Youtube comments of James LaBarre (@SenileOtaku).
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One of the big issues with energy supply is so many people can only think in terms of a one-and-only energy source. We need to have a widely diverse system, making use of what works best in a particular situation. Nuclear power as one major source, plus making use of hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc. Solar panels would probably work better as highly localized (such as your laptop, tablet, phone, and other portable electronics should have pop-up solar panels to augment the battery packs in them).
Heck, we could build a geothermal generating plant in Centralia PA.
Seems so mant of the same people opposing nuclear power are also the same ones seeking the end to coal plants as well as pushing for the demolition of hydroelectric dams. If they're THAT concerned about everyone's carbon footprints, perhaps they should remove their particular part of it from the ecosystem.
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Actually, I think this all started falling apart back during the Bill Clinton administration. In the 70's and 80's we were on our way to coming together as one people, on our way to ending racism and learning to accept our differences, our preferences, religions,gender, etc, without making any of us less worthy. Certainly we weren't there yet, we had more work to do, but the trend was heading the right way. . Then Bill came along, and all the hatred and divisiveness came rushing back.
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@juancarrillo1270 That was my thought too. Even back when Japan was the "low-cost manufacturing" country (before China) they took some pride in what they made. Early on their products may have been a bit crude in their construction, but they gave it their best effort to make the best with what they had. China, OTOH, cranks out whatever is the cheapest (in more than one use of that word) and laziest they can do. There is so much corruption at all levels of government that it's the only way a manufacturer can afford to make anything. And as they abuse and exploit their workers, those workers logically have no incentive to improve the products, or even care if they're good, bad, or even dangerous.
One thing that shows just how different the products are between the two countries; look at the collectability of toys made in Japan or China. The clunky old stamped metal Japanese toys of the 50's and 60's are in much higher demand.
Granted, Sony, Nintendo, etc have had plenty of "asshole" moments.
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Interesting you should mention the a1278 model. Just picked one up at a flea market over the weekend (for all of $75), although it's listed as a "mid-2010" model (did they just re-use the number?) It's only my second Mac (after the iMac Rev.D from 1999, that we lost in a house fire some 11 years ago). It does what I need it to do; gives me experience working with MacOS, and was priced at about the maximum I would spend on an Apple computer these days. It even runs 10.13 ("High Sierra") and is likely something I could repair myself if needed (maybe even watch some repair videos from that Rossman fellow).
But yeah, if I can't fix a computer, I don't want it. If I wanted a machine with all the components, memory and processor included, permanently wave-soldered to the motherboard, I could get a $200 Asus laptop rather than a $2000 Mac (and even with everything else built-on, it still has a regular HDD, and is possible to dismantle without trashing the entire system).
At work I was recently sent a "laptop refresh" email, and had my choice of a Lenovo or an MacBookPro. I looked at the specs, and the Lenovo was far more useful for my needs (especially when I attach two external monitors) than the Apple. Specs were far better, and the Lenovo was running Linux, which gives me far better control over my desktop environment than Apple would deign to allow me.
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Just the very idea of leasing equipment that is built into your house raises red flags to me. Service contracts, home improvement loans, those are the sorts of things I could see paying for over a period of years. But those would be against items you *OWN*. If it's something I'm leasing, it should be for something that can readily be removed within an hour or so. For home security I'd be leasing maybe a base-station, but the cameras, doorbell, etc are built-ins, so one way or another they're MINE.
As it is I'm looking at exterior cameras for home, and not only would I be buying the cameras outright, I'm looking for ones that would use an open-source management system that doesn't require some external service to use.
But then again I've always presumed anyone showing up at my doorstep to sell me something, is most likely planning to rip me off.
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Time to move to Japan if I want to write/produce truly creative work. Look, the manga and anime handles a wide range of social topics, but they do it ion an inventive, thoughtful way, trying to find balance in the story. Oh, and they actually try to make the story engaging and entertaining, rather than yet another woke sermon. And the "doujin" culture (amateur works, either based from existing shows/books, or original works) is vibrant, and various big "franchises" have come out of it (such as "Touhou Project"). Even in their traditionally insular culture, they'd be far more accepting of a "gaijin" like myself than the US entertainment industry is now.
