Those sneaky bastards. Thanks muchly for the clarification. Henceforth I'll be thinking how we benefit Microsoft's precious IP as we re-acclimate our organization around this wonderful ribbon.

Why do "liberals" have to "abandon the climate change mantra" to do something about air and water quality? Can't "conservatives" do something about air and water for their own reasons? Howabout a clean air and water bill, bi-partisan, the "conservatives" support it because we are "poisoning everything" and "liberals" support it because of "climate change". There. Bill passed, clean air and water, and Richard Nixon smiles in his grave. Everybody wins.

Except, THAT WOULD SUCK, because if Republicans vote with Democrats, Republicans might jeopardize their precious "brand" of being against all things liberal, and then voters might get confused, not give as much of a shit at the next election from one party to the other, and those safe majorities might not be so safe anymore. Furthermore, the ultra-libertarians in the Tea Party wing will attack the incumbents in the Primaries, claiming that the new regulation for protecting clean air and water is evil, liberal, communist, twinkle-toed Kenyan-Muslim interference on one's God-given right to pour shit all over your own land if you damn-well want to. And, of course, who's going to PAY for your clean air and water? Regulators, agents, inspectors, prosecutors, none of them work for free! Our Lord Grover Norquist will not permit any new taxes for yet more wasteful government spending!

Nope, too risky. New election cycle coming up. Gotta keep up the pressure, and cooperation doesn't do any good for anybody.
On the other hand, making friends with big industrial polluters yields nice election contributions, which pays for TV, radio, and print ads to whip up rage and FUD against the other Party, at least until election day.

Clean air and water? Not this year. Not next year either. In fact, never so long as it might validate those foul godless liberals and that *spit* asshat Al Gore with his "climate change" bullshit.
But thanks for your vote.

That Ribbon was most likely introduced simply to distinguish the look and feel from free Office apps, particularly Open/LibreOffice. That's right, I think it's more marketing gimmick than UI innovation. It's not completely hideous - the Ribbon can be hidden, after all. What sucks about 2007 onward is what they TOOK AWAY from 2003. Yes, the toolbars could get messy under 2003, but that's because they were so customizable. Office 2003 even came with a little icon editor to make your own buttons and assign them to macros. That's gone in 2007 and onward; only the most rudimentary customizations are possible with the new Office, which you need if you use anything beyond the basics.

Office 2003 is at end-of-life, and our IT staff is forcing us to Office 2010. Our workflow depends on a lot of macros, however, which in the past we trivially assigned to custom buttons or pull-downs in 2003 toolbars. Very difficult, or simply not possible, to do in 2007 onward (requires, at least, custom tools, XML editing, and hooks in VB, just to put a custom icon on a ribbon). There's a lot of gnashing of teeth on the Internet from workplaces trying to regain the functionality that was so trivial under 2003.

Office became popular because they nearly gave it away with new PC's back in the Pentium/Windows NT days. It stayed popular because for all its security flaws, VB for Office made the software customizable enough to become essential to any office out there, be it your dentist or the Citibank trading floor. Microsoft lost sight of that with 2007 and the Ribbon Revolution, citing weird focus groups getting hung up on one thing or another to justify a complete UI overhaul, but until now companies like ours could just simply stick with 2003 and get our work done.

For all the faults of Microsoft's products, the saving grace was they were typically so customizable your could bend it into something you could tolerate, or even like. The "new" Microsoft that came along about the time of the Ribbon is going the opposite direction... Windows and Office are less user-customizable with each release, Windows 10 being no exception. This kinda sucks, and I don't see any end to it.

I use both, and find Firefox generally has superior performance and memory usage.
The "hipster bullshit minimalist interface known as Australis" is unfortunate, but Classic Theme Restorer takes care of that.

Gotta give a shout-out to the Cree dimmable. Got one going for more than a year in awful conditions: outside, exposed to direct sun in the day, freezing weather at night, and (most impressive) connected to a really cheap photodiode for automatically switching on at night. The latter killed several CFLs because, at dusk and dawn, the lousy photodiode passes some flickering sub-voltage mess for a minute or two before finally switching off/on. The Cree has put up with this like a champ.

The Amazon tycoon owns the Washington Post.

