MS can do all the lock-down they want on the hardware they make and sell. But for them to be in charge of locking down 3rd party hardware and software that I buy from other vendors is just nuts. Especially as the 800 lb gorilla in the room means that I will have almost no choice of vendors that don't restrict my use. I want my computer to be mine, not Microsoft's and not Apple's.

There is a difference between discordance and dissonance, musically. The way you, and TFS, and TFA, and most people (not necessarily the paper, haven't read it) use the word dissonance would be more appropriately be called discordance, according to my harmony prof. Dissonance is an important part of harmony, without it, music would have no tension, no resolution, and would be more just a series of sounds, than music. A lot of that is learned, IMO. The perception of diiscordance, however, I believe is innate - the ear is wired to hear harmonics as being related to the fundamental frequency; e.g., two tones an octave apart (a factor of 2) are almost always recognized as the same "note". YMMV, IANAM, etc.

The lower harmonics, like the interval of a fifth (1/2 of the 3rd harmonic), or a third (1/4 of the fifth harmonic) are actually quite close to the equal tempered scale approximations - closer than most can hear, and definitely closer than most can sing. In fact, vibrato may change the pitch more than it would be off. The higher harmonics are definitely off, though, e.g. The 11th harmonic is about halfway between two notes on the piano.
As you probably know, the Well Tempered Clavier is not equal tempered, and much music in the past was in scales with no real tempering. That makes the different keys have very different feelings, which has carried into the present as to what kind of music is in flat keys, sharp keys etc., even it's almost exclusively played in equal tempered scales nowadays.
BTW, how did you get 256/242? 12 perfect fiths would be about 3^12 / 2^19, wouldn't it?

How would those things require the GUI to change?

Quick! Someone make a "Let Texas and Louisiana Secede" petition!

Only if they sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty first, and allow international inspectors in!

FYI, they are not "blaming" global warming for the reported cooling of the uppermost layers of the atmosphere, they are demonstrating that the increased CO2 measured at those levels has a cooling effect that causes that layer to contract.

HCFCs have more or less global warming potentials than CFCs, depending on chemistry, half-life, etc. Furthermore, HCFCs are being phased out; e.g. you can't buy new commercial equipment with R-22 anymore.

FYI, CO2 gets up there up by mixing (wind, turbulence, & diffusion); but since it's heavier than N2 & O2, CO2 is a lesser percentage of air at higher altitudes than at lower altitudes.

Not really. GW is caused by conversion of high energy photons (light) into low energy photons (heat). If CO2 increases this conversion rate . . .

Stop right there. CO2 does not convert light into infrared. It absorbs infrared. The conversion from visible light to infrared occurs when the earth absorbs visible light, heats up, and subsequently re-emits the heat as infrared waves.
Re-read TFA (if you really read it the first time) and note that this is about the increased CO2 in the upper atmosphere gaining energy from collisions with O2, and re-emitting that energy as infrared, much of which makes it into space, since it is happening above most of the atmosphere. Has nothing to do with trapping heat from the sun that is causing gloabl warming, other than both involve CO2 & infrared.

leaving work in the pitch dark . . .FUCK DST

I have the opposite opinion about bright sunlight at 6:00 in the morning when I leave for work. Since I'm going to spend the next hour on the train, I don't want to wake up, I want to try to catch a little extra sleep if I can. The mile+ walk from the train to my office will wake me up good enough, bright sun or clouds. So daylight savings time is OK with me - I just hate changing twice a year. (as I said in another comment, I'm on the Eastern edge of the time zone, so noon is off by 1/2 hour either way.)

I put down that I didn't like DST, but since I'm on the Eastern edge of my time zone, it's mostly 30 minutes of one or half-an-hour of another. If I was on the Western edge of the time zone, though, I would really hate DST. What I really find annoying is changing twice a year.

If you had dogs, they would eat anything and everything left out and get fat. Most cats wouldn't.

Actually, it was named for Willis Group Holdings, a leaseholder who got the naming rights in 2009.

#Java is sufficiently flaky that it's very common for particular applications to need particular versions very carefully installed and configured . .

Exactly. I do work for a client that uses Primavera - which we have to access thru a browser for all records and communication on their construction projects. A recent update to their installation required us to install a very particular Java version that is not at all up-to-date or secure, fuck whatever else we might need Java for. The kicker is that both Java and Primvera are Oracle products.

Also 'crushed' is not a nano-material. Could you imagine nano-granularized silicon?

They crushed nano-porous silicon. So TFA is about a nano-material.