I'm glad my beloved grandfather and great uncles are gone, they fought against fascism in WWII and this kind of gestapo shit would disgust the hell out of them. I could probably wrap his body in some copper wire and run my entire neighborhood from all the revolutions he's turning in his grave.

I wish I had a chance to know your beloved grandfather and great uncles. You know, back when they were walking magnets.

If you pay for something and they don't deliver, can't you just call your credit card company and dispute the charge?

is 42.

Let's walk through building a similarly speced Hackintosh and set aside the build quality and all-in-one arguments for the moment.

(Massively cribbed from TonyMacx86.

Let's get as 3.2 GHz i5 for $200 (Core i5-4570).

We need a motherboard to plug it into. A Gigabyte for $142 will get us WiFi and some nice features (GA-Z87N).

8 gigs of RAM for $85 seems reasonable and compares to the target too. (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9)

A Bitfenix Prodigy is a nice case for $90. Here, you may be able to go cheaper, but you can certainly go more expensive. (BFC-PRO-300-WWXKW-RP)

A Corsair 500W power supply for $55 is pretty reasonable.

Although I'd prefer an SSD, we're comparing to a system with a 7200 RPM spinner. A Seagate Barracuda for $79 seems appropriate. (ST31000524AS)

I'm having trouble matching the GeForce 755M with my Wikipedia-Fu. A modest video card with twice the memory sets us back $100 (ASUS GT640). Hopefully the performance is similar, but I'm open to suggestions.

The barebones system is $751.

You can get a 27" IPS display from Monoprice, which Anandtech said badly needed calibration to be taken seriously (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7240/monoprice-zerog-slim-27-ips-monitor-review) for $390.

You can get a decent keyboard for $50, and a decent mouse for $50 (here, you can beat both by downgrading, but I use a trackball that's closer to $100).

The reference system excludes an optical drive, so we won't needlessly add one to compare, but includes an SDXC slot, whatever that is. Assembling all those spare parts above gets me to $1241, and excludes software (which is famously "free" now, but really is only free with the purchase of a licensed computer), but I can save $460 over the reference system.

I cheaped out on the screen, but for another $100, I could get a Dell that's got decent factor calibration. I don't have speakers -- $50 may be a good budget for what's in the iMac, I don't have a camera, but a Logitec C920 for $75 seems equivalent. Adding those back in gets me closer to $235 under the reference system.

My hand-built system isn't an all-in-one, which is a value to some. My hand-built system may not be as quiet, which is worth a premium too (I used higher-power desktop components instead of the laptop equivalents in the iMac), and I may use more electricity, increasing the TCO by as much as $0.05-$0.10 per day (wild guess) which adds up over a few years. All of this, the OS, iLife and iWork licenses plus the support of being able to walk into an Apple store is where the $235 goes toward. My iMac is 5.5 years old. I've replaced the hard drive 4 times (one died out of warranty, the replacement was slower than hell but free, replaced that with a faster spinner, replaced that with an SSD), and the number of Torx screws necessary to get to them is significant, but does not make it unserviceable. The memory in my wife's (same age) died at 5 years old, and that was a $40 replacement that took 5 minutes.

It is unfair to say that this is a $12 burger selling for $100 (when I go to the local restaraunt, I pay $9-$10 for a burger, and it comes with fries... Are you overpaying for your hamburger?).

Yay Doubleclick?

Go ahead and storm the NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade with guns blazing, demanding your privacy. Let us know how that turns out.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue trying to prevent the next Columbine, Virginia Tech, Oak Creek, Aurora, Tuscon, Newtown, etc.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Be careful what you wish for, Dr. King.

Last week, I created a meatloaf in my kitchen. I did not, however, "invent" meatloaf.

There would be no need to pirate it if everyone knew that it would be on TV. How many knew that this was the case?

Not everyone has the same motivations as you. "Pirates" often have setups similar to TiVo's "season pass" feature. You type in the name and all the episodes are downloaded automatically, and with higher accuracy than PVRs (ever had a favorite show preempted by a politician or sports program you weren't interested in?). They end up in a uniform location with all the other shows the user is interested in, and with a common interface-- be it XBMC or just VLC.

Fixing one TV show doesn't fix the entire problem. Personally, I was terrified to download anything ... until suddenly there was no legal way to get my TV show of choice. I was in the US, couldn't get cable, my satellite provider wouldn't (or couldn't) provide the local networks -- a problem long since rectified -- and despite my satellite and affiliate's insistence, I was unable to receive that station with any antenna. Once I realized how easy it was, I realized that it was easier and more accurate to download than it was to DVR shows. That spread to even shows I received over the antenna and satellite because of the convenience and accuracy.

I look forward to when the entertainment industry realizes they're not catering to my type and there are a lot of us out there.

Actually the whole gauss gun idea makes no sense.

I think it makes lots of sense. It's pretty clearly functional and simple, and it runs off the definition of a linear motor. In fact, there are some places that will assume "projectile" when you specify "linear motor" instead of slower speed ideas (like a MagLev).

Take an electric motor attach a say 100mm diameter spinning frame put you bullet on one side with a counter balance on the other side spin it up to 2000 revolutions per minute and you achieve 628m/s when you release the bullet.

Did you build one of those yourself to satisfy your own curiosity? If not, then I don't think you have any business stating that a coil gun makes no sense. When someone explores your idea and discovers a 10cm flywheel that's counterbalanced until the moment of release, what kinds of problems are they likely to encounter at the moment of release? 2000 rpms sounds pretty reasonable in terms of my car engine, but I might get nervous about that close to my face. How noisy is a 2000 rpm flywheel that is centripetally loaded? How much energy is involved in that strategy? How long is the initial spin-up?

Personally, I think the coil gun ideas are far more simple to understand and instead of mitigating drawbacks at every step, he's shooting aluminum cans and glass jars and a laptop he apparently has a great deal of animosity toward.

My Apple II had 16K. If yours had only 4K, what are you doing with a 7-digit UID?

I read the first few pages of your link. I agree. Word salad.

That's not money printing. That's called "a gift", since the entity you borrow from no longer has the money.

No?

Lego Mindstorms isn't a cheap way to go, and it's even worse if you don't already have lots of Lego lying around.

Head to Radio Shack and take a look at their Arduino kits. It's not any cheaper, but it's the popular way to start these days. That will familiarize you with some stuff that's available these days. Once you're familiar with the terminology of what interests you, head to the Internet and see what they have to offer.