To be fair as an engineer; if you are not learning on the job you are being left behind.....I assume it is the same for doctors; I can't comment on generals though.

Sorry to burst the grey hair bubble there; but for those of us that started out on the ribbon interface....it is significantly better then the old way with all the options hidden from view. Having a set of commonly used tools available at all times is super useful. I'm sure that if you learnt on the old style of interface then you would be annoyed that things have moved....but well progress happens.

When using LibreOffice at home I am constantly having to google how to do stuff that I can find easily in excel. But hey that is likely because I use excel every day at work and calc once a week at most.

Wow you had Dr Flemmer as well. I feel your pain.

Serious question (from a non-American); can companies in the states increase the amount they charge you without notifying you first?

I'm in NZ; I have a 30/10 fibre connection; my provider (Orcon) wont tell me about new lower cost options but advertises them on their web site so I check once a month or so. But there is no way for them to increase what they charge me without me signing up to a new plan. I pay $85/mth for unlimited. But they could never get away with tacking on extra fees etc... If there was ever a charge above $85 for a month I would be calling and asking what the hell it was for, and look at moving to any one of 12+ of their competition.

I know a lot of /. is US based; but sometimes the way you do things is confusing to me.

Be careful, what you have there is a ninja not a daughter.

Already +5 or else I would have modded this up..... great for a laugh of on a Thursday morning.

Well if there is only one message then yes you could; 1 = DIE! 0 = null.

This may be pedantic but is it still a shark tank if it is filled with ravenous clowns; would it not be a clown tank?

Nothing is 100%; your fire hardened safe will not survive impact from a meteorite.

NZ (New Zealand...its a country, on the bottom of the world) is 1.5 times the size of Oklahoma; 500 quakes is a week for us.

GeoNet - Stats

Well that is nice for you; my work computer can take anywhere from 3 - 25 minutes to boot; and there is no way to tell which end of the frustration spectrum you will be inhabiting on any given day.

Some mornings I hit the button and go make coffee; the computer is there waiting on my return ~3min; other mornings I hit the button make the coffee, come back, go use the loo, come back, play some games on my phone.....and then can start work.

I have a 4th gen i5 but am hampered by the slow ass spinning disk that depending on windows proclivities for the day either gets hammered and everything grinds to a halt or could chug along happily. Windows is too variable in its operating speed; all my personal computers now have fast SSD's so it makes the work machine seem even slower.

Really you make it too complicated; get seeds - plant seeds (tells you on the pack when to plant) - harvest produce that makes it thorough - don't buy that type of produce while you are able to harvest it.

We are growing a bunch of stuff; we are currently harvesting tomatoes; courgettes; beans and cucumbers. And have been buying very little of other veg from the supermarket for the last few months. We buy a little fish and meat once a week. Food costs are low this time of year and will probably go up a lot during winter. Why does it need to be an all or nothing kinda deal?

no leave it at hypotenuse; it lends the appropriate amount of sillyness to the idea.

11) run flash game

But there is every reason to expect that I will no longer be able to choose from all laptops on the market and then just install linux on it like I have been doing for the last 15 years (much easier these days...everything just works TM); next year or the year after when I want to upgrade my laptop I will have to spend significantly longer looking to see which vendors supply an unlocked boot loader. If there is one available at all.

I am currently running an Asus Zenbook which is a great machine; I wonder if this will be possible in the near future, will I be able to buy a machine based on what I want or will I be restricted to 3 vendors and 4 models from each?

I have been running Ubuntu mostly; but from time to time have experimented with: Mint; Debian; Fedora; BSD; Tails and Qubes. And maybe a few others I can't remember. Are the days of trying a new OS for the weekend gone? (get spare HDD, load OS and test drive for the weekend, back to main OS HDD on Sunday night).