So, when can I expect to see multiple monitors on my tablet?

I need a desktop that I can remote.

That is, something that renders in a responsive way, without GPU extensions. Something I can run in a Virtual, on a box that has other Virtuals running, or access remotely over DSL.

Glitz has it's place, but that place isn't in core OS functionality.

One thing at the Museum of Science and Industry, that any self-respecting geek would not miss: the U-505.

She's a German Type IX-C submarine, captured off of Cape Verde, in 1944. Two M4 Enigma machines and over 900 pounds of codebooks and crypto publications were recovered from her.

http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/u-505/activities/capture/

Actually, skilled readers generally recognize patterns of words and phrases, not just of individual words. That's why the "the the" brain teasers work. Folks don't even look at the individual words when the phrase is familiar.

Still, folks slow down and spell out, when reading unfamiliar words. And when you're just starting, all words are unfamiliar. That's why whole-word fails as a teaching method.

What bugs me about Mono in Ubuntu is their decision to include only one runtime.

You have to jump through hoops to get .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0 running on the same machine.

If removing Mono from the list of official packages makes it easier to do parallel installations, I'm all for it.

And how much coal is China burning? Indonesia? Nigeria? How accurate are their numbers? Have their been changes in their collecting or reporting methods, over the period studied, that affected their numbers?

How much concrete has been manufactured in the US? In China? In Brazil?

There are thousands of sources, that are reported on in various ways, and other sources that can only be estimated. These numbers need to reconciled, converted into forms that can be added together.

Without the raw numbers, and precise details on how they were reconciled, this isn't science - it's just politics.

In climate change and public health, no, I don't trust peer review. Or rather, I don't think that reviews done by reading the paper, rather than by examining the data and the process, have much meaning.

The standards of peer review differ, from one field to another. In most fields, a paper wouldn't be accepted for review, let alone published, without making the raw data and the data processing methods publicly available. It's because climate change journals do not require that that I don't trust peer review in this field.

Just something to keep in mind -

We can't measure carbon dioxide output.

We can measure carbon dioxide levels, in the atmosphere. We cannot measure how much carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere, or being extracted from it.

These numbers are estimates, based on thousands of different point measurements, processed according to whatever number-mangling process that the folks who wrote the report have decided best accumulates the totals.

So in my mind, before anyone even starts to discuss these numbers as if they were real, they should have access to 1. the raw data, and 2., the specific programs used to process the raw data into the reported estimates. And not only for this year, but for the prior years that the report is comparing with.

Absent complete disclosure, this should not be treated as a scientific report.

Because most of the apps I use run faster under VNC than they do under X, even with ssh compressing enabled.

I was using VNC as an example only, though.

How does GNOME3 work, running in a virtual machine?

True. Which is why GNOME is no longer the future of Linux.

Am I the only person who runs my desktops as often through remoting as sitting at the console?

How fast will this be running over VNC?

When the keys on my HP-49g+ finally died, I looked around a bit, and bought an HP-50g.

I expect it'll be the last calculator I ever buy.

My next purchase is more likely to be something like a netbook running Ubuntu and Octave.

I gave up on multi-boot installations a number of years, ago. I've had my last couple of PCs configured with swappable drive bays. When I want to boot a different OS, I just stick in a different drive.

Don't focus too much on programming languages. That's only the half of it.

There are a fair number of tools that professional programmers use as much as their language, and that are as or more important to doing what is without a doubt the programmer's primary task - finding out why some piece of code isn't working.

A good editor, a good build system, a decent debugger, a solid testing framework, all of these are essential to be productive.

But first, foremost, and always, version control. Don't do anything until you have version control in place. It's critical for professional programming, but it's even more critical when you're learning.

When you're working with a new technology, most of what you are doing is experimenting. Version control gives you the freedom to experiment. The confidence to try something different, knowing you can revert back to an earlier revision, if it doesn't work.

Dropping 'h's is a significant characteristic of the Cockney accent.

And to a Yank, of course, the only two British accents are BBC and Cockney.

(I saw a production of The Pirates of Penzance, once, where the constabulary used Cockney. The idea that the lower classes from Devonshire and Cornwall might have different accents than those from London's East End never seems to have occurred to them. But then, most Yanks think that the Beetles had Cockney accents. Gads!)