Sometimes the animal adaptation proves to be a problem for us (and the animals). For example, not everyone is terribly happy that coyotes have adapted to suburban living. A lot of people aren't that happy that bears have adapted to food locked in small cars.

Monoculture.

It worked for Windows security! Why not for American education?

I want Bill Gates to do for American Education just exactly what he did for design of computer operating systems and for compound document management formats.

Because everybody knows that dollars are a surefire benchmark of brain power, so we have proof that Gates is an uncanny supergenius, who should now direct that dollar stream to blast any obstacle for his genius vision of how we should live, and be educated.

Public policy? Twaddle! Smart people with money. That's the cure for what ails society!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox

Easy transfer, easy backup, and a gazillion parser/import/export utilities. It is more standards based than most anything you'd care to replace it with:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mail_Utilities

"Microcenter" are probably capable of .OST and .PST files - without a glance beyond the Microsoft franchise.

Really, we need to restore the understanding that if the law forbids something, it forbids paying someone else to do that thing. Murder is illegal, so it is also a crime to hire someone to commit murder. Government prying without a warrant is illegal, so buying the same information from someone else is just as illegal.

The NSA is not supposed to have any domestic operation at all. If they happen to capture a Citizens call at the foreign endpoint, that's one thing, but no call that stays in the U.S. should ever be seen by the NSA.

However, at this point, we would pretty much have to dismantle the NSA entirely and form it again to break their culture of lawlessness.

Oddly enough, once you remove the fluff, all you are left with is rounded corners and touch what you want.

"Old man, take a look at my life..."

No, those are something else entirely. The crimes happen when government agencies exceed their mandate or the limits of the Constitution. Of course, that puts the NSA firmly on the wrong side of the law here. I'm just waiting for the announcement that they are merging with the RBN. If they were at all honest, they would have struck the colors and hoisted the Jolly Roger by now.

Agreed 100%.

It is unfortunate that there is so much craptastic USB hardware out there. The sad part is how often it is decent(ish) hardware crippled by a terrible driver. Of course, it is sometimes crappy hardware papered over by the driver.

In a sense USB is a victim of it's own success. It was designed to allow for mass produced inexpensive interface chips. It allows for a lot of good and inexpensive hardware that just works, but it also allows for a lot of really cheap junk. Due to branding and market segmentation, it's hard to tell one from the other. The more expensive device might be better or it might just be over-priced. A lot of the no-name stuff is exactly the same as the premium branded stuff minus the expensive badge.

One thing USB did right was defining APIs for common device types. A surprising amount of USB hardware just works with the generic driver in Linux.

I wouldn't mind seeing an 'It just works' certification (optional, of course).

Or, better yet, raise enough money to fix a real problem.

Because the hardware (which Apple had nothing to do with) wasn't really there yet. However (as I mentioned elsewhere) a few ATMs actually did implement it back when Apple was considered an also ran. Before that, it was in about half of all sci-fi movies (where they didn't have to worry about the hardware). It was occasionally faked up mechanically by printing the option on the button. A static form of it even appeared with those crappy membrane keyboards.

That's not actually an uncommon situation. Some idea is all over the place but nobody implements it because the underlying tech is just not up to the task yet. Then someone takes a small evolutionary step with that underlying tech and suddenly the idea is reality. Then some asshole tries to claim it was all theirs.

That's because there were a bunch of other equally obvious mechanisms. The industry was essentially trying them all. They were mostly just GUI analogs of real world objects of various sorts. It just turned out that the slide to unlock caught on as a fashion. Fashion is not patentable.

Apple did none of the work that made the touchscreen useful. The problem with touchscreens was bulk, cost, and resolution. Apple fixed none of those. What they did was incorporate the new and better displays (made by others) quickly into their products. They integrated it all into their OS. That's really cool, but product development is not patent worthy.

I remember some ATMs in the '80s with limited touchscreen capability. It showed a few options and you touched the one you want.

I have actually written a touchscreen driver. It's not as messy or complicated as you think it is. Unless your hardware is crap.

Right wing affiliation? Are you kidding? That gets you audited these days - look at Dr. Ben Carson as an example.

Actually, some parts of it have been upheld by the Supreme Court. Barely. But it's not a tyranny of the majority because the majority of the people in this country are against it. One party pushed it through and now they're delaying parts of it to help stave off losing a lot of elections later this year.