Yes, they should use the Roman numeral and call this Windows X. Apple did it, and it was cool. Then they could call their next version Windows 10 Plus, or for short, Windows XP. Businesses will jump right on that one.

Bingo!

I agree, most things don't need a video. I well-written set of steps is usually enough.

Even so, if you do have some videos, and they're on Youtube, you just need a wiki that can support hyperlinks --- which is all wikis.

Flash had a reason when it was created. Silverlight did not.

"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

--- JFK, 1962

So as the ultimate hipster, I will use desktop Linux and Windows Phone.

Compared to the Microsofty cacophony of yesteryear:

- Windows Starter
- Windows Home Basic
- Windows Home Premium
- Windows Professional
- Windows Enterprise
- Windows Ultimate

and that's just for the Desktop edition. I'll take a move in the opposite direction, hoping they'll eventually settle on a happy medium.

A programmer should be able to pick up another language in a matter of weeks and master it within a year. Do your best in whatever language you like or need now. While it's fun to talk about the pros and cons of different languages, the idea of being stuck in a language is silly.

DISCLAIMER: You may have to network socially to bypass those who rely too much on words in resumes. You may have to do a couple hobby projects. You may have to take a pay cut while an employer waits for you to get up to speed.

I don't know of any services. The only way I know would be to get my own gear:

1. S-VHS VCR. Even if your tapes weren't recorded in this higher-resolution format, S-VHS VCRs make VHS tapes look better.

2. Analog-to-digital capture card, like from Blackmagic Design or Grass Valley. Make sure it has an S-video input jack.

3. S-video cables. This cable keeps the brightness and color portions of the picture separate as it goes from the VCR to your computer. This is the best you can do from VHS. The only thing better would be RGB cables or some kind of digital output from the VCR, but no VCR has such outputs. The best is S-video, and only S-VHS VCRs have that. However, it is noticeably better than the standard composite cable, the single RCA jack, typically yellow, on most VCRs.

4. Time-base corrector (optional). The capture card might do this well enough. If not, this device would stabilize and correct the video signal. So you would connect your VCR to the time-base corrector, and the time-base corrector to your VCR --- all with S-video cables.

For your capture format, I guess you could go completely uncompressed, but ProRes is 10-bit 4:2:2 and already overkill for VHS.

Is anyone else unnerved by the short notice of passing asteroids? Anyone who finds themselves assuming that some agency has this taken care of?

On the one hand, I say, "Hey, it's 2014. We should see these months or even years ahead of time. Furthermore, we should have an asteroid defense system. Don't ask me exactly what. But it's 2014, man."

On the other hand, I say, "Hey's it's only sixty feet wide. How could we possibly have seen it much sooner in the whole sky surrounding the earth? We're not so advanced. I don't care if it's the twenty-first century. Look at global warming, how long it took to uncover Osama Bin Laden. Look at Windows, systemd, Slashdot beta ;)

I would be interested in the anyone's response to Lennart Poetterings rebuttal to the common complaints about systemd.

I'm too n00b to know who's right.

Judging from this description in an older story, I'm wondering why the Linux community didn't embrace depinit.

Just in case anyone else but me is having a hard time finding out what the book actually is, it's called What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions.

Slashdot: home of the best comment moderation system and the worst article summaries.

Last night I finally started reading an old book, HTML: The Definitive Guide, 3rd. ed., published in 1998. "HTML is a young language, barely five years old," it begins, "but already in its fourth interation. Don't be surprised if another version appears before you finish reading this book."

I smiled to myself. If only he had known that HTML 4 would stay with us for eleven years, and that when 5 came out, they said they wouldn't update the version numbers anymore.

But the book was right: another version came out before I finished it.

I liked the part about poetry. That rings true. I came to programming from writing. They have a lot in common.

Experience counts. It's wiser to hire someone with 25 instead of 5 years experience. I generally get better results from the elders, whether they are my server admin, plumber, or barber. The years round off rough edges, and they're just more relaxed. They may be grumpy, but they always seem ready to make a joke. In their work they are more methodical and deliberate. They seem to be working slowly, but they finish sooner. They're mainly just less frantic, less wasted motion, more thoughful. There's no problem they can't figure out, eventually. They also are more likely to be the ones to insist on doing the job right, or thoroughly, more than the customer is asking them to. They are more likely to describe something as elegant or know what the word means.

This obsession with youth is sort of like how everything's new "on the Internet." Eventually the gleam will wear off, and society hopefully will realize that it's better to hire old people, just like it's better to hire master plumbers, 60-year-old architects, and gray-haired graphic designers. Steve Jobs, for NeXT's logo, paid $100,000 to Paul Rand, who was 72.

I'm a web programmer in my 30s, but I use vi, psql, and --- well, that's about it.