... should be called "Somersaulting Shark"?

Respectfully, nothing "just works".

Funnily enough, I do believe that's the point on which we were previously relying.

You seem to be bringing a lot of personal snark into this. Not to mention, this was never originally pointed at any of the users (as you're quite clearly saying with your "inferiority" comments).

This was about Microsoft's plan to circumscribe search results depending on the user's "mood" and "intelligence"; what this implies in a future when people are already burying their heads in the sand, as it is.

And - I'll reiterate, seeing as you seem to have missed this the first time - this is about people who keep using these tools and
choose to not learn more about the tools they're using. Would you like me to say that I feel superior over people who refuse to learn things; when I don't refuse to learn things outside of my own scope? Would that satisfy your need to feel superior?

Furthermore, you comment about stating "Apple users are idiots who don't know a thing about their computers"; I would rather say that "people using Apple or Windows and don't know anything and refuse repeatedly to learn about their tools are idiots".

... much like people who can't seem to read comments with a sufficient level of comprehension, but with plenty of personal issues brought in to cloud said comprehension.

You sound like the person who doesn't understand that we diesel mechanics keep meeting so many truck drivers who can't comprehend what the truck is and is not capable of doing.

They buy into the iTruck hype and keep assuming that the damn thing will keep driving itself down the I-95 while they have a quick kip behind the wheel. And then blame us when they end up in a ditch.

Hence, me bringing up the point of the meanings being conflated. It, contrary to popular (indeed, encouraged) belief, doesn't just work. Hence, the diesel mechanics tend to think less of the truck drivers who haven't bothered to ever look under their hoods; and berate us for making the mere suggestion that they might consider doing so.

Okay, fair enough. So, what features of the Microsoft products is it that meets your needs better?

a) Because these people don't really get how to use these devices.
b) I think you're conflating grandparent's use of "It just works" meaning "don't think or customise, just use what we give you", with the idea of these Apple products really, genuinely "just working".

You're also right. Ever since I started supporting people with iPads, I accepted the truth of that.

You do what you need to do, people. Don't exercise your tiny little grey cells. You don't need to learn anything new. You don't need to stretch yourselves or make yourselves better. Just leave it all in our hands. That's better. Go back to sleep now.

Are you kidding? More like "once again, your opinion of Rob Enderle will drop to an even lower all-time low".

Use that search bar up top and see what the collective Slashdot has had to say regarding Rob Enderle in the past. I refer you, specifically, to the "Ferrari laptop", "Linux Geeks", "Microsoft Apologizes" and "SCO" incidents, for example.

I'd say "for fuck's sake", but I wouldn't want anybody thinking I said "for Enderle's sake".

I'm completely happy to agree with virtually every opinion I've scanned here so far. But my question is: what are they really going to do with this information? I mean... current population estimate of the U.S. is 313.32x10^6. I don't feel that living in a completely different country on roughly the other side of the world protects me entirely. ... but what are they gonna DO? Arrest EVERYBODY in the world? Jerk off to some crazy panopticon fantasy they have? Enforce slave labour to put together armies and workforces when it's time to invade Mars? I mean, what?

I take your point; except I think the scale slides back to "fucking bastard" away from "fucking awesome" precisely because according to History, he heeded those calls from the Dark Side. Just because you have mad skillz doesn't make you Good when you use your powers for evil.

He would've won, if he hadn't been such a bastard for the first 45 years of his life (or at least from when he started coding school systems to put him into classes with more girls until he finally released most of his executive power from Microsoft).

There are so many concepts nowadays, which could be taught to our "oh, the poor kids, won't somebody teach them real IT concepts, we need more girls as IT students" children, through some clever presentation.

We could Reboot or TRON so many things. I'd hoped the new TRON movie would try to be clever about things. The British SF magazine whose reviewer labelled the new movie's director as having no balls was right on the money, though - a closed system that hailed from the 1980s (and still ran, no less?). In an era with the Internet, Wi-Fi, virtual machines...

Sigh.

... 7.0 started locking up (consistently, 100% of the time) within 2 minutes on a workplace VirtualBox VM (under the same distribution I run at home). And I need a browser with a pop-up window due to the way our workplace allows access to the outside world.

8.0 didn't fix the lockup and started rendering text-fields in black so I've had to remove that from home.

My partner said she hated the black text fields so I took us back to the 6.0 still archived in /usr/lib. In the workplace VM I went back to 3.6.24.

On the up side, I can check 9.0 by the time I get a coffee and 10.0 probably by the time I finish my news read.

On the down sides, they'll probably both be broken too. I don't know if I can make the jump to Chrome or something else, I've been there since the Netscape days, damnit.

According to the bible, we're not allowed to know about good and evil. Which a) is pretty shoddy and b) how did this suddenly turn into being about "judging"?

Don't you mean "disobedience to Jehovah"?

Why not?

What about those who think the whole story of Jehovah is a shoddily-written piece of nonsensical D-grade fiction?

... you mean, like you did just there?

... Satan, the Lucifer, the Light-Bringer, the one who stood up to The God who keeps humanity down?
... wow. You almost make me wish the whole thing wasn't a poorly written, inconsistent fantasy like "Twilight" or the Harry Potter stuff.(*)


*: to all the HP fans about to downmod me into oblivion - I waited 20 years for the TRON sequel and the Green Lantern movies to come out. Broke my heart that they were badly written too. To all the Twilight fans - well, I really couldn't care less without surgical intervention.

There's a third side you've missed - the people who see the bible as having so much contradictory nonsense in it, we'd have to be a pack of mindless, attention-deficit-ridden intellectual-children to treat it as anything more than an historical and sociological curiosity.

Have I seen where it's led us? Communication satellites in space. The computer you're using to read this text. Vaccines and medical treatments so we don't die in childbirth or by the age of 30. (I don't drink myself, but) Wines and beers invented a couple of thousand years before Creationists claim our planet even existed.

The lesson of biblical history is that if you believe and act according to this stuff, you won't have much of a history. Nor, perhaps, do you deserve to.