Not on that, but it was collapsed to just the title of the post (at least for me). I skipped over it earlier as an inane Idle post, but looking over again decided to expand the title to at least RTFS.

Why are you guys trying to kill polls?

Which is the beauty of the Firefox addon system. The baseline browser as a framework is extensible in an almost unlimited fashion, which should allow them to keep the default web browser lean and focused on browsing the web. If someone wants add chat client or "read it later" functionality, users can choose to install that addon. Mozilla could even show a "suggested addons" page the first time a user runs Firefox that includes stuff like Pocket and the absurd Firefox Hello crap. For that matter, they could even bundle addons for things like Hello, making it easy for users to remove addons they have no interest in.

But no. Mozilla is filled with people hell-bent on destroying Firefox the web browser and and replacing it with Firefox the Platform. I'm just waiting for them to start decommissioning the addon framework, which they've already started by requiring all addons to be signed by Mozilla, or they won't be loaded. It's sickening.

Unfortunately, somebody must have actually finished the game in order for it to be eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame.

Um... that's based on GDP, not land area. Last time I checked, Canada wasn't the same size as New York state.

And on Windows you don't even need a vulnerability in one of the whitelisted programs. CreateRemoteThread will gladly give you an execution context in another process you have access to. From there you can LoadLibrary or CreateFile or whatever other evil things you might want to do.

Agree with pretty much everything you said, but especially

I've tried to use Powershell as my shell but it just doesn't feel right; however, I've written several scripts for it for file manipulation and system administration tasks. It's also nice for administering Microsoft stuff like Exchange, both as a shell and scripting engine.

Well, when you're typing out Unix commands on an teletype that's 80 characters wide, creating short options first made a lot of sense.

Powershell's approach is more verbose, but it's also a little more readable (same as long options in Linux), especially when you're dealing with things more complicated than "copy a file", such as "create AD forest trust" or "reconfigure Exchange retention policies". That said, I still tend to use short options by default.

One thing nice about Powershell is that you can truncate options as long as they're not abmiguous. So you can make -Recursive be -Rec, or even -R, as long as there's not also a -Recreate or -Recover options. That seems to be a nice middle-ground.

Not only will fewer people see the poll and have a chance to participate, but it becomes an out-of-sight, out-of-mind issue for everyone else. I usually see the poll and vote pretty soon after it's posted but like to go back to see the results and read the comments after a few days. Without the reminder always there on the sidebar I'll never remember to do this.

Stories come and go on a daily basis. Polls last for weeks at a time. It seems prudent to separate them on the page.

Do you (or anyone else) have suggestions on how to get started on this? I'm still pretty early in my career and have taken some of the easy obvious steps to saving, but feel like finance planning is full of dark and twisty passageways (likely filled with grue).

Is it worth trying to find a local personal finance adviser you can sit down with face-to-face? Where would you look for someone like this? Suggestions for types of investment and retirement accounts, and how much you should put away?

I realize it's a deep subject but appreciate any comments. Thanks.

Ha ha, loved that.

Yes and no, I think. I don't think icons generally get classified as skeuomorphic since they just represent targets or classes of entities. Another poster mentioned the Android clock icon -- I don't think the Windows 7 date/time icon was made to resemble another material or object -- it's just a pictogram that clearly presents the idea of a calendar or clock. Compare that to the Android clock icon. I suppose that sort of looks like a clock if you already knew what it was, but it's certainly not clear. In my view that icon has failed at expressing any clear idea and is therefor a failure. Which one do you think a new user would more quickly identify as the way to bring up a date/time widget?

Compare this to one of Apple's absurd interfaces. This day calendar program is clearly trying to emulate a physical day calendar, complete with leather stitching and yellow lined legal paper. This is what the current trend has pushed back against, and that's probably not entirely a bad thing. You can take emulation like this too far, and Apple almost certainly did with their suite of apps.

But I don't think the current "UX" trend has as much to do with a severe over-correction to skeuomorphs as it has to do with flat, near monochromatic designs being a lot simpler to scale and make look uniform on a wide variety of screen sizes and pixel densities (as others said). It might be easy but it looks like shit and is about as usable.

I hadn't seen them laid out so clearly before, but now that I have, all I can say about the original Windows 10 icons (middle row) is oh my god.

Seriously, what happened here? When did we go completely off the rails and let pea-brained designers start throwing this kind of bullshit around, calling it "modern" and "clean". No shit it's clean -- that recycle bin probably took all of 30 seconds to draw with the Line tool. No, faster probably, since they were just pulled out of the Windows 1.0 archives.

I look at those three rows of icons and truly cannot fathom why someone would ever choose (especially) the second or third rows. They're low contrast, simpleton drivel that doesn't even do a good job of representing the objects they're trying to depict. Whoever created them should be fired, along with the manager that approved them.

In fact, Microsoft would be well-served by firing the whole damned "UX" group and replacing this new-age cargo-cult mentality of user interface design with a scientific approach of usability studies and research. You know, that thing they used to do. Let Google and Apple waste their time with that hipster crap if they want to -- normal people and business just want to get shit done and you don't get off on the right foot to do that by making all your icons indistinguishable pale pastel blobs.

I disagree strongly that "culture" (a word that's constantly misconstrued by executive trying to justify a horrible workplace) has any bearing on whether an open plan is successful. It much more strongly depends on the type of work being done.

A police bullpen or typing pool may be fine in a big open area. The same goes for sales and marketing types. However, if you're talking about any work which requires stretches of concentrated effort then it's just a Bad Idea. Engineers? No. Programmers? No. Accountants? No. Any kind of researcher? No.

This is the only real reason they're pushing this model. It's a clear terminus of the erosion that's led us from offices, to cubicles, to the little half walls, to just acres of desks. Well, that, and wanting to look hip by copying other companies who are doing it.

He's the guy that makes sure Natalie Portman (naked and petrified) remains covered in grits and that they're always piping hot.

That's going a bit far. Javascript definitely has some kludge in the corners and along the basebords. The wallpaper also needs to go.

Not many lanaguage need a book called "the good parts" (great book, by the way). Or, a little more tongue-in-cheek....