Because coding is an incredibly useful skill when you realize how much of the "real world" wastes time on mundane tasks which could be improved or automated. Especially if you're in a non-engineering background even the simplest of coding skills can put you far ahead of your peers.

Formatting is a pretty easy concept for beginners. No more problematic than other formalisms for closing loops, which will equally cause problems.

If email and cut&paste is messing up your indentation then you need to solve that problem first and foremost, not just rely on the fact that the language doesn't care.

You're confusing two different problems, namely locating a point source on a dark background, and wide-field imaging. The former can be improved beyond the diffraction limit, while the latter can't.

Oblivion was uncanny because Bethesda simply didn't do a very good job. They made everyone look ugly, had very lazy motion and physics, and made talking to these characters with a close up of their face a major feature of the game.
Look at other games from the era and you'll find much more realistic and convincing characters, and not just because they have lower red textures.

The energiewende is just a euphemism for scrapping nuclear power. No extra commitments to alternative energy were made, and it certainly isn't clear if any projects enjoy widespread support.

Maybe you should elaborate your argument instead of being so pretentious.
The popular GSM phones of the late 90s were candybars with numeric keypads.
In case you didn't know, you can still buy these phones, ranging from the most basic to relatively sophisticated feature phones. They don't run Smartphone OSs which require large touchscreens.

Furthermore there have been recent attempts at selling smartphone flip phones and sliders which were popular in the 2000s. The reason you don't see more is because they don't sell so well (probably because they don't make much sense).

It seems you're either lamenting the fact that they don't make phones that never existed in the first place or you're just clueless about what's out there.

'The form factor, for example, has largely standardized on the iPhone +/- some deviation in size."

That's a bit disingenuous. You have almost every vendor offering tiny 3 inch smartphoned and their range goes all the way up to 5 inches, with 6inch "phablets" filling the gap to tablets.

I don't see any lack of design variety either. Rounded or square, Metal or plastic, thick or thin, and soon curved screens are all taking part. You also have some very risky type of gimmicks, like waterproof phones and a smart watch.

And there are certainly quite a few players in the market. The big ones are the likes of Samsung Sony Motorola LG, whilst the Underdogs are the chinese brands like Oppo, Gionee and countless others

Grinding and turn based battles are what RPGs were originally all about. It was JRPGs which first pushed towards strong narrative.
Western developers/publishers almost completely lost interest in RPGs after the early nineties, and only recently have they made a comeback. Even so, the JRPG market is far bigger and more diverse than "Western" RPGs have been at any point in their history.

Provided the entirety of the end-user software is licensed freely. If not you may have to develop your own front-end or rely on some dodgy alternatives.

I find it petty to try and and construe my post as an ad hominem attack when I was simply pointing out that he was not infallible and Apple wouldn't be as successful today if everyone had treated his words as gospel.
The Cube was different: They tried something new and failed.

You can also integrate more functions on a plastic component (such as case, cushioning and clips), whereas the equivalent in metal and glass will probably require seperate parts which in turn have to be assembled together.

From an engineering perspective plastic is such an incredibly useful and durable material. The iPhone is a perfect example of designers forcing metal and glass into something for aesthetic reasons. If you want functionality you go with plastic.

*If* the NSA is monitoring you. If a government agency were to have access to a hypothetical extensive fingerprint database it may very well *start* monitoring you, based on some fingerprints they found somewhere.

Well, technically they only said it wouldn't be uploaded to any *Apple* servers.

That's what they claim. But even assuming this makes it secure, given the industry track record as well as recent revelations we have every reason to disbelieve this. The only way to verify the claim would be to review all hardware documentation and source code.