Oh look, it's another person making wild allegations without a shred of evidence. Nobody but you mentioned governments forcing farmers to do anything. Only you seem to think that adding 3-nitrooxypropanol to the feed is for any reason other than to reduce the greenhouse gases from cows. You have simply made up a claim to belittle someone who has a different opinion to you. It is exactly the sort of thing that cascadingstylesheet was complaining about.
Is that really what you consider to be a rational discussion?
What, you mean behaving reasonably might work better than just demonizing political opponents? You may be on to something there.
Judging by the way that the OP responded to my post, I think that we still have a long way to go before the demonising is done. Not only did he or she demonise the farmers by saying that they wouldn't voluntarily do anything to help in reducing greenhouse gases, but also I managed to get a serve because I didn't magically know that this was the vague "problems of implementing" the addition of a chemical into the cows' feed.
But seriously, I think that there is plenty of work going on behind the scenes to find solutions to climate change (like this story for example). Unfortunately, these sorts of studies tend to go unreported while the public endlessly debates what Al Gore said in a film back in 2006 or what happens to solar power plants after the sun goes down.
And yet making unsubstantial allegations and spreading FUD is exactly what we need around here. If you can't make a statement without explaining yourself then you have even less business commenting here than I have.
Believe it or not, farmers are concerned with climate change because it directly affects them. Here in Australia, our farmers often cooperate with the CSIRO (and other institutions) to study various aspects of climate change and methods to combat it. Also, any government that wants to make a cheap demonstration that they are doing something to meet their greenhouse gas emission targets could easily subsidise the addition of a single chemical into the feed of cows and other animals.
Because all the 1.2% savings that can be made add up to make a large difference. If we find eight ways to make 1.2% savings across different areas then that is nearly a 10% reduction in the human generation of greenhouse gases. The human race isn't limited to finding just one method to solve the climate change problem. If we make small savings across the board with cost-effective, manageable solutions then we don't have to solve the problem with a single grand gesture that ends up costing a lot of money.
And what are the problems that you envisage implementing this? The article says:
Larger tests will be needed to see if detrimental effects crop up over the long term
I find it interesting that you have already found out what the problems are before scientists have managed to do any studies.
Imagine my surprise when one started stating the license expired, and it was not able to run any setup.exe's to fix it (obviously some sort of infection).
Naturally Windows systems are full of malware and viruses if you simply assume that any problem that occurs is "obviously some sort of infection". If something goes wrong with a Linux setup, I'm sure you would assume that it couldn't possibly be due to "some sort of infection" and would actually take the time to find out what had happened.
When you finally found the problem you could then rest assured that your belief in the superior OS was justified, and the circular logic would finally be complete.
I haven't yet found one that I can. I've asked several people who claim that there is no problem, how do I get into UEFI setup, to turn it off (or add my own keys)? The thing is, while Microsoft turned around and added a requirement to be able to turn UEFI off (originally, they weren't going to), they also made a requirement that to boot faster, it was not allowed to let people press a key to enter setup.
Hold the key down before powering on (and keep it held for a second or two after). On a Toshiba the key is F2, and it will definitely get you into the setup. On other brands you could try ESC, Del, F1, F2, F4, F10 or F12. Microsoft seems to think that you can access your BIOS settings with a keystroke. Have a look at their instructions on how to Disable Secure Boot:
Open the PC BIOS menu. You can often access this menu by pressing a key during the boot-up sequence, such as F1, F2, F12, or Esc.
Or, from Windows, hold the Shift key while selecting Restart. Go to Troubleshoot > Advanced Options: UEFI Firmware Settings.
Also, if Windows fails to boot 3 times in a row it will enter the boot menu, from which you can access the BIOS. Try booting, then turning it off three times. I had to do that once when I had a hardware fault once.
And no, the signed Microsoft Linux that some distros use for setup is not a valid option either.
Or you could use a distro with a Microsoft signature. Good suggestion. Oh, except for some reason you don't want to run Linux.
"Caught" does not imply anything of the sort. If you were caught cheating on your wife, no crime is implied. If you were caught picking your nose, nothing would be done to you (unless you work in food preparation, perhaps).
