Yeah, no, not really, though. Most consumers are a lot less idealistic than you seem to think. Even most of the guys who scream "this time they've gone too far! fuck 'em" eventually find a rationalization to stay with Windows.

The reasons for buying Windows 10 are pretty much the following:
- 'It was bundled with the computer'
- 'I needed the newest version of Windows to run x'
- 'They told me I should't use XP anymore and this was the Windows they sold.'

And then there's also what seems to be the largest part of consumers: the part that actually likes Windows 8.

Metaphorically speaking: yes. People should be prosecuted.
But let's not become barbarians ourselves.

If you can settle for just updates, filehippo's update checker works well to get quick links to the original installers (also of older versions) for programs you have already installed:
http://filehippo.com/download_... (The newer versions are supposed to be sucky).

Secunia PSI 2.0 is also good: http://secunia.com/vulnerabili... -- 3.0 was more noob-friendly, last time I checked (Yes, I realize the irony of purposefully installing older versions of programs created to update software to their latest version).

They don't help in installing or uninstalling software and only Secunia supports automatic updates for some programs, but keeping programs up to date under Windows using these tools is at least acceptable.

Yeah, the coin doesn't seem to be doing well: http://coinmarketcap.com/asset...
It's not on any exchange, either.

Man, that was the least confusing part of your post. At that point I was still wondering how many Slashdotters own colleges.

After understanding what you wrote, though, it is indeed a solid easy strategy. You don't even need to have drives in the systems of your colleagues or family. Just place a NAS in their network and put BTSync or Syncthing (FKAPulseFKASyncthing) on it. With BTSync there even is a hidden method to create an encrypted key so that the data on the 'untrusted' nodes is only there in encrypted form: http://forum.bittorrent.com/to...
Syncthing is actively considering adding this feature: https://github.com/syncthing/s...

I haven't tested the BTSync encryption yet and am not aware of how secure it is, especially considering that BTSync is closed source, but this approach seems to me to be the future of small scale offsite redundancy (and of ad hoc file sharing in general).

OTOH: I think a lot of people see affordable stereoscopic consumer VR as a serious market, at the very least for gamers. This time, '3D' may actually stick.

Considering that most photos aren't shared face to face anymore, there might even be a reason to make '3D' photographs and movies.

I'm not sure that improves your position.

I never said that.

I did.

You forgot the start of that sentence: "They have agreed to merge their two organizations by mid-2015 and set up an as yet unnamed organization ..." (remember what I said about your knowledge of the meaning of the word 'merge'? I'll help you. Replace 'and setup' by 'into' and read the sentence again. Remember that it was a reporter who wrote the sentence.)

The key point you're missing is that the XKCD-comic is about a third party creating a standard. This is about two parties already solely responsible for their standards agreeing on a single standard. Whether or not that is a new standard or one of the two existing standards doesn't matter for the resulting count of standards. It's not as if the new standard will be competing with the old ones (as is the case in the XKCD-comic). The old ones will obviously be abandoned, ergo: fewer competing standards.

I'm not familiar with the 'Android' wireless charging standard. Is it new?

Yeah, the 'jitter' is almost certainly not caused by CPU interruptions from other processes (on a HTPC).

What you need is a video player that uses a dedicated D3D drawing surface (if you're on Windows) and either a frame blender/interpolator (MadVR smooth motion, SVP, although this is definitely a workaround), or better yet, a video player (MPC-BE / MPC-HE) or renderer (madVR) that matches the refresh rate of the display with the frame rate of the source content.

The latter is the best option, but your display needs to support slightly exotic refresh rates.

Warning: after having experienced perfectly smooth video playback, you will be spoiled for life.

I'm pretty sure those don't exist.
Maybe 'warning-may-contain-occasional-science' channels. But 'science centered'? No.

You have no idea what the word 'merge' means, do you?
You just wanted to karma-whore by posting an irrelevant XKCD-link. Shame on you.

Don't be silly. It's not as if GlobalFoundries is putting AMD at the back of the line.
They just haven't been able to keep up with TSMC technologically (GF couldn't promise to deliver 20nm or 16nm when TSMC could), and they probably wouldn't have been able to if they were still a part of AMD.

The only big difference is that it would have been a pretty hard sell to have your GPUs be produced by a third (technologically more advanced) party instead of in your own (struggling) fabs.

How cunning.
What's next? 'Your mom'-retorts?

Oneliners can be very insightful or completely ridiculous.

There can be no end goal.

1. The concept 'goal' requires the concept of time (or: transitioning between states) and the concept of objective desirability, as it defines a set of reachable states that are more desirable than other states (more fully: an ordering of states). Both are, to me, not fundamental but emergent elements of the universe.
2. The target state(s) are necessarily goalless (or they wouldn't be the most desirable, that is, unless you allow the 'end' goal to change between states).

Let me put it like this:
Suppose there is a big red button hidden in the desert somewhere and that pushing it is the end goal. Suppose we find it and push it.
Then what?

Push it again? Game over, thanks for playing? Cop-out 'transcendence' to next level with new 'end' goal? Transcendence to next goalless level in which things just happen for no reason and all states are equally desirable?

Don't get me wrong: we can still have subjective temporary goals. Just no 'end' goal.

Hehe, thanks for the chuckle :-)

I'm doubt that the takeover of 'tablet culture' will be that complete. It is very true that the capacitive touch screens have spurred a huge development in UI design when it comes to having big targets, little clutter and sensibly using gestures, but these principles aren't really new. They just became necessary elements because of the lack of input capabilities, precision and invested effort of the target market. At the same time we're also still seeing many, many suboptimal workarounds to deal with those properties (cursor positioning, slide-in panels, long press, double tap, triple-tap, auto-correction, Swype, etc.). Applications that are even slightly complex benefit greatly from having a pointer and a keyboard and I predict that these applications will exist side by side (or even as an integrated whole) on convertibles as consumers and application developers slowly rediscover the ease of having those input capabilities present. The apologism for the issues present in people's new tablet (and hopefully smartphone) toys will slowly wane when that happens.

I'm sure there is some analogy about men fucking women and men in there, but I'm not sure the imagery would clarify my points above ;-)