I think you're right. I've been here a gawd-awful long time, and this latest abomination is by far the worst by several orders of magnitude.

I keep hoping to see an "UPDATE: Suckers! We trolled you good!" appear in the summary, but I don't think that's going to happen.

I wonder if the Romans felt this way as their empire declined and fell?

Anyone who buys into this platform is not paying attention. Not for the jokes about houses crashing, etc., but because it's not Windows. Seriously. History has shown again and again that Microsoft has one platform: Windows (or DOS before that). Anything else will eventually be killed off *by Microsoft itself*. Even for WinCE/PocketPC/WinMobile/WinPhone/whatever, the writing is on the wall -- Microsoft wants to get off that platform and on to a MinWin-derived, stripped-down mainline Windows system.

I don't want to have to replace all my home automation in X years when the upper echelon at Microsoft finally notices this thing isn't Windows and kills it.

As chance would have it, I was at MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club open house last night (Saturday 21 April 2012). TMRC, for those who don't know, is a well-spring of hacker subculture. Their model railroad layout is fully automated using homebrew control and interface hardware, and their own Linux-based software. Formerly it ran on adapted telephone switch relays.

Anyhow, their layout includes a scale model of the Green building, and yes, you can play Tetris on it. Granted, it's not as impressive as doing it on the *real* building, but there's something to be said for prior art. ;)

I'll see if I can't get a video of it uploaded.

That's (pardon the pun) apples to oranges. Rosetta is a software emulation of the PowerPC architecture. x86 virtualization is typically hardware based; it's just a task switch, While they *could* go that route, it's not what I was getting at. :)

For a change, that's not actually Microsoft's fault. When in "long mode" (the 64-bit mode), x86 compatible CPUs do not support "virtual 8086 mode". So, if you're running a 64-bit OS, it simply can't run a 16-bit process.

Although machine-level virtualization must get around this somehow. Which makes me wonder if that technique -- whatever it is -- couldn't be adapted to a more lightweight way to run a 16-bit process (without requiring a whole 'nother running instance of the OS).

Yeah... we could call the new legislation "Ban Idiotic Titles in Congressional Hearings".

Interesting, but I believe my statement would stand true even if that wasn't the case.

Right.

Nuclear power doesn't seem to be economically viable without government subsidies. The free market includes irrational actors, and too many people fear anything nuke-you-lar. At the same time, for the same reasons, most governments seem to be avoiding it -- it's bad for elections.

Agrarian society isn't going to happen willingly. Thriving civilizations don't decrease their energy usage. (Collapse of civilization would get us there, I suppose, but that's generally not a deliberate choice...)

Which leaves global warming.

I'm just one big ray of sunshine, aren't I?

I highly doubt you could find any commercial insurance company that would underwrite a new nuclear plant these days. Since I know you're staunchly against government funding of such, and I suspect it's impossible for any free civilization to deliberately curtail its energy use, I guess that leaves global warming, right?

(I'm stirring the pot, yes. :) )

Interesting. You definitely think differently than I do when it comes to maps and directions and the like. It might be revealing to explore this kind of thing more, but unfortunately a Slashdot subthread isn't the best place for that. :)