In this case, "caught" simply means that the telco was found to be doing something that they hadn't told their customers about (and would obviously prefer they didn't know about). And no, we shouldn't stop posting stories like this. Perhaps Optus will get away with it this time, but each time something similar comes to light it will build in the collective-minds of the public. Eventually something will be done to protect privacy; either at the legal level or the personal level like everyone starting to use VPNs. We will all say the VPNs are to protect us from corporate privacy issues, but really it will be to get around the Great Firewall of Australia or data retention laws.
NASA has become too political -- I am unable to trust their prediction models.
That is complete rubbish. You might have political reasons to dislike the data, models and predictions presented by NASA, but what evidence do you have that NASA has manipulated any of their work for political reasons? How have they "become too political" when they haven't changed what they do or say? If their results match the results of the rest of the scientific community but not what the Republican party says, are they being political or are the Republicans just wrong?
We keep hearing accusations that they (and others) fudge their figures to get more funding, but in a world where institutions that contradict the views of those in charge get defunded and disbanded, why would they mislead the public in such a suicidal manner?
In what way was it horrifically bad? Name one problem that it had? The following from the link you provided doesn't suggest that it was bad at all:
The Microsoft JVM won the PC Magazine Editor's choice awards in 1997 and 1998 for best Java support. In 1998 a new release included the Java Native Interface which supplemented Microsoft's proprietary Raw Native Interface (RNI) and J/Direct. Microsoft claimed to have the fastest Java implementation for Windows, although IBM also made that claim in 1999 and beat the Microsoft and Sun virtual machines in the JavaWorld Volano test.
The problem with Microsoft's Java was that they implemented extensions that were not separated under the microsoft.* class tree, and that was why they were sued. I think the only reason that you claim that it was bad was that it was made by Microsoft so you just assumed that it must have been.
This is nothing new. The Shared Source Initiative has gone on for years, and provides access to the source of Microsoft products to governments, OEMs, large customers etc.
The difference here is that they are providing it at what they call a "transparency centre", which I suspect is to minimise the danger of the source getting released to the public so we all can inspect the code.
Microsoft is coming to the party late, as usual, with their "me too" product.
They are hardly coming late to the party, as this is simply the latest in the line that started with Windows XP Starter Edition. It originally was made for specific countries, but it was gradually expanded to worldwide distribution and has had an equivalent cheap level for OEMs for every of Windows since then. In fact, this isn't the first version to be labelled "Windows X with Bing" - that happened with Windows 8.
A billion devices in two years is a LOT of devices.
It does seem like an ambitious target for such a short time, but then Windows XP Starter Edition was only available in 17 countries and it ended up shipping 1,000,000 units. That said, it took them 5 years to reach that milestone.
Bullshit. I seriously doubt that you jump out of Linux into Windows just to watch DVDs, run desktop gadgets, perform a Windows Update, play solitaire and use a USB floppy. Are you seriously saying that any of those functions would be worth swapping your current operating system or that Linux didn't amply fill that need?
I bet you didn't even look at the list before posting your anti-Windows jibe.
You mean someone uses Windows built-in DVD playback? The first thing I've done on a new computer for the last five or six years is install VLC.
Ah yes, the old "I don't use it, some therefore nobody does" trope. The majority of people in the world wouldn't bother to install VLC to replace a function that was built-in to the OS.
I tend to use the standard media player with K-Lite codecs to play DVDs because the picture quality is slightly better on my system. Perhaps playing with VLC's options would fix that, but I can't think of a reason to bother. For video files, I tend not to care which player I'm currently using unless there are audio sync problems (VLC wins for its audio controls).
Having to change the security policy on every PC where my script will run is a total pain.
Can't you read? You don't have to change the security policy if you just sign your script.
You only have to change the policy if you want to edit a script on that PC, and if you do that then surely you are sitting at the workstation and are able to issue to one single command that is needed. If you can't issue the one command required then you have no business trying to edit a Powershell script.
It sounds like you just want to complain, no matter what. If you want to distribute scripts to others then sign them. Problem solved.
If your users want to edit the scripts then they can change their Powershell security policy allowing them to make all the script updates that they want. Problem solved.
In the meantime, the rest of the world who don't use nor care about Powershell just want to have a computer that is protected from malware attacks. They can live a little safer since Microsoft blocked the Powershell attack vector by default. Problem solved.
