There is one physical Microsoft store close to me in a mall.

It's kind of funny, because this mall is organized with the high-end luxury brands on the top level, and the discount crap at the bottom level.
The Microsoft store is directly below the Apple store.
The layout and colour scheme inside the store both looked like a cheap apple knockoff.

The apple store was always packed, the Microsoft store rarely had more than 1 or 2 people inside. I'm surprised it wasn't closed down years ago.

Amazon Web Services power a significant potion of the internet.
Even many governments rely on it.
You can choose not to purchase products through their store, but the company has metastasized to the point where keeping your dollars out of their pockets is near impossible.

These are troubling times with a lot of bad news out there, so let's try to be optimistic about this, and find the bright side.
Sure, this might be the worst shape the reef has been in for all of recorded history, but it's also the best shape the reef will be in for the rest of recorded history.

Video games are an art form, and it should be up to the creators to decide how they want to express their vision. And if that means making games early Nintendo hard, then so be it.

Video games are also a business, and it is smart for creators to cast a wide net to allow as many players as possible to experience their creation.

Personally, I would rather live in a world where 90% of games are not for me, and 10% of them are laser-focused on what I love, than live in a world where everything is generic pablum designed to be inoffensive to everyone.

When a human doctor makes a mistake, they might learn from it and know better for next time.

When an AI makes a mistake, every single system connected to the network might learn from it and know better for next time.

And once an AI reaches superhuman levels of performance, it's safe to assume it will stay better.

I am hopeful there will be some rapid advancement in this field.

And this is exactly why people should not trust the cloud.

'The cloud' is a fancy way of saying, "somebody else's computer". And they can control what stays on their computer. They control what security (if any) is in place to protect your data.

These services and companies can not be trusted.

Historically, Windows isn't stable until about the 2nd service pack, years after it's official release.

Thank you for the suggestion; I'm installing it in the background and I am going to try this out shortly.

Sony Vegas is pretty much the only program I use that still requires Windows.

It's powerful, easy to self teach, and until 10 came around, it was extremely stable.

But if your video card is anything newer than the GTX 500 series, don't expect any GPU rendering assistance.

Linux has the super low end and the super high end well covered, but it has a few serious areas that are lacking.

On the low end, OpenShot definitely beats windows movie maker, and it's about as good as iMovie, so for vloggers, it's all you'd need.

On the high end, Lightworks and Cinelerra are both powerful, comparable to Avid, but less stable, and the learning curve is steep; too steep for an amateur who is just messing around to master quickly.

But for a start up or mid-range video production company, neither option is acceptable. OpenShot is simply not good enough for their needs, and the high end is too much, the training costs for employees would be significant. There is no Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, or Final Cut 7 for the mid range companies to work with.

I've also had trouble rendering to h.264 in Linux. The files are sometimes corrupt - refusing to load in anything other than VLC, sometimes lacking features, like progressive upload that is youtube friendly, or just plain poor quality - not all renderers are made equal, some look better at a given bit rate than others.

"Projects like OpenHatch will even help you match your skill set to a project in need. So what's holding you back? Time? Lack of interest? Difficulty getting started?"

Not knowing about OpenHatch until just now may be a part of it.

As an artist, I've contributed a fair amount of material to the creative commons ecosystem, and I've posted some tutorials for open source projects that have a small user base, but other than that, I have no way of knowing what skills of mine could be useful to anyone working on a project, or what holes they need filled.

As soon as the open source world produces something better than h.264, I'm sure everyone will rush to adopt it.

Lots of people just want a tool that works, not a tool that functions better as an ideological statement than as a media player.

I click the link, video looks decent enough, loads fast enough.

"So academia is just like the rest of the world, then."

Not exactly. The reports in academia are much more long-winded.

I purchased my first ebook reader just 8 days ago, (Sony PRS-T1 for $50) and installed calibre (0.9.18 is the version currently in the ubuntu repository) this morning, and I am very impressed with this piece of software, but a little intimidated by the interface, so I will look forward to testing out this new version.

The original reason for limited-edition prints wasn't driven by marketing. The stone or wood block would physically degrade with each print, and after a certain number of runs, the drop in quality was clearly visible (why earlier editions tend to be worth more)

With digital reproduction, this just isn't a factor any more, and limiting the production run is pure marketing; creating an artificial scarcity to inflate the price.

Most of this announcement is just empty art jargon; the elite paying lip service to their vision of the unwashed masses, framing things so the academics won't slam them too harshly, while still walking away with bags of money.