Mini-ITX is absolutely colossal compared to the NUC. Even the Mac Mini is gigantic in comparison. On the other end, ARM is not even in the ballpark in performance. ARM definitely has its place, but it is not in the same class as the NUC.

By the time you buy your mini-ITX motherboard, case, and power supply you are paying more than an equivalent NUC. The 3i7 is cheap. And, unlike mini-ITX jammed-together nightmares, the NUCs are beautifully engineered systems that go together neatly.

I have never seen a mini-ITX that had anything close to an acceptable cooling system. They were noisy and/or inadequate. I went through a phase where I built a number of mini-ITX systems, and none of them were ever anywhere near satisfactory.

The way the country goes, the powers that be would probably have Obama impeached if he tried to pardon Snowden.

Ha! There's an easy end-run around that scenario. He does what all presidents do. He issues a whole shitload of pardons during the last few days of his presidency. You can't even begin to get the slow wheels of impeachment working in hours, even if anyone is paying attention on his final day.

If a single commenter mentioned this, I didn't see it. The entity employing H1B workers is required by law to file a Labor Condition Application to ensure that they meet or exceed the prevailing wage, and an attestation designed to ensure that they are not used to break a strike nor to replace citizen workers - i.e., that the H1Bs are really needed because citizens cannot be found to do the jobs.

Obviously this does not work, or there would be little to no motivation to gratuitously replace citizens with H1B workers. What no one has satisfactorily explained to me (beyond waving the hands and mumbling "corruption") is, how is the law being flouted?

Yes, conceptually all flash data has to decay when powered off. But implementation tradeoffs vary widely. A dirt-cheap Microchip PIC18F2580 microcontroller has flash data retention without refresh "conservatively estimated" at 40 YEARS MINIMUM and 100 years typical (page 3, 10, 435). The number of previous erase/program cycles that retention is predicated on is not given, but is probably a single one, or a few, out of a typical endurance of 100,000 cycles and a minimum of 10,000 from -40 to +85 C. AFAIK there is no wear leveling or block sparing in microcontroller flash memories.

I have NEVER HEARD of an embedded guy ever running into a case of either cycle exhaustion or data decay in the program memory such microcontrollers (if data is written to flash during operation, specs do have to be considered).

SSDs have flash design tradeoffs remarkably different from this. For example, MLC individual cell endurance is around 1000-10,000, and retention is far less as seen in the article and comments here. In return, the access time is vastly faster and the density vastly higher.

Intel comes with botnet: Intel AMT/Vpro/VT.

VNC server built in to the the chipset, pulls from frame buffer of intel gfx card. Also can upload the contents of your ram over the network or 3g if you have it. Cannot be permanently disabled (can always be remotely re-enabled).

This is to find dissenters and pedophiles.

In the middle east they get bombed. In the west it's prison.

This is to keep men at the bottom and women managing them.

It's just sad to think our uninformed (and probably uninformable) coward probably believes the drivel he spouts. From end to end. And he's got a lot of company.

Credit card companies don't bear the losses in the sense you seem to think they do. The losses are simply treated as a cost of doing business, and passed on to their customers as a group - the credit card holders. To this is added the irrecoverable portion of the costs incurred by irresponsible credit card holders who don't/can't repay their debts, and the costs incurred by RESPONSIBLE credit card holders who fold due to catastrophic illness or injury, getting victimized by a bad economy, thrown into prison for selling someone the wrong kind of cigarettes, etc.

Why do you think credit card interest rates are so usurious in a time of supposedly spectacular low cost of money?

Yes, the credit card company is the defrauded entity, but you understand that they are not the ones who suffer the monetary loss. Don't you? The credit card issuer passes on the cost of the fraud to its customers in the form of account charges. Ever wonder why if you lend your money to an institution you are lucky to earn 1% interest - but if a credit card issuer lends you money, it will cost you in excess of 20%?

Some of that is waste and abuse and obscene profits. And some of it is credit card fraud.

Maybe he never heard of Hydro Quebec.

Just out of curiosity, what about dentist's fees for extraction of all teeth plus provision of full dentures? And what about a rigorous eye exam and provision of either gradient eyeglasses, or at the bare minimum a set of near and far glasses?

They could also read out the bill number and list all of the line items, and the callee will know that the caller has seen the bill. That's prima facie evidence that they either are the patient, or someone authorized to see the patient's bill.

As a USAian, I am crying for 65 million people of France for what has just been done to them by those solemnly charged with protecting and serving those people's interest. I know what it's like.

Hello white supremacist filth.

Your use of the term 'animals' to describe followers of a popular religion betrays you as an obvious racist. Do not deny it. The language you are using is a politically correct 'code word' that hardcore racists use to avoid public scorn. You are fooling nobody.

I am far more concerned about the rise of fascism whose support base has appeared to increase. This is a far greater threat than radical Islam or any other form of extremism and has historically resulted in far worse atrocities.

The above poster, as well as all other fascists must be dealt with by any means necessary to prevent fascism from taking hold to avoid another holocaust or similar atrocity. Fascism is a disease and all of its adherents must be destroyed.

The term "animals" was used to describe people who slit the throats of innocents and blow them up; not people identified by religion - AND YOU KNOW IT. You can take your accusations of "code language" and STUFF THEM. Words mean what they say. If you want to make up meaning in the unknowable mind of a speaker, no one can stop you. Even if the shit you make up is stupid, use of your own mind is your right. But accusing people based on those fantasies of yours is the lowest form of scum sucking.

Take your threats against identified posters, from the safety of your anonymous post, and ram them up your ass.

Town of Granby: you SUCK! That insulting enough for you? OK, you're all probably a bunch of pedophiles and suck your mothers' dicks! Stop trying to emulate Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung! Oh, and come and get me, YA TURDS! Do I sound cowed to you?

P.S. - there is no threat implied or expressed in my speech, but an insult, maybe. Earth to Granby. Nobody has a right not to be insulted. Nobody even has a right not to FEEL threatened. For all I know, the boogie man is going to get you. Or me.

It will. I suggest you bone up on C99.

There is legal and portable C that is not C++. Yes, C++ is close to a superset, but it is NOT a superset.