Well, not sure that it really would have during the '90s when the cold war was pretty much over. I can't see Russia launching anything back then even if they knew USA couldn't launch back. Everyone else was either an ally or small enough that the US's conventional assets were enough of a deterrant.

If it happened in the '60s or '70s? Sure, yeah, perhaps, but not in the Clinton admin.

And cheapness. Don't forget that.

Which doesn't only increase the ability for people to buy them - it increases the portability and utility. Because they're so cheap, I am way way way more willing to just toss it in my bag everywhere I go than I would be with a notebook costing twice as much for fear that it'd get damaged, lost, or stolen.

I mean, I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but the lower the cost of the machine, the less pain it's going to cause me if it goes away, so the more likely I am to take it to places.

As other commenters have said, lots of people out there (Musk, Branson) have plans, and they're working in the private sector because they see profit out there for the taking.

Similar to Columbus really, who was a private citizen (who raised funds from a public figure, but as a personal thing, rather than as an employee of the crown) trying to make personal and corporate profits by going on his trip.

So yeah, we're really actually getting closer to that rather than further away.

If you'll pardon the crudity, bullshit.

As a Canadian, I have a massive problem with American gun culture because while the bullets traveling out of the gun can't be brought across the border, the guns themselves can. While some few guns in the hands of Canadian criminals are bought legally in Canada then stolen or just used for ill, the vast majority of them come over the world's longest undefended border. If guns weren't so trivial to buy in the U.S.A. and if they weren't so common, the problem over here wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is.

On top of that, while you in Europe may be insulated from even the problem we have here with the guns themselves, you do have a problem with the exporting of the gun culture itself. If your neighbours consume cultural artefacts that propegate gun culture, they will be more likely to have them and use them.

So yeah, bullshit.

And now the article is gone. How long before the whole site disapears?

On a serious note though, why not reinstate internet spring cleanup days? I remember them being done regularly every year back in the '90s, and dutifully unplugging my computer every time it rolled around. It was annoying, but this kind of problem never happened back then, so obviously it did what it was supposed to. I don't know why they got stopped - probably because they put a government tax on accessing the internet and so it was in the government's best interest to have more people on... That's probably it.

2182 is the street address of the house I grew up in. It's fate! It's karma! It MUST mean something, right? The chances of that happening by accident are astronomical!*

Although, considering how many people are on SlashDot, and given the fact that dates and a lot of other important numbers to people, including street numbers are typically four digits, I guess it's probably closer to a dead certainty that someone on Slashdot would have some sort of connection to the number.

But still!

*(pun intended)

Yeah, I was in a meeting too and got told to leave afterwards, which considering how light the shaking was here (barely noticable) was truly lame. The difference with us is that after ten minutes standing around in our gathering spot, we trooped back to the office and back to work. I guess we're not going to be able to do anything for the next two days anyway because of G8/G20 and we're not allowed to come in to work then, so they had to at least get this afternoon out of us.

Apropo of nothing, where do you get a torch wrench? I've gone from never knowing they existed to wanting one desperately in about a second and a half.

The last time I priced out Oracle software it was $X per CPU for the first core on a physical package and then $X/2 for each core after that. So a 12 core CPU over 2X 6 core CPUS would basically save you half a CPU license. Which given Oracle's pricing, could be a whole heck of a lot.

That was a few years back, so it may be different now.

users. Let the users tell you what is good and bad. Build the interface to match the user.

The interesting thing here is that your evidence doesn't match the examples.

Microsoft puts every single thing they do in front of users, and tests it to death. Apple puts some really smart, good designers in a room and they do what they think is best. (overly simplified, but you get the idea)

One of the first things Jobs did when he came to Apple was to kill the UI research group. They have a unified, attractive and logical interface because they keep it tightly controled and don't let groups of just anyone come in and tell them to change things. They're also secretive to the point of paranoia, which means they'd never be able to do user testing groups before launch of anything.

Microsoft is bland because every single thing they do is tested over and over and over again with user groups, which gives them a lot of data, but means they end up with the lowest common denominator on everything.

You can make your own decision on which is better.

I actually read something that made the case that Microsoft was too consumer focussed. This is around the time when MS had just got the security religion and the person said that until then, nobody was asking for security in their focus groups and market research, just features and compatibility with older software. Geeks were asking for security, but they made up a relatively small number of people in the market. When worms,viri and root-kits and all that started being more and more prevelent, people started asking for security, and so MS started doing security.

Short version: Ask your users what they need all you want, but you're always going to be a reactive organization, and you're never going to surprise anyone, because they'll always just get what they ask for. If you make educated guesses what they need, you'll sometimes blow them away with something awesome.

Probably not...

And yet another thing that used to not be permanently branded with one or more company's logo disappears.

When the last one disappears, will we notice?

Basically what the subject line says: stay away from anything you can get at Best Buy and you'll probably be golden. That means Lattitude not Inspiron from Dell, and so on. What you lose in 'features'. (better speakers, media buttons, graphics, shiny palmrests and so on) will be more than made up in quality

I know HP and Dell right now have extra battery 'slices' which can take your battery life over a full work day, and even into the 12 hour range, which is fantastic. Other accessories are mostly USB therse days, so not as much a concern for most as they might be for you.

The fun thing is that apparently you're at more of a risk of suicide when you're starting to get better than when you're actually depressed.

The problem being that when you're depressed enough, you get to this great place where you don't actually have enough resources to kill yourself, you kind of feel like it's too much effort. You also think that you're such a bad person that you deserve to feel bad, so it wouldn't be right to pull the trigger.

When you start getting better, you get to the point where you still feel worthless, but can actually get out of bed long enough to seal up the garage doors.