This is the way security defaults should be. If the ActiveX defaults had been secure by default in the early versions of Internet Explorer then the browser would not have had the bad reputation that it deservedly received. Sure it made it easier for developers (like you) to run their code on their users' systems, but it did so at the cost of security of the majority of people who didn't want that facility.
K. Construct a for loop in PS that lists a directory and adds the words "This is cool" to the 13th line of any file of type "text" without downloading a module.
Off the top of my head (and using verbose commands to make it more obvious), I got:
dir | where -Property Extension -match '.te?xt' | foreach {
$i=0;
$s=(Get-Content $_.FullName);
$s | foreach { if ( (($i++) % 13) -eq 0) { $_+" This is cool" } else { $_ } } | Set-Content $_.FullName
}
I haven't thought of a way to do the file type determination (other than by the extension), but that will do just for a post to an AC. It can all be done on a single line; I added the line breaks and indentation so it wasn't a big line of gobbledegook. Now it is several lines of gobbledegook!
The impressive part of the tab completion of Powershell is how context sensitive it is. When I typed the where command, I entered -p<TAB> and it expanded it to -Property (although just -p would work too). But the fun part was that I could then type e<TAB> and then go through the list of property names that are returned from the dir command that begin with the letter e; first Exists, then Extension. So it was aware what was being passed to the where command on the pipeline and returning the correct properties for that object.
So if I typed the following:
get-content "file.txt" | where -Property
...and pressed the tab key, it gives me the property name of Length as it knows that it is returning a string rather than a file. The same where command will work on (and give appropriate tab completion) on a directory listing, file output, database query, or XML tree list.
I just tried typing help copy on my computer and it worked, yet I don't have an msdn subscription. That said, help is not installed by default. From the equally free online version of Microsoft's documention:
Windows PowerShell 3.0 does not come with help files. To download and install the help files that Get-Help reads, use the Update-Help cmdlet. You can use the Update-Help cmdlet to download and install help files for the core commands that come with Windows PowerShell and for any modules that you install. You can also use it to update the help files so that the help on your computer is never outdated.
Finally, if you want to write help for your own Powershell code, just type help about_Comment_Based_Help for details on how to do this. No need to buy any licences.
I don't understand why Hollywood won't cast teenagers to play teenagers.
There are numerous reasons. The look of adults will remain more consistent throughout the filming of a movie and between sequels (not to mention a TV series), while no amount of contractual obligation can stop a child actor from growing. I heard on a director's commentary of a film (can't remember which one) that said that they had problems reshooting parts of an earlier scene because the child had changed between the start and end of the movie; probably no so noticeably as you watch the film sequentially, but when it they intercut shots into the same scene then it could be obvious.
Child actors also have limits on how long they can film and require schooling during the shoot. It's possible that trained actors are easier to direct and put in better performances, but that is just speculation and there are definitely examples of children doing some stunning work. Finally, teenagers can be right pricks sometimes (although so can some prima donna actors too).
Good lord, do people actually use the 'built in' email provided with Windows?
Of course they do. Most people in the world will have never heard of Sylpheed, let alone know what it is for. It is pretty arrogant to think that people don't use the built-in email simply because you don't.
We may end up with intuitive and user-friendly software, oh no!
But the problem is that you don't get an intuitive and user-friendly system. You might get a clean system without clutter, but then have to figure out and dragging from the top of the screen to the bottom is the way to close a program. Or that clicking in the space that used to have a design element (but is now just blank) was the way to bring up the start screen. Or that things that look like they are just decoration are actually active buttons, but you only know this (and what function they perform) by blindly clicking, dragging, swiping over every part of the screen.
Even when you do this, you still have to face the final insult when you find that the function you are looking for was removed from the software because it was deemed too advanced for modern users - even though Windows has been able to perform that function for decades up until now.
Modern user interfaces have absolutely nothing to do with intuitiveness. I looked at some really old software recently and found it so pleasant because I could tell exactly what functions were available and how to perform them simply because they used textual buttons and menus. It was so much better than being faced with a bunch of similar-looking graphics with no mouse-over pop-ups to explain what they were for.
The endless posts from people who claim that anyone who drives anything other than a SmartCar or a Prius is an evil person who is destroying the world...