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I still use optical media for a lot of things. You can buy a lot more DVD blanks for the price of a single flash drive, regardless of how cheap flash drives are gettiing. Especially if you are dealing in smaller "data sets", where anything more than a 4G flash drive is wasted space. Heck, I'd like it if I could get a car stereo taht could read data DVD-Rs (each one having MP3s of a single artist or music style at a decent resolution). Sure, can do that with flash drives, but again, more expensive per drive than disk, and likely much wasted space on the flash.
DVD Camcorder? Yep, still have one of those too (although these days I tend to prefer using the MemoryStick storage it already has; more capacity, and I don't have to 'finalize' it in order to view the video)
DVD-RAM disks were used in the 'Hardware Management Consoles' for pSeries and zSeries (mainframe) systems. An HMC is essentially a "PC" set up with software to manage partitioning, configuring, and updating those large systems, and the configurations could quickly become quite complex. In order to avoid having to reconstruct the profiles in case of failures, the HMC could back-up the profiles to DVD-RAM. I'm presuming the "ROM" vs writable DVD-ROM was so you'd be able to overwrite old profiles, so you wouldn't accidentally restore an old configuration. I ended up with some of the blank disks because our test lab never bothered using them, and more when we shut down a server floor. Actually have a PATA internal drive for the disks, as well as a USB external drive that happens to have DVD-RAM support.
Now that you mention it, I should see if my DVD-Videorecorder can handle DVD-RAM disks. I'm using that recorder to transfer VHS tapes by simply dumping the entire tape to disk, which I can then poke through to extract whatever content I still want.
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While I can't see MacBooks as being an affordable alternative, I can see some potential cost savings in Chromebooks or the like, amortized over three years, if they can be used to replace teh the need to buy expensive textbooks, planners, etc, especially when you have some textbooks that are only meant to be used for one year (mathbooks with fill-in/tear-out pages, for example). Digital copies of articles that would have to be otherwise photocopied and handed out. Offsetting the costs of physical media that will only get thrown out afterwards. Considering some level of computer experience is needed anyway, perhaps the costs are offset. Mind you, I don't know the actual costs involved, but textbooks aren't very cheap either.
But if you're buying MacBooks, I expect those savings go right out the window. Leave the Macs to people who specifically need MacOS capabilities (heck, have a few in your school computer lab for the occasions where they may be specifically needed).
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As for what changes we'll see in the democratic Party over the next four years; I'm seriously hoping to see the Dems face an overwhelming defeat in November. Yes, in large part because their planned policies are extremely bad for our country, but also so that the "rank & file" of the party membership (not the current leadership) will demand and force a reworking of the party, something that will bring it back from the brink and restore sanity. Barring a rise of 3rd-party victories (enough to eliminate the ability of the Republicrats or Demopublicans to hold a majority), we need the two parties to be in balance with each other, with neither being able to railroad their own agenda through.
As for the impending doom of the "blockbuster" movies, it may not be an entirely bad thing. Watch commentators like Nerdrotic and the like about how the industry is spitting on the very fans who should be the industry's lifeblood. Maybe the studios will actually have to cut way back on all the flash, hype, and special-effects and instead go back to (*GASP!!*) actual competent storywriting.
Not that I have a shortage of things to watch anyway. I have such a backlog of just Anime itself that I'd never be able to catch up without foregoing sleep, work, eating, etc (OK, I can watch while I'm eating, so that doesn't count). And I've got my own "space opera" to finish writing too.
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To what Drinker says on shows cutting themselves down to shorter runs, and trying to squeeze a story into fewer episodes, that certainly seems the situation in Anime as well. Where shows like "Space Battleship Yamato", "Queen Millennia", "Neon Genesis Evangeleon", "Revolutionary Girl Utena", and other classics put their stories over a longer story arc, these days it's a whole lot of 12-and-done productions. The problem with those is the storylines get rushed and lots of story development gets dropped, or they run the 12 episodes and it ends without resolving anything.