Not if they're already in the cockpit (bullet-proof door). Any any stray shot by some trigger-happy gun nut would likely pierce the fuselage and start decompressurization, ala Goldfinger. Also, terrorist holds lady with knife to neck and tells you put down your weapon (while unseen terrorist sneaks up behind you with box-cutter). Besides, if you let "passengers" carry guns onto plane, then terrorists who are "passengers" also permitted to bring guns onto plane (they just have to get through our fine TSA screening).

This is a really good idea.

I like this, too, but what's to stop the bad guys from faking the secret frequency and crashing the plane from the safety of their hideout? We can't even get HTTPS to be secure.

Bottom line, this problem sucks. Really sucks. And it won't be an easy solution.

You, sir, have ruined my day. There's no question why those locks were put in place after 9/11, but a new problem arises that once a bad guy gets the cockpit it's all over. I can imagine some weird manual override built in, crawling around the luggage compartment Passenger 57 style, but then that could be exploited by the bad guys. This problem just sets your head spinning round until you can't get on an airplane anymore.

It's a bit more than that. I'm no Windows hater. I just really like and work with Windows 7, and I don't like what Windows 8 and onward needlessly take away.

If the only PC I had to worry about was my own, than I'd be more ok with undo'ing all the stupid things that Windows 8+ did with the interface, ClassicShell, Window Blinds, whatever. But at work that's not an option. IT has a reasonable interest in keeping things supported and uniform, and adding and supporting tons of third-party interface stuff is something they just don't want to do. So the staff just have to live with this crappy interface stuff (ribbons, non-expected full-screen metro apps, charms popping up unexpectedly, buttons in the wrong places, colors that draw your attention to the wrong place) that, honest-to-god, slows down their productivity. Some staff don't love learning new PC stuff, they just want to get work done. Why the fuck did Microsoft change all this shit when there was no reason to?

I appreciate that Windows 8 is better under the hood, boots fast, and is mostly compatible (*cough* Adobe *cough*). But my staff and I spend our working lives on the desktop, and Microsoft just up and made things ugly and force everyone to drink it like Victory Gin. Particularly, they take away the means to customize the interface to something more 7-like. If they at least left the option to customize things up beyond what the lame "personalize" control can do so you don't have to rely on third-party hacks and unsigned system files, it wouldn't suck so bad.

That's why it doesn't take a Windows hater to hate Windows 8. I'm testing Windows 10 preview, and it's better 'cause there's no start screen or charms, but man the desktop and icons are getting more ugly with each new build, like they're time-warping back to the late 80's when 16 colors was all you had. WTF!

I've worked with one of these, and it is very sweet. Honest PC alternative to a Macbook. I'm no fanboi (I use both platforms), but PC laptops have been flimsy plastic throwaway junk for years, whereas apple builds reliable, solid, throw-it-in-the-bag and go with no McAfee crapware to deal with. The Dell comes with a little McAfee crapware to uninstall, but in every other respect it is the first decent PC laptop I've seen in a long while.

Quality costs. The XPS with 8.1 non-Pro, 8GB RAM, the lower-resolution, non-touch screen, and a decent-size 256 GB SSD (upgrade) will run you $1099 (the "retina" touch-capable screen costs another $300). By comparison, a 13" Air with the same storage, RAM, and non-retina screen (and a slightly faster processor) is $1299.

The XPS 13 feels solid, stupid lightweight, really fast, long battery life, and the non-retina screen looks great (can't vouch for the higher-res screen, but I've heard mixed reviews of Windows 8 scaling up). And it's an actual "lap" top - it don't need no kickstand to hold the screen up. Here's a good review. I would really like to see more PC's built like this.

IIRC, he still had his lucky penny.

The forthcoming BMW i3 has an option (and an empty space under the hood) for a range extender. This vehicle looks seriously sweet. I am very much hoping that this new competition encourages GM to up its game with improvements to the interior and performance of its EV line. While I have admired the drivetrain tech in the Volt, I found the interior design and performance to be lacking, more econo-box than flagship. Owning a Volt needs to make the driver feel great, but too often car companies build-in these kind of compromises to encourage buyers to consider the next more expensive model.

The consensus has been that C++ is really useful, really powerful, but really complex, particularly in view of layer upon layer of features piled up along its evolution. How, then, to best learn how to code C++ "the right way" with its modern incarnation and features? Any recommendations?

This.
Thanks for everything.

Yep, that was a stinker. I managed to avoid it. Learned my lesson from Last Crusade.