I don't mind ribbon. It's pretty good in many ways, though I think getting to any of the advanced options (options open up a separate dialog box) is inconsistent and otherwise unintuitive. This aspect is more like Windows 8 charms, where it seems the advanced options UI just didn't get done in time. But for the basic operations, "ribbon" is basically a glorified toolbar that holds more than your usual UI widgets. If anything, I'd rather they go all-in with ribbon and entirely do away with the separate dialog boxes for advanced options.

But this whole effort in moving everything to the "cloud" reeks of a move to rent seeking. Which businesses are more than happy to pay for, but on my personal machine, I'd like to own my software. Open/LibreOffice is great for basic stuff, but I wish it had the polish of Office (it's just a bit harsher to use, UI-wise). As long as they don't do away with Office, I'm perfectly OK. Actually, my favorite version of Office is 2K7 (over 2010 in fact) even though the ribbon in 2K7 is a bit rough around the edges. 2010's "home tab" is terrible.

That having been said, it's a shame they don't have collaborative documents built-in to their software (Google Docs) now that they have serious integration with their cloud service. If they did, they'd corner that entire market. Nothing beats a shitty (and increasingly-shittier) web front-end like a native application with a native UI. Nothing.

All things indicate that all of the wizards were Maiar, and hence Saruman was one as well. It would follow that Galadriel's power, which is merely over the elves would not work on the Maiar.

For the palantir, I read that as cautioning others from fooling around with objects whose power is beyond their own understanding. Since the palantir fell into the hands of the Rohirrim recently, Gandalf would have (and did) want to study it further before determining whether it was a boon or a bane.

The description of the mithril coat I see as similar to the experimental body armor made from non-newtonian liquids: it's normally soft and supple, until somebody applies force to it, at which point it hardens, perhaps such that the force is ultimately reflected. Except maybe mirthril is lighter, thinner and metal instead of polymer. Effectively, it's metal kevlar.

Only they can't do that.

Here on the other (this) side of the pond, we have constitutional protections from self-incrimination. Which means that we can't be compelled to reveal something that we choose not to. And if it happens, the evidence acquired by such means can (and likely would) be thrown out in court.

Now, these protections don't extend to stupidity, so the cops usually get what they want anyway. Which is all the more reason why circumvention of strong encryption and mass surveillance largely is unjustified and should be fought against tooth and nail. It has no bearing on successfully catching real criminals, but it certainly will pick up undesired thinking.

Then it must have been a mininova.

How about instead of an implant, just put it into something the size of a credit card. And as a bonus, make it digestible too so it can be disposed of quickly when necessary. And then, for ease of use (to prevent key loggers and such), make it so that the only way to add new passwords is to physically input it into the device.

Oh wait...

I think you've identified the problem quite well. I don't think the carte blanche "public financing" is a sufficient solution however. If you look at countries with public financing, it's not as if money is any less of a problem in their elections. The biggest wallet is still the strongest competitor. Even without PACs and SuperPACs buying up the airwaves, even if everybody knew everything via the most democratic form of communication, i.e. Internet, there are still numerous ways for money to enter the election (in the latter case, via astroturfing).

Running for office is currently a popularity contest. In fact, the very mechanism is called "popular vote". The best person doesn't necessarily win. Rather, the most popular person does. Popularity comes about in multiple ways, but in the end, it boils down to marketing. Marketing is not necessarily telling the best-sounding lies (though it's likely the case considering these are politicians we're talking about). Marketing also involves raising awareness and manipulating the narrative. Any campaign is dead on arrival without a good marketer with a good marketing strategy, knowing who to say what to when.

A good marketer requires money. Or promises of benefits. We're all intelligent people here. We all are talented. We all command a price (though money is but one type of payment), and understand and implicitly acknowledge that the price of our talent is higher than the price of those with inferior talent, but also lower than those with superior talent. There's no reason to believe that this does not apply to marketers.

The only way to remove money from politics is to remove popularity from the process. There are many ways to blunt the impact of money (public financing being one such, spreading money around more evenly is another), but so long as there is value in talent, money and power will remain correlated.

Now, as for the methods of reducing money's influence in a popular election, those would be public financing, reducing income disparity (the two I previously mentioned), improving education, and democratizing communication. Tying the number of representatives to a fixed population size (rather than fixing the number of representatives and floating the population represented) will also eliminate other corrupt practices like gerrymandering. Going to a ranked voting system would also help, but that's more to eliminate the two-party dominance. These last two reforms would indirectly reduce the amount spent per party though they would not reduce the total spent nor the impact per amount.

1) Nobody says the tenants are buying the homes.

2) Nobody says Lucas is trying to recoup the costs of construction.

3) The total cost per unit is probably much higher if you factor in the value of the land.

FYI, low income housing is usually rentals. Many low income people have trouble saving for a down payment, much less get a loan from a bank, no matter how small the amount borrowed is.

