It explodes.

On our walk last night, my dog defecated while facing west. Clearly he's broken.

If I'm not a "real" photographer, I sure have enough people fooled to make a decent living.

> How is ubiquity of cameras making them inane exactly?

I don't mean to imply such a close cause and effect. I'm commenting that for whatever reason, we as a society are taking what is arguably a cool thing and turning it into something inane. It's not the ubiquity of cameras that's making them inane, it's the use to which they are put.

For every photo or video that makes headlines or brings down a crooked cop, there are millions of banal selfies or photos of burritos. It's just exactly as depressing as the popularity of celebs who are famous only for being famous, and for much the same reason.

I tell you, this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox -- we haven't seen any other civilizations because they all invented personal electronics, became irredeemably narcissistic, and civilization collapsed as a result.

There's something to be said for having a camera (no matter how feeble) with you at all times, but aren't we getting tired of pictures of food and blurry portraits taken in the bathroom? People are taking this great thing (a camera with you always) and making it inane. There will inevitably be a backlash. Personally I've stopped taking photos with my phone, except in emergencies (like for accident evidence) when I don't have a "real" camera on me.

> Rumor has it that Satya has personally delivered a massive smackdown to the management team responsible for Win8 fuckup. The user sat numbers were sad indeed.

This gives me hope.

You have a point, and Mint is on my list to try. I have an older machine I can use for evaluation.

Truly, the only reason I keep Windows around is for the Adobe creative suite (which I use daily). The moment Adobe ports Linux, I'm done with Windows.

Yes, I've read that. I'm waiting for the punchline, (like, you have to use gestures to log in! C'mon it'll be fun!) but what I've heard so far make me cautiously hopeful. I'm fine with 7 for now, but know I need to upgrade eventually, probably to 9 when it's on SP2 or 3, and when 10 comes out and is obviously a POS. And then, we wait until 11...

Yeahhhhh.... we're staying on Server 2008 until Server 2012 or some future version behaves in a reasonable fashion.

Must have: Useable start menu, (a button to dump us into the "start screen" was just plain insulting) a useable desktop, and the ability to not run any metro (or whatever it's called) apps whatsoever.

Important but not a deal killer: Put all the control panel functions back in the control panel. You can keep the charms bar for tablet compatibility, but I'd want some way to turn it off on a desktop. In fact, I would like a way to turn off all hot corners, hot sides, and swiping gestures while on a KVM machine. Registry changes to do this would be fine, as I would intend to do it once and never revert back.

...no.

Unless you finagle your way into management.

Wait, now that I think about it, we might be thinking along legacy lines. Perhaps the future is more like: managers with liberal arts degrees presiding over completely outsourced technical resources.

Maybe I should go back to school and major in art history.

Thank you. I didn't understand his response either.

...and I could possibly think of a few from that time, but they were rare.

I think I disagree. Read any Heinlein, Asimov, Smith, Anderson, Blish, Simak, Van Vogt, Cutner, during the "golden age" in the 1940's and 1950's, up to maybe 1964. Generally positive in outlook. A positive view of the future is not something Star Trek invented -- it was par for the course up until the mid sixties. If anything, Star Trek in 1966 was riding the trailing edge of that positive outlook in scifi, before everything turned dreadfully depressing.

Life does tend to imitate art, although the cycles are a few decades out of sync.

Anyone remember the seventies pre-Star Wars? You couldn't produce an SF film unless it had a downer ending. The magazine of fantasy and science fiction was full of depressing dystopian stories. Dangerous Visions, Last Days of Man on Earth, Driftglass... The book stands were loaded with depressing scifi. It wasn't a particularly uplifting time. I remember wondering at the time whether the industry go through cycles, where to differentiate yourself you have to write depressing fiction, and then everyone follows along, and then to differentiate yourself you have to go with, I dunno, a happy ending, and everyone follows suit, back and forth. Or whether literature and media tend to track some manic-depressive cycle of society. Or drives it.