Made me laugh aloud. People wanting their computers to work when they are using them, rather than having their o/s rebooting unexpectedly? Microsoft has known this since the earliest days of MS-DOS and refused to listen. Now they act like it's news, 36 years after the first complaints.

I remember bits of it. I was in 3rd grade at the time. We had been talking about it at school in science class all week. It was late in the week, Thursday or Friday. We had no tv in the school, but we had radio. I don't recall which class I was in at the time, but I remember listening to early parts of the countdown on a radio the teacher brought to the classroom. After school, I had finished my homework and was watching something on tv before supper. A reporter broke in with a special announcement that the astronauts had burned to death. (They didn't really, they were asphyxiated inside their suits.) Mom heard that from the kitchen and came in and listened and then shut the tv off. The next day at school the morning prayer (Catholic school) was announced for the three astronauts' souls and their families left behind. That Sunday's mass was also dedicated to the tragedy. Up to that point, my friends and I used to talk about being astronauts, and who would get to go first. Several of them were no longer so excited about it within a few days. A few years later I was glued to the tv watching Apollo 11. Of that group of friends, I'm the only one that actually went into an aerospace field.

Actually he did NOT have Swedish authorities' permission to leave. He just fled as soon as he found out they were continuing the investigation on molestation (v.s. rape). Also, none of your second paragraph is quite correct. Timeline (2010):

Aug 18: Assange applies for Swedish work/resident permit.
Aug 20: The two women file their complaint and local prosecutor issues arrest warrant.
Aug 21: Case transferred to Chief Public Prosecutor (CPP).
Aug 22: CPP doesn't find enough evidence to substantiate rape and suspends the case.
Aug 22: Swedish Prosecution Authority continues investigation because there seems to be enough evidence for charges of molestation (different from rape).
Aug 22: Assange learns of investigation and publicly denies everything.
Aug 25: Preliminary rape investigation was discontinued by CPP.
Aug 27: Womens' attorney requested a review of the CPP's decision to terminate.
Aug 30: Police question Assange. He denies, claims consensual sex.
Sep 1: Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) overrides CPP, resumed all original investigation on rape.
Sep 27: DPP notifies Assange's lawyer of his imminent arrest.
Sep 27: Assange flees Sweden.
Oct 18: Sweden denies Assange's work/residence permit request.
Nov 18: DPP orders detention. Judge issues European Arrest Warrant.

As you can plainly see, the molestation accusations were NEVER dropped. And since he left even though he knew he was under investigation for molestation, he clearly paid to leave, and he should pay to return and face responsibility. Maybe he's innocent, maybe he's not. Maybe the law is unfair and maybe not. Certainly he could have gone to court like most people, faced the judge, and argued his case, and possibly won. But the fact is he's tried for years to avoid facing responsibility. And the Swedish prosecutors, along with a judge, feel they have sufficient evidence against him for his arrest and his day in court. His continued fight against this is not helping by making him look innocent, if anything he is tending to prejudice the case against him.

The only reason he has managed to avoid this so far is because of his involvement in Wikileaks, and the resultant political help from Ecquador. He's using politics and the cloud of US extradition over Wikileaks to avoid Swedish prosecution. Just like certain Wall Street execs avoided prosecution for violating laws - politics over justice.

There is an accurate Swedish prosecution timeline at http://www.aklagare.se/In-Engl...

Wikipedia info with LOTS of citations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Why is it that 10 years of taxpayer-subsidized higher education resulted in such a thoughtless, irresponsible, and basically just shitty column?

Hmmmm...

We got several packages a month mail-order. When I was a kid in the 60's we lived on a farm in central Illinois. My parents and grandparents did a lot of catalog shopping. USPS used to deliver packages frequently. Big mail-order businesses at the time included Sears, Fingerhut (first catalog in 1948), Hammacher Schlemmer (first catalog in the 1800s), JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, Spirgel, and more. Most of these places had accounts, but you had several payment options.

Most common method of ordering was to pull the order form from the catalog, fill in the items you wanted, calculate the costs yourself, and send it with a check. In those cases, often orders shipped once your check cleared the banks. In other cases, you could order and be billed later. Sometimes things came COD. Sometimes they came with a bill inside the package. Or a bill would arrive separately from the package. We did the same for ordering parts for some of the equipment, which wasn't available locally.

Most mail-order companies had customer credit accounts, and you would just list your account number on the order form, or it might be pre-printed because the catalog was shipped directly to you. Some, like Fingerhut, used to put a peel-off mailing label on your catalog. It had account information printed right on it. You just pull it off the waxed backing, and stuck it right on the order form, which was inside the catalog. They would ship the order to you immediately, and you'd get a monthly bill. Some, like Penneys and Sears, offered their own credit cards, and you would just use their cards to order. A lot accepted Bankamericard (which became Visa).

Every adult I knew had at least one credit card in the 60s. I think the most common were probably the gas company cards. Shell, Fina, Gulf, and the like, although there were plenty of bank cards floating around.

Our normal mail carrier was a nice lady, and she drove her own car. Most days she drove a station wagon because she had so many packages to deliver to homes and farms along her route, but some days she drove a little car if she didn't have much to carry. I remember in the '70s when she got a new Jeep Cherokee and was so proud of it. The first day she drove it, she stopped to talk to Dad, and the back end was almost full of boxes for delivery. Around the holidays she would sometimes have to split her route up into thirds because of all the pre-holiday catalog shopping, and she would sometimes drive a full sized van.