That is a complete lie. I just did a search and found only one mention of the words SmartCar or Prius, and they were written by you.
Quote me the last Slashdot article that was focused on LED bulbs. Ok, you might find one.
I just said that the issues of replacing incandescent light bulbs is over which is why it needs longer needs any discussion. We also don't discuss this new color TV that we have had for decades because it is no longer news for nerds anymore. Don't try to make out like it is some conspiracy to bury the topic just because there are other technologies that have yet to prove themselves.
Because without a good economy, many more people are hurt and killed due to a lack of basic life needs
Now that sounds very alarmist. The idea that the economy will be so ruined by a carbon tax that people will die from lack of basic life needs is extreme and unsupported.
So the idea that we're going to toss money out the window when it comes to the environment? What color is the sky in that world?
Blue, and with a partially restored ozone layer too. That's right, there have been many instances where we have spent money to fix environmental problems.
I wouldn't mind a rational, reasonable conversation on the topic, but instead you've got "the world is ending we must DO SOMETHING" screamers...
Allow me to take a leaf from your book and say: Citation needed...
How exactly does the scientific community state that the world will end? Do they say that it will explode, like Krypton? Do they say that the oceans will boil away? If there is one thing that you can say about scientist it's that they always show their workings, so it should be easy for you to give an example of some paper that describes how the world is supposed to end.
But we both know that nobody has said that the world will actually end.
Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs seems to be a very cost effective way to reduce our power consumption.
Yet all we hear about are electric cars and solar power, neither of which make any economic sense.
Are you seriously saying that you have heard nothing about replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs? Seriously? That conversation has already been had. Go out and buy a light globe and tell us what choice you have now? Why would we still be hearing about that now when that is the one thing that has already been fixed?
And why should economic sense be of highest importance? Slavery makes economic sense, and yet we pay more for our goods so that the people who make them get paid because it is the right thing to do. Why can't we do the same thing so that we don't stuff up the environment?
I really wish that this was true, but I'm afraid the denial war is a constant and relentless presence. Only the bogus reason-of-the-month used to discredit the entire scientific community seems to change.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh look, it's another person making wild allegations without a shred of evidence. Nobody but you mentioned governments forcing farmers to do anything. Only you seem to think that adding 3-nitrooxypropanol to the feed is for any reason other than to reduce the greenhouse gases from cows. You have simply made up a claim to belittle someone who has a different opinion to you. It is exactly the sort of thing that cascadingstylesheet was complaining about.
Is that really what you consider to be a rational discussion?
What, you mean behaving reasonably might work better than just demonizing political opponents? You may be on to something there.
Judging by the way that the OP responded to my post, I think that we still have a long way to go before the demonising is done. Not only did he or she demonise the farmers by saying that they wouldn't voluntarily do anything to help in reducing greenhouse gases, but also I managed to get a serve because I didn't magically know that this was the vague "problems of implementing" the addition of a chemical into the cows' feed.
But seriously, I think that there is plenty of work going on behind the scenes to find solutions to climate change (like this story for example). Unfortunately, these sorts of studies tend to go unreported while the public endlessly debates what Al Gore said in a film back in 2006 or what happens to solar power plants after the sun goes down.
And yet making unsubstantial allegations and spreading FUD is exactly what we need around here. If you can't make a statement without explaining yourself then you have even less business commenting here than I have.
Believe it or not, farmers are concerned with climate change because it directly affects them. Here in Australia, our farmers often cooperate with the CSIRO (and other institutions) to study various aspects of climate change and methods to combat it. Also, any government that wants to make a cheap demonstration that they are doing something to meet their greenhouse gas emission targets could easily subsidise the addition of a single chemical into the feed of cows and other animals.
Because all the 1.2% savings that can be made add up to make a large difference. If we find eight ways to make 1.2% savings across different areas then that is nearly a 10% reduction in the human generation of greenhouse gases. The human race isn't limited to finding just one method to solve the climate change problem. If we make small savings across the board with cost-effective, manageable solutions then we don't have to solve the problem with a single grand gesture that ends up costing a lot of money.
And what are the problems that you envisage implementing this? The article says:
Larger tests will be needed to see if detrimental effects crop up over the long term
I find it interesting that you have already found out what the problems are before scientists have managed to do any studies.
