Wall Street investment bankers have moved well beyond simple burglary.

A pity. AOL had a lot of entertainment value, even if it wasn't quite the kind AOL intended.

No, it's to punish people for being middle class and striving to do better. I was never rich and never will be, but every time I made a little more money I paid a lot more tax. Work overtime for extra money when incremental taxes are 40%+? (It's easy to get there with Social Security and Medicare tax, state tax, and federal tax; you don't have to be a high earner). You reach a "why bother" point where being productive is counterproductive.

I'm all for doing the right thing and helping people that need help. I'm also all for people trying to help themselves. So if phones help people help themselves, such as getting work or education to enable them to get work, then it's to the good, and it's a responsible thing for the rest of us to do.

Someone just please tell me that's what's really happening with these programs. You know, giving people a boost so they can become productive? As opposed, say, to making money for the ruling elite, or allowing people to get free goodies in exchange for votes, or allowing people to shirk their own responsibilities.

Nothing is simple. We certainly have some of all of the above.

Poutine is indeed delicious, though I would not call it health food :)

You've answered your own question.

Yes, I have always loved the concept of my paying more taxes so other people could have for free the things I can't afford for myself.

Oh no! We're going to cause global warming on Mars now!

Shouldn't someone from the anti-open-source bunch be on here stating that this "proves" that open source isn't viable?

Oops, shouldn't give them ideas.

I more lament the demise of Crunchbang, actually. It was a pretty original concept. But distros come and go. There are market forces in open source, too. Commercial software also comes and goes, but when it goes, users are generally left with ... not much.

Which raises the question, why is this even news? Is it more Linux/open-source bashing by the commercial OS crowd? It doesn't even make sense. Turn on remote admin and leave a default password in place, and it's the fault of Linux when you get hacked?

I can beat that :) I started on an IBM 1620 (in 1966) with 2k of core memory --- old fashioned doughnut core. 2k was the "big" machine, by the way.

So how about we just let people go into any career that makes them happy and fulfilled, and not worry about their gender? Want to be a nurse, a scientist, a homemaker? Male or female, who cares, just do it.

The only issue here is that society doesn't see it that way. The issue isn't that "oh man, women are 51% of the population but only 41% of the scientists (numbers not meant to be accurate, just illustrative) so we have a crisis and we better do whatever before the sun implodes." The issue is to allow and encourage people, without judging them or imposing preconceived notions, to seek their own destiny in their own way.

But some things simply will never change. Women are still going to be 100% of the mothers and men 100% of the fathers. (I did *not* say caregivers or homemakers.)

Windows 3.0 (and subsequent in that series) was not an operating system, it was a windowing environment. Remember, it still ran on top of MS-DOS, and it was still effectively single-tasking in that switching tasks paused the previous task.

Windows was not a true OS until Windows 95, as I recall the history.

There were others, like GEM, that never really caught on despite their relative quality.

But (to change the subject a little) I think the "big one that got away" was OS/2. A pity that IBM didn't know how to market it.

I need to read the article, but it seems like 12 seconds is really, really short, let alone 8 seconds.

Seriously? People can't concentrate for more than 12 seconds?

I'll go along with this, but with the following modification. Do this once a year, every year. First time, maybe the kid decides to live. After five, ten, twenty years with no hope at all?

Execute him, the punishment is quickly over. Put him in jail, he's likely to live 50 more years knowing he'll never, ever get out.