UPS didn't deliver out where we were at the time, too far out in the country until the 70's. It was "too far off their regular route." We were 3 miles from a small town, and 10 miles outside the nearest city. Go figure. If something came by UPS, my parents would have to drive into town to pick it up. I remember those rides quite well. Dad commented once that they probably couldn't afford to deliver outside town because they charged less than USPS did for delivery, and yet the companies that shipped by them didn't know that and therefore used them a lot. Mom was always making notes on the order forms to please ship by USPS (if there were no listed options) because UPS didn't deliver to us. IIRC, USPS had a 20-lb limit on parcels at the time, so larger stuff would have to ship by UPS.

Dad sometimes would hand me a tool or parts catalog with a couple of pages and items marked, and have me fill out the order form. I think that was a test more than anything else, but I smile when I remember it.

I can see where if you lived in town, and tended to only need stuff that was available at local stores and businesses, you wouldn't have needed to mail order stuff much, and you may not have needed or wanted a credit card. Also, it's pretty obvious that the traditional walking mailman wouldn't have capacity to carry parcels in his shoulder pack or on his tiny cart. I know my grandparents, who lived in the city, occasionally got parcels, and they were delivered by a driver, not by their regular mailman.

Just for curiosity, I looked up the history of the parcel post. USPS has had it since since 1913, although they were accepting smaller packages long before that. Sears was shipping 30,000 orders a day in the early 1900s. https://about.usps.com/who-we-...

A particularly interesting quote: "In 1903 Sears claimed that “one-fourth of the entire population of the United States secures some of their goods from the Chicago Mail Order Houses,” which by then were receiving up to 30,000 orders daily."

Not only were they not born knowing the route, but some young cranes in Egypt are suffering now that their "old guy" is incarcerated for spying.

Exactly. Gates' current problem is that Microsoft stock is falling, and most of their products are a bust. Windows 8, Windows Phone, Surface. Gates' net worth is still heavily tied to Microsoft. Google, on the other hand, is doing well. Bing Google search. The Nexus 7 has been selling well, and a new version is out. Microsoft has nothing like Glass. Android is showing up in a lot more types of devices, and holds the leadership in the global mobile market. So Microsoft is suing Motorola (and Google) and attacking Google on every front. Suing Android users for patent royalties. Everything from stupid ads like dancing office workers to rampant product placement of Surface tablets into primetime tv shows.
Gates is attempting to make Google look bad, mostly through classic propaganda techniques. He employs faulty syllogism and use association: that Google's intent for better Internet is solely aimed at world health. He's acting more like a congressman every day. In their eyes, making the opposition look bad makes them look good. But it's really the question of who's the lesser of two evils.

Dow manufactured Agent Orange for the military. Only last year, Dow finally agreed with the EPA to clean up dioxin spills around its plant in Midland, Michigan, where they produced dioxin for almost 100 years, and it fought the cleanup for almost 20 years. That alone is a very bad record. If you really want more citations, just use Google. There are plenty.

Can they be easily jail broken and loaded with Android?

Sounds like Oracle doesn't have enough free time on its hands.

It seems clear to me that Oracle really doesn't want Java except for an easy way to gain control in the mobile interface market. It always seem merely collateral damage from acquiring Sun. The only real attention it seems to have gotten was rebranding. And with Google developing their own compatible engine for Android, Oracle's grand plan is now a pipe dream. Hence their crazed copyright lawsuit against Google for uncopyrightable APIs.

There is no such thing as an anesthetic bullet. The closest possible device would be tranquilizer darts, which are usually fired from shotguns. They aren't very accurate, so you have to get pretty close. Plus, they take a while to work. Sometimes minutes.

Murphy's First Law of Armed Conflict: If the Enemy is in range, so are You.

Commodity systems do not always mean lower TCO. TCO is based on a lot more than just hardware, which is normally a small fraction of a system's costs.

Very well, but you also said of IBM, "When they start selling POWER systems that run Linux, then we can talk." I was merely responding to that, fyi. I'm certainly not putting words in your mouth.

2015: Nationwide News: Certain high-risk sports become "off limits" with employers across the nation. Included in the list are mountain climbing, downhill skiing, biking, motorcross racing, and 4-wheeling, all of which can lead to severe injuries.
2018: New Colorado employment guidelines ban hiring snowmobile owners or people that enjoy horseback riding.
2019: New HR guidelines in St. Louis require candidates for any city job to sign a form indicating that they do not and will not own skateboards, tennis rackets, or golf clubs.
2022: San Francisco releases new guidelines for hiring women. No woman with her uterus intact can be hired in any agency. Officials cited the cost of healthcare insurance for women capable of reproduction.
2025: Automobile driving is prohibited for all employees of the federal government.

Good point, but that's more of a consumer view than a business view. Businesses are usually working on the here and now, or the near future, and cost effectiveness. Your view leans toward less timeliness to gain the cost savings. I have both views, one for my personal equipment, the same as yours, and one for my company, the timely need.

You also make some good discussion about x64 compatibility, but consider services and apps vs. hardware. If you're connecting to my web site or my cloud services, you don't know what hardware I'm running on, but you DO care that it's fast enough to meet your needs. So why would you care whether my hardware is x64 compatible as long as your x64 systems talk to it just fine? It's like caring about the underlayment on the highway, as long as the top surface is good for driving.

Oh, and by the way, IBM Power systems also run Linux. Very well, in fact. Ever since the RS/6000 system shipped in 2000. In fact, the base purchase of any Power system, even a blade, usually includes the Linux CDs. (Or did, I haven't bought one in over a year.) On a personal note, I miss the days when dozens of companies were doing competing hardware designs and so much innovation was going on at one time. With only a few, the innovations come more slowly, and we know that many are stifled because of internal company competition politics. I want more innovation.

In 1986, James Doohan demonstrated a slight purple flare when transporting live sea creatures into/out of transparent aluminum (sapphire) aquariums.