Imagine my surprise when one started stating the license expired, and it was not able to run any setup.exe's to fix it (obviously some sort of infection).
Naturally Windows systems are full of malware and viruses if you simply assume that any problem that occurs is "obviously some sort of infection". If something goes wrong with a Linux setup, I'm sure you would assume that it couldn't possibly be due to "some sort of infection" and would actually take the time to find out what had happened.
When you finally found the problem you could then rest assured that your belief in the superior OS was justified, and the circular logic would finally be complete.
In space, no one can hear you whoosh!
I haven't yet found one that I can. I've asked several people who claim that there is no problem, how do I get into UEFI setup, to turn it off (or add my own keys)? The thing is, while Microsoft turned around and added a requirement to be able to turn UEFI off (originally, they weren't going to), they also made a requirement that to boot faster, it was not allowed to let people press a key to enter setup.
Hold the key down before powering on (and keep it held for a second or two after). On a Toshiba the key is F2, and it will definitely get you into the setup. On other brands you could try ESC, Del, F1, F2, F4, F10 or F12. Microsoft seems to think that you can access your BIOS settings with a keystroke. Have a look at their instructions on how to Disable Secure Boot:
Also, if Windows fails to boot 3 times in a row it will enter the boot menu, from which you can access the BIOS. Try booting, then turning it off three times. I had to do that once when I had a hardware fault once.
And no, the signed Microsoft Linux that some distros use for setup is not a valid option either.
Or you could use a distro with a Microsoft signature. Good suggestion. Oh, except for some reason you don't want to run Linux.
"Caught" does not imply anything of the sort. If you were caught cheating on your wife, no crime is implied. If you were caught picking your nose, nothing would be done to you (unless you work in food preparation, perhaps).
In this case, "caught" simply means that the telco was found to be doing something that they hadn't told their customers about (and would obviously prefer they didn't know about). And no, we shouldn't stop posting stories like this. Perhaps Optus will get away with it this time, but each time something similar comes to light it will build in the collective-minds of the public. Eventually something will be done to protect privacy; either at the legal level or the personal level like everyone starting to use VPNs. We will all say the VPNs are to protect us from corporate privacy issues, but really it will be to get around the Great Firewall of Australia or data retention laws.
NASA has become too political -- I am unable to trust their prediction models.
That is complete rubbish. You might have political reasons to dislike the data, models and predictions presented by NASA, but what evidence do you have that NASA has manipulated any of their work for political reasons? How have they "become too political" when they haven't changed what they do or say? If their results match the results of the rest of the scientific community but not what the Republican party says, are they being political or are the Republicans just wrong?
We keep hearing accusations that they (and others) fudge their figures to get more funding, but in a world where institutions that contradict the views of those in charge get defunded and disbanded, why would they mislead the public in such a suicidal manner?
Your dictionary pedantry adds no value and in fact obscures the issue.
Well said. Being right is never a substitute for feeling righteous.
Of Java, you uninformed nitwit, Microsoft's horrificly bad implement of Java: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
In what way was it horrifically bad? Name one problem that it had? The following from the link you provided doesn't suggest that it was bad at all:
The Microsoft JVM won the PC Magazine Editor's choice awards in 1997 and 1998 for best Java support. In 1998 a new release included the Java Native Interface which supplemented Microsoft's proprietary Raw Native Interface (RNI) and J/Direct. Microsoft claimed to have the fastest Java implementation for Windows, although IBM also made that claim in 1999 and beat the Microsoft and Sun virtual machines in the JavaWorld Volano test.
The problem with Microsoft's Java was that they implemented extensions that were not separated under the microsoft.* class tree, and that was why they were sued. I think the only reason that you claim that it was bad was that it was made by Microsoft so you just assumed that it must have been.
This is nothing new. The Shared Source Initiative has gone on for years, and provides access to the source of Microsoft products to governments, OEMs, large customers etc.
The difference here is that they are providing it at what they call a "transparency centre", which I suspect is to minimise the danger of the source getting released to the public so we all can inspect the code.
Microsoft is coming to the party late, as usual, with their "me too" product.
