"fuck off you fucken fuck"

Spoken like a true, brainwashed, Trump follower

Why? Why do you (and evidently others) think it is "one step beyooooond"??

I used to have a Lumia 928. I loved it. I wish I still had it, somedays.

Smartphones existed before the iPhone. Apple just improved the interface. Although an "iPhone-like" interface would have been developed anyway. Google bought Android Inc. in 2005 and they had been working on the Android interface prior to that (since 2003-ish?). The beta for Android was released/shown in 2007 and officially released in 2008. So, we would have had the same or similar smartphones today with, or without, Apple.

A part of me had hoped Windows phones would have succeeded. But, I understand why it didn't succeed.

I had a Lumia 928 for a brief time. I loved the interface and the phone. But it really lacked apps. Unfortunately, iPhone and Android already had too much of a foothold. It is much easier to develop apps for 1 or 2 platforms than it is for 3 or 4. So, the top 2 platforms win.

Heating a house with coal seems strange to me. It hasn't been done here for almost 100 years. Natural gas is much cheaper where I live. Electric isn't far behind. There is no easy way (that I'm aware of) to get coal sent to my house, so it would be super expensive to obtain the coal and expensive to change out the natural gas furnace and electric heat pump. Why would I want to go with something that is far more expensive and dirty? Plus, it seems like going backwards in heating technology. If someone in my town/city stated that they were heating their house with coal, most people would laugh and ask which century they are from...

Very true. I remember hearing the "we'll have fusion in 20 years" statement over 30 years ago.

I didn't realize anybody in the USA still used coal to heat their house (seems backwards, expensive and dirty). I live in one of the most rural and one of the coldest (in the wintertime) states, South Dakota. Coal heat hasn't been used here since the early 1900's. It is mostly natural gas, propane (in more rural communities) and electric. Some people use wood on occasion, but not as their primary heat source. My house is a combo. I use an electric heat pump until the temp gets below 30 F, it then switches to natural gas....which is cheap and abundant out here.

Sigh....."moot"......long damn day, before a weekend.....sigh....

Yes, the point is mute. Coal, for energy production, is dying. It can no longer compete and it will not be able to compete in the future. So, it doesn't matter if wind (or solor) receive subsidies or not. Like it, or not, renewables are the energy of the future. It may take a few years of natural gas production, but coal is definitely on the way out, as an energy source. .......although it is difficult to argue with someone who's finer points are "STFU". :-)

Coal receives a lot of indirect subsidies. Like rail transportation, etc. However the point is mute, because coal can no longer compete. The cost of renewables like wind and solar keep dropping as more are installed and the technology improves. Even if all subsidies were removed, as of this year (2017) wind has become cheaper than coal. Coal is not the way to make "America great again". Continued innovation in renewables are the path of the future. If the USA doubles down on coal over renewables, we will just fall further behind the rest of the world.

I'm not a fan of Trump (at all), but I think it is a little early to tell if they drop in tourism is a result of his policies and administration. It would be interesting to see graphs from previous years, to see if tourism drops or spikes at certain times of the year (on average). I imagine there is usually a drop in tourism to the northern states, in the winter time, which would affect overall tourism to the USA.

It is certainly possible that his administration could have affected the tourism, but I don't think the supplied data/graphs show us enough history to come to that conclusion.

My first language was BASIC, in various forms. My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 and my school had Commodore 64's, so Commodore BASIC was my first language. My next computer was an Apple IIc, so then it was Applesoft BASIC. When I was a senior in High School, the Commodore 64's were replaced by IBM PS/2's, so I also learned some GW BASIC.

The first language I learned in college was Pascal. Followed by COBOL, FORTRAN, C, C++ and Assembly. Java, html, perl, and python did not exist yet.

As a UNIX/Linux administrator, I mostly "program" in bash/ksh shell script, with a little python sprinkled in. :-)

It is almost as if slashdot missed April 1, by a few weeks....I can't believe they would seriously put this article out there.

Come on Slashdot! Really? This is not news. RetroPi, Recalbox, and others, have been around for quite a while, for the Raspberry Pi. I put one of these together last year. It is not that hard.

I'm very disappointed in this article and the fact that slashdot would even post it.