If MS had put any focus on allowing skins/themes for Windows, the touch market would have just been an extra feature. There is no technical reason they couldn’t have, as evidenced by the third-party apps that allowed legacy skins on previous versions, such as 8 and 10. But they needed that lock-in and forced experience, rather than giving people the choice.

There are decent GUI installers for most, if not all, major Linux distros. They may not be as full-featured as the CLI versions, but they are sufficient for average users.

Yes, Win2k, WinXP, and Win7 were all major leaps forward in various areas. Imagine if 8 had been just a major cleanup of Windows 7 and unifying the various settings paradigms, how much better that would have been.

If you put $10 million into a fund for each of your 10 kids, it would leave you with about $300 billion for all the other things. $299.9 billion, if you aren’t keeping track of interest.

How am I supposed to take this seriously when it leads with “followed the Israeli regime’s defeats against resistance in … the Palestinian territories”? The only Israeli defeats I’ve been hearing about in Gaza are against their PR department.

It’s funny. Cilantro tastes weird and I don’t like it, but I wouldn’t say it tastes soapy. That said, whenever I have it, I always notice this weird taste, but never actually recognize it. Then I check the ingredients and there it is.

Well, now I can’t help but wonder if burning them is better or worse.

I finally saw one in person and I was a little ashamed to live near someone who made that kind of choice.

“Now it sucks for me and you! Just kidding, I like the taste of soap.”

As a tool-using species, killing them with something you won’t care about the smell being on seems pretty trivial.

There is a difference between nations and ethnicities, and there are many people whose homeland is ruled by others, or whose homeland is part of an amalgamation of different different ethnicities under the umbrella of a single nation. I’m pretty at least some of these countries that don’t recognize the country of Palestine recognize Palestinians as a distinct ethnicity.

None of that detracts from the general sentiments you raised, touches on whether or not Palestinians (or other ethnicities) should have their own nation, or excuses what I believe to be the Palestinian genocide being perpetrated by Israel.

The synopsis says the cables are already repaired, and it take more than a random merchant vessel to repair underwater cables.

This is kind of like saying, “What if only America existed?” There would certainly be some disruption, but it wouldn’t exactly be the end of civilization. Now, randomly distribute those people across the world, and it gets harder. But. The hypothetical plague didn’t kill 95% of the population, it made them infertile. That gives you decades to prepare and recover if you’re aware of the problem.

If an event like this happened, we could easily maintain most of the trappings of civilization with a little effort and cooperation. So yeah, you’re probably right.

There’s good evidence humanity was down to the tens of thousands before, yet here we are. Source. I’m not saying we’re guaranteed to get through it if it happened again, but a drop to half a billion people wouldn’t even necessarily cause a significant reduction of genetic diversity.

If it’s a one-generation thing, you will see some (or perhaps a lot of) social upheaval and a lot of artificial insemination/stud services, leading to a relatively brief dip in the population. Seriously, look up when Earth reached 1 billion people, and we’re closing in on 9 billion now. If it’s every generation, humanity will go extinct. Each fertile woman would have to have over 40 children to maintain population levels.

Given acidity is one of the 5 basic characteristics of wine, I suspect people, even adults, have been enjoying sour flavors for a few thousand years. Also, preserves have tended to be sweet, salty, or, you guessed it, sour for a long time, as well. They only thing that has really changed is our delivery vehicle for sour snacks.

I’ll let you in on something else. We spend as much taxes per capita on healthcare as America does.

People always talk about looking for the silver linings, and here you are finding love in part because of a major disaster. Good for you!

I used to think there was nothing more stupid in zombie movies than uninfected humans just leaving each other alone and killing off the zombies. Why would you bother taking guns from other people when you have so many just lying around after 90% of the people died? If everyone just killed 10 zombies, the whole thing would be cleared up. I don’t think that anymore.