assertion that the reaction to this case is something new is, in the context of this story, is just plain wrong. The name of the app presented contains a word which was part of a Supreme court ruling regulating indecency 35 years ago.

Unlike our parents generation, which told were told fuck jokes by their kindergarten teachers so they would be prepared for the real world.

Yes. For starters: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11166759

There is an obvious difference between commenting on an event that has already passed and wishing for, planning for, or incentivizing a future event.

Technically, yes, it is.

Um, when a government agency pays a fine, who do you think picks up the tab? And who are they paying the fine to?

I can see it now: "Due to an unexpected increase in revenue of 27,760,000 dollars, the NSA budget has been increased."

No, postcard is a an equally poor (and in some ways much worse) analogy. Letter in an unsealed envelope is closer. Neither of these non-virtual objects would routinely have copies made while being transmitted.