It's especially problematic when adapting from a long-running manga. Look at a series like "Yona of the Dawn"; the show gets as far as Yona gathering the 'four dragons' she will need on her quest. The the series ends. Nothing about how the dragons will help regain her kingdom, how she learns about the world, the neighbouring countries, no answer to what her cousin is really up to, etc. Especially how the first episode starts with a 'flash-forward' scene of how she fights the evil in her land, which would imply the show would eventualy go there.
Sometimes it seems like these anime adaptations are just advertisements for the associated manga.
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It's funny you talk about 10 year old boards like they're actually old. I just built out a new system the beginning of 2022 (DDR4, not 5 even), and before that my previous new build had been in 2005. In between I had repurposed old machines, scraped together systems from used parts, etc. Heck, even with my new builds I was reusing cases and drives.
When I looked at motherboards for my latest build, I was looking at expandability first, then on-board features (a minimum of 4 memory slots, and preferably 4 PCIe slots). I hadn't realized the NVMe would take up 2 SATA 'port slots', so I already had to add an extra SATA card (old IBM x3200 HMC case with 2 optical drives and 4 hard drives). Those high-end boards look like they shove in all sorts of crap I don't need at the expense of expandability I might need.
And still scraping up components to use up parts I already have? Yep, doing that with an older AM3+ system I have here, picking up a used processor upgrade and adding in a used GPU card (already bumped it up to it's maximum 16G memory). Looking to make a backup minimum-spec machine so I can fix my wife's P.o.S. MSI laptop (isn't saiing 'P.o.S.' and 'MSI' redundant?), so she can still play WoW and Diablo III while I figure out what the MSI-crap's problem is (I may see if I can get WoW working under Linux/Wine).
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"...all the missteps, pettiness, politics, reverse decisions..." And just HOW is that any different than the Apple of today? Only that today's Apple can more easily steamroll over the resellers, repair shops, and the customer base with no regard for quality, usability or repairability. They pretend to be so 'eco-conscious' all while manufacturing expensive throwaway products exploiting people on both ends of the chain.
Considering how Steve Jobs intentionally and wilfully kneecapped and destroyed the Apple IIgs, it's good that he suffered some level of defeat as well. Nowhere enough, but some.
I remembered seeing those Lisa systems for sale back then, and it was one of various systems I wanted, but wasn't even close to having enough money. The idea that they were intentionally destroyed makes me angry, as that means it would be that much harder to get one now at a reasonable price.
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@bartroberts1514 Geothermal is certainly something we haven't sufficiently exploited (think Centralia PA), but outside of localized implementations it isn't going to produce a large portion of our energy needs.
Water power? Yeah, that IS a good source of energy, if it wasn't for the lefties and their ilk tearing down all the hydroelectric dams producing that water power.
Wind? Would be better if done on smaller, localized scales (think of the classic old farm windmills, etc) rather than the expensive-to-produce 'wind farms', with components that can't be readily recycled after the wind generator's short lifespan (and don't forget wind turbines catching fire and spewing all sorts of pollutants into the air). Oh, and disrupting migratory patterns of birds (you know, the sorts of creatures the tree-huggers claim to be fond of).
Solar? Do you consider the human cost of acquiring the raw materials (but you probably don't care about children being sent into dangerous mining operations, so long as you can get your new iDevice)? And what about (again) the ability to recycle the solar panels once they've outlived their usefulness? And the problem that many are produced in countries that don't give a crap about how much they pollute the planet or disrupt economic systems?
I can hear you now; "but, but, these are technical problems that can be solved with more development (and a WHOLE lot more public money)". Quite true, but the EXACT SAME can be said of any nuclear technologies. Weighing risks vs benefits, and chosing what is best in any specific situation. But thinking of multiple solutions seems to be well beyond the capabilities of way too many people now.
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If you abso;utely have to run a MSWindows-like operating system, there's always ReactOS. If enough people put money and effort towards it's development, it could readily become a useful replacement. Of course, the time that should have been done was when MSWin XP was headed towards EOL, but companies, etc were too cowardly to try that option.
