Absolutely agree. But open sourcing IE might cause it to become a better product, which, one would think, would benefit regular people even if they did not realize why.

Way WAY past time. But one possible issue might be that Microsoft doesn't want anyone to see how yucky the code is.

Yes you're right, and I use one of those hard drive "toasters" where you can shove a raw drive in the slot, do the backup, and then pull out the drive and put it on a shelf. I highly recommend this strategy. I was mostly addressing the "home network is too slow for backup" comment. Home network these days is fast and cheap enough for anyone with critical data that needs to be backed up.

Moreover, using rsync (which I do not at the moment, but I'm a fan of the technique) makes it possible to completely automate backups, and not have to remember to manually disconnect the drive or remount it read only.

I'm pretty sure that would be an improvement.

Yeah, they just got their own version of Keeping up with the Kardashians.

Never? Really? Wow. There should be a special Achievement just for that.

> only for it to be a hackneyed reference to a reddit meme so old that it's practically dust?

Well, it *was* coming from 5.5 billion light years away. They can't be expected to be up on the latest memes.

> I would go so far as to say a studio would do worse because they'd want to interject some new concept.

Cue the precocious kid and annoying pet...

My background: I grew up watching TOS, was at first excited and then bored by TNG and the rest of the Berman series, and had my interest renewed by Abrams' films, which I believe are reviled primarily by Berman "endless meetings" era fans, and not first-run TOS fans. That said:

Star Trek Continues (TOS-C?) is, so far, surprisingly good. The sets, costumes, tools, and effects are easily equal to TOS Remastered. But besides that, the plots are interesting and after you get over different people playing the characters, it's like episodes of TOS that for some reason you hadn't seen yet.

Wife and I both loved them, and my 20 year old daughter, who grew up watching TOS Remastered, has given it her conditional seal of approval.

Something we all agree on is that there needs to be more episodes. Daughter holds back full approval only because there hasn't been enough so far to have an informed opinion.

8 is also an even number. By skipping 9, did Microsoft beat (or at least change) the curse, or have they released two sucky versions in a row?

I left my phone at home by accident Saturday, and had to borrow someone's phone to make a call. Oh, hey, a Windows phone -- the first I've seen in the wild that wasn't on a TV show. I commented "Hey, it's a windows phone" and she responded "I needed a phone and it was the cheapest one they had." Ok, then. Could Windows be the new Symbian? (Would that necessarily be a bad thing?)

My understanding is that many corporations just recently moved off XP to Win7. That's probably going to be fine for a number of years. I understand that Microsoft needs to release something in the consumer space for marketing reasons, but what does 10 accomplish other than as advanced field beta testing for the next corporate version?

I might run 10 on a test machine just to see what we're in for, but I plan to run 7 on my workstation for as long as practical. 7 was a nice bump from XP, 8 was nasty, 7 is where it's at for now.

Ok, wait. Home internet is not too slow for backup. Gigabit switches are about 30 bucks. Had he rsynced his files to a different machine instead of having the hard drive locally mounted, he'd still have his backups.

I'd like to posit that backups to multiple hard drives aren't just for rich folks either. A terabyte hard drive is less than $60 on Amazon. If you have more than a terabyte of critical information, you really need to think about your backup architecture.

I make part of my living from photographs, have over 90,000 photos on a separate drive. Part of my overhead is three other drives for backup. Two onsite, not attached to the computer except when backing up, and one geologically distant in a friend's fire safe. The most recent onsite drive gets swapped for the offsite drive every few months.

Only you can decide how much your data is worth. If it's valuable, it needs backed up.

Good point. And reaction to this could be a good indication of what members of the GOP should be de-elected by conservatives.

Shrug. Even the worst of dictators generally make the trains run on time. But I agree, decrying something positive from an otherwise odious administration merely makes one look foolish. Intellectual honesty requires giving credit where due. On the surface, this looks like a good thing.