There was a science fiction story in Analog, many years ago, involving one character who could supposedly "read auras" when seeing someone in person. The punch line [spoiler alert!] was that this character saw further into the infrared than normal, and saw the patterns of blood flow on the face and skin, like a visual polygraph.

Just as some people have perfect pitch while others are tone-deaf, and others might have the equivalent with color sensitivity, how many people might have such extended ranges - nothing weird or alien, just the edges of the bell curve into the red or the violet?

Color sensitivity can also be affected by many medications. The best-known effect of ED pills making vision blue is not at all unique. Worse, some of these effects can become permanent, and neither doctors nor patients are aware of this. Any change in color vision after starting or changing medications should be reported to your doctor, and if the doctor doesn't care, I would find another doctor.

Absolutely! Get the high-index plastic, and then get progressive lenses (I'm old), and there's aberration all over the place. The blue and red Bank of America logo is particularly annoying when lit; as I turn my head, the smaller section moves relative to the larger section. The problem is that if I wore glass, they would be Coke bottle bottoms.

That tradition goes back to mainframes. One difference is that in the IBM mainframe days, a "version" came out every blue moon, thoroughly tested by an itty bitty monopoly, and justifying similar thorough testing by users; whereas today a "version" can arrive every few days (or faster for people who watch commits to the archive) and testing would almost be continuous.

What are these strange and mystic words you use?

Take it to the next step: Mechanics have realized that the benefit of others not knowing how to fix cars is that Mechanics have a skill for which they can ask to be paid. They can be as arrogant as they want about their superior car knowledge, as long as they don't tick off the paying customers. The programmer who has thrown his incomplete hack on a server and called it FOSS is not getting paid, and sees no reason to put in any "extra" effort.

If I might review your scenario from a slightly different perspective, we might see why Linux has still not taken over the desktop.

The programmer has implemented something that doesn't fully work, because it's "good enough" and/or the programmer can't be bothered to make it right. The writer, like a normal user, is surprised when a casual experiment fails dismally. The programmer might (in a dream world) be embarrassed by the poor quality of his/her work, or (more likely) reacts with anger at the implied accusation of low quality (rather than accept the input as a feature request/prioritization), which anger is reflected back by the writer inferring that the programmer is not just uncaring but incompetent.

Someone offering to handle documentation *is* offering an altruistic gift of time and effort, just like any other open source contributor, though expecting gratefulness is sort of hopeless, mainly because most programmers would *not* see the documentation as an aspect of the project at all, but as a separate afterthought.

Normal people want stuff to work, and they don't want to remanufacture stuff first to make it work. Normal people assume that "published" or "released" stuff is ready to be used, not an experiment or a hobby project. Yes, they're getting stuff for free; but they're still comparing it against other stuff where people worked on the dull parts as well as the fun parts.

If someone "forked the code", presumably there is an earlier version that everyone can still get. If the point is that someone has essentially appropriated open source work, well, yes, that can happen, and the appropriate response is to boycott the offender.

"Honest, I only added a few symbols! Why doesn't the program work anymore?" Besides, computer science used to be part of either math or engineering, depending in which school you went to; we could just go back to that and suggest that it be a REAL SUBJECT instead of just tossing web images together and claiming you "wrote" something.

On "24", someone would just hang you over the side of a building and threaten to drop you.

Microsoft is an American company. The court is asking Microsoft for license and registration, whichever pocket it happens to be in at the moment (oops, I meant email and whichever server). That's different from you being a Dutch citizen (I assume if you are from Amsterdam) and being arrested for doing something *here*. The comparison would be, if a Dutch court wanted to talk to you about your account on a US game company's servers.

This. This is what has taken me out of the "suspension of disbelief" in each of the first two Hobbit segments - the feeling that I'm looking at the preview of a ride, designed for that purpose rather than designed to be a film.

You may have a problem. I have never found fuck boring.

Similar problem with another health club, due to a merger/acquisition. They referred it to collections before contacting the customer (me).