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.

My hearing is bad enough that I need to use hearing aids, although I can get along to some extent without them. When I watch TV, I always have the Closed Captioning turned on and have, in fact abandoned shows that stopped providing it. Yes, providing it at need uses up a little more bandwidth, but very, very little. We don't need to throw out Net Neutrality to get closed captioning, especially when you consider the fact that most people won't ever need it.

I've also had the snail mailed fake invoices from them, which I can only suppose is an illegal use of the whois database.

It's also Mail Fraud, and the owners should already be in prison for what they've been doing. Let's hope that the Feds get off their asses and earn their salaries.

I like my system of avoiding this kind of scam better: my (vanity) domain is registered using my correct snail address, but I've told the registrar that I only want email from them, no paper. That means that if and when I get something in my mailbox claiming to be a bill for registration, I just throw it away unopened because I know it's not legit.

Formal logic is a branch of mathematics.

Yes, I know, but very few people except mathematicians think of it that way. Most people consider it to be an entirely different study so I phrased it that way to emphasize that much of computer programming has nothing to do with what the average person thinks of as math.

Studying computer science requires a fair amount of math to understand why some algorithms are more efficient than others rather than just accepting that they are. And, it can be a great help in working out the storage and IO requirements of a program. How much math you need to be a working programmer depends, as you point out, on what branch of programming you specialize in. Personally, I've always considered programming to be more a branch of logic than one of math.

Diabetes is mostly annoying and not commonly deadly.

To quote the infamous Dr. Terwilliger, "I, on the other hand, am inclined to doubt that statement." The most brilliant man I ever knew, Dan Alderson was diabetic and didn't take care of himself. Two years before he was forced to retire for medical reasons, he lost his eyesight to diabetic neuropathy; he was only able to continue because I became his "seeing eye person" and helped him continue to program by dictation. Next, it caused his kidneys to fail so that he had to go on dialysis, forcing him to retire. About a year later, he lost a foot to an ulcer, largely caused by his diabetes. Within a year he was dead. Another friend was concerned about his blood sugar levels and made an appointment to have it checked; before the appointment came, he died of hyperglycemia. I developed Type II twelve years ago and since then have woken up in four different ERs. Diabetes can be, and often is a deadly metabolic disorder. Please learn what you're talking about before you comment on this subject again.

Many years ago I had a friend who was a gemologist. He told me once that it's not at all hard to tell that a stone's synthetic once you have it under the microscope. Synthetic gemstones (Not diamonds; they're done differently.) are built up little by little on a rod, then cut, shaped and polished. No matter how well done they are, you can see the layers. Either the technique has gotten much better over the last several decades or the jeweler didn't know what to look for.

Well, do you know of any cases where women took sexual advantage of pre-pubescent children? I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but if so, it appears to be rather rare.

Sexual harassment occurs whenever men and women are together.

It doesn't even need to have both genders present. We all know that there are men hitting on younger men or boys and women sometimes abuse a position of authority to get a man (or boy) into the sack. For that matter, I'm sure that there are at least occasional cases where a lesbian tries to seduce another woman that isn't interested in experimenting, although these almost never get into the news.

When all is said and done, what difference does it make? All you had to do before was make up a name that looked real, such as Rufus T. Firefly.

If that's all that they want, they should bring back Cutey Bunny and Little Annie Fanny.

It's not a fallacy. Since the days of Windows 3.1, these assholes have existed in large numbers.

I don't think that word means what you think it does.

And I've now seen people excoriate MS for trying new things and trying to innovate.

I have no idea how true it is, but I've seen at least one person comment (maybe on a blog) that Windows 8 reminds him of a cross between Windows 7 and Gnome 3. If so, it gives me even more reasons to be glad that I use Linux and Xfce. (I started out with Gnome 2, but switched to Xfce when I read about what Gnome 3 was going to be like.)