Some of this seem to be blameable on hardware makers who once made firmware updates hard -- you had to set a jumper on the motherboard. Then they got rid of that part, but you couldn't flash it from the dominant GUI operating system and had to boot from a DOS disk. Then you didn't even have to do that and could flash any firmware on the system from the GUI.

Now it's too easy. It would seem to make more sense to require the system to be booted to a firmware update mode, simple and reliable enough to be placed in ROM where it could always be trusted but sophisticated enough to have both enough user interface to choose a storage device for firmware and enough intelligence to recognize which files were firmware for which devices so that there wasn't any real risk of bricking the device by flashing the wrong firmware.

Server makers could sort of bypass some of this via remote management capabilities most servers have built in so they wouldn't need to do it via GUI or special boot modes.

I didn't RTFA (hey, this is Slashdot) but I could see where recent tablet iterations have such high DPI that it might be most useful for multi-window mode to split the screen and scale the app windows to fit more than one app at a time on the screen.

It seems like a lot of apps have a kind of defined layout and not much if any layout intelligence built into them, so changing their window size to less than screen size would seem to require many apps to be rewritten to support other windows sizes than full screen.

Scaling the entire app display to fit the window size would seem to solve much of this, with the caveat that apps with a fine degree of detail in their controls and small text to begin with might be less than useful. But for many, monitoring the content changes might be enough even if 100% of the controls or detail isn't legible.

Some terrorist(s) will kill many dozens or hundreds in the US and everybody will want snooping back. Just you watch and see. Bookmark my post. I've been around long enough to notice political patterns.

A 640,000,000 mile long reset finger oughtta be long enough for anyone.

Too many goatse links?

It would be like attempting practical powered air flight in the 1600's. General technology was just not ready for it.

We need national issue votes, not just representatives, similar to "propositions" in some states. The trick is to make the hurdles high to include one such that the national ballot is not gummed up with stupid issues and political gimmicks.

Oh please coming from a long time linux and freebsd user.

The costs to fly consultants to fix broken IE specific sites like SAP, java applets that look for XP and crap out on other platforms, wine bugs, lack of AD support for lockdowns, and help desk Temps to sort through the angry users, documents created with Libre office looking funny to potential clients with Office, are pure madness to consider! Don't give me the garbage about how users were supposed to save as .docx with no macros. Many are drooling idiots who will want to reprimand your ass for ca using this etc. Wine config? Yeah good luck with a 1,000 users including HR who have a weird java applet where people don't get paid if an error arises ;-)

I am not saying this as a troll. Linux has it's uses for specialized servers.

But if people wanted to be freed they would have last decade. Windows is reliable now since NT came and gets shit done

Why bother then? Easier to just use what came with computer which is Windows.

Mate is a fork for the now obsolete gnome 2 4 years ago. I left linux 4 years ago because of nonsense like 5 his realizing gnome 3 made it game over.

Why would someone want to be free of Microsoft? It just works and is stable now. It ain't 1998 anymore where you could make a case since Windows now has an NT kernel

What you describe is skuemorphic design which objects mimic real world objects which is the old way of doing things.

Look at the candy buttons and leather in the address bar to see why the art professors decided not to go this route anymore.

With flat the design possibilities are endless as you can make the gui in a way you want and the user can focus on content-consumption and work. Not glass and depicting what a tiny pic of something like a skuemorphic button means. Think of Stop signs? They are simple colors and text.

I am not saying I agree with this. Just reprinting what I read on art blogs. FYI it was Google that started this. Not Microsoft. The search is soo basic but is powerful underneath

What's to say we don't figure out a way to harness cosmic expansion or the other 90% of the universe's energy in the vacuum and create a pocket dimension that traverses a Kerr black hole so that we wave to ourselves leaving before we enter the event horizon in an infinite loop?

Only a slashdotter would dream up infinite dupes

And I'm sure the railroad barons felt the same way.

I've heard a few good lectures on ontology and epistemology and every time I'm struck by the level of assumption and interpretation in what we know.

1) Someone will always comment on their continued use and the superiority of an essentially obsolete Nokia handset, whether it is an older feature phone or an N900.

2) A pissing match will take place between otherwise zealous technology advocates as to how little they pay for mobile service, often coupled with how little value they find in mobile data or contemporary smartphones.

The parent posters' theories may be crackpot or science fiction, but it does seem that in absolute terms our knowledge of cosmology, while well grounded in theory, seems awfully speculative especially given our level of understanding of basic forces like gravity, let alone find concrete, experimentally verifiable theories for the beginning/end of the Universe.

I would argue that the size and timescales are also so vast relative to both our individual existence and existence as a species that we might not be able to ever really know with any certainty, nor would the answers matter.

It's like being in 4th grade and trying to develop meaningful theories on when and where you will retire in your late 60s. Not only do you not know enough facts to answer the question substantively, it's so far away that knowing or not knowing isn't really relevant and much of it hinges on unrelated consequences of events that we don't know and haven't experienced yet.