He's right, you know. I've been using computers since 1961. Back then you could read the manual in an evening and then you know all the commands you needed to know. Now the systems are so complicated that only the Internet is big enough to hold the documentation. That's what makes discoverability so important in a user interface these days. Windows 8 is sorely lacking in that department. I have spent the last two weeks building a virtualized server on top of Windows 2012 Server. As a server it's just dandy. Hyper-V works beautifully; networking, backup, management tools are all great. BUT the new interface is still awful and the screens are just plain ugly. I've been working with a Remote Desktop connection to Windows 2012 Server from a Win 7 machine. The Win 7 side is beautiful and functional. The Win 2012 Server side is ugly and functional. It looks a lot like IBM stuff from the 60's. At least there's no confusion about which machine your working on.

Just bought a Dell desktop for my GF. We went to some trouble to find a Windows 7 machine since I find Windows 8 to be unuseable on a desktop. (I've spent some time with it since I'm setting up a new server using Win 8 and two virtual Linux machines.) There is no way I want a touch screen on my desktop. Can you really imagine spending a lot of time reaching over your keyboard and coffee to swipe the screen?

Sadly, it does now mean what the parent poster thinks it means. I gave up on this one when the Economist started using it with the new meaning. Also note the last paragraph of the Wikipedia article.

But in the Gregorian calendar the 13th falls on a Friday more often than on any other day of the week. (You can confirm this by checking the entire 400-year cycle. It's a small difference but Friday wins out.)

50 years and I'm (finally) more comfortable in Boston (USA) than London (UK).

Mod parent up. The Air Force Museum is outstanding. They have an actual hydrogen bomb (disarmed, I hope) that's the most ominous looking thing I've ever seen. They also have Bockscar, the B29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Once you get past the nuclear horrors there's an amazing collection of planes going back to the Wright Brothers.

Whoa! That's one of the weirder corners of the net. And there's even a second page.

I've been learning computer languages since 1961. I definitely gets harder. The first time I noticed it I was in my late 50's and was learning Web develeopment (SQL Server, ADO, html, Javascript). When I was younger I could read a manual, remember it, and get to work. With the Web stuff I was working with a circle of books on the floor around my chair. Now I don't use books any more, just Google. Part of the problem is getting older and not remembering details so well. Part of the problem is that there is SO much more to remember. Fortran had a dozen or so constructs to learn. Modern Web systems have thousands. My opinion is that modern programming systems would be unworkable without Google. Even the young people couldn't remember it all. Would I hesitate to learn a new language now? Probably not. I just did some work with Camel for the first time; it was slow but I got through it. So, all the advice about career paths is probably good, but if you like to code, I'd say you can still do it.

I've been using MDaemon happily for many, many years. The administration is simple, I've not had any problems with my address being blocked, the spam problem is taken care of by MDaemon's options and all together I'm a happy camper. I used to use their calendar app too but it doesn't play well with Android, so I switched to Google. There's a free version that you can try. I no longer remember what the restriction was that led me to use the paid version.

Thank you! Mod parent up!!!

What is this junk doing on Slashdot? Did anyone look at the source of this "information" before posting it? The Heartland Institute? Really?

“No, it’s not an X-ray,” she told Abbott. “It is 10,000 times safer than your cell phone and uses the same type of radio waves as a sonogram.”

It's news to me that sonograms use radio waves.

About time. We are fussing about whether this will be safe after 10,000 years and meanwhile we store the waste in overcrowded pools spread around the country and continue to burn coal, which is an environmental disaster all by itself, never mind what it does to the climate.

It's even worse than that. There are over thousands of tax jurisdictions to keep track of. Not all items are taxed in all jusrisdictions. There is software that will deal with this but it costs tens of thousands of dollars a year. That's no problem for Amazon but it's a killer for all the small businesses that sell on the Web. If you really need to tax them (and I don't doubt that we do) the only reasonable way to do it is to impose a national tax and distribute it to the states.