Actually, I remember seeing some kind of making-of short around the time the first one came out and they were talking about how the cinematographer managed to capture all the lens flares "to get this great look." I could be wrong, but they may not have been fake.

What about the episode of TOS where the Enterprise was transporting Spock's father and a bunch of other alien ambassadors to a peace conference?

What about the episode of TOS where the Enterprise was transporting a bitchy alien leader to some planet where she was supposed to secure peace by marrying some guy?

Kirk and crew were constantly going on diplomatic missions, securing trade rights and the like. There were ambassadors all over the place. Granted, they usually managed to stumble into some sort of intergalactic punch-up as a result, but the point of what the Enterprise was actually supposed to be doing wasn't so different from what it was in TNG.

You might want to investigate the serials "The Three Doctors," "The Five Doctors," and "The Two Doctors."

Couldn't disagree more. Stephen Moffat seems to have decided that the best way to write Doctor Who is as a series of fairy stories for young girls. Thus, you have a very young actor playing the Doctor as Harry Potter, the Sonic Screwdriver is his magic wand (just what does it do, anyway? everything?) and nearly every episode ends with a deus ex machina, where the Doctor claps his hands together and everything going back to normal, the whole thing explained away with some timey-wimey gibberish. It's almost nothing like Star Trek and it's barely anything to do with Doctor Who. As a fan of the original series, the current one has gotten so bad that it's nigh unwatchable.

I'm going to guess he's going to look back on his life and realize that he was dumb to think he'd seen it all at age 24. He talks as though the Third Age of Middle Earth is ending -- and you wanna know why? Think about it. When the original iPhone came out, he was 18 years old. For his entire adult life, there have been iPhones, and the iPhone was the first real major technology shift he'd ever seen. For those of us who have been through all sorts of booms and busts and cycles and trends in the computing industry, things look a lot different -- as they will for him, when he really gets old.

His whole submission reminds me of those things that pop up on Buzzfeed every now and again -- "Twenty things that will make you feel old" -- and half of them are photos of the all-grown-up-now former child actor from some kids' show on Nickelodeon that you've never heard of because the first episode aired in 1994.

I don't agree with that. I enjoy change -- sometimes even for its own sake.

Want proof? On this computer, right now, I am running Windows 8 and the "streaming" version of Office 2013 from an Office 365 subscription. If that's not change for change's own sake, I dunno what is.

Now, part of this is because it's my job to be familiar with the new stuff. But in general, unless something actively hinders what I used to be able to do with the old stuff, I go along with the new stuff just fine. Generally speaking, new stuff is built by people who genuinely wanted to improve on the old stuff, and often they get that right, if only in minor ways. I say bring it on.

But bring it on for everybody? Obviously not. If you don't feel the way I do then don't do as I do. Simple as that.

For as much as the media likes to say that the world is changing forever every five minutes, I honestly don't see it. I run headlong into just about every new thing that comes along, if only just to check it out, and I honestly don't think I have lost anything worthwhile in the process.

Yes, there are Windows 8 laptops on the market that are more or less locked down. Others aren't. Yes, to do anything worthwhile with an iPad you pretty much have to play by Apple's rules. So if you want a tablet, get an Android one and root it. And if you don't want a tablet, don't get one! The submitter seems to be looking for a problem where none exists.

How? Same as everything else: with a great sales pitch.

The idea that "the only thing preventing scientists from understanding the human brain in its entirety ... is a lack of ambition" is utterly ludicrous. That's like saying the "only thing" that's keeping human beings from walking on Mars is a lack of ambition.

Really? How did we test this hypothesis -- watch and see if any of the mice tried to take over the world?

I buy books from B&N (and occasionally Google, when their prices are better) because I believe in supporting authors and the publishers that put out their books.

I also immediately crack the books I buy and store copies of them locally and on cloud storage, so I'll never lose them just because the Nook store shuts down. Removing the DRM takes less than a second.

I think what the GP was implying is that Microsoft had no chance of growing a market in e-books, couldn't grow one if it tried, and that once it owns Nook it will still be completely incapable of growing the market it just bought -- in fact it will shrink. Sometimes the best business decision is to stay out of markets where your company has no competency.

So Nook was a failure for B&N? Sure, maybe it's not giving Amazon as much of a run for its money as B&N hoped. But then again, just what does B&N think it's going to do if it gives up on Nook now? Sell magazines and coffee? Good luck on that >cough< Borders >cough<.

Does anybody really care about the Start button? All of my keyboards have a great big Windows key on them, and all of the Windows 8 tablets I've seen have a Windows button at the bottom of the display. What I think people really want is the Start menu -- and I am absolutely not convinced that Microsoft is going to give us that back, button or no button.

So basically you first call me a coward for stating my opinion on Slashdot (as if stating it somewhere else would make me more "brave") and then you agree with everything I said about the bad keyboard and poor tablet experience when trying to use Office on Windows. Have it your way then, guy.

None of which has anything to do with the fact that it offers a pretty lousy experience on a tablet, which was the topic of discussion.

BTW, I use Windows 8 every day on laptops, desktops, and now tablets, so I believe I'm entitled to my opinion on it -- more so than many, in fact. What you call "bashing," I call informed criticism.

No. A Samsung device.

So you're telling me that in order to get a feature that's standard on many platforms, I need to find the control panel that historically has been used to switch on features for the disabled? Why isn't there an option in the keyboard itself, instead of forcing me to go hunting all over creation to find it?

That's only of minimal help when I'm trying to enter a mix of letters, numbers, and symbol characters and the keyboard is finicky.

And as others have noted, searching the web to find techniques that should be intuitive is not a good solution. I think you're going out of your way to apologize for poor usability design. The tablet experience on Windows 8 is just not particularly great, and it only gets worse when you want to use desktop apps (such as Office, which is what Gates was bragging about).

One thing I've noticed since switching to a Windows tablet is how lousy the onscreen keyboard is. On most platforms, touchscreen keyboards try to incorporate things like predictive text, auto-capitalization, etc to help you type, because they realize that a touchscreen with no tactile feedback is a less-than-idea way to type. The Windows onscreen keyboards have none of that. What's more, they seem wildly inaccurate ... the visual feedback seems to be telling me that I'm hitting the right keys, but when I look up at what I entered, half of the letters are keys right next to the ones I thought I was hitting (and although I can touch type on a physical keyboard, I do have to look at the keys on a tablet).

Screw all of that. Before you can do any of that, you have to enter your password to login to the system first. Try that when you have a strong password and you can't be totally sure what keys you're pressing.