You don't have to hide the extensions in order to make the GUI not change them. Just prevent the user from editing that part of the filename.

You are describing some sort of standard for magic cookies. This could easily be merged with the existing use of magic cookies.

There is however somewhat of a standard now: the first 4 bytes are a 4-letter code for the file type. Lots of image formats, in particular, use this.

Unix-like has stupid warts too, try creating a file named "-r" in a directory full of important sub-folders then delete it.

  % rm -- -r

Or bypass the problem completely by using a USB microphone. These digitize the audio right next to the microphone proper, with everything floating at the same voltage so nothing substantial is picked up betwen the air pressure sensor and the A-D converter.

Bluetooth headsets work great for this, too. Most current generation laptops already have the bluetooth central-role radio onboard. Or get a cheap low-profile bluetooth dongle.

4. PC/laptop microphones suck. I don't know why no one bothers to test them to the same level as your average cheap dumbphone speakerphone. They pick up all kinds of system electrical noise, ...

The problem usually isn't the microphone. It's the way it's wired (per the standard) and the way the desktop/laptop is powered.

PC microphones are wired UNbalanced: They have a signal and a ground wire, rather than the + and - signal wires and everything-but-desired-signal cancelation of the balanced wiring setups typical of professional microphones.

Laptops typically use power supplies that are not grounded, so they don't require a three-prong outlet. This usually ends up with the stray capacatance to BOTH sides of the line wiring capacitively coupling equally to the laptop "ground". That means the "ground" of the laptop is at half the line voltage - about 60 volts of AC (a rotten approximation of a sine wave plus lots of other junk it picked up at an assortment of frequencies). The capacitance is substantial - not enough to shock you if you touch the laptop and ground, but enough to feel a buzz if you rub your hand lightly across a "grounded" metallic part of the device.

Plug in the unblanced microphone and hold it, put the headset on your head, or just leave it sitting on the table. The "ground" is at 60V and you are driving maybe a couple MA of it down the shield wire. The voltage drop of that current (along with any other pickup) adds straight onto your audio input. The best microphone in the world will perform horribly if hooked up this way.

Try this: Unplug the laptop and let it run on battery. Notice how almost all of the noise disappears. You can also get rid of most of the noise by tying a decent ground onto the laptop. (Unfortunately, many meetings last longer than the laptop batteries...)

Plug in a VGA monitor with a three-prog power plug, which grounds the case of the laptop via the shield and the two hold-in screwd. I've done that without actually hooking up the monitor (which would have disabled my laptop screen) by adding a couple of the nuts scavenged from another DB connector as conductive spacers so the actual signal pins are not quite into the plug. And done this on a docking station, so the laptop headset was quieted when the laptop was docked, even though I used none of the docking station features except the power input.

Make a second cable with a three-prong plug to bring a ground up to the laptop. Green wire from the third pin to a screw into or clip onto such a chassis ground point.

Or bypass the problem completely by using a USB microphone. These digitize the audio right next to the microphone proper, with everything floating at the same voltage so nothing substantial is picked up betwen the air pressure sensor and the A-D converter.

The number of grammatical cases is irrelevant. Question: What's the difference between a grammatical case without stem changes and a postposition (opposite of a preposition? Answer: A space.

  That which is challenging, apart from stem changes, is the same thing that is challenging with helper words in general: when to use what with what. Picture a person learning English and trying to remember what to use with what. "I was scolding her.... over it? for it? about it? to it? around it?" "We were unhappy.... over it? for it? about it? to it? around it?" "She was dedicated.... over it? for it? about it? to it? around it?" And so forth. It's the same for people trying to learn which declension case to use in which context. But if the declensions are just suffixes without stem changes, then they're no different from postpositions. And often stem changes where they occur follow pretty predictable rules, often for pronunciation reasons.

First off, TFA is crap.

What SPECIFIC regulations does Tim Hoettges want applied to Google / Facebook? And WHY those specific regulations?

Is Grandma's Facebook page the same as a "blog"? Grandma probably does not run her own webserver. Is she using wordpress.com or something similar? Would they be regulated?

Where are the follow up questions?

Sometimes Google does something that has an adverse effect on a business. So he throws that into the first topic. They are not the same.

Still less than Apple. WHO CARES? But throw that in, too.

"... snoogly-googly ..." Better throw that in, too.

"... known in the SEO industry as the âGoogle Danceâ(TM)*." Think about that. An entire INDUSTRY has popped up because some business are adversely effected by Google changing its algorithms. Bad for A but good for B means A pays C to be placed higher than B. As long as A or B or C are NOT Google, what is the problem?

Dictionary definition of Yahoo: A person who is very rude, loud, or stupid.

It amazes me that technically knowledgeable people choose names that limit their success.

TeX is 3 letters from another alphabet!

Gimp means: Usually Disparaging and Offensive. A term used to refer to a person who limps or is lame.

24*7 = 168. Sleeping 130 hours leaves 38 hours for everything besides sleeping. Sounds like a male lion. Plus there are all those female lions hanging around.

It seemed to me that "Yahoo was stagnating for years" not because of employees working from home, but, overall, because of poor and insufficient management.

After Terry Semel, and before Marissa Meyer, there were 5 Yahoo CEOs who stayed less than 2 years each.

Nothing has changed, apparently. Marissa Mayer's second-in-command 'leaves with $109m' on being fired from Yahoo after just 15 months. The rapid changes in management continue, that time with a $109,000,000 loss for Yahoo. (What management arrangement allowed a poor manager, someone who was so bad he was fired, to make $7,266,666 per month?)

When Google stopped paying Mozilla Foundation $300,000,000 each year, Mozilla Foundation took money from Yahoo to sneakily "update" Firefox so that it uses "Yahoo search". Yahoo search is actually Microsoft's Bing search. A quote from Marissa:

"I'm thrilled to announce that we've entered into a five-year partnership with Mozilla to make Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox across mobile and desktop," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a blog post Wednesday. "This is the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years."

Now, somehow, the Firefox and Thunderbird user interfaces have been degraded. Firefox no longer allows making a duplicate tab from a tab; it is necessary to right-click on a web page to make a duplicate; that doesn't work well because it is necessary to find a place on the web page that is not a link.

Thunderbird and SeaMonkey composer now have the Save-As bug.

So, Microsoft paid Yahoo. Yahoo paid Mozilla Foundation to trick users into using Microsoft's Bing search engine. And now Mozilla Foundation is apparently allowing the degradation of its products. Apparently Microsoft wants Firefox and Thunderbird to be degraded that so there will be more users of Microsoft's browser and email software.

The sneaky tactic is not working: American Firefox users dump Yahoo and go back to Google.

Now: Yahoo's Incredible Shrinking Profitability In Its Core Business (Forbes, March 1, 2015).

Never tried SmallTalk?

"... they hired someone who they thought would bring a lot of Google inside information to them, ..."

Marissa Meyer was demoted, according to an L.A. Times story that has now been deleted, but is available at another site.

Quote: "But when Page took over as CEO in April 2011, he did not make a spot for her on his senior leadership team. Instead, she took over the company's location and local products, fueling speculation she would leave Google."

Do you think someone can be CEO and take care of a baby at the same time?

Back in 2006, before she joined Yahoo, there were questions about how much she thinking she could do, considering her work habits: How I work.

Quote: "I do marathon e-mail catch-up sessions, sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday. I'll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight. I almost always have the radio or my TV on."

Another, earlier quote: "I use Gmail for my personal e-mail -- 15 to 20 e-mails a day -- but on my work e-mail I get as many as 700 to 800 a day, so I need something really fast."