If you are in need of MSWindows-specific applications*, it is likely you will be able to run them under the Wine runtime under Linux (and other x86-based Unix-type OSes). Run them under a trial version of Crossover Office (a commercially-supported version of Wine); if it works and you buy your supported copy of it, that goes towards supporting the continued development of Wine as well. ANything else like browsere, email clients, office suites have Linux *and MSWin versions, so you could start migrating to them before you even have to move off of MSWin.
Personally, I will continue using Linux as my primary OS on all my systems. MSWin runs inside a VM on those, so if absolutely necessary I can just shut off the network connectivity on those (or just keep a clean tar file of the clean configuration, and just extract it over the other one if needed).
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But the thing is a spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend would always be a "person of interest" in a case like this. As I understand it they're statistically more likely the guilty party, and they'd certainly have more opportunity. However, given that he'd automatically be investigated anyway, the smart move is to have a lawyer already on hand. It's much like the typical argument against people protecting their privacy, where the other side will say "you should only want privacy if you have something to hide".
This expert, as well as the reporters, should already know this. I'm not saying he's innocent any more than I'm saying he's guilty. But let's avoid "trying him in the media" as has been the case far too often. It's precisely because the press, public opinion and police procedures would be shining suspicion on you that you should protect yourself, that's just a smart move. But just as we have our Scott Persen's that plead their sob stories to cover up their guilt, we also have the Richard Jewel's who get who get branded as heinous criminals before we find "oops, they weren't guilty after all".
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Find an older mid-tower case you can reuse. If it doesn't have the windw, no one has to see whether your system has all the fancy lights and status panels inside, which means you won't need them. My primary machine's case used to be an IBM x3200 HMC. My other mid-tower is one of those classic late-90's beige wonders (bought it at a yard sale for $5) which I painted up with a hammer-finish copper paint, with black highlights (especially since your current optical drives will have black faceplates).
M2 or SSD for your operating system, but data files like documents, pictures, music & videos can realistically stay on spinning rust. So a smaller solid-state drive saves money too.
Can't tell you what to do with graphics/GPU, as I don't do gaming. I'm working with virtualization, image editing, etc, although I'll probably need a much better graphics solution if I start doing any animation rendering.
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I didn't block ads on YouTube UNTIL they started the bullshit of interrupting videos mid-roll, regardless of whether it was mid-sentence or even mid-word. I had been willing to accept pre-roll and post-roll ads since I could watch the video itself without interruption. But once the mid-roll ads came along, I cut them off completely.
I am OK with reasonable advertising,, but when they pull that crap of auto-play loud videos, popover pages and such, that is just unacceptable. If YouTube blocks my video viewing because of ad block, I'll just spend MORE time on Odysee, Rumble, and other sites (or I'll just watch more on Crunchyroll and Netflix, which I am paying for).
And the problem I find with a lot of anti-ad-blocker sites is that I actually don't have an ad blocker (except for my YouTube-specific ad blockers), but I DO have cookie filtering. And that triggers ad-block detection on many occasions. Which means I couldn't readily disable it for them anyway. And if they're triggering my cookie filters, then they're likely serving malicious content.
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I think another issue with the "housing crisis" isn't necessarily that there aren't enough houses, but that people can't afford to buy houses. Heck, even car prices have gone well beyond what the average middle-class can afford, so think of how much worse it is for housing.
But I think it's also offensive the way the interviewer, when Vance sugests bringing in the disaffected American workers into the workforce, she says "in construction???". Seriously, I have FAR more respect for the folks who work in building our homes, offices, factories & the like than I do for so-called "journalists" like her. As a software QA engineer myself, I have to think there's something to be said for a job where when you're done you can see a finished construction project, a tangible result of your work, and know that will last for years and years, while software is illusory and will be abandoned as useless and obsolete within a few years.
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This is why, even though I am vehemently opposed to what the far-left is doing to distroy our culture, our morals, and our country, and as much as I see the Democratic Party is quite happy to enable all the WORST the far-left has to offer, dancing right along with them into the pits of hell, I STILL can't call myself a "Conservative". I see nothing wrong with Dave & Dave making their OWN choice in their lives, and expect they'll be much better parents than many of the clueless idiots in this country (and the rest of the world) breeding indiscriminately.
