IIRC, AOL didn't offer actual internet access until pretty late in the game.

Today's date is Tue Sep 7644 07:32:08 PDT 1993

Sounds like a good deal. I did opt for a lot more options, tv card, wireless, dual burners, fairly high end card in its day etc., which ate up part of the balance. I know I could have built for a little less, but sometimes it is a matter of putting the risk on someone else, and how much your time is worth at the time. But either way, it shows it pays to buy quality. I'm using that computer right now, on my TV in the bed room :)

but this is the perfect example of american greed the most pure and wasteful greed i have ever seen.

If you'd taken ten seconds to click over to TFA, you would've learned it's in this Georgia, not this Georgia, you America-bashing twat.

I tend to buy boxes with fairly high end parts (not expensive, just high quality), and when I built them I did the same. High end enough that I really didn't have to upgrade until everything was no longer "state of the art", so no parts to recycle in.

My ooold computer has a Q9550 and 8 gigs of ram, just as I ordered it. It is still pretty usable as a daily backup video player, and not bad for midline gaming like Portal 2, Goat Simulator, etc. Upgraded the video 3 years ago, $150-175 for what was then a steal.

5 years old, and the CPU is still on the front page of Passmark, at >4000 pmarks. Not bad. Paid around 1800 without monitor. Upgraded to 7 Pro over Vista, but even the original install is intact. Hard to beat that kind of stability, and not convinced you can build it by hand anymore.

it has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible

Are you sure it's not merely pining for the fjords?

I love the quote, "Five hundred kilometres is pretty much as far as a normal person would want to drive in a single day." Oh, man, I've driven further to see a live show, and driven back essentially the next day

Indeed. Aren't things in Australia nearly as spread out as they are here? 300 miles is nothing. 300 miles won't even get you from Las Vegas to San Diego. I've done that as a same-day round trip. I've driven from Las Vegas to Denver in one day. 770 miles makes for a long day behind the wheel, but it's doable. You can cover 600 miles in 8 hours at 75 mph.

So my question is: what is holding everyone else back from freeing themselves from contacts and glasses?

I don't need contacts or glasses, you insensitive cl...oh, wait.

As long as the manufacturing can scale and it does offer the advantages we assume, I would expect in in £300 cameras with 5 years, maybe even cheaper. Look at Gorilla Glass, once they found a market and could scale, now everyone uses it for smartphones.

google broke into internet search with the page rank algorithm whose essential purpose is to combat "search engine optimization."

Yeah. They destroy legitimate businesses with their wonderful algorithms...

SEO isn't a legitimate business. If your website is getting pushed into the search-result basement, odds are you're doing it wrong.

I think most doctors believe its beneficial but I also think they somehow see acetaminophen opiate formulations as some kind of bulwark against abuse. Either because they believe it is so much more effective paired with acetaminophen and you'll be inclined to take less overall or that people "know" acetaminophen is bad in quantity and it will serve as a deterrent to excessive dosage, especially people with a history of drug abuse.

Also, the DEA watches doctors who prescribe opiates very carefully. If some government goon believes a doctor's handing them out like candy, the doctor's most likely going to be called in for some very uncomfortable questions. See chapter two of Three Felonies a Day for some examples.

The way scripts for opiates are handled is also quite different. My wife's oncologist was able to submit the vast majority of prescriptions to her preferred pharmacy electronically; they would be ready for pick-up a short time after. The one time she was prescribed straight oxycodone (or whatever opiate), it was printed on security paper to thwart attempts at altering or copying. It was signed, and some sort of DEA ID number issued to the doc was printed in the header. I had to deliver the prescription to a pharmacy. Her usual pharmacy didn't have it in stock, so I had to find another that did. Once it was filled, I had to sign for it in a logbook (similar to when you buy products containing pseudoephedrine).

Generally speaking, anything with lots of parts has more points of failures. Since CFLs all have ballasts, my experience has been that spikes does take a toll, by virtue of them dying after the storm.an incandescent is just a big resister. Yes, it can break but it is fairly tolerant by virtue of being tungsten and having no other parts. This is why I spend the money for the better CFLs. I've been using CFLs for well over a decade now. Been using them since the 90s, so not an expert, but I've owned a lot of them.

Android 4.x devices like the Nexus 7 don't have a dedicated menu button. And in this copy of Google Maps, there's no "tricolon" button where the overflow menu is supposed to be.

https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/6054498?p=maps_android_tips_tricks&hl=en&rd=2

The first thing that came up on my phone for this? "Popular tip: View maps offline." I got to it from within Maps by opening the menu off to the left side and hitting "Tips and Tricks" down at the bottom.

(This was on a Moto X running Android 4.4. YMMV.)

why the sarcasm tags?

To make clear that it was a sarcastic remark. The two nitwits who put in -1, Troll downmods are apparently too dense for even that to register.

I wonder if they registered with fincen. Otherwise, they are setting the precedent of of auctioning bitcoins as a loophole...

<sarcasm>
When the government does something, it's not illegal.
</sarcasm>

Stop saying that it would cause massive economic harm, because that is bullshit. In fact, it would (as always) mean jobs.

If I go around breaking my neighbors' windows, that creates jobs for glassmakers and window installers. Never mind that my neighbors would rather have spent their money on something other than fixing broken windows.