The main problem with cheap rentals is the building's maintenance costs. Government subsidies are used to help with that usually. If Lucas isn't willing to bleed in the long term, at best, he's going to have to price the rentals for middle income, working class people. Which may still constitute "low income" in that part of California.

What you say is true when it comes to organizations that have a strong managerial structure.

In this case, I think it's the programmers (I cannot call them engineers because real engineers tend not to pursue new and shiny for the sake of new and shiny) themselves who are to blame. Their reasons for completely destroying old productive systems are a dangerous combination of the two factors mentioned: 1) new and shiny as I mentioned and 2) making their mark, as you've mentioned.

Developers can actually be motivated by either one and not fall into this trap. But with both of theses combined into one (often-subconscious) goal, this is the kind of atrocity that results: complete abandonment of what exists and works with a poor or no replacement.

In the movie, he's going to sue the lead characters for being violent.

You joke, but some parts of Windows actually are stuck in 1996. And that's not even getting into userspace apps.

Or, they could just make their own processors. I believe they have the IP to do so through various acquisitions. And x86 isn't exactly the best instruction set out there efficiency-wise, so they might end up with something cheaper to run (definitely cheaper to build) and better.

Considering its location relative to Florida, I'd say tex-mex is a perfectly valid reason for methane coming out of that hole.

What I find funny here (and on other tech sites) is that up until the moment you talk about H1B, everybody's all for opening up the borders and easing up on illegal immigration. It's all lovey-dovey "let's make them legal so they can pay their taxes" up until the point when they're actually legal and competing for the same jobs as the prevailent occupation as the community. But suddenly, as soon as the topic switches to H1B, it's a chorus of "don't let them in, they're stealing out jobs!"

From my experience with on- and off-shore consulting, the low-skilled jobs are the ones that typically get replaced. These are things from data entry to phone support. Companies that try to send away high skilled jobs tend to get burned by either the lack of talent, or the cost of the equivalent talent (cost accounting both for money and the necessary overall decrease in productivity). Which is to say, for a highly-skilled worker, whether somebody's on a visa or not, they're probably going to cost about the same.

Yes, some companies are switching fully to an on- and off-shore consulting work force. In the past, companies that have attempted this were ultimately forced to bring the majority of their skilled labor back because the talent simply isn't worth the additional hidden costs. Yes, there is talk (and fear, always a lot of fear) that companies will off-shore all of their tech workers. I think if anyone actually tries that, they won't be around for very long. And I'm not terribly sympathetic. There's no reason good people should hold up incompetent management, and the faster the free market gets rid of these companies, the faster more forward-looking businesses can assume their place.

There are, of course, two exceptions to this, that being the government and utilities. In this case, the Senators are investigating a utility. I expect both government and government-permitted monopolies (utilities) to be staffed by U.S. citizens. Even if they're contractors, which they usually are, I think that there is a national security matter at play, and that absolutely cannot be compromised by foreign, non-patrioted workers.

What I'm more concerned about is abuse of employees on a visa. Consulting companies tend to treat their visa-based workers well, but companies that sponsor tend to treat their workers like total shit. That's because companies that sponsor are able to hold that sponsorship over the heads of their sponsored employees. And people want to come here to work, and some of them are willing to do so for almost nothing. When applied in this way, work visas are nothing more than the modern form of indentured servitude. It's a human rights violation in our very own backyards, but because we're so concerned about job-stealing and keeping our jobs here, we can't even see it.

A brain drain from the rest of the world to the U.S. can only be a good thing. Sending menial jobs off shore is also a good thing. Letting tech-adverse companies die is or learn a harsh lesson is also a good thing. The only losers are the ones who can't keep up with the overall rising skill of the tech labor force. And quite frankly, there are plenty of on-premise jobs that simply cannot be outsourced for them too, though it may not necessarily be at the forefront of technology. The only bad thing is the use of having a work visa rather than citizenship to justify abuse. And that ties into a bigger issue of the Rights of non-citizens.

But I get it. People want their cake and to eat it too. Our in-house primary education system has churned out a generation of duds (now ever more than before, and it's only getting worse). We don't have in-house highly skilled workers anymore, just a lot of mediocrity burdened with significant higher-education-caused debt. To you, I apologize. The system deceived you. You shouldn't have gone to college, and never belonged there in the first place. You should have gone to trade school, or just gone straight out into the work force. If you want to take something up with the politicians, that's what you should make them address.

Not visas.

Education.

You just have to reserve a time and show sufficient competency at operating one.

Thank you.

We here at slashdot, being technologically oriented, tend to forget that humans are not computers and don't act in the way that computers might act.

It's a matter of organic vs mechanical, and so many people mistake one for the other, or fail to differentiate between the two, or try to "bridge" the two together, usually with disastrous results (see C++14 and Esperanto).