As a Libertarian I've found myself strongly allied with the Conservative ideas of fiscal responsibility, smaller government, self-responsibility, etc. I expect I will always be able to ally with them on those points. But I also believe in a stringent separation of religion and government, marriage between any two willing and consenting adults regardless of race, religion or gender, and am also VERY Pro-Choice. I'd even point out to conservatives that the people MOST likely to get abortions are the very same troublesome far-left; why not just LET them weed themselves out of existence. And I could argue other reasons they might support as well, but then the discussion will get way out of topic.
So go for it Dave, although you may find yourself wondering what it was like to get a full night's sleep... <g>
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I specifically looked for a vintage home cassette deck (not a portable player) so that I could have a decent transport mechanism. Unfortunately it needs work before it will even work. Seems I shouldn't have thrown out my mid-80's Akai (which I had bought new) when it stopped working. But at my age I need to start clearing things out of the house, so holding onto dead equipment is counterproductive.
I would definitely like to buy some physical media from various doujin circles I follow [1], but the CDs are limited runs to begin with, and they don't make it to the US anyway (except as a handful of used disks, at which point the artists aren't making any money from the sale). So it comes down to buying FLAC downloads from their online sites.
[1] you know, like Alstroemeria Records (who did "Bad Apple"), Shibayan Records, Frozen Starfall, Violet Delta, etc. And there's the Vocaloid producers, AniSong, etc.
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Would have preferred, if MS was determinedbkit- on adopting a pre-existing rendering engine, that MS had adopted Gecko. I think the whole heavy-handed "Blink" dominance (Chromium's Webkit-derived rendering engine) is ultimately a bad thing, if for nothing else, the high security risk of a browser monoculture. If Chromium does something wrong, or ends up with a severe zero-day vulnerability, then a significant proportion of the internet population becomes at risk.
I actually use Waterfox rather than Firefox, mainly because FF broke too many extensions I needed. Generally, I despise Google Chrome. It tends to bring my Linux systems to a near standstill, and have seen that browser crash pages upon startup on MSWindows (multiple machines & MSWin versions). The only reason I'm using the Brave browser is for YouTube, since Google became overly obnoxious with their video-breaking advertising, so I'm cutting off ALL advertising for YT, but still want to support other sites.
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I could see them saying it's "easier" to get repaired, if you consider it's more obvious that you can bring your Mac to an Apple Store to schedule a repair, while getting a WinTel-type laptop repaired will take a lot more effort to locate a repair shop. Presuming you don't want to rely on the GeekSquids at WorstBuy.
But it's rather obvious to me; anything that requires un-soldering is going to be more involved than popping a couple clips and swapping a component. But that level of thought escapes many modern-day journalists of ANY field, but it seems to be more prevalent in the tech journalism field.
Not that there aren't Wintel-type laptops that suffer from the same repair difficulty as MacBooks (such as the Asus x551c). But those are usually the lowest-end cheapass laptops, meant to be essentially throw-away devices. I had tried repairing/recovering one for a friend late last year, and ultimately found it to be a bad SATA channel. You might actually try to fix taht on a MacBook, on the Asus you just turn it into a laptop X-terminal with Linux on a bootable USB, and forget about fixing the components (the mboard is nearly the price of a new machine).
But if re-soldering is such a "simple" repair (according to these tech journalists) then maybe I should replace the bad caps on a couple Dell boards I have here, if it's so dead-simple to do (well, relative to what LR does here, it actually would be).
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@thalesnemo2841 The problem with the electoral college is the same as the problem with the way Senators are elected. Senators are selected by the popular majority of the state **in total**. Now when you have someplace like New York State, where the majority of the population is concentrated in two or three cities, those cities overwhelm the interests of the remainder of the state.
The proper method would be to tally the votes *by county*, and then use those county votes to see who becomes senator for that term. As I understand the weird way NYC is set up, each borough counts as a "county", so even there they'd get five votes. The House of Representatives has it's members chosen by population groups of a particular size, so it's not like NYC and other similar cities aren't already being adequately represented.
This is how the Electoral college should run. Two electors selected by a county subtotaling, and the remainder by a tally of the corresponding district to each.
