who asked for maintenance? I just want to be able to reinstall the same version I was already running before, if to do so I have to click a 'this is unsupported, you are on your own' checkbox then whatever, I just want to:

- if I have an old device and I wipe it, I want to be able to reinstall the applications I ALREADY HAD ON IT even if new versions are available (which would not run on it)

- if a developer releases a bad update (significant changes in functionality, crash bugs in my scenario, redesign, whatever), I want to be able to downgrade to the previous version I ALREADY HAD

developers would totally be free to say 'if you want this issue fixed you need to upgrade to version x.y.z', that's fine with me, but as things stand now the state of walled garden app markets is not very good: if in my job I told my customers that they have to force upgrade to every release (major OR minor) I put out and they won't be able to downgrade after doing so I would (rightly) go out of business very quickly.

that works until your old version has a major security hole and your choice becomes moving to the new version or risking being exploited: for example I've always run my ipad2 on ios5 until ios7 was released, then ios6, but now I *had* to update to ios7 due to the ios6 patch for the major security hole not being available to me (given that my ipad2 can run ios7 itunes only gave me the choice to update to that).

I completely agree with this article, I also think there are no reasons but greed to prevent itunes from installing old applications on your old idevice, I have an old ipod touch 1st gen that still works perfectly, have a lot of still very useful apps on it, but if something happened and I had to wipe it I would not be able to reinstall pretty much any of them due to the itunes store not allowing me to, it's a really bad state of affairs (for users) but then again that's what happens when you buy into a walled garden ecosystem, you are at the mercy of what's more convenient/makes more money for the company, not what's best for you.

what about a story when a kid became deaf? why isn't the deafness-measles connection more in the news? it's a lot more common than death as a side effect but of course not a lot of fun to deal with

thing is that measles doesn't have only death as a serious side effect, much more common is deafness and inner ear disorders, which make your life not a lot of fun, believe me, and those are not necessarily always linked in the stats (esp. considering that the risk for things like meniere's goes up A LOT if you've had measles as a child, but you might not get it until decades later)

if you have a set of slides there is no flexibility, if you are giving a chalk talk (and you actually know what you are talking about) you can tailor the talk to the audience, if you know a part is understood you can skip things, if you find a point that is more difficult to understand you can add context, provide more examples etc.

Slide talks are best at presenting facts, not that great at conveying information (since there is no flexibility), and quite bad at fostering discussion (since your audience generally won't be very engaged), so the decision here to stick to chalkboard talks seems like a good idea.

the same thing that you would do if you don't vaccinate and your kid gets measles and ends up permanently deaf, in the end it's about probabilities, the probability of measles having bad side effects seems a LOT higher than the probability of vaccines having bad side effects, ergo it should be obvious what to do.

This said people are not rational, the odds of getting run over crossing the street are much higher than a lot of other events people worry way more about...

Windows:
- microsoft security essentials
- windows firewall control (commercial)
- cygwin
- notepad++
- sysutils (procmon etc.)
- ultramon (commercial)
- launchy
- sharpkeys
- autohotkey
- visual c++ express
- 7-zip

Mac:
- little snitch (commercial)
- macports
- better touch tool
- keyremap4macbook
- iterm2
- alfred
- geektool
- menumeters
- caffeine
- xcode

Linux:
- whatever distro-specific set of packages gets me all the dev stuff
- (if needed) whatever distro-specific repository gets me extra packages (say, epel)
- kde
- xfce
- various personal customizations done over the years (xmodmap, ...)

Everywhere:
- firefox (noscript, requestpolicy, adblock, flashblock)
- emacs
- python / virtualenvwrapper / git ...
- bash customizations (powerline, bash completions, personal scripts)
- libreoffice and latex
- truecrypt
- virtualbox
- dropbox
- gimp

these are the baseline, beyond that it depends from what I am using the actual computer for

I played WOW from vanilla to cataclysm (I played the most during tbc and wotlk) but did not play MOP, from my perspective the most fun of the game was to meet people while levelling, grouping together and then having that develop in a friendship and/or starting a guild and so on.

When I left nobody grouped for anything during levelling due to the content being way too easy, x-realm dungeons removed any sort of incentive to behave (in the "old days" if you were a ninja or you ruined a party your reputation on the server would be immediately affected, meaning no more runs for you, kicked out of your guild etc.), and in general realms did not have much of a feeling of community anymore. After I left apparently they introduced x-realm zones which seem to me the worst of both worlds, you have people everywhere ( so competition for nodes / quest items ) *and* they are not from your realm, so you can't really interact much with them and there is no incentive again to be nice.

From my perspective if I could make decisions I would:

- remove automatic x-realm gameplay (if you know somebody on a different realm and you want to invite them, fine) so no x-realm raid finder or dungeons or bgs
- make all nodes or quest mobs drop shareable loot so there is no competition for them
- merge low-pop realms, create a couple of "special" low-pop realms players can be moved to if they so choose
- significantly increase the difficulty of levelling and dungeons, and I mean difficulty, not just lowering drop percentages of items
- increase the role of 'proving grounds' to make them more and more mandatory, every time you run through a proving ground you get a buff (say, lasting a day or two) and only with this buff you can PUG (raids or dungeons or bgs)
- any time you fly when you dismount you get a "can't pvp debuff" so you cannot attack players unless they attack you first

these IMHO would bring back more of a feeling of community and achievement to the game, OTOH I am sure they are still making money hand over fist with the current model so I doubt anything like this will happen, which is sad because there definitely was a period of time where wow was an incredible game to play.