Thrift stores are the cheapest bet (think out-of-the-way Mom and Pop Christian Ministry type thrift stores, not Goodwill).

Stopped by one recently and asked if they had any old keyboards in the back. The employee pointed me outside to a shed behind the building. There was literally a pile of old IBM Model Ms laying behind the place, had been hit by rain several times. Took a garbage sack of them home, let them dry out and everything was fine (there was even an old IBM model 5150, but my wife wasn't about to let me add that to the PC graveyard in the office).

The annoying bit is that so many of them are AT instead of PS/2 (good luck even finding PS/2 ports on modern hardware, now it is just 4 USB ports in the back).

Gabe Newell's "wizard" comment struck me as the right thing to say. You can make cool stuff that does cool things and it doesn't require millions of dollars worth of equipment or special friends in high places or fame or whatever. Generally you just need time and effort and with the right idea you can do something pretty amazing.

Pics of offices with people playing rock music, ping pong and video games are, on the other hand, probably not a great idea.

For the last 20 something years I've written nice, respectful letters to my Rep and Jr. and Sr. Senators ranging from traffic lights to pending legislation. Most often the response comes 6 months after the letter is sent telling me that they will take it in into consideration if the legislation ever happens to come across their desk table again, but currently they voted against what I was for or for what I was against. Better luck next time.

If I don't get that response I get one that says that they respectfully disagreed and then they regurgitate their campaign promises hoping to receive my support in the future.

As crazy as it sounds, the only real luck I've had is with the tea party caucus types. Unless it has something to do with some weird, arbitrary, moral stance they exclusively say no to almost everything. At least I can count on them to never do anything.

Not sure if hard to use is still fair assessment. Back when it was purely a geek affair, but these days you don't even have to run a typical package manger. Just fire up Ubuntu Software Center, search and install. Just as you would on a smart phone. Easier than Windows at this point. Did that come 10 years too late, maybe, but the "Linux" of 10 years ago isn't the same as the one of today.

We already have that, it is call a mortgage payment.

Most of the time it doesn't matter, but in this case are a talking materials science. A 3D printed "clip" wouldn't last very long unless we've made some serious advancement in the materials used for 3D printing.

What about telling Manning that he was a minister?

No, but the ending was non-obvious.

"No other industry whines quite like computer programmers."

So Dashiell Hammett's estate should have been allowed a patent for the crime novel?

I'll settle for the patent office taking that "non-obvious" bit into consideration.

Math major?

The big problem isn't a slippery slope, the big one is that it becomes a hammer in search of a nail.

Back in '31 my state started a sterilization program to specifically weed out "idiocy, imbecility, feeble-minded[ness] or epilepsy". Of course that was a front for the real purpose, slowly sterilizing the black population (after passage, the bill's sponsor was very happy to admit that it he looked forward to a day that there would be no black people in South Carolina).

As time went on and slow genocide went out of style it became jumbled. Through the 60s and up until the 80s female employees, black or white, were regularly screened for any traits that would have made them undesirables.

"So Margaret, you have heterochromia, too bad, your hysterectomy is at noon; sorry, we ran out of retards to spay and we can't afford to lose funding (and you can't afford to lose your job). Too bad, so sad."

He is taking the politician's fallacy and running it in reverse [a.) we did something b.) it created a problem c.) this solution is a failure].

It is a frequently policy taken by the local gadfly at the end of the bar who strikes down every suggestion with ease, but never suggests a solution of their own (knowing full well there is no such thing as a perfect solution).

I'm not knocking the guy, at least he is interesting (and smart, don't let him fool you, he is very careful with a lot of his wording, even with a phrase like Digital Maoism). Unfortunately, as it stands, everything he has to say is Millennial poster-child blues.

Kids are odd creatures. They often have short attention spans, but they can watch the same thing (literally) thousands of times. If the kid learns something from it that is pretty awesome.

I'll take a language fight over a commie GPL v. capitalist proprietary license v. any other license style fight any day of the week. At least the former doesn't end with totalitarianism v. global corporatism.