Actually AviSynth does have a (very basic) UI: AvsPmod It's not the fanciest thing in the world, but it does the job. You're still writing scripts, but it comes with some nice options like error reporting and previewing, which make life a lot easier.

Or are they also doing HDCP just to make sure that if you want to record footage, you need to pony up the cash?

Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.

But as far as I'm aware there's still another platform that offers far higher technical capability, zero DRM, much more flexibility as a media center if that's your thing, and can even be upgraded when parts break or become obsolete. Call me back when the PS4 gets all that, too.

Maybe before we rush to adopt the Metric system, we should stop to consider the consequences of blithely giving this measurement system such a central position in our lives.

Both of them are hungry for all the personal data they can get their hands on, so that they can turn around and sell anything to you, and sell you to anything. The problem is that while I'm completely in control of my choice to have a Facebook account (read: I don't have a facebook account), my most recent employer requires me to have a LinkedIn profile. Moreover, a lot of tech firms won't even consider you if they can't find you on LinkedIn. It's a horrible site, but unfortunately everybody expects you to play the game.

Oh, so it's cool to treat non GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) as hard facts now? Awesome, then I'm declaring $5 billion in earnings this day alone. See? I wrote $5 billion on this post-it note, so it must be true! I'll wait until Yahoo releases the numbers that came from actual accounting work, and not the CEO playing around in excel.

I applaud the change itself, but stretching the timeframe to actually having a good system implemented will do Microsoft no good. I hope they're okay with rampant piracy, since it will be more convenient to just pirate a new copy of Office 2013, rather than fumble around with Microsoft's customer support for a day while they double check my name, phone number, social security number, hair color, and genome sequence to make absolutely sure I really am the same one who bought that license in the first place.

Well, not entirely. They're considered 'scumbags' because they have a habit of buying up small studios and either gutting them for the sole purpose of eliminating a competitor or forcing them to wring out their talents and IP's until nothing is left but a shriveled husk. Maxis, Bioware, Pandemic, Origin Systems; I could keep this list going for awhile yet. EA could make an entire game based around micro-transactions, but it would still be a drop in the bucket next to the greater crime of smashing every talented studio they can hit with their money hammer just to keep the little guy down.

As somebody currently attending a 'large, state-funded, public university', I can safely say that that how high the bar is set depends on the professor that students are assigned. The university I attend tries to mitigate this somewhat by forcing everybody to take a standardized writing test required for graduation, but the test is set somewhere around early to mid High-School level English skills, so there is definitely a low bar there. Whether or not the bar is lower than it was a decade or two ago: I cannot say. What I can say is that all of my peers with university-level writing skills always attribute them to a rigorous high school teacher or university professor who pushed them to get good, myself included. Those who were not lucky enough to have such a presence in their education still amaze me by including 'txt speech' in academic work, even into their Senior year.

I really mean it: I don't want to have to login to the internet. You keep trying to get me to do it with Chrome, so I switched from that, but now you're going to badger me about this for my phone, too? Sometimes I want to surf anonymously. Sometimes I don't want Site X and Site Y knowing that I'm the same person logging into both. And I can say for certain that all the time, I don't want to be tracked by you so you can present me with more "targeted ads" to give me a better user experience. Let's not even get into what happens if my phone gets stolen, and suddenly all my consolidated information is at some stranger's fingertips. There are far, FAR too many problems with centralized authentication, and I'm really getting sick of Google trying to force it down my throat.

Skype constantly drops calls. The average Xbox Live voice chat user really needs to shut the fuck up. Win win.