In what way is Chicago landlocked? The entire point of its existence is the fact that it's a good port to ship things from the interior of the US out the St. Lawrence Seaway to the rest of the world.

But, the most crappy, inefficient code in the world can be covered up by hardware

Well, until it gets the answer wrong in a way that fucks up the business...

...But by then, the management fucks who made the bad decision have gotten their golden parachutes and shed their liability, so nobody gives a shit, apparently.

I really want to see what you can do with $30K in Atlanta.

Before I graduated and started working, my wife and I lived comfortably on her $30K artist's salary. We even bought a three-bedroom house in a decent neighborhood close to downtown. Of course, this was in 2009.... our house would cost about twice that much now.

(We still live comfortably spending less than $30K, although I now make a lot more.)

And btw, why aren't there americans willing to work for $60K?

There are! They just aren't willing to relocate to a fucking cardboard box in Silicon Valley.

The company I work for is currently code-naming their projects after cartoon characters.

Given the hardware advances in the 6 years since the 1000HE was released, I find it hard to believe Asus can't put out a computer that serves the same purpose for the same amount of money. Or less money.

I bought an Asus X200CA (12" touchscreen, slow CPU, 4 GB RAM) for about $260 back in October. They do make computers that serve the same purpose for the same amount of money (or less money); it's just that the computer in TFA isn't it.

In the example I was thinking of, the "one computer per classroom" thing didn't actually happen until almost 2000, when networking and email did exist.

"Glorified toy?" You give those schools too much credit -- they'd put one computer in each classroom... and then the teacher would use it for email and nothing else (if he even used it at all).

Clearly, he means schools founded by magnates, like Carnegie Mellon University.

Shortening yellow light duration causes accidents. Installing cameras causes shortening yellow light duration. Use the transitive property.

I have one of those $30 T-mobile plans too, and none of the nickel-and-dime stuff you mention matters because I just use Google Voice / Hangouts VoIP so everything, including phone calls and SMS, counts as data.

You can insult me all you like, and live in denial all you like. It doesn't change the fact that you're a sniveling, cowardly, traitorous, authoritarian bootlicker who is too goddamn stupid to realize that you can't preserve freedom by destroying it.

No, the world is not fucking different! The world has never been fucking different! All that happened was that a few assholes got lucky on 9/11 and then dumbasses like you shit themselves and then let Bush et al. turn the US into a goddamn fascist police state! Being a dumbass is one thing, but being a dumbass in a way that screws over everybody else is not acceptable.

YOU LET THE TERRORISTS WIN, YOU GODDAMN MORON!

Go fuck yourself, you goddamn sniveling coward.

The freedoms enumerated by the Bill of Rights are absolute and not up for debate. You and the other authoritarian bootlickers can either accept them, or you can GTFO to North Korea where the government suits your preferences.

Why? It perfectly fits the government's 1984-inspired naming convention, just like the Department of Defense (née War*) and the Department of Homeland Security.

(* It was renamed in 1949 in an amendment to the National Security Act of 1947, which was the law that established the CIA, among other things. Coincidence?)