Compare that to say, OS X, which actually provides compromise. It lets apps run full screen and windowed, whereas, ironically, Windows doesn’t. I get full screen or windowed. No compromise.

Microsoft is in the midst of what is likely the most public battle with cognitive dissonance in tech history. It believes that users want both a classic UI with one set of controls, logics and experiences simultaneously with another UI with its own set of controls, logics and experiences that are subtly entwined, utterly dependent upon each other, yet breathtakingly unaware that either exist.

I think a long time ago Apple secretly bought Microsoft and spent a decade beating themselves in the market so that when they released their long-planned suite of iHardware and OS X, it would make Windows look silly in comparison. That’s the only logical excuse for the way user accounts work in Windows.

Why, first of all, does a home operating system have an administrator account option? Then, second, and perhaps most important, why does this administrator account have the option, and a mandate in most cases, to run apps in administrator mode? Isn’t the very act of logging in as an administrator signaling to the operating system that you would like to run apps in administrator mode?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to get rid of user account levels and just prompt for a password when I need higher-than-normal access to the file system? Wouldn’t that be easier to explain to people than, “While running in administrator mode, right click the app and click, ‘Run as Administrator,’ and then when it pops up and asks, ‘Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?’ click ‘Yes.’”

In OS X you tap, type in a password and press enter.

In Windows, you log in as Administrator, right click, click, get a psychologically jarring audible warning with a dimmed screen, then click again.

Microsoft made an administrator mode that requires an administrator to modify administrator mode. That’s the deal.

The following is a partial list of things that could take her away from you.

• Car crash
• World War III
• Untreated swine flu
• Large pride of feral cats
• Pride of lions
• Serial killer
• Tsunami
• Shark attack
• Pristiq

Cloud: The collection of data and use of related computing services via remote servers accessed through the Internet.

The Internet is a collection of data and use of related computing services via remote servers accessed through the Internet. Stop adding meaningless marketing buzzwords and “modern usages.” How am I supposed to tell people to put periods in p.m. or to not use the ampersand if you use “cloud?”

It’s not your job to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It’s your job to raise it. That’s why we have style rules to begin with.

Mass Effect 3 ends the space opera trilogy in the most vague, unsettling or brilliant way. I can’t decide. I have no real intention of going into the details of the plot, characters, choices or dialogue. (The soundtrack, however, is brilliant.) My interest is in the defense BioWare is presenting. Art.

They see themselves as artists and, as such, should be immune to the populist consumer demands of their audience. Here to, I vacillate between supporting and disagreeing with their premise. I absolutely believe games can be, and in many cases, are art. I have a problem supporting that opinion when the developers sell additional parts of the story in downloadable content packs (or are owned by EA).

My friend Aaron, who I’ve debated the ending with these past few days, told me I should tweet @masseffect and say, “I’ve never bought a painting that later had additional canvases sold for it.”

This is exactly the problem I feel developers face when telling me their work is art. A popular belief among players finishing Mass Effect 3 is that the story concludes so poorly it must be a cliffhanger to be completed in a paid downloadable content pack. That’s not art. That’s the product of a meeting where people use phrases like “value-added.” I wasn’t given a complete artistic work. I was given a book with only the first three words of the last chapter, then told by the author I was attacking their artistic choices.

As it stands now, if the additional pack even exists and they had planned all along to release it (expecting all their fans to get the cliffhanger and patiently wait), I believe they’ll have to release it for free to appease the near unanimous condemnation from every person who plays the game. That’s not a bold artistic statement, it’s a poor business decision. All they’ve done is torment fans and lose money.

If they had no intention of releasing clarifying material for their artistry, then I’ll quote Roger Ebert, who, incidentally, does not believe video games are art.

“If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn’t.”

BioWare, don’t lecture us on artistic expression in an attempt to hide poor business decisions. Just own up to the mistake. And if you didn’t plan to release anything to explain your ending, admit you choked at the end, developed collective amnesia and forgot you weren’t writing the ending to the Matrix trilogy.

On an unrelated note, who’d win in a fight, an adventurer with an arrow in the knee or Marauder Shields?

Varian TrueBeam is exactly the name of the robot commander that leads the revolution.

Vanity Fair created a great response that I will not endeavor to outdo.

Whose job is it to decide what words look strange and what words just look fancy? And at what point does an exotic extra consonant become distracting?