I blame Apple and the iPad at least in part for stuff like this. In the iPad world, if you remove an app, then your files associated with that app will indeed disappear and cease to exist. They've done a lot of work to try to make it appear like there is no file system. This creates huge problems when you want to share a file between 2 apps..

I think a lot of the productivity gains came from the lack of WYSIWYG support. When you can't actually see what the output is going to look like on paper, you spend a lot less time futzing around with the layout and a lot more time just typing up the document. The fact that it's so simple is what allows you to just get to work and get your job done. Also, there was no other programs running in the background. Which meant that there wasn't emails, chat messages, and other distractions constantly drawing your attention away from what you're really supposed to be doing.

I guess I'm advantaged over today's kids because I grew up using WordPerfect 5.1, and we learned that using shortcut keys was basically the only way to get things done. The WordPerfect Keyboard Map sat at the top of every keyboard in my highschool. Sure you could do stuff with menus, but we learned on the first day of class that you should do as much as possible using hotkeys.

I don't think a mind meld with computers will even be the desired input method ever. The QWERTY layout has been around for 140 years. I don't think there's any reason for it to change. There are other input methods, but nothing that matches the speed and consistency of a skilled typist. Remember, the keyboard is not simply a tool for entering English words. It let's us communicate all types of information with the computer. Simple key combinations can be used to express many different things to the computer. Also, I can type while looking out the window at the trees blowing in the wind and still get the correct output to the computer. I think that a computer trying to read our brain signals would get very confused with all the "noise" in our heads. They have enough trouble just trying to get speech recognition working in a quiet room.

Very much agree. When I went to school, it was all WordPerfect and Quattro Pro. For programming we did QBasic and HTML/Javascript. But it was using Netscape Navigator where people frequently used frames and document.layers. I basically had to forget a whole bunch of stuff to be able to relearn the current way to do things. I was lucky in the sense that the teachers at my highschool taught us how to figure out how to do stuff on our own by telling us to read the documentation or search around the menus to find the functionality we needed. Whatever they learn will be wrong by the time they get out into the work force. The best you can do is try to teach them how to figure things out for themselves.

Most of the art classes I've taken in school really didn't allow any free expression. Most of there were something along the lines of create a copy of what the teacher does. Music class is the same. We just played sheet music. We didn't actually get to create any music. One time in highschool I got to do some art that was actually expressing myself. We had an artist come in, and they taught us how to do sculptures. We were told to do whatever we wanted. I think that was the only time we were actually allowed to do something original.

Even as somebody who has kids, I think this is fair. Why should someone be entitled to more leave than somebody else just because they chose to have children. My dad took a few months off between jobs once, because he had savings and was looking for a particularly good, high paying position, and he really enjoyed it. Got a lot of stuff done, and went into his new job very well rested. Even a week off here and there isn't enough for most people to really relax. We spend our entire working life without a chance to truly rest.

We have paternity/parental leave in Canada. and I don't think it helps much. I know very few men who have taken more than 2 weeks when their kid was born. I think I know exactly one guy who took the full leave (35 weeks here), but his wife was a doctor, so it made much more financial sense for him to take the reduced pay for. The mom took a few months off when the kid was born, and then he took time off after she had recovered. In the name of equal opportunity, parents should be able to split the allotted time off and benefits, but it's not going to change things that drastically.

While I agree that this type of discrimination exists, you have to admit, it many STEM jobs, having somebody leave for a few months would be a pretty big concern. For many other jobs, it's not a huge problem to replace somebody when they need to take time off. For science and engineering, you are paying somebody for their knowledge. And in particular, you want to keep people around because they have gained a lot of specific knowledge about what goes on at your company. You can't just bring somebody in and transfer over that knowledge quickly. By the time the replacement catches up, a few months will have passed. And once the person gets back to work, it will probably take them a couple months to catch up on what's been going on.

This thing has way more power and way better connectivity than an ARM SBC. Try finding an ARM SBC with USB 3, DisplayPort, Gigabit Ethernet, and M.2 SSD support. This thing is small enough that you could substitute it for a laptop if you just wanted a machine to bring between work and home. I know a lot of people who have work laptops who never use them except at a fixed desk anyway. Just plug in the peripherals at home or work. Not than I'm a big fan of working from home, but for some people this might actually work quite well for the task.

For brick and mortar stores, you are absolutely right. I think chip and PIN is a pretty decent authentication method. But for it to really work, we need to get to the point that there's no mag stripe, and no number on the card. We should completely get rid of the legacy payment by mag stripe, or simply knowing the card number and expiration date. There shouldn't be an insecure alternative. Payments should either be authenticated through the chip, or through the card issuer's website. There should be ability for the retailer, online or otherwise, to obtain information that would allow fraudulent transactions to be made.

This is what's wrong with online payments. To make a credit card payment, the website should just direct me to the website of visa/mc/amex and have me verify myself, and transfer money to the merchant, very similar to how PayPal works. With phones being so ubiquitous, a similar thing could be done for brick and mortar stores. Pop up a QR code at the register, scan it with a visa app, enter your credentials, and the payment is done. We need to fix the system and get rid of these antiquated payment methods.

Zealotry is probably the main issue. By and large, sports fans aren't that bad of people. But it doesn't take much searching to find evidence of riots and destruction from hard core sports fans, or people using sports as excuse to be terrible people.

I think that most religions are good and that very few of them condone these acts. It's just that you won't see it on the evening news. Because it's not exciting. I go to a baptist church, and I cringe that the Westboro Baptist Church uses the name "Baptist". It's basically the complete opposite of what they teach at my church. Everybody I have met there is very accepting of and they don't judge people. It's a nice change from the Catholic church I grew up in. They make a huge effort to apply the teachings in the bible to how to live your life as a better person. While I don't think that religion is required to be a good person, I think there are plenty of churches out there helping people to be better people in all aspects of life.

If I was using this password system, wouldn't having the file give the person who obtained the file a list websites/systems that I have access to, along with my user name? I'm not sure if that's such a great trade-off. Currently I have a password safe (keepass) that keeps the entire password database encrypted until you enter the correct password. The password I have is quite long, and would probably take a huge amount of computing resources to brute force.