"Monoblock" or "the primordial monoblock" is a term for the presumed state of the presumed material comprising the presumed universe just before it presumably exploded. Everything, no exceptions, including space itself, all in one tiny... something, (tiny with respect to... something), that did.... something, and then [waves hands] Big Bang! Try this google search.

Science can trace the expansion of the universe backwards quite a ways, within the bounds of our understanding of physics as it stands and it makes sense, albeit some very strange and difficult to swallow sense. But go back far enough, and a point is reached where our physics simply do not serve to describe the previous state. At all.

I liken it to tracing a pitched ball backwards, not having been around to witness the pitch, but analyzing the arc of its trajectory and theorizing that the ball erupted spontaneously from the ground in order to arrive where it is. We can't account for such a spontaneous emission, but after all, hey, there's the ball, right? The immediate and obvious objection is that "but physics tells us that can't happen"... well, physics tells us the exact same thing about the big bang. That's why I consider the comparison apt.

I'm not saying the big bang theory is wrong; I'm just saying it is definitely unproven, and that there are severe and fundamental problems with attempts to prove it at this time. Tomorrow, we have new physics, and that may resolve everything very nicely. But until or unless that happens -- until someone shows how the "ball could erupt from the dirt, spontaneously or otherwise" -- personally, I'm reserving BB theory acceptance.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders: "never get involved in a flame war on Slashdot."

The job of an editor is NOT to just present stories that go along with the group-think of the day. We have Faux News and their ilk for that. Also, if they edit submissions too much "for clarity" the submitter will complain that's not what they wrote. So what are you going to do?

Well, would it be too much to ask for them to fix the typos and make sure the links work?

The bad thing about it is, firstly you have to open the file to find out what it is, and that's very inefficient if you have to do a lot of them. Secondly, not all files are easy to identify that way.

Yeah, and on Unix anything, even with no file extension can be executable if that bit is set. So file extensions won't necessarily save you from anything malicious.

Yes all OSes need a mechanism where you can tell the file type. The argument is, file extension is not that right place for it.

Actually, a properly implemented scheme would NOT require the user to be intelligent. You might want to show the user, hey this is a Microsoft word file, but what's the point in making the user say deal with the whole .doc vs .docx distinction? Case in point, we check files out of share point as doc, we upgrade them to docx format, but guess what, it doesn't work because I can't change the file extension in SharePoint. All because of the stupidity of assuming that file name should be welded permanently to file type. Crazy stuff.

There is nothing wrong with file extensions to hold this information, or at least there wouldn't be if the computing universe was more geared up towards preserving it in various copy scenarios. In fact is say file extensions are definitely the RIGHT spot for it, it's just that the rest of the universe needs to catch up with it so they are preserved in all cases.

3 characters is an awful, error prone, non user friendly hint. Better the OS analyses the file on a more reliable criteria to tell you the file type in a different column.

That assumes a lot. It assumes the user has knowledge of the thousands of extensions in use and what they mean, and that he knows what app they are mapped to.

I could make a political point about how kickstarter and its kin are a response to laws that limit risky investments by all except the wealthy and the effect of "the closure" in Venice in the 14th centuary.

That sounds interesting; go for it.

"Apple has not shipped a single API on Mac or iOS written in Swift. "

Apple has specifically designed Swift so that if the day comes that they are writing APIs in Swift instead of Objective-C, YOU WON'T EVEN KNOW. They have the same internal object model and memory layout. They are basically the same language with a different syntax. (Not quite, but it's not too far off).

And while Apple might not have declared Objective-C dead, people who've seen how Apple operate before can clearly see the writing on the wall.

To some extent it's true you can learn syntax in a few days. HOWEVER, learning to think in a paradigm is a different matter. How long to pick up Scheme syntax? An hour. How long to change your brain to think in Scheme, and not in C/Java/C++/C# ? Well that's a whole different matter.

The [[[][]]][] in Objective-C are an extremely simple concept to grasp. The same can't be said for all the >< in C++.

LOL, you just gave me deja-vu about my previous life as a C++ programmer.