Popped back here after a few years away. My thoughts exactly.

Not sure what machine you had back in 2005, but I bought a new T40 in 2003 and used it until 2012 (heavily upgraded). It was a joy to use and worth every penny of its huge asking price.

These days I use a Thinkpad T450s. The keyboard, RAM, storage are all replaceable, the key feel is just as good, and if anything, it feels less bendy than my old T40. I think the modern equivalent is the T470 or T470s, and they are still very nice machines. With a three year on-site warranty.

While I don't use Gnome nor Unity, there were aspects of both that I think are impressive. I'd always thought that if someone managed to combine Gnome's speed and integration with Unity's practicality, HUD and ease of use, it'd be a great desktop.

Unfortunately, this is more gnome3 with a nod to unity, than their lovechild. Gone are global menus, the HUD, application key shortcuts, application categories and the elegant window decoration integration* in Unity.

Some of these things still live on in ubuntu-mate mutiny layout, which I think has more of a shot of retaining Unity's features while dropping the bloat.

*by which I mean integrating the window decoration and menu beautifully into the DE when in full screen mode.

Have been using Linux as my main desktop OS for around 8 years now, and someone mentioned that my admiration of Linux was somewhat religious. It made me wonder if I'm being blind, and that maybe Win10 and MacOSX are, in fact, better. Of course, we can't spend our lives constantly reviewing everything out there to make sure we're still using the best, but after a bit of thinking (and some recent tinkering with Win10) I can conclude that my admiration of Linux is fairly objective.

Most people who are religious were born into it, and in fact, I used Windows before I'd ever used Linux. I've also tried several different OSs - Windows (3.1 onwards), RiscOS, Workbench 3.1, EPOC, symbian, MacOS9, X, Haiku OS etc. - and I can say that Linux has the best combination of features, reliability and autonomy that I've come across.

I suppose you could say I'm a religious convert, and maybe there'd be more truth to that. But then you'd need to show me an OS more reliable, as fast, autonomous, with a rock-solid package-management system.

would be for the small car in front to be piloted by a non-human.

My disclosures before I get started - I'm a Thinkpad fanboy, sorry.

But look, what GP is saying is not that out of the world. I've dropped Thinkpads onto hard surfaces several times - they usually just bounce. One time a hinge broke, admittedly (but that was after 9 years of use...). Is this all that surprising given that most Thinkpads are tested to do this?

Everyone knows the aluminium shell of the macbook is fairly soft, and dropping in onto a hard surface leaves a floor-shaped mould on the laptop.

Yep, my T450s is terrific. My history doesn't go back as far as yours, but my T450s has a better fit and finish than my T40 I bought new back in the day, the keyboard is just as nice (ok, except I do miss the 7th row), and I guess only time will tell if it proves as durable as that machine. It's certainly less creaky.

or 'get office' or 'xbox live'.

or system notifications that your version of office is out of date?

because that is the signature of Windows 10...

The more I use highly specific solutions tied to a particular bit of software, the more wary I am of them. Sometimes pen and paper, or if electronic, plain text in hierachical folders is the most future-proof way out there (I think also for maintaining bibiliographies). You can tidy up plain text by writing it out in markdown and converting to pdf for printing. Do you linux? I know office is unfortunately engrained in academia - I'm trying to avoid it using latex/pdf instead, but we'll see how long that lasts.

So Katy Perry who earned between 30-50 million every year between 2009 and 2014 (sorry not verified, but I suspect ball-park is not far off) thinks she's losing out because of the modern internet.

There are so many things wrong with this. Firstly, it's the record companies that are suffering. But they are suffering because artists don't really need them nowadays. They used to have a monopoly on the recording studios and publicity, but with modern electronics and software that allows you to find music you might like on spotify, soundcloud, youtube, what role do they play now? If they can get the artists on their side to help them with their profits, bonus to them, but sorry artists - you're being fooled.

Secondly, I frankly don't think Katy Perry deserves the multimillions of dosh, when I spend more time listening to and appreciate more the artists who put up their music for free on soundcloud. Don't get me wrong, I like the odd track from Katy Perry, but there's some great stuff being made by people who I don't think are doing it to be multimillionaires.

I think we're at a golden age of music precisely because of sites like soundcloud and youtube. It's important that money flows from listeners to the artists, but less should go to Kate Perry and more to the great and many artists I actually listen to.

Hang on...

The data for the 100'000 genomes project is held securely as confidential data and is not available to companies. Not that I'm sure what they'd be patenting anyway.

Luckily this child lives in the UK, so there is no need to worry about being denied medical care for her condition.

Just understanding the mutation is a long step from being able to do something about, so yes, maybe sometime in the future there will be a patented and very expensive treatment available (or not available as the case may be). However, if someone else wants to develop that treatment and provide it cheaply no one is stopping them. This is not how I'd like the world of pharma to work, but unless a democracy are consciously happy to pay a lot of taxes into a high-risk world of pharmaceutical development, it isn't going to change soon.

I find virtual desktops helpful when working on a large single project which requires many files, webpages and applications to contribute to the final result.

For example, if I'm creating a scientific document in Latex, this is what I do:

4 desktops
1: (far left) - my working directory is open, with webpages and pdf files used for referencing
-I can drag files from my working directory to other workspaces and drop them into the relevant application from here.
2: usually an application like a spreadsheet or R (statistics) which will be involved in creating content in the document
3: graphics software (I use gimp, but I find graphics software is a bit of a hog with your workspace, so it gets one all for itself) for finishing off or creating figures
4: (far right) Latex source, terminal and output PDF for my document.

I then use alt-1,2,3,4 to flick between them and alt-` to call up my application launcher and obviously alt-tab to switch windows. That way the alt key is used for window management, the keys are in a similar place, and, visually and mentally, 1,2,3,4 represent my extended desktop.

Switching virtual desktops like this also helps with any neck strain - my neck is always facing forward and I'm not spending any time with my head at an angle.

Your use case sounds quite particular - I don't tend to have multiple projects open at the same time. If I did, I'd probably create several users and switch when I wanted to change projects. Another way might be to create a 4x4 array of workspaces with each row for a given project (if I did that I'd need to do something clever with keyboard input so I could still use alt-1,2,3,4). Using VMs sounds a bit resource-inefficient.

I personally find virtual desktops a good way of organising and compartmentalising parts of my workflow, and it solves the problems inherent when you have too many windows open on a single desktop (i.e. finding a specific window, or representing your applications on a taskbar or overview). However, it does have a cost in that it requires an extra thought process to be made when switching applications - which is whether your app is on your current workspace or another. Gnome seems to have a neat way of dealing with this, but I find their task-switcher overview, and vertically-limited workspaces to be too much of a hindrance.

Nice thought experiment, but why is it that God?

Before we knew what was outside of our milkyway, was the universe God?

I suppose you mean by using the term 'figment of some higher being's imagination', you imply that we exist in the already-nebulous concept of consciousness of a brain in a physical universe that doesn't bare any relation to our physical universe.

But I'm still not sure why we need to call this God.

ubuntu-mate.

There's a reason ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 were seen as high points of the ubuntu story. I've been using unity, gnome 3 and crunchbang since then, and was worried that returning to a gnome 2 style interface would be like trying to recreate a particularly great drunken night out when you were a student - best left as a good memory. My worries were unfounded. Ubuntu-mate is fast, effective, efficient and looks great. I don't find I miss the extra gimmicks unity and gnome 3 have, and I appreciate the well-developed window and workspace management, file manager, even the simple places menu and add launcher functionailty with kupfer.