The shiny side of the foil needs to be on the outside of the hat. The problem here isn't government intervention, rather a lack of same. The problem is corporate sociopathy and lack of standards. The standards should have been set up before anybody started building equipment. Where government fell down was not mandating that. Not a surfeit of regulations but a lack of them.

And had there been a monopoly there would have been no compatibility problems, but would have caused worse problems.

I tried Lo but it wouldn't do full justification, so it was a no-go for me; I need to format printed books. Oo seems to work like any other Windows program, except it loses it's "last used files" list in the start menu whenever it's upgraded (they really need to fix that).

Ebola is (according to the summary) completely contained in Nigeria and Senegal. This 2014 outbreak is all over West Africa, and according to TFA (I know, I know) the patient had just returned from Liberia, a West African country where the current outbreak has (obviously) not been contained.

Someone bringing this virus back is not so surprising. The big deal will be when we have our first case of endemic transmission -- when someone *catches* the virus here.

Overrated?? Asimov wrote over 500 books, both fiction and nonfiction. His stories were between the covers of all the science fiction magazines every month. And the trilogy you rate so poorly won a Hugo award (the most respected science fiction award there is, with the possible exception of the Nebula). He, Heinlein, and Clarke are are often considered to be the "Big Three" of science fiction authors.

Sheesh, judge the author of over 500 books on three. That's pathetic.

Oh, and in case you didn't figure it out, I've been a huge Asimov fan for fifty years (as well as Heinlein and Niven and most of the rest). I didn't care for Clarke, but I'd not call him unimpressive, I just didn't care for his style. If I cared for that style I'd probably love his work, but I don't.

Couldn't agree more. Not restoring the (useful) start menu for W8, even as an option, goes to show how much they really care about it's customers.

You're not their customer unless you're buying boxed sets of their OS and apps to install on your home brew machine. Acer, Dell, etc. are their customers. You didn't buy that OS from Microsoft, the OEM did. You bought it from him, and he's the one you should complain to.

I'm hoping W7 is it for me, but I'd said that XP was it; I've been mostly using Linux for a decade. Then about 3 years ago I bought this notebook and have been too lazy to install kubuntu (which I had on the older one that had been stolen). Despite its annoyances W7's still there.

From the time I got Windows 7, and I could just press "start" type the first few characters of the program name and launch it

And then open the file you want to work on. Meanwhile, using the Start Menu, two clicks and your document is open inside the app.

Your method is extremely problematic with something like GIMP that has little or no keyboard use.

Don't like Start? Don't use it. But just because I don't have a use for something doesn't mean it should be abolished.

On my small notebook I have the file manager, Thunderbird and Firefox pinned, but I mostly use Open Office Write. Most recently opened documents are two clicks away, while if Oo was pinned a click would open a blank document, and it's a couple more clicks from Oo's interface.

Getting away from that damned ribbon is one of the nicer things about being retired! Even better than not needing an alarm clock.

Far better than what I was going to say, which was that old Doctor Asimov is rolling in his grave. I do think he'd approve of that Japanese robot named Asimo.

I stand corrected.

Citizens' band is NOT ham radio. CB is limited by law to low power transmitters and anyone can use it. Ham radio can reach anywhere in the world. Also, you need to take a test to be granted a ham license. Never heard of Ohm's Law? No license for you! Back when I was a teenager you had to know Morse code to get a license, the one thing that kept one out of my hands (I never could memorize).

Yes, they control their spectrum but this uses bluetooth, not their spectrum.

Oh, god. Mel Gibson's 1990 Hamlet was awful. It was the most asinine thing I've ever seen. Shakespeare for people who really *are* dummies. Reportedly it was director Franco Zeffirelli's attempt to make Shakespeare "less cerebral" and more accessible to the masses. What a choice to try that with! The whole point of Hamlet is that he's so damned smart the only person who can really stand in his way is him.

My point was that you've got to find an actor who can give a knowledgeable performance. Not some meat-head action star stunt cast miles out of his depth. I'd rather watch Arnold Schwarzenegger Hamlet.

I think the best film adaptation of Hamlet I've seen was Kenneth Branaugh's 1996 version, although it is long, long, long at 242 minutes (to Gibsons' 134 minutes). Olivier's 1948 Hamlet is generally highly regarded, but it's too sentimental for my taste. Haven't seen Derek Jacobi's 1980 BBC performance, but I've heard good things about it. I've seen snippets of the David Tennant Hamlet, and it looks promising, although it's hard to shake the impression that it's Dr. Who playing Hamlet.