They are hardly coming late to the party, as this is simply the latest in the line that started with Windows XP Starter Edition. It originally was made for specific countries, but it was gradually expanded to worldwide distribution and has had an equivalent cheap level for OEMs for every of Windows since then. In fact, this isn't the first version to be labelled "Windows X with Bing" - that happened with Windows 8.
A billion devices in two years is a LOT of devices.
It does seem like an ambitious target for such a short time, but then Windows XP Starter Edition was only available in 17 countries and it ended up shipping 1,000,000 units. That said, it took them 5 years to reach that milestone.
Bullshit. I seriously doubt that you jump out of Linux into Windows just to watch DVDs, run desktop gadgets, perform a Windows Update, play solitaire and use a USB floppy. Are you seriously saying that any of those functions would be worth swapping your current operating system or that Linux didn't amply fill that need?
I bet you didn't even look at the list before posting your anti-Windows jibe.
You mean someone uses Windows built-in DVD playback? The first thing I've done on a new computer for the last five or six years is install VLC.
Ah yes, the old "I don't use it, some therefore nobody does" trope. The majority of people in the world wouldn't bother to install VLC to replace a function that was built-in to the OS.
I tend to use the standard media player with K-Lite codecs to play DVDs because the picture quality is slightly better on my system. Perhaps playing with VLC's options would fix that, but I can't think of a reason to bother. For video files, I tend not to care which player I'm currently using unless there are audio sync problems (VLC wins for its audio controls).
Having to change the security policy on every PC where my script will run is a total pain.
Can't you read? You don't have to change the security policy if you just sign your script.
You only have to change the policy if you want to edit a script on that PC, and if you do that then surely you are sitting at the workstation and are able to issue to one single command that is needed. If you can't issue the one command required then you have no business trying to edit a Powershell script.
It sounds like you just want to complain, no matter what. If you want to distribute scripts to others then sign them. Problem solved.
If your users want to edit the scripts then they can change their Powershell security policy allowing them to make all the script updates that they want. Problem solved.
In the meantime, the rest of the world who don't use nor care about Powershell just want to have a computer that is protected from malware attacks. They can live a little safer since Microsoft blocked the Powershell attack vector by default. Problem solved.
This is the way security defaults should be. If the ActiveX defaults had been secure by default in the early versions of Internet Explorer then the browser would not have had the bad reputation that it deservedly received. Sure it made it easier for developers (like you) to run their code on their users' systems, but it did so at the cost of security of the majority of people who didn't want that facility.
K. Construct a for loop in PS that lists a directory and adds the words "This is cool" to the 13th line of any file of type "text" without downloading a module.
Off the top of my head (and using verbose commands to make it more obvious), I got:
dir | where -Property Extension -match '.te?xt' | foreach {
$i=0;$s=(Get-Content $_.FullName);
$s | foreach { if ( (($i++) % 13) -eq 0) { $_+" This is cool" } else { $_ } } | Set-Content $_.FullName
}
I haven't thought of a way to do the file type determination (other than by the extension), but that will do just for a post to an AC. It can all be done on a single line; I added the line breaks and indentation so it wasn't a big line of gobbledegook. Now it is several lines of gobbledegook!
The impressive part of the tab completion of Powershell is how context sensitive it is. When I typed the where command, I entered -p<TAB> and it expanded it to -Property (although just -p would work too). But the fun part was that I could then type e<TAB> and then go through the list of property names that are returned from the dir command that begin with the letter e; first Exists, then Extension. So it was aware what was being passed to the where command on the pipeline and returning the correct properties for that object.
So if I typed the following:
get-content "file.txt" | where -Property
...and pressed the tab key, it gives me the property name of Length as it knows that it is returning a string rather than a file. The same where command will work on (and give appropriate tab completion) on a directory listing, file output, database query, or XML tree list.
I just tried typing help copy on my computer and it worked, yet I don't have an msdn subscription. That said, help is not installed by default. From the equally free online version of Microsoft's documention:
Windows PowerShell 3.0 does not come with help files. To download and install the help files that Get-Help reads, use the Update-Help cmdlet. You can use the Update-Help cmdlet to download and install help files for the core commands that come with Windows PowerShell and for any modules that you install. You can also use it to update the help files so that the help on your computer is never outdated.
Finally, if you want to write help for your own Powershell code, just type help about_Comment_Based_Help for details on how to do this. No need to buy any licences.
