http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/07/26/1922239/26-Years-Old-and-Cant-Write-In-Cursive?from=rss

You are an enthusiast, who chooses to spend your disposable income on a fancy computer. But most people want a machine that will let them email/browse. If it kept working for ten years, they'd be happy to continue using it. I think if you were honest about the amount you'd spent on your PC over the years, you'd understand why most Mom and Dad users (and corporate users for that matter) would be a lot better off with Linux.

I've never paid a dime for service or support.

The real cost has been in broadband Internet services and consumables - ink and paper.

When I first became interested in the PC I was told to focus on the programs I wanted to run. I happen to like polished, focused, apps that target the non technical end-user. Including the occasional PC game. I've found very good value in Windows.

I tend to buy refurbished electronics from sources like TigerDirect.

There is nothing fancy about this aging Dell or the HP that is likely to replace it. But it will be a significant upgrade - targeted more towards media play than high-performance PC gaming - I tend to more of a classic solo RPG and adventure gamer anyway - and adjusted for inflation the new system will likely cost less than what I paid the last time out.

Indeed, some of the studies actually showed increase mental capacity in the groups associated with ethylmercury exposure from thimerasol in vaccines. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/acip/downloads/min-oct07.pdf

To be fair we're not talking about the actual laws themselves but the Oregon DOJ's interpretation of how to apply them in a practical way.

That is what my ISP does I save $0.50 every month by having my bill emailed as a PDF.

You don't have to analyze all the data, you just need to find out which bugs are on the computers that may have the data you want. (not that I think they're actually doing this)

I'm sorry to hear that you have a base case of ADD, with the short attention span and addiction to uniqueness. California's Lemon Law requires that manufacturers provide parts and materials necessary to effect repairs for at least that long. If they fail to do so, they're in violation of State law and subject to prosecution, either by private parties or the state itself in extreme cases. IIRC it applies to anything with a manufacturing cost greater than $100. It's a direct response to planned obsolescence. You apparently like planned obsolescence because it feeds your disability? I have to wonder, though, since you mention "protect[ing] against obsolescence" on your business Web site as one of its goals. Since the Lemon Law also protects against obsolescence, shouldn't you be in favor of it? I'm guessing your clients would be.

Or making plastic....

Well, they do have some moral fiber: '100 drums were secretly buried somewhere in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. Clan members avoided burying the waste in neighbouring Calabria, said the turncoat, because of their "love for their home region"'. link Nice of them, eh?

How does all that solve the problem of a malicious application injecting something nasty into the drop site? It could perfectly well say "I am an image object," and when the app says "give me your image data as a JPEG," it gives it specially-crafted data that exploits a vulnerability in an image decoder. Whether or not the interfaces are OO or not have nothing to do with this.

Not saying your model doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It does. But it doesn't remove the need to do input validation. (Not that I really buy the parent's claim that lack of a desire to do good input validation is the reason we don't have decent, universal DnD support, but that's another issue.)

This is not a basic assumption of evolutionary theory.

You are confusing Social Darwinism, which is an ideological stance, with evolutionary theory, which is a mathematical model that leads to testable hypotheses.

Perhaps you are also confusing the Tragedy of the Commons and other metaphors from economics?

It's fine to argue that it's okay to be as greedy and acquisitive as possible, just don't drag evolution into it. I don't agree and I point to the general agreement in the necessity of the rule of law as my support for my stance.

That's one thing I always had an issue with over geothermal. What happens when we pump out all the heat from the planet? It solidifies and our magnetic field shuts off? (unless you believe that new thing about the ocean currents) I read somewhere that we'd have ~9000 years of geothermal at current world usage levels of energy.

From this article, radioactive decay inside the Earth constantly releases about 30TW (= twice the current world usage levels of energy) as uncaptured heat, so we don't need to be concerned. In particular, whatever source gave you the 9000 year figure is in stark conflict with this paper (pdf) on geothermal sustainability. Since we don't currently have the technology to touch anything below the crust (i.e., less than 1% of the Earth's radius), we are unlikely to cause any serious problems in the core in the near future.

The basic answer is, "a really long time," because the main power source for the wind arises from the sun, rather than the rotational energy of the Earth. Tides leach much more rotational energy, and they've been at work for over 4 billion years.