Don't make me laugh -- I used to be an APL programmer.

I think that you'll find that Windows 8.1 will perform like shit on those machines... Not only because all of the rendering will be software-based.

Huh. Windows 7 certainly runs very well on some of them, with hardware-accelerated rendering and everything. Why would the rendering in Windows 8.1 switch to software-based?

If someone is still using Snow Leopard for software purposes, it's probably best done in a VM now. Lots of new features and performance in Lion and later assuming you have at least a 5 year old machine or later.

I agree, but the normal release of Snow Leopard is not licensed for running in a VM. If you run it in a VM, you're violating your license. (This is the reason I own a copy of Snow Leopard Server -- that is licensed for running in a VM.)

Further: not all apps that run under Snow Leopard will run in on a VM -- for one example, some that depend on OpenGL will refuse to run. (Diablo 2 happens to be an example. I tried it out of curiosity, using the latest release of VMWare Fusion.)

Libreoffice supports Appleworks documents. Maybe she could migrate.

To my surprise, so does iWork. I was able to open up a bunch of my old AppleWorks documents and spreadsheets in Pages and Numbers.

Are there Macs that can run Snow Leopard but cannot run Lion?

Yes, and my house has two of them. Snow Leopard was the last version of the OS that supported 32-bit processors.

We've got a MacBook Pro and Mac Mini in our house with 32-bit processors. They're still perfectly adequate machines for light usage, in terms of performance, but they won't run any MacOS newer than Snow Leopard at all.

(What's hilarious to me is, they can run Windows 8.1. I'll probably end up putting either Windows or Ubuntu on them before too much longer.)

Snow Leopard is also the last version of the OS to support executing PowerPC binaries under the Rosetta engine, and some people keep it around for that reason. (Example: it's the last version of MacOS that will still play the MacOS version of Diablo 2, which, while complied for OS X, was never compiled for Intel processors.)

If things better than Google Glass are made so innocuous it's imperceptible, then society won't accept it, but be ignorant of it.

Some time after that becomes the case (and it will), society will accept it. It's simply going to be so commonplace for such stuff to be posted publicly to the internet that the rage is just going to burn itself out. (It might take a generation for this to occur, but it will.)

If the IDE is helping you catch typos and quickly dig out references like method names, that's one thing.

If the IDE is providing so much scaffolding for your project, "wizards" and such, that you don't actually understand what's going on, that's another thing.

(I've seen both.)

It sounds to me like the perfect target for a simple root, and installation of gapps and xposed framework. No need for CM.

Well, if you want to rip out the extra points of integration Nokia added to Microsoft services, CM might prove to be the simpler way to get that.

Is there some reason I'm unaware of for avoiding CM?

So, this is supposed to be a decently-made budget handset for less affluent markets, running AOSP? That sounds to me like the perfect target for a CyanogenMod port...

...was when someone commented that Sun Microsystems was worth about one third of a chat service.

I've seen 3rd party lenses that contract the space requirements, didn't need it myself, but they exist.

I actually tried one that a member of the Xbox team recommended. It very much did not work for me. YMMV, I suppose. That wouldn't have covered all of my complaints anyway, even if it had worked.

So I don't really game console, but I hear Child of Eden was maybe the only game that used Kinect right, and it's pretty much an abstract musical game that lets you shoot lasers from your hands.

I think it's worth noting that the Kinect support in "Child of Eden" is optional. I got the game, and played it Kinect-style for a little while, but ended up getting too tired too quickly to get very far.

Fortunately, you can also play with a standard controller, as if it were just an updated version of "Rez". And that's the only way I play it now.

....all the hatred for Kinect.

In my case, it comes from owning one for my 360.

First, the requirements for a space to use it fully are absurd. I do not have a tiny living room, but the way it's laid out, I can't use the amount of floor space that Kinect games "want" me to. The optimum viewing distance from my TV is taken up by a couch and an easy chair, and there's an actual wall right behind them.

Second, Microsoft got so excited about using the Kinect for non-game purposes that they virtually destroyed other modes of interaction. The home screen and tabs and so on for the 360 are now so optimized for the Kinect that they're more awkward to navigate with a standard controller. Sure, the "home" UI started to degrade back when the "NXE" was introduced, but the newer tile-based scheme is even more terrible. (In particular, navigating lists now involves list items that are very large so they're easy to "hit" with the Kinect, which ends up meaning far fewer items per "page".)

(Basically, the Kinect did to the XB360 for controller users what touch screens did to Windows 8 for keyboard-and-mouse users, if you follow my meaning.)

The Kinect is still physically attached to my 360, but it's turned off almost all the time now. The only time it's turned on is when my nephew comes over and wants to play "Kinectimals" (the only Kinect-based game I use that I think is actually improved by the peripheral -- I might add "Dance Central" to that, but that game is too impacted by the floor space requirements discussed above, so it's impractical for me to play).

All that said, I'd still have considered the XB1, Kinect and all, if it had come with solid backwards compatibility. But it didn't, and so I have absolutely no investment that the XB1 could leverage. Starting from a clean slate, the Kinect is, for me, a huge strike against the XB1, based on my extended experience of actually having used the original version.

Wasn't Android derived from Linux?

Not in the sense you probably mean, no.

The Android kernel is a Linux kernel. That part is true. But, a Linux kernel is far from sufficient for building an Android device or running Android apps.

Google is not placing these restrictions on that part. The use of the Linux kernel does not spread virus-like to random other components of the distribution, so has pretty much no bearing on the stuff under discussion.

In practice, Android is not very open right now, and is very deliberately becoming less open over time. (This has both advantages and disadvantages.)

Ah, so it's a problem for the people with a specific business model that requires having precise control over both ends of the connection, making them fundamentally incompatible with openness and interoperability. Okay.

Myself, I'm not very sympathetic, as I actively want to see those business models fail and get abandoned. But now I have a better understanding of why someone might dislike the situation. Thanks!