It sounds like they are the perfect candidate for the "Compatibility View List" GPO options available with IE 11 - you can define a list of URLs that should open in IE8 compatibility mode, where everything else runs on IE 11.

It almost fixes bad web sites that are engineered to work with IE8 and nothing else... almost.

I'm sure there are lots of people that would like to forget Vista.

Except for Windows 9x being the product name, and any actual version check API would return4.x.x instead.

Aside from that little issue with your argument, I'm sure you're completely right!

Even worse is the polluting of the server products with the same garbage. I don't need, nor want, live tiles on my domain controller. I can't "tap" things, or "bezel swipe" a "charm bar" on a damn VM.

What's difficult to detect for amateurs may not be difficult to detect for other space-faring nations. Plus, I'm sure that there's probably notification of a launch given ahead of time to other nuclear powers just to make sure they don't mistake it for something it's not...

Yes, there are smaller accidents that were below the threshold of my comment, and I didn't say you were a supporter of coal, but coal is the incumbent generation technology for baseload. Trashing the other baseload alternatives is effectively a vote for coal, which spews persistent poisons into people, animals, and waterways during successful normal operations; as opposed to nuclear energy which only causes environmental harm during an emergency or accident, and eventually the radioactive harm decays, over varying amounts of "eventually."

Is nuclear perfect? Oh, hell no. The companies that run these things need to be bitchslapped by a regulatory agency that is actually willing to bitchslap them. Personally, I'd be happy if the government drafted all the technicians and engineers that operate the ~100 commercial reactors into the US Navy, who has a good operational record of LOTS of nuclear reactors.

Would I be happier if we could go 100% wind / solar / biomass / geothermal? You're damn right I would be, since I work for a company that installs solar nationwide, and my stock options and restricted shares would make me rich in the process. But it's not realistic at this time - you need something to be exciting electrons when the sun is on the other side of the planet while the wind is calm, and I'd rather it isn't coal.

Regardless of if man-made climate change is real or not, can't we all get behind the idea that continually spewing burned-up mountain into the air is bad? Do you not believe that the elevated levels of airborne particulate downwind of coal-fired generation is something we should get rid of in favor of cleaner technology?

Climate change is not the only reason to stop converting mountains into dirty air that kills people.

It's true that it no longer just goes up the stacks and into the air, but it still goes somewhere - the amazingly toxic ash ponds. Which, by the way, are not exactly the safest and most sequestered thing ever. One dam breaks, and you've destroyed a river ecosystem, as happened in Tennessee.

except that there isn't a tree that is as energy dense as coal, which gives you a problem of scale.

See, that's the exact kind of logical thinking that seems to be in short supply these days. Unfortunately, it's the creeping idea of "we wouldn't want to offend..." that causes expression to be curtailed.

You touch on something I was just thinking - you replace "homosexual" with "Jew" and you get pretty close to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935.

Yeah, yeah, Godwin and all that - but it's remarkably similar in nature, and should be recognized for the abhorrent concept that it is.

They don't think that far ahead in the logic.

It's purely "Nuclear = bad. Coal = bad. Hydro = bad." and that's the end of it.

So you're actually suggesting that the two nuclear accidents that involve the release of radioactivity outside of containment has done as much damage to the global ecology as the gigatons of carbon released by burning coal, the massively toxic ash ponds, and thousands of square kilometers of strip mining necessary to keep digging up coal?

Are you serious?

Because microwaves don't travel for free through an atmosphere?

As solar tech gets better, it gets equally better for all applications. There would have to be some inherent advantage to an orbital installation that outweighs the humongous inefficiency of all the rockets, all the orbital construction, and the losses from converting to microwaves or lasers that you pass through 100km of atmosphere before converting into electricity.

That is incredibly unlikely without some other super-mega sci-fi project like a space elevator.