Disagree. Venus had good conditions for life to emerge and also is a chemistry pot. Not seeing that on present day Mars.

Mentioned two already, Aldi and Lidl.

They've been particularly successful in penetrating countries that have traditionally suffered from a lack of competition, like Australia.

To be fair, once you've a few years of experience in a profession, almost no-one gives a crap about your education. Being able to demonstrate you can do a good job becomes more important. Certs become more important and that's mainly because some licensing agreements give the company discounts if they can maintain X number of certified professionals. Obvious exceptions excluded, like being a pilot for example.

Not that I disagree with your point mind you, and to add to it the over-commercialisation of education has been detrimental to it's quality.

Nope, Microsoft is going to let it wither and die a slow, undignified death as they drain every penny they can out of it.

It's been the strategy with their gaming software for years now. Buy up a successful studio, kill anything that made it successful, release half arsed sequels that are DLC'd, P2W'd and generally geared to maximise profit over enjoyment and when that is no longer working, sack any remaining staff and shelve the studio. Case in point, Bethesda.

They've already said they have no interest in making hardware but they still want branded hardware out there. So what they want is someone else to have the expense of designing, building and supporting the hardware whilst they control the brand.

It would be a mercy if they Old Yeller'd the Xbox right now, but they won't as there's still blood to drain from it and lets face it, the fanboys will keep paying because they're too invested, financially and emotionally to stop now.

The Playstation has the same problem with a few notable exceptions, Sony still does some decent games, they are still willing to piss huge sums up the wall and the Japanese government will never let Sony fail no matter how much they piss up the wall.

Libre office is fine for personal use, it's improved in leaps and bounds in the last 10 odd years. I'd recommend it to anyone regardless of skill or experience to get them off the MSFT merry-go-round.

The problem isn't for the home users, they've always been on the "bend over and take it" track when it comes to MS, it's just that now they've got some real viable options which will end up hurting MS but I digress... the issue is business users. For business users the problem isn't the software for the end user (word, excel, et al) it's not even the issues with supporting FOSS, it's mostly the back end. The costs of running an on-site MS Exchange setup is stupendous and not to mention that it's a huge vector for cyber attacks let alone the costs of running an equivalent platform, not even Google really competes with Exch/Office and that's just the tip of the iceberg (OK, a large enough tip on its own), it's really on the back end where MS has businesses by the short and curlies. Whilst I agree businesses should be better protecting themselves against predatory vendors, it's not such a simple thing to do in practice.

I really think we need another serious probe into Microsoft, in fact the entire licensing industry. Shine a huge light onto it and we'll be horrified at what we find.

No. This is nonsense. Nuclear fuel production has a massive ecological impact. Nuclear only looks good when compared to coal. Stop doing that.

8 years ago, I may have agreed with you. Now you literally have a secret police force nabbing US citizens or whoever they don't like off the street and deporting them to a foreign prison without trial.

Your highest offices are openly ignoring the law... what makes you think they'll stop at shooting just one US citizen (and posthumously declaring them a traitor with no evidence after the fact). They're already sticking guns into the faces of preachers. Ironic as a German Preacher named Martin Niemoeller warned us of just this kind of thing 90 odd years ago.

That's really more akin to fascism rather than socialism, by which you of course mean Marxism.

A simple cow analogy,
Communism: you have two cows, the government takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism: you have two cows, the government takes both and sells you some milk.

With the US, this really is a problem of it's own making. Not just with Trump, he's just the ultimate expression of a deep seeded problem in the US. The notion that someone who is poor or doesn't have enough money is in that situation entirely due to their own fault. That the poor deserve their lot. Makes people who benefit from it feel better however it's a negative feedback loop as costs rise (in no small part due to Trump) those who were previously comfortable start to suffer and struggle to reconcile this with the philosophy that it's OK to hate the poor because it's their fault they're poor.

Whilst I agree that it's not unique to India, it tends to be endemic across Asia with the notable exception of a few ex colonies like Singapore and the Philippines.

However as an Australian who's lived in Britain for the last 10 years, I think you misunderstand British politeness. A Brit will definitely say no to you, even directly. However the penchant tends to be for understatement. "I don't think that's a good idea" is a nicer way of saying "you're utterly daft for even thinking it" or "Things didn't quite go according to plan" means "it resulted in the death of a family of 4".

It's called astroturfing. Fake grass roots.

I dunno, balloon cities .. how stable is the atmospheric layering? We may be better off inhabiting space itself in modular space stations built from asteroid minerals. I would not be opposed to trying it though.

Uhh,, are you crazy?? It's got an atmosphere with clouds of pure acid that snows lead sulfide on a surface that'll melt you face in 5 seconds. That said, we ought to do it.

If you need a rationale, you already failed. Going to Mars if fucking cool, next level amazing. It's another fucking planet. A wandering point of red light in the sky our ancestors could only wonder about. How the F can any "rationale" be more compelling than that?

That got dark quickly. Maybe you should stop fantasizing about murder being the solution to your problem? There's ALWAYS alternatives.

I would cooperate with law enforcement if they're investigating serious (violent) crime. All stupid "omg, privacy" excuses are pathetic. If it was your family member that would be victimized you'll be angry at everyone who didn't help.