And that is apropo of what exactly?

^^THIS. The safety obsession, as if we can control freak everything and live forever. Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Risks? But it's for our own good!. They said so.

Dangerous subversive thinking these days it seems:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

Nice point. Amateur means "one who loves" (literally), it should never be disparaging to be called an amateur. Hobbyists are "amateurs" by definition. All the great Renaissance thinkers were amateurs across a wide range of fields, but often to great depth. Hence we owe much of modern thinking to amateurs.

We regularly demonize many classes of people and demote to non-human. Pedophiles. terrorists, monsters-du-jour, you name it. Before those is was gays, blacks, various ethnicities, you name it. Fashions come, fashions go.

You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.

Until they feel like not making that available, and want to force feed their shit down everyones' throats.

That's right, the 2ic of the Linux kernel, Andrew Morton, flatly refuses to work with patches and still sends his revisions to Mr Torvalds in massive tarballs, a cause of merciless jibes from the latter. Linus laughs it off and puts it down to Mr Morton's eccentricities (but he also puts up with it).

Does this anachronistic obstinacy make Andrew Morton a "bad" programmer?

And to follow up: then install the free Classic Shell [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Shell] and there's your Win 7 start menu and desktop back from the dead. These are the first two things to do when lumbered with a Windows 8 machine.

Windows 8 already has one, it's just that nobody seems to know about it. All you do is move the desktop card to the top left hand side of Metro. Whichever card is in that position will be launched after booting.

Wow. They really stick real people on a curve like that? And there always must be "average" and "poor" workers in every unit? That sucks. It's medieval. And stupid if it's true.

Now that's a low blow! You were watching me have sex with my ex, weren't you!

And I don't no better either. I don't yes very well, too.

Is the duck hot?