Of course, my own particular solution is a variant of one I read someplace. Rather than the massive dog-and-pony circus we deal with every four years, we should simply expand the electoral system, picking 100 people by lottery of citizens within a congressional district, for each congressional district. These people would receive the campaign materials of each candidate, and would make a choice from those. 100 superelectors per congresscritter means the number is high enough they can't be personally strongarmed by the candidate, yet still is economically possible for third-party candidates to participate. The superelectors can have time to mull over the particular platforms, get input from their friends, family, etc, and make their own decision without all the hype.
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When I finally had to replace my 5 year old Droid Razr HD (it would no longer recognize SIM cards) Ibought a Moto E5, unlocked*, for $130. It does what it needs to do (make & receive phone calls), works as a basic note pad and address book, *PLUS has the headphone jack and removable battery. Only problem with it was it had grown larger (W & H, not thickness) and barely fits in the carrying pouch I used for the Droid Razr. Other than the fact I have to (apparently) activate "OK Google" in order to use voice command over my bluetooth headset (F*** you Google) it's the perfect phone for my needs.
feeble excuses on why they have to reduce/remove things is like one of my big complaints with Android tablets. I would actually prefer a full-size SD/MMC card slot, since there's plenty of space on the housing to fit one. But the manufacturers (f*** them) will never do that.
Bezels? Yeah, I prefer some sort of bezel on the phone (big clumsy hands, so it's harder to use something with a full wrap-around screen) I ALSO would prefer them on my laptop screen as well. I hate it that laptops these days come with those paper-thin displays that seem as though the manufacturers WANT them to flex and break. I'd rather have something thicker and more resilient. So these days I only look at used machines (I'm loading Linux on them anyway, so don't need the warranty).
Remember way back when Mad Magazine would have those 'pictorials' for various businesses, and the particular business would go out of their way to provide BAD customer service? Why do I get the impression business schools adopted them as models for running businesses these days? No, folks, those weren't meant as guidelines...
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The sad part is, I had actually wanted an electric car some 35 years ago. I had thought they'd already be at a viable state by now. I mean, I'd like to help clean up the environment too, but I've learned a full-on electrification isn't going to be the way to achieve that. It will take an innovative assortment of smaller-scale solutions rather than centralized management. But government mandates are the polar opposite of innovation, and being able to think of complex solutions is beyond any government. All they know is one-size-fits-all, when what we need is to fit our tech and systems to the specifics of any particular situation, and often it's localized rather than regional or national.
And besides, if we come up with our OWN solutions, we won't be dependent on centralized authority, and we CAN'T be having that, can we?
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Have no problem with UI inconsistency on my systems. I'm running the Cinnamon desktop on LinuxMint, and all blends in very nicely. You have FAR more flexibility in it's look, colors, shading, elements, etc (even though the Gnome3 devs do everything in their power to break user configuration in the GTK libraries). If you're using KDE/Qt applications under a GTK-based desktop, you can even theme those to more closely match the GTK configuration (and it works the same if you are on KDE, which can manage GTK theming). And if you're running some MSWindows application under the Wine runtime, even those can be made to blend in seamlessly.
Part of the secret with this is *modularity*. MS needs to break-apart a lot of the functionality of their OS. As it is now too many elements are heavily intertwined with other unrelated components, too many layers don't merely bleed into each other, but have pieces welded in that have no business operating at that level.
As far as 'backwards compatibility" is concerned, I'd think MS should take on the "Wine" approach. For that matter, they could essentially just port Wine to MSWindows, and make that the compatibility layer to run all those 'ancient' APIs. Then they could migrate those legacy APIs out of the core/kernel of the system, since they'd be supported within the compatibility layer. The wine-layer could then be frozen to whatever MSWin version they want to stop at (probably W7), and let the core handle newer functionality without having to worry about breaking legacy applications. Biggest problem is that MS would have to submit that legacy code into the WIne project, under a GPL license (various reasons too involved for here), which I don't see them willing to do. The alternative would be to base it on the very out-of-date ReWind fork of Wine (an awful lot of work to bring up to date, likely to costly to even consider).
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