It's like those Cthuluh (sp?) stories where you have cults that worship a destructive god that kills them instantly whenever it manifests. When you read it you think "why would they worship something like that ?!?" And now I'm not surprised anymore.

Yeah. Companies already have so many rights and advantages the people don't (being immortal for example), it's getting crazy that they want to pilfer the few we have. Citizen United has done *so much* damage for democracy and the world at large.

Wrong. Even 50yo models were accurate enough to predict the current (and ongoing) situation: https://www.science.org/content/article/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming. And a recent comparison of 15 models of the 80s recently showed that they were all basically correct. But who am I kidding, you are not gonna read that anyway, as you are confusing weather and climate on purpose as usual.

And I have a hard time believing that Apple (or whomever) can't brick them remotely, even when in China, after they've been reported stolen. As soon as they connect for an update, the IMEI identifies it and bingo, drop a (virtual) brick on it. Why TF NOT ?!?

It may be a trite saying, but it's as true in education as it is in a gym. If you don't exercise your brain, it's not going to improve.

There's a reason weightlifters don't use a forklift or crane to pick up the barbells and do a dozen reps. The problem is not that the weights are in need of lifting. And that's the same problem with homework. The teacher doesn't need a stack of 5 page reports; what they need is for their students to practice using their brains.

Unfortunately the education system is designed to evaluate output instead of process. It's easier to grade a paper or a test, not evaluate a demonstration of knowledge. It's always been ripe for cheating, but now the cheat tools are everywhere and made legitimate by techbros demanding AI productivity. So either teaching will change, or we'll head straight for idiocracy and nobody will be left with the skills to wonder why it all went to hell.

It used to be that stupid people would get drunk at the local watering hole on saturday night and complain about not being able to sell their turnips at the proper price at the market. But now they make youtube vids or complain at the school board about books they've never read. The stupid have grown global and influential, pushed by billionaires who find it advantageous to sow chaos.

I though most vampires were fluent in latin...?

I imagine a touch screen would be most useful when you don't have convenient access to the pointer. For example, holding a laptop up to discuss something with a coworker. It would allow for the coworker to move windows around, switch tabs, etc, without having to physically hand over the laptop.

But if you are sitting there with your hands on the keyboard and thumb on the trackpad -- a touchscreen has no real use. But that is not the only scenario in which such devices are used.

Person A: Go to that link...

Person B: This link?

Person A: No, go down some more.... Now up.... No, not that one....

Person B: This link?

Person A: Great, now open it in a new tab... I said a new tab!!! Better go back, we need that previous page. No, don't close the window....

Am I the only one who can see this sort of interaction taking place? There are times when it could be very useful for "Person A" to just touch the screen.

Yeah, sorry, I'm not really complaining. And yes, I'm not a big fan of huge modern frameworks. gcc all the way, yeah !

;-) It's the 3rd iteration of this project. When I got it 15 years ago, I decided to do just that. Well, not really, I was tasked of writing a test program to see if it could replace part of the old one while the 'official replacement program' was being discussed, and since it worked fine I ended up rewriting the entire thing. The official program never got off the ground, but there is now talk of doing it for the 4th iteration... I want no part of it.
For the curious I work in scientific research

I'm more scared of it than anything, particularly since I've been asked to add something after 10 years !

It's a good thing to have an overproduction of food. It means that, with the proper distribution channels, everyone can eat; and if there's a bad year or two, like a volcano spewing ashes in the upper atmosphere like happens every 200 years or so, we won't all starve.
On the other hand having an overproduction means the prices fall down and farmers go broke. No easy way out...

There's a saying that goes "A complex software project that works started from a simple project that worked". For instance I have a 40k lines program that has been working non-stop for years without any memory leak or crash, and it started from a half-page of specs "to do a test" and then they kept asking me to add thing... Granted it now looks like a monstrous pile of kludges, but still...

I've been using KDE for 25 years and KDEwallet never bothered me and yet I've never used it. Maybe because Firefox doesn't interface with it ?

I'm not saying SElinux or Apparmor are useless, I'm saying they are too complex and too poorly documented and too steep of a learning curve for the average sysadmin, even more so for the average desktop user. If you receive a full week pro training to use them, good for you, but that doesn't work for most people.