I thought programmers still do this. I recently bummed some code that accelerated ten days' run into a couple of hours, if not less.

IBM Series M keyboards.

TeamOS/2. These was one of the scenes you hung out in, if you wanted to be a PC-hacker.

Tag Lines: eg OS/2: because a 386 is a terrible thing to waste. or OS/2: a multi-threaded suite.

AT (and other pretentious terms that dated just too quickly).

Floppies (of all sizes).

I'm nigh on near sixty, these are the sort of things wizards of various kinds (inc me) did. I did a fair bit of computing from 1977, but the main iron arrived in 1992.

BASIC, the kind of stuff you find in ROMBASIC and BASICA/GWBASIC, not QBASIC.

Wiring up things like cross-over cables and null modems.

Using a line-editor to edit text files (such as MS-Edlin).

Running pipes and scripts to do things.

XYZ-Wars. eg Edlin is better than Copycon

IBM Mainframe printer codes, and how to convert these into Windows or dos.

Writing to the iron in some code.

Computers before file-systems and operating systems. (The fourth computer i used actually had an operating system).

Agree.

Over the past year I've (for the first time) used Mac OS X on my laptop, I find it much less useful, and frankly much less user friendly, than Gnome 3 (and even Gnome 3 hides too much information because it assumes its users are technophobes).

One can understand Microsoft and Apple designing user interfaces primarily for technophobes, because in the modern world the majority of their users are people for whom the full power of a computer system is too complex for them to understand, much less use; and, seeing that they have in effect a duopoly, the fact that their more technically able users are not well served by their user interfaces doesn't matter, because there aren't enough of us to be a significant market, and most of us will be told what to use at work in any case.

But I really don't understand the Gnome designers' reasons for hiding so much, for making even moderately technical things so awkward. In practice, almost everyone who chooses to use Gnome is a geek. Having said that, if it really annoyed me I could either switch to something else or get under the hood and modify it, and I don't.

For me, Gnome 3 works with niggles. MacOs X is really annoying, but I can use it. Windows 7 is tolerable. Windows 10? Just let's not go there.

Then it's poor responsive design.

Seriously, there is a limit to the width of a column of text that it's comfortable to read, so for continuous text on large screen there may be reasons for having large amounts of whitespace. And, again, for continuous text, having a proportion of white space around the text is easier on the eyes. There can be good ergonomic reasons for using significant whitespace in design.

Good responsive design is hard; to have the same page layout on a two inch wide mobile phone screen as on a 24 inch monitor, and have it attractive and easy to work with on both requires a great deal of thought, and often some compromise. Making the compromises at the small end of the range doesn't work because on a very small screen pages that are not well adapted are completely unusuable, whereas if you make the compromise at the big end of the range you end up with a page that looks ugly but still works.

But the challenge of responsive design is to respond to a wide range of screen sizes and be functional and elegant on all. It's a significant challenge, and too many designers design to one fixed size or a small range of fixed sizes.

I really like the game. I used to play the solitaire version when i was younger.

We heavily modified the rules, so that you could have unlimited building, so eg a thousand hotels on vine. Ah.. that will be £1,000,000, and we'll build another 666 hotels there.

The solitaire version is that you 'play the bank', buy all the land, and then bill the bank for staying there. Kind of like the clintons, but it was long before them.

I don't recall the cat. It used to be a lever in the versions from the sixties. Forty years on, i can still write out much of the board, and the hotel and base rentals for it. Just a little wasted time :)

If Snopes were left-leaning, it would have been impossible for me to defend Bush all those years.

Sorry, but Snopes is left-leaning. What you've run across are examples so flagrant, they had to admit them to false. For example, "Trump to Repurpose USS Enterprise Into Floating Hotel and Casino" or "Donald Trump Was Born in Pakistan" are obviously fake and Snopes will label it as such.
The best way to check any "fact-check" site is to find the same quote said by two people on different sides of the aisle. What I have found is that many times, the same claim will receive a higher rating from the left, as the site will find an excuse as to why it may be true. The right receives no such courtesy.

Do you mean the "reality" that says only white Republicans can be racist?
Maybe you mean the "reality" that every Republican candidate since Reagan is a racist/misogynist/elitist/Bible-thumper?
Oh, I know... You mean the "reality" of Obamacare cutting health care costs and everyone being able to keep their doctor, right?

Sorry, but when "the left wing" has played the bigot (racist, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe) card so hard and so long that it's color has worn off, I have hard time believing that they know what "reality" truly is. Don't believe me? Go back and look at the smears against Romney and look at what they are saying about him now. Back then, he was an animal abusing, woman suppressing, religious nut-job. Today, he's the sane pick for Secretary of State. Seriously, how long did you think the American public would believe the BS when you tell them same BS every four years, only to back off your claims a few weeks after the elections end? Well, the elections you win, anyway.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe they simply disagree with your policies for reasons other than hatred?

Sorry to be the one to have to inform you of this, but this is not just about bathrooms. Sure, bathrooms are all you hear about on the news, because that's how it's framed. No one really cares the sex of the person in the stall next to you. Opinions change when you start talking about locker rooms, showers, and other facilities, especially when these facilities are used by children.

Sexual identity issues and bathrooms do not equal boys and girls in school showering together. You're literally making that up.
This is from the Charlotte non-discrimination ordinance:
"A place of public accommodation may not refuse to provide the full and equal enjoyment of its facilities based on a protected characteristic, such as gender identity and gender expression. Restrooms, locker rooms, and other changing facilities are covered by the ordinance."

Here is the source:
http://charlottenc.gov/NonDisc...

Oh, but you said boys and girls. OK. Let's look at what the Obama administration wants:
"Schools should let transgender students use bathrooms, locker rooms and other sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity, according to the guidance." ...
"The letter does not carry the force of law but the message was clear: Fall in line or face loss of federal funding."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/...

Ello.
https://ello.co/

All the videos I saw looked to be the result of old and poorly calibrated touch screens. These things happen with older monitors.
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

Whenever i see it it's almost always people complaining about the fringe left like it's the mainstream.

Do you not know that the head of your party will cut off school funds if a school does not allow boys to shower with girls? That's pretty damn far to the left and definitely "mainstream" within your party.

Sorry, but I don't believe that all women must be forced to feel uncomfortable just because and EXTREMELY small minority of men feel uncomfortable undressing in front of those with the same biological equipment.

And no, I'm not sorry, but the first man that follows my little girl into the locker room at the local YMCA is not going to like the result. But I'll be one getting in trouble because your "mainstream" left doesn't see anything wrong with a grown man getting naked in front preteen girls who are trying to change for swim practice!