The 80s suffered too much from political correctness because of concerns of "TV violence", etc. The real renaissance happened in the early 90s when a lot of shows were created that no longer talked down to the audience like so much of the 80s fare did. Shows like "Ren and Stimpy" broke a lot of taboos and opened the way for a lot of really good stuff that wasn't just dumb kids' stuff. OK, maybe it was still dumb, but it was _good_ dumb.

"The Jetsons" only lasted one season in the 60s. They made more in the 80s, keeping the show more or less the same. The new episodes weren't as good as the original, but they were at least less dated.

The original Flintstones show ran in prime-time for 5 seasons, but has been in reruns for the 50 years since. However, they made a number of spin-offs for Saturday morning, most of which were not very good (perhaps none of them were very good, I don't recall). I think they were making new Flintstones shows even up into the 80s, although I'm sure Wiki can tell you the details.

So you didn't watch Rocky & Bullwinkle and Roger Ramjet, or you were too young to get the Cold War satire?

Those shows were brilliant, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

There's good "Christian" music out there. The difference is that it made by accomplished and talented musicians who choose to make music with a Christian theme, because that's the kind of music they want to make. I think most Christian music is made by people who chose the medium to create the message, as opposed to people who had mastered the medium and decided to use it for the message. Of course, this is no different from any other kind of music... Sturgeon's Law law applies here just like everywhere else.

Remember the old Spider Man or Star Trek cartoons?

Yeah, having watched the 1960s version of Spider-Man was quite a letdown. It wasn't that good, and started really getting weird when Bakshi got more involved. On the other hand, the music was great and the theme song remains, in my opinion, one of the best ever.

The Star Trek animated series on the other hand was a different beast. Yes, the production values were really cheap, but the stories were generally very good, and the writers included several people who wrote for the Original Series, and other prominent SF writers like Larry Niven. Plus, it did have the original cast doing the voice-acting, which was a definite plus.

Poorly drawn, badly scored, badly scripted, and almost uniformly missing the hilarious innuendo and subtleties that were present in your typical 'toon from the nineteen-fifites and -sixties.

Warner Brothers cartoons and the successful Hanna-Barbera cartoons you mentioned were not typical cartoons in that era. The typical cartoon in that era _was_ "poorly drawn, badly scored, badly scripted and totally missing in any innuendo and subtleties", often a lot worse than what you see today, in fact.

It only seems different because we only remember the 10% of cartoons from that era that were actually good... you know... like the ones you mentioned.

TV quality does ebb and wane, but it really wasn't such a stark difference as you portray. There was a lot of crap back then too.

Well, that's appropriate because Windows 8, with its limited palette and ugly "Flat" UI looks like Windows 2.

NT 3.51 was one of the most stable OSes I've ever used, if not the most stable. NT 4 was still pretty good, minus the even number service packs. Windows 2000 was excellent, minus Explorer, which for me usually crashed within an hour of a fresh install. I always liked XP once you turned on the Playskool theme. Nothing since XP has impressed me. Just more bloat, and more effort to get it to look and act like it used to.

Ten will have a start button. How will it be different from Vista or XP?

It will be uglier, for one thing. You can count on that.

... but the machine used to create the version number was running on a Pentium.

Actually, the web has always worked a lot better if you consciously avoid sites created by "designers"

So, no Slashdot Beta then...

> I really hope it's real 3D this time, not just some stereoscopic trickery where you need special glasses to eat your hamburger.

Yeah, I hate when it's just pink slime on one side of the burger and blue slime on the other.

And don't forget the Christians, who were able to live under Saddam's regime. This is no longer possible and Christians throughout the Middle East are being driven out and/or killed. This alone doesn't mean we should have left Saddam in place, but it certainly is one of the things that needed to be weighed against the benefits of removing him.

>> The classic example is the broken window fallacy...

Hey, if it works in Ankh-Morpork it should work in the real world, right?