Some large tournament for ten-pin bowling? Or that variant of cricket that you play over there (but I thought you called bowling "pitching")?

Sauron was corrupted by Morgoth as a mature Vala.

Even defense contractors like Boeing use stock computers from large OEMs like Dell.

I don't know about defence contractors, but I'll be in the offices of an oil major tomorrow lunch time because they wipe the hard drives of all their OEM laptops and re-image them with a heavily customised version of XP, Vista or Win7 with all sorts of weird different networky things. Pain in the arse, but that costs them money - I go into their office for a videoconference meeting (because their laptop won't work on anyone else's network), and they pay a day's day-rate.

I make it a smidgin under $400, since I've got bigger hard drives already available. Assuming you're talking about US dollars.

Say you wanted to spend $750 on a newer laptop, then needed to spend 10 hours researching it and working out how to disable all remote management things and remove proprietary blobs from the firmware. Oh, and add in a modern WIFI chip too. That would be implying that you value your time at ~$35/hour.

If you value your time more highly than that ... well, it may become worthwhile to look at a solution like this.

Will a modern (last couple of years) laptop really let you get your work done more rapidly?

And also Completely Free Of Full Remote Management capabilities.

I have a bunch of servers that all have iDrac or other management connections,

I suspect that you're not the target audience for this system.

I have an 18-wheler truck for sale. Would that be good for your daily commute to the building with the underground par park?

Coming soon (in a future libreboot update):

ProteanOS BusyBox/Linux-libre operating system pre-installed directly in the SPI flash chip, alongside Libreboot. This will mean that the user has a full operating system available at all times (as part of the boot firmware) as a boot menu option for recovery or any other purpose such as updating libreboot, even if the HDD or SSD is removed from the machine. Those who order today will receive this as a software update when available, with installation instructions.

OK, I'll put that idea on hold for a bit then.

Not for $700+ for an obsolete laptop, there aren't.

I got one of their previous offerings - an X60 with 3GB ram and a 320GB hard drive which I promptly replaced with a TB one I already had - for IIRC £220, and after a bit over a year I've had to spend another £20 to put a bigger battery into it. I dont' know what that translates into in dollars, whichever dollar you're using.

Everything works properly, and without hassles.

In contrast I spent half as much again on a brand new piece of shit at about the same time for the stepdaughter after she fried her laptop video with static. That had some piece of shit called Windows 8 on it which has been and endless source of problems.

GlugLug seemed to struggle a bit with fulfilling orders after they last got a big write up in a UK-based Linux magazine. It took about 2_1/2 weeks from order to arrival.

Bigger screen than the current machine ... hmmm, considering it.

Hmmm, if you're talking about retrofitting, then I'd look at fitting a small amount of a catalyst - platinised mineral wool or something like like that - into the routing from gas inlet to main body. Temperature sensor in the main chassis, if the flames don't cook the money automatically. Possibly route the flames out of the front of the ATM. At about crotch level.

The cost of the catalyst would be considerably lower than the cost of retrofitting anything.

Errr, you do realise that it's the Saudis who are primarily behind the current drop in oil prices?

The wife and I were watching that Ex Machina film at the weekend and she took exception to my comment that the first commercial android robotics product will be sex-bots.

She can disagree as much as she likes, but I think I'm right.

I wonder ... how many 3d printers have had dildos as their first print?

If it doesn't then there is your entry point into the market.

then migrate to different media as technology improves.

Technology will change with time, true. Whether it gets significantly better is a different question.

Every new technology will have salemen puffing it up, and as we all know, salesmen are inveterate liars. You simply can't trust anything they say without investigating it yourself, in detail.

Use existing mature, run-of-the-mill technologies. Use multiple technologies and multiple locations. Swap technologies when new ones have gone through their initial high-failure rate and the cost has levelled out.

I remember the screaming and shouting about the world being overwhelmed by Blu-Ray (or was it high-def DVD?). I'm in the process of updating my domestic system's backup on HDD, which would take me between 20 and 40 blu-ray discs. (I haven't seen either a disc or a drive in the wild, so i'm pretty fuzzy on the sizes and I've no idea how long they'd take to write. At least I can set the HDD copying and leave it to run overnight without needing to worry about changing discs at 02:00.) So despite all the screaming and shouting, Blu-Ray is dead for backup - if it was ever alive.

What's a charms bar and why would I want one?

Some of us use windows for work, so haven't seen any of this shit, and are unlikely to.

Also, the watchmen don't like being watched? Tough shit.

It's hardly a novel sentiment. Juvenal was more poetic about it about 100AD :

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

When activated, Plan C would have brought the United States under martial law, rounded up over ten thousand individuals connected to 'subversive' organizations,

Interning "over ten thousand" [subversives] sounds unbelievably low to me. The number of "subversive organisations would probably be in the tens of thousands alone, with multiple targets per organisation. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of internees would sound more credible to me. The Ulster internment put away (temporarily) a bit less than 2000 people during it's operation from a population of a bit less than 2 million. If America under martial law were to be comparable, that would suggest 300000 detainees in America as a whole.