GNUS apparently dates to 1988, and as you mention, MH goes back even earlier.

Trying to repackage very old ideas as the latest thing is a marketing ploy. Still, I thank AOL for all those free coasters they sent me in the mail back when.

I'm in line with your derivative meaning.

You're making me tensor and tensor.

Climate change has become a political cause. That's both good and bad.

It's bad because politics and political agendas inevitably overshadow science, and causes often don't tolerate opposition.

It's good because if something needs to be done to stop/prevent damage to the ecosphere, it can only happen through political action. Scientists aren't going to, on their own, be able to effect, say, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

In a rational world the scientific evidence would be acted upon by politicians in an objective manner, following the dictates of the evidence.

But I hardly need to point out that it isn't a rational world.

I remember Aurora, it was great, and you can still get versions of it online. But I've been hard over on Emacs for years now. It does everything from managing my schedule to providing a powerful desktop math engine, and if I really wish, I can even edit text with it.

I can see how you read that into my comment, so perhaps I should have been more clear. I didn't distinguish between "choose to use" and "have to use" but in retrospect of course I see they're different things.

So let's just say if you want or need to use Windows (or whatever the case may be), then indeed that's consistent with the original comment about using the right tool for the job, where "right" may derive from absolute necessity on down through merely preference or familiarity.

In other words, while I'm (as I said) a big Linux fan, I don't pretend that it solves every problem and is right for everyone and everything.

Finally, a breath of fresh air.

I'm an unabashed Linux fan and use it for everything. That's my choice and preference.

If Windows or Mac or WhoKnowsWhat suits you better, that's your choice and preference.

Yeah, next time I go from here in Honolulu to the mainland I'll take Amtrak. Brilliant concept.

I can completely understand these fears, but do they have a basis? What makes you think -- especially -- that LO will drop Windows?

That's only true in general within the same release of MS-Office. If you include legacy documents, LibreOffice will open more of them, and more formats overall.

Interesting study, but it begs the question of what happened to bookstores? Most communities have seen a huge contraction in brick and mortar bookstores.

The most common explanation is that many people buy from Amazon rather than go to a bookstore.

So the general conclusion may be that physical books are far from dead, but physical bookstores could be another matter.

Here on O`ahu, we're down to one Barnes and Noble and one independent bookseller, plus a few of those "Book-off" mini-stores that have some used books.

I realize this is a side discussion but you are right. The idea that good or even great work will automatically come to the fore and garner recognition is naïve at best. Someone who is louder and better at self-marketing will get ahead a lot faster.

The meek do indeed inherit the earth --- by having their faces ground into it.

I understand your point, but I think MS does know where they're headed and who their customers are, but they don't care very much about them, if at all. That's a different kind of problem, much worse than just lack of direction.

My surmise is that MS knows their direction: getting everyone, eventually, onto a subscription model. Corporate customers are to a greater or lesser extent there already, but now MS has to round up those pesky consumers who haven't been anything like fully milked for revenue. What money does MS get from them now? For the most part a few dollars when they buy a computer with Windows preinstalled, and maybe some money for Office. Relatively slim pickings.

Well, thank you, I don't use it and won't use it.

As someone who "back in the day" coded extensively in assembler language, I've always been partial to Luddite software. Let's hear it for Fortran II !