Um, that was in the 16th century. A little bit of history has happened since then - including the fact that Benedict is no longer Pope (current guy is Francis).

Back in the 18th and 19th century many Americans were practising slavery, so perhaps you could let go of a Pope that lived in the 16th century. He, like the early Americans, was a creature of his times. It is time to get over it. We all have skeletons in the historical closet.

Judging from the kind of requirements users often give me, a new computer language really needs to be telepathic. It has to know what the user meant - even when the user has no clue themselves.

It would help if the new computer language could do magic too. That's another user requirement I often get.

Epson printer ESC codes - you embedded them in text documents and sent them to your parallel port dot-matrix printer, and they produced bold and italics and double width, and all sorts of effects.

ANSI escape screen codes - for setting foreground and background colours and other screen effects (clear screen, home) when you got bored with light grey on black.

No. Slurping is most definitely not OK. I have had misophonia since the age of 12 (and it gets worse with age) and slurping is one of my principal triggers. I will feel like screaming at you as loud as I can if you slurp. I probably won't, but I will be sorely tempted. But I will get out of there as quick as possible.

Don't slurp.

(And yes, I know all about the joys of eating the traditional Chinese way. The only way I could stand it was to drink a large glass of alcoholic cider as quickly as possible. Alcohol is one of the few effective temporary cures for misophonia - I am told that cannabis also works, but that isn't legal where I live).

Whoa whoa whoa.. back up a bit with the gender mud, I'm pretty sure Obama wants to be called he.

Doesn't matter. They'll just be calling us all "cucks" since we don't beat our wives or espouse genocide against people of color.

The camera "sees" the user and even knows which user it is seeing. The camera then locks the screen immediately when the user is not present.

How long before the computer "sees" the user and notifies the police that they can pick up their known dissident. I mean, really, given the kind of governance we're about to enter into, this (not to mention Alexa-like audio surveillance "features") are the last thing I'd want on any equipment in my home.

And no, I don't have anything to hide. But conversely, I also don't use the restroom in the middle of 5th Avenue. Privacy is a thing, even in a world full of morons who think it isn't.

Yes, quite carried away. Your exposition is quite naive in thinking that people think in the scope you think they do. The failure to respond has been repeated historically quite a number of times.

And I think your timing of off by 50+ years, nothing will happen until people are really starving.

Nothing will likely happen until the 0.1% are starving, by which time it will be too late to do anything. The only reason to even hold out what little hope there is, is that people like the grandparent are at least thinking about, and worrying about, these things. If enough do, then real change can happen. Like the outcry that forced the Republicans to back off (at least for now) gutting the House Ethics committee, when the masses do voice their concern, they are heard. Unfortunately we all feel too weak, and too powerless, to make much noise unless things really hit the fan (by which point it is often too late). This is not an accident, and there are very specific reasons we as citizens are constantly made to feel powerless (hint: it benefits those running the show, on whichever side of the aisle).

While this request has DRM implications I really don't like (lense to screen encryption) and is no doubt an MPAA wet-dream, I unfortunately have to support this, as the clear and present danger to journalists, and the potential for regimes like the Trump Administration, Putin, et. al. to distort or destroy evidence of wrongdoing, demand something like this. At least with encryption journalists can keep their data safe, and if done properly, we can detect changes to the raw video/audio data. Both of which will be critical if we don't permanently want to live in a so-called "post-truth" reality (which really means "nothing but lies, lies, and more lies" reality).

No, it's in Wales. They would say: OH, Y DYNOLIAETH!!!

But will it get you a job? Only employers know what it is important to know.

Remember, consumer: 2 + 2 = 5

You'll do fine around here.

This is so boneheaded it beggars belief. The straightforward solution is to require the UEFI variable filesystem (or whatever it is called these days) to be mounted read-only, and require (UNIX anyway, but something analogous ought to work for Windows too) an application to do a "mount -o remount,rw" to do whatever it needs to do, then do a "mount -o remount,ro" when it's finished. Not as nice as having UEFI not be seriously broken, but workable, and there's not much of an excuse for things like systemd, openrc, etc. implementing this where appropriate (and for any UEFI crap that can brick a system, this is appropriate).

Applications don't like it? Tough, patch the damn things. Requireing firmware to be exposed to harm like this on any operating system is unacceptable.

Waiting for all the morons to blame cannabis.

The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don't want none of them highfalutin brain cells in their good town. They scare off the kids. "All the young people are going to move out," warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, brain cells suck up all the intelligence from everyone else. Another resident -- a retired science teacher, no less -- expressed concern that a proposed school would block education, and prevent nearby kids from growing up. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her brain cells didn't cause cancer. "I want information," Mann said. "Enough is enough."

Given that we're talking about geometric structures, maybe they're rodents of unusual shape...

The many angled ones. They live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set. Be afraid. Be very afraid.