I wouldn't quite say "simple" for a lot of folks, myself included. There are two reasons why I ended up going with a unibody MacBook Pro (2009-era) when my last laptop died: It has a decently sturdy build quality (much better than the Dell I gave up) and, when something goes wrong, I can take it to a human, point out exactly what's wrong, and say, "Fix it" rather than play phone and shipping tag with some contracted-out support company. At the time, upgradability didn't factor into my decision; it was just as upgradeable as every other system I considered. Since I purchased this machine, I've upped the RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB and swapped the rotational hard drive for an SSD. I've also had to use the Genius Bar to address a charging issue (1 hour of my time, vs. 2-3 months getting the run-around with Toshiba for my wife's previous laptop; there's a brand I'll never touch again).

(Mac OS? It's nice because it has the Unix command line utilities I'm accustomed to; Cygwin and Interix are clunky at best. UI isn't as nice as Windows 7, though.)

Now that Apple has removed the upgradability feature, I'm not quite sure where I'll go next.

Oh, I definitely build my own desktops. Laptops are a different beast, though; because the form factors are non-standard, it's difficult to find parts which play nicely. You can't just add a dedicated graphics card, for example, and the motherboard+screen+case are pretty much a unit (though your example of replacing the EEE's screen for a touch-enabled one is impressive).

If they're under 13 (elementary and middle school age range), they're not allowed to access Facebook due to their terms of service and (in the US, at least) COPPA.

From Facebook's terms of service:
You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.

This is due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires verified parental consent before children can provide information to the website. While this does not impact you directly (that is, the FTC isn't going to knock on your door), you could get some heat from parents or administrators for allowing it at all.

Personally, I think the law is too draconian, but I wouldn't put my position in jeopardy to protest it.

The main issue I have with devices in the size-range of the Galaxy Nexus (I have a Droid Razr Maxx) is the ability to grip and use it one handed (hitting buttons with your thumb). It's not something I need to do terribly often, but I had gotten used to this coming from 6+ years of owning a BlackBerry. If it were closer to an iPhone in size, I'd be ecstatic. (I'm still quite happy with it: a nice, long battery life, Gorilla Glass, and I can toy with Android development on it.)

That said, I don't see this as such a huge deal that I would go on a rant about it.

Because I last week I thought that making an -rc7 was not necessarily realy required, except perhaps mainly to check the late printk changes. But then today and yesterday, I got a ton of small pull requests, and now I find myself releasing an -rc7 that is actually bigger than rc6 was.

My main beef with the clamshell design is it's difficult to use from your average economy seat on an airplane. If you have the keyboard at a comfortable typing distance, the screen has to tilt forward to not hit the seat in front of you. Getting it to a proper angle means pulling the keyboard uncomfortably close to your body.

The Vadem Clio had an interesting design where the screen was mounted in the middle on arms that attached to the back. Thus, it could hover over the keyboard and still tilt back. I never got a chance to see or use one, but I had hopes this design would alleviate the airplane seat problem. Alas, it seems to have disappeared from the market, and the patents for this design are either not being licensed out or nobody wants to take this risk.

Not sure if the wording was accidental, but non-profit != does not make a profit. The main limitation is that surplus revenues (what would normally be "profit") must be used to further the organization's goals, not benefit investors (via dividends) or employees (via profit-sharing). In fact, a well-run non-profit should be bringing in extra income and expanding its programs and services. The Wikipedia article on this is well-written.

Conversely, a business can be for-profit but still not have income (or even lose money). Within the U.S., the distinction is whether your organization is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c) entity; there are a number of tests it must pass (along with a few forms which need to be sent in).

This made me curious, so I did a bit of digging (a few minutes on Google) and turned up this article about the keyhole satellites, which supposedly (no citations given) have a resolution of 5-6 inches from a 200 mile orbit. Assuming they could be brought down to 80 miles and everything scales (which is a crazy assumption, but this is all speculation and guesswork, anyway), that would be a resolution of 2-2.5 inches.

Enough to identify the writing on a cigarette? No. But one could probably rule out certain brands based on color, size, shape, etc., at that point. Without better data (which, I'm guessing, we're unlikely to come by for obvious reasons), I'd call this plausible.

I don't think that's the target. Look what Apple has done with Thunderbolt: it's their primary docking adapter for their laptops and they've made their new monitors the equivalent of docking stations. Basically, it has just enough bandwidth to carry a DisplayPort signal plus USB.

I have a 2009 MacBook Pro which commutes with me to and from the office. It's a tad annoying to have to plug in six different cables every time I get to my desk and unplug them when I leave (which is a few times a day due to meetings). I've wished for a decent docking station; Apple seems to be averse to including a connector for this purpose, and the third-party solutions I've tried are as kludgy as one might expect. The addition of Thunderbolt doesn't have me rushing out to replace my laptop (obviously), but I'll be happy to have it when the time comes to retire this machine.

(As for why I have a MacBook vs. a Windows laptop... well, it's rather well built (and has survived a few drops to date), is Unix-y enough to allow me to develop on it and still deploy the results to our Linux servers, and has built-in grep and zsh.)

I'm a bit skeptical about the seriousness that the hardware vendors treat security. Depending on how rushed to market the product is, a lot of corners are cut in both hardware and software development -- and Realtek seems to be no exception in my experience. We see malware on fresh-from-the-factory hard drives and USB drives, tagging a ride on drivers, etc., all the time.

And the Stuxnet architects said it best: "It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn't think much about the thumb drive in their hand."

You can emulate the orientation bit by playing with transforms (<g transform="rotate(30)">...), but at the second-grade level? Yeah, stick with Logo.

One of the most engaging presentations I've seen on this was the making of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich where the students write out the instructions and you execute them -- very literally, as a computer would do -- illustrating the attention to detail and error checking required for programming.

I recall seeing the knife go through the lids for the peanut butter and jelly jars, the jars being placed directly on slices of bread, peanut butter being spread on the bread wrapper, etc.

This would be something to incorporate into a larger talk, probably at the end (to keep their attention going).

Sort of, kind of, but not really. From their home page, under the "Just the software you need" heading: "Each PC includes Windows 7, Windows Live Essentials, Zune software, Internet Explorer with Bing optimization, and more." In other words, you get Microsoft's bloatware instead of third-parties'.

I don't know about "most used" -- perhaps most used on non-iPhones -- but certainly a browser to test against.

And, yes, please fix it for OperaMini. I was disappointed to find that I couldn't read /. during my morning commute.

Finally, yikes -- what's up with the edit box jumping around during preview?