I don't understand why Hollywood won't cast teenagers to play teenagers.
There are numerous reasons. The look of adults will remain more consistent throughout the filming of a movie and between sequels (not to mention a TV series), while no amount of contractual obligation can stop a child actor from growing. I heard on a director's commentary of a film (can't remember which one) that said that they had problems reshooting parts of an earlier scene because the child had changed between the start and end of the movie; probably no so noticeably as you watch the film sequentially, but when it they intercut shots into the same scene then it could be obvious.
Child actors also have limits on how long they can film and require schooling during the shoot. It's possible that trained actors are easier to direct and put in better performances, but that is just speculation and there are definitely examples of children doing some stunning work. Finally, teenagers can be right pricks sometimes (although so can some prima donna actors too).
Good lord, do people actually use the 'built in' email provided with Windows?
Of course they do. Most people in the world will have never heard of Sylpheed, let alone know what it is for. It is pretty arrogant to think that people don't use the built-in email simply because you don't.
We may end up with intuitive and user-friendly software, oh no!
But the problem is that you don't get an intuitive and user-friendly system. You might get a clean system without clutter, but then have to figure out and dragging from the top of the screen to the bottom is the way to close a program. Or that clicking in the space that used to have a design element (but is now just blank) was the way to bring up the start screen. Or that things that look like they are just decoration are actually active buttons, but you only know this (and what function they perform) by blindly clicking, dragging, swiping over every part of the screen.
Even when you do this, you still have to face the final insult when you find that the function you are looking for was removed from the software because it was deemed too advanced for modern users - even though Windows has been able to perform that function for decades up until now.
Modern user interfaces have absolutely nothing to do with intuitiveness. I looked at some really old software recently and found it so pleasant because I could tell exactly what functions were available and how to perform them simply because they used textual buttons and menus. It was so much better than being faced with a bunch of similar-looking graphics with no mouse-over pop-ups to explain what they were for.
The endless posts from people who claim that anyone who drives anything other than a SmartCar or a Prius is an evil person who is destroying the world...
That is a complete lie. I just did a search and found only one mention of the words SmartCar or Prius, and they were written by you.
Quote me the last Slashdot article that was focused on LED bulbs. Ok, you might find one.
I just said that the issues of replacing incandescent light bulbs is over which is why it needs longer needs any discussion. We also don't discuss this new color TV that we have had for decades because it is no longer news for nerds anymore. Don't try to make out like it is some conspiracy to bury the topic just because there are other technologies that have yet to prove themselves.
Because without a good economy, many more people are hurt and killed due to a lack of basic life needs
Now that sounds very alarmist. The idea that the economy will be so ruined by a carbon tax that people will die from lack of basic life needs is extreme and unsupported.
So the idea that we're going to toss money out the window when it comes to the environment? What color is the sky in that world?
Blue, and with a partially restored ozone layer too. That's right, there have been many instances where we have spent money to fix environmental problems.
I wouldn't mind a rational, reasonable conversation on the topic, but instead you've got "the world is ending we must DO SOMETHING" screamers...
Allow me to take a leaf from your book and say: Citation needed...
How exactly does the scientific community state that the world will end? Do they say that it will explode, like Krypton? Do they say that the oceans will boil away? If there is one thing that you can say about scientist it's that they always show their workings, so it should be easy for you to give an example of some paper that describes how the world is supposed to end.
But we both know that nobody has said that the world will actually end.
Replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs seems to be a very cost effective way to reduce our power consumption. Yet all we hear about are electric cars and solar power, neither of which make any economic sense.
Are you seriously saying that you have heard nothing about replacing incandescent light bulbs with LED bulbs? Seriously? That conversation has already been had. Go out and buy a light globe and tell us what choice you have now? Why would we still be hearing about that now when that is the one thing that has already been fixed?
And why should economic sense be of highest importance? Slavery makes economic sense, and yet we pay more for our goods so that the people who make them get paid because it is the right thing to do. Why can't we do the same thing so that we don't stuff up the environment?
You're picking a fight before it's started!
I really wish that this was true, but I'm afraid the denial war is a constant and relentless presence. Only the bogus reason-of-the-month used to discredit the entire scientific community seems to change.