This isn't even exciting anyway:

This just in! New hardware faster than existing hardware! Read all about it!

Then you weren't paying attention. Just as my cynicism was starting to fall to all the rhetoric of hope... he made the FISA and my cynicism returned to say, "Told ya so."

Personally, I LIKED all the UI changes in Lion right away with the exception of shrinking the "stoplight" buttons and the fact that the pill button that removes the toolbar has been removed and replaced with the full screen mode button.

But you are right, some annoyances are just annoying because they're different. I'm generally kind of excited by new stuff so long as it isn't a major hinderance (and it usually isn't).

He has no reason. Anyone who has read the Ars Technica overview of the OS or isn't just trying to be a hipster knows that. I can see some people not liking the interface changes but he's a snob that thinks that because the OS has inherited some visual features from iOS that it feels like a toy. Making the decision after "two minutes" is a joke.

Although I will say, in my experience, Snow Leopard was the most stable version of OS X I have ever used and I installed it the day it came out. It was rock solid out of the gate and on top of that Mail was FINALLY stable. Lion? Not so much on either count. Although, being used to some of the changes I wouldn't go back.

Thunderbolt and SuperSpeed USB aren't even competing for the same market and don't have the same purpose. You will probably never have Thunderbolt mouse, keyboard, headset, printer, etc. There's no reason to use such expensive cabling and ridiculous bandwidth for devices like that.

Docking stations, breakout boxes, external PCIe cards, displays and high speed RAID arrays are what Thunderbolt is for. A box with say... 4 ethernet adapters is good for Thunderbolt. Your webcam though? Uhhhhh, no.

I'd dress in drag. I'd plan a road trip of riotous living. Haha.

Problem is, it'll just end up giving them more attention and feed into their "persecution proves us right" mentality. I have an insane aunt like this and it's completely irrational to deal with.

The fucking tragedy. Steve Jobs dies at 56 and Phelps is 82 and fuckers like that live for-fucking-ever.

And I suspect they're going to be unpleasantly surprised when they meet him. If there is a god worth worshipping out there, he's gotta find these tools really annoying. (I just wish he'd find them annoying to drop a bus on or something.)

I just want to know why it's cool to call "white" people "white" by it's not okay for someone to be "black." You have to use the term "African-American" over and over—a term that is particularly confusing if someone is of Jamaican or Haitian descent.

Where oh where are my mod points when I need them. (Mrs.)

I had to reread your post with John Cleese's voice in my head. Hahaha.

" I'm not copying the building, I'm taking a picture of my experiences."

Hmmm... maybe you should sue the owners of the building for taking part in your experiences!

Well, thank you for ruining pulled pork for me asshole.

"At some point, we will chew up enough resources that the planet will not recover."

What does that even mean? Not recover? It's "recovered" for worldwide fires and volcanoes and the entire planet being basically a frozen over the top. Tectonic plates shift against one another and consume and excrete land. In a billion years I doubt you'll have much of an idea that our species was even here.

"When we have fished the oceans to empty sea, and the land will no longer sustain crops, only then will we discover how foolish we've been."

And in our starvation the planet will recover. The people that survive (if any) will probably change their ways or... repeat the process but it will take a long time before it matters.

The worst we can do is make this place a nasty place for the existing species. Almost all of said species were doomed to disappear over a long enough timeline anyway. Frankly, I don't think our species is gonna get any wiser about our own impact until something horrific happens so, in a weird way, I'm kind of rooting for it.

"do not mess with complex systems you don't fully understand."

Yeah, that's gonna make for some scientific progress right there.

"And more importantly, it belongs to every single living thing growing on it."

Says who? In our cold and ultimately absurd universe, that's not really how it works. Volcanoes and hurricanes don't respect existing habitats or life, why should humans? Polar bears have no "right" to exist or to continue existing and neither do humans.

Understand that I agree with your sentiment in some regards and am certainly not a card carrying member of the Pave the Earth Society. However, the idea that there is some inherent moral obligation to give a shit about the environment is, more or less, a religious sentiment. The universe itself doesn't dictate that we care and itself doesn't have any particular care or concern about life or plastic or toxic waste. It all just is.

Besides, if there's one thing industrialized nations have made clear: they don't give a shit about future generations in political, social or economic matters (see Social Security and Medicare in the USA) so why should we, as a society that's been conditioned not to give a fuck about the future, give a fuck?

"What happens if bees stop pollinating altogether tomorrow? What about hurricanes and tornadoes all over the planet?"

Evolution will weed out the unfit and replace them with new species able to deal with the changes, the way it always has. That's how life operates.

"That's not such a hard concept, is it?"

It's hard because if I'm not religious, I have no reason to care beyond self interest and most of the really nasty "long term" environmental consequences will be playing themselves out when I'm dead or near death. Why should I care?

None of which has anything to do with college. Understanding computer science generically requires... studying computer science. Holy shit. What a fucking concept.

If you treat your profession as a trade, you'll learn trade skills. If you treat it as an art or a science you'll learn more. If you are intellectually curious you'll study outside of your bubble.

College can certainly help with those things, but it's not the one and only true path.