I could care less what Slashdot likes to hear, and I've spent a good chunk of my life using Windows OS's so I don't say any of this easily, but I'm becoming more and more disenfranchised by the direction in which Microsoft is taking their platform. It feels very much like they are trying to put their own spin on iOS in Windows 8 and that's not a good thing. The whole idea of the IBM-compatible PC (I think a lot of people forget that what is considered the modern PC was a knock off of what IBM was trying to do in the 80's with their platform) is an open platform with software that was meant to allow users to run what they wanted and not be locked down to specific hardware. The direction that MS is taking Windows seems to be drifting away from that, and the fact that they are even making a piece of their own hardware (the Surface) tells me that they are not content with just making an OS. Not only that, but have you used Windows 8, really? It is the most unusuable piece of crap in the Metro interface mode. The fact that they had to release 8.1 to keep people from abandoning ship tells me all I need to know really.

Trust me, I never thought I'd even consider abandoning Windows, and that's coming from someone whose first two forays into programming involved QBASIC (based of course on BASIC) and C++ on Visual Studio 6, so I can say with certainty that I'm no Linux shill. That being said, Ubuntu 12 and 13 have been by far the best experience I've had with an OS outside of Windows 7, which IMO is the pinnacle of what Microsoft has done with an OS. I'm going to stick with Windows 7 as my Windows of choice until MS either corrects the mistake that is Metro or they drop support for 7 at which point I'll probably go Linux completely and just use Wine when I absolutely need to run a Windows program

Don't underestimate the people who are stupid enough to think that installing a beta version of a linux distro on their machines is easy when they probably can't even troubleshoot minor issues like printer connectivity in their Windows install...

Valve has already commented that they will be porting all of their engines over to Linux, so I doubt that it'd be long before Portal 2 is offered as a native game in Linux rather than having to play through the streaming service.

You said it much better than I could ever have hoped to. I've been a big Windows guy since 3.1 (maybe partially because for a while I didn't know any better) but lately Windows 8 has made me realize that Windows 7 will probably be the last version I will have installed on any of my systems voluntarily. I have a Win8 laptop (preinstalled) that I now have dual boot with Ubuntu 13.10 and I have considered more than once wiping Win8 off and making it a completely Ubuntu laptop. Seeing SteamOS has made me an even bigger believer in what Valve is doing for PC gaming because as far as I can tell, Microsoft is the worst enemy to the PC as a gaming platform and that's only going to get worse.

Perhaps this is partially to help push the XB1 forward as a "better choice" than the PC for gaming. Perhaps it's just ineptitude on Microsoft's part. Probably it's a bit of both. But either way, I think as my children get older and I start teaching my kids how to code and how to work with computers at a deeper level than launching netflix and playing plants vs. zombies that it'll be primarily with some sort of *nix based system (not Mac OS X though, they've just become overpriced PC's with specialized software). As a matter of fact, my goal is by the time my kids are over 10 they'll know how to write basic C programs and use make along with gcc, and they'll feel as comfortable using terminal as they will using a GUI.

Actually they are trying to pull people over to the "PC" from being console only by making an OS that mimics closely the experience of a console for PC games. So it is in their best interest to make it outwardly as easy to use and setup as possible, while still giving power users access to what's under the hood.

Replying to myself, I don't have a Facebook account, but I am still on LiveJournal. Not sure what that makes me, I suspect it's too sad to be pretentious.

I though only hipsters had Facebook accounts these days, the kids are all on Instagram.

From the article, he's being charged with 31 counts - is conspiracy, identity theft and extortion etc... 1/31st as bad as murder?

I've been using a Logitech 5 button gaming mouse (I think it's the G3) for a number of year snow, I've forgotten how long. My husband has been through several in the same time, but mine just keeps on keeping on. I have to clean it fairly regularly because cat hair sticks to the glide pads on the base, but other than that it's like it's brand new.

Well, if you're talking about the conventional usage of "human" in scientific circles, the answer is: Yes, they were; they just weren't modern humans.

But "human" really isn't a technical term; For that you want something like "Homo" or "hominin", depending on how far back in the tree you want to describe. The term "human" is used informally to mean just about any critters later than the split from the Pan (chimpanzee) branch. It's used when you don't want to be too precise about such things.

OTOH, "human" is widely used in common speech to refer to anyone "not like us". Sometimes it means "white people", especially in writings from before the 20th century. But you don't much hear such usages in scientific settings. You do see it a lot in media coverage of science, but then it means whatever the journalist thinks it means.

Caveat - I understand that the plural of anecdote is not data.

When I was in high school in the mid 80s I had male teachers actively discouraging me from pursuing STEM courses and even questioning why I was still in school when I should be learning to cook and clean. I was the top English student in the year, and 2 top student overall (physics, chemistry, pure and applied maths, english).

I got into IT because my friends at university who were doing science and engineering degrees wouldn't let me do my essays writing by hand, and forced me to type them on a computer in the lab at uni.

Someone beat you to it already.

I was assuming it was posted ironically or something, anyone that stupid probably wouldn't have comprehended the gist of the conversation so far as to reply.

I would debate whether they are hardwired to accept male authority, rather that they were culturally inducted into accepting it as most authority figures they encounter growing up were male.

Most places that are likely to refuse service will be the type of place where you order, eat and then pay - it would be the restaurant owner who would end up out of pocket if an order was placed and the guy was thrown out before he could eat it.