From what I've heard, the current UI for Windows was designed for a tablet, then forced onto desktops, but that's just hearsay because, as I wrote above, I only use Linux.

I'd love to see a single UI that works across...

You might, but I, at least, wouldn't because what you'd end up with was a UI that worked equally badly on all types of screens and wasn't really right for any of them. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, preferring to use Linux, but I will say that they're right in not trying to shoehorn a One True UI onto everything.

If the signal wasn't scrambled, all those naked blue-colored girls I saw on a TV as a teenager may actually be naked blue-colored girls... from SPACE!

After all these years of running SETI@Home, we still haven't found any extraterrestial TV signals carrying alien porn. :/

Actually, I would agree, except for where you claim that SpaceX has done nothing new.
For starters, NOBODY has taken anything as large as the first stage to space and landed it under power on earth. This is absolutely a first.
Secondly, they have the cheapest launches going. Why? Because they automated heavily. That has not been done.
Thirdly, no escape system has been a pusher system ever before (though boeing is attempting it as well).
Fourth, no capsule has landed under power on earth. If he succeeds at that, it will be a first.
Fifth. nobody has successfully launched a rocket with 28 engines. If Falcon heavy succeeds, it will be a first.
Sixth, nobody has built a full-flow staged combustion engine using methane. SpaceX is working on just that, with raptor.

Now, do not get me wrong. I support NASA, as does most ppl from SpaceX. BUT, to claim that SpaceX is not doing anything innovative, is just as wrong as those that knock NASA.

ASCII is more than 30 years old, it's 51 years old, and I'd bet $10,000 that it will be readable by nearly every computer in another 51 years. UTF-8 and UTF-16 are also highly unlikely to be unreadable anytime during my lifetime since they've been in use for 21 years and are open standards with many real world implementations.

You're probably thinking of floating platform as something that moves around like a boat, more likely it's going to be a converted deep sea oil platform like Broglio Space Centre or Sea Launch.

which we keep buying/making to prop up the ICBM industry with civilian dollars.

More like to feed dollars to Utah as demanded by their powerful senior senator. (ATK's Thiokol unit is based on Utah and Hatch has been seated since 1977 and his predecessor served from 59-77)

River birch survives just fine in my climate here in Northeastern Ohio, we average 1.5m of snowfall and regularly see -23C temperatures with dips about once a decade down to around -35C. We're at the extreme northern end of their range though so it would probably be a crap shoot as to whether it would grow.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/p...

Source packages are on that page, follow the links to the builds for the binaries.

IIRC at one stage it specified vorbis/theora as a baseline which every implementation should support but under pressure from apple and MS they took that out.

There are two inches of white space on the left an text off the screen to the right. Whoever programmed that Scribd site was incompetent as hell.

You could try river birch if you're subarctic.

Depends where in the UK you are.

Some areas have competion between virgin meda cable and openreach FTTC. At the other extreme some areas have no cable and phone lines so long/shitty that they can't handle DSL at all. Many providers have caps or "fair usage policies", especially in areas that don't have LLU.