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take the window min/max/close buttons on MacOSX and Ubuntu, which for some reason they decided to put on the left instead of the right which everyone has been made familiar with over the last couple decades. ... And to what end?

That's pretty simple: the original Windows design is poor, because it's very easy to mis-click when trying to maximize and instead close your program, because some moron at MS though it'd be a great idea to stick the two tiny buttons right next to each other.

If you have a hard time figuring out how to use a window-close button on the left side, you're going to have a real problem when you're sat down at a Windows 8 or 10 computer with its "charms" and touchscreen-oriented UI.

Minor quibble, but I'm gonna bite:
The Ubuntu design is just as poor, because what the designers did was move all three buttons to the left. So you can still mis-click. Moving "minimize" and "maximize" to the left but leaving "close" on the right would have been much smarter.

BTW, you can edit the configuration in Ubuntu to change the button positions to the right. I don't think I've ever seen such an option in Windows.

One of MY pet peeves in Xubuntu are single-pixel window borders that make click-and-drag resizing very difficult. But those, too, can be edited.
There are even pre-designed console commands on the net: https://softsolder.com/2015/01/28/wider-borders-in-xfce-xubuntu/

You will find the original Borland Pascal 7.01 lurking somewhere on the internet, on some "VINTAGE" something named url. Easily to be found via "google".

Yes, there is freepascal, yes there is delphi, ..

But Pascal really - and only - rocks on a rock bottom DOS-WFW3.11 machine with ISA slots, Creative Labs SB16 , I have one machine prepared and in operation.

And I do code in Pascal, Assembler(tasm) and interface with the real world[1] what do I need a raspberry Y for .. ;)

Ed Nisely was so kind to open source his book [2]

And actually there is really great literature out in the wilde like Buchanon's applied PC interfacing .. and Interfacing Sensors to the IBM PC (it's more like an excelent sensors handbook)

The ISA-Bus has some advantages over GPIO, with bus drivers you can do GPIO, however you can also DMA and PIO based data transfer.

Also to interface ISA-cards(Sound, NE2000) to other projects is mostly fairly simple when starting with port based i/o.

No big devellopment environment just Borland Pascal, TASM and Turbo C++

Be aware of the delay loop error on machines with more than ~200Mhz you need to apply a patch (also found on the internet try searching for xfdisk - which was written in borland pascal)

[1] http://linuxgazette.net/124/du...
[2] http://softsolder.com/2011/10/...

Ugh. Well, apparently it is fairly straightforward to disable the local control feature.

A friend who has done this tells me it's somewhat of a waste of time because the 3D printer wants to move an order of magnitude faster than the max speeds most mills are capable of driving. (Since it's adding toothpaste, rather than cutting away metal, maybe that's not so surprising.) He ended up buying a Thing-o-Matic (and doing a *lot* of re-engineering to get it working reliably) but now he's thrilled with it. It doesn't replace his mills and lathes, but it sure is a convenient addition. He's all oh the thumbwheel broke off my micrometer: I'll print a new thumbwheel bracket. The windshield mount on my recumbent broke, so I'll print a new one. He's printed plumbing parts, cookie cutters, centering adapters for optics, replacement bar handle clamps, you name it, and there's no setup or clamping or accessories or anything like that -- not even alignment. He just emails the completed gcode to the machine and goes in twenty minutes later and takes his new item off the stage. I'm dead envious.
That might be different if you're using a servo-based mill with fast ballscrews, but for steppers with fine-pitch threads, well, my CNC is pretty rattly and jiggly when it's driving around at 10ipm and his Thing-o-Matic can run at 500ipm.

A friend who has done this tells me it's somewhat of a waste of time because the 3D printer wants to move an order of magnitude faster than the max speeds most mills are capable of driving. (Since it's adding toothpaste, rather than cutting away metal, maybe that's not so surprising.) He ended up buying a Thing-o-Matic (and doing a *lot* of re-engineering to get it working reliably) but now he's thrilled with it. It doesn't replace his mills and lathes, but it sure is a convenient addition. He's all oh the thumbwheel broke off my micrometer: I'll print a new thumbwheel bracket. The windshield mount on my recumbent broke, so I'll print a new one. He's printed plumbing parts, cookie cutters, centering adapters for optics, replacement bar handle clamps, you name it, and there's no setup or clamping or accessories or anything like that -- not even alignment. He just emails the completed gcode to the machine and goes in twenty minutes later and takes his new item off the stage. I'm dead envious.
That might be different if you're using a servo-based mill with fast ballscrews, but for steppers with fine-pitch threads, well, my CNC is pretty rattly and jiggly when it's driving around at 10ipm and his Thing-o-Matic can run at 500ipm.

I'm looking forwards to seeing what he builds once he's gotten done rebuilding the machine.

Sure, it's a lot of work to put into a brand-new machine, but anyone who has bought a Chinese mill or lathe machine knows that a right-out-of-the-box rebuild sure helps the accuracy. Even with simple tools like wood chisels, the first thing you do is resharpen them because the from-the-factory job is nearly worthless, so it's hardly surprising that an amateur-designed, amateur-built, and kit-built-by-amateur 3D printer would need some work.

I'm looking forwards to seeing what he builds once he's gotten done rebuilding the machine.

Sure, it's a lot of work to put into a brand-new machine, but anyone who has bought a Chinese mill or lathe machine knows that a right-out-of-the-box rebuild sure helps the accuracy. Even with simple tools like wood chisels, the first thing you do is resharpen them because the from-the-factory job is nearly worthless, so it's hardly surprising that an amateur-designed, amateur-built, and kit-built-by-amateur 3D printer would need some work.

I'm looking forwards to seeing what he builds once he's gotten done rebuilding the machine.

Sure, it's a lot of work to put into a brand-new machine, but anyone who has bought a Chinese mill or lathe machine knows that a right-out-of-the-box rebuild sure helps the accuracy. Even with simple tools like wood chisels, the first thing you do is resharpen them because the from-the-factory job is nearly worthless, so it's hardly surprising that an amateur-designed, amateur-built, and kit-built-by-amateur 3D printer would need some work.

I'm looking forwards to seeing what he builds once he's gotten done rebuilding the machine.

Sure, it's a lot of work to put into a brand-new machine, but anyone who has bought a Chinese mill or lathe machine knows that a right-out-of-the-box rebuild sure helps the accuracy. Even with simple tools like wood chisels, the first thing you do is resharpen them because the from-the-factory job is nearly worthless, so it's hardly surprising that an amateur-designed, amateur-built, and kit-built-by-amateur 3D printer would need some work.