"I'm a bee, I'm a bee, I'm a I'm a I'm a bee"
-- The Black Eyed Peas

There exists free (as in DFSG) solitaire for Android.

Are you referring to the fact that http://slashdot.org/subscribe.... "is not available at the moment. We apologize for the inconvenience"?

How does lack of BIOS "force" you to use Windows 8.1? The last time I tried Xubuntu 14.04 LTS, it supported UEFI just fine. And all the desktop applications I use either have a port, have an alternative, or work in Wine.

(Yes, I know that's not what it stands for.)

Once all non-Apple laptops sold in brick-and-mortar stores ship with Windows 10, choosing a MacBook instead of an entry-level Windows 10 laptop may cost more than just buying ad-free Solitaire for the five years that you plan to use the laptop. Or what am I missing?

If there's a "pancake face", it's Americans who wear too much makeup, or perhaps Americans who overindulge at IHOP, Bob Evans, and Denny's. And any country is a "gook", as guk is just the Sino-Korean word for a country, akin to Mandarin guó, Sino-Japanese koku, and Vietnamese quô'c.

Which country has that, plus a decent standard of living otherwise, plus practical qualifications for immigration?

It's still a lot more reliable than asking "are you 18?". Sometimes it's wise to accept incremental improvements to avoid the Nirvana fallacy.

And additionally assuming that AdBlock is available for your preferred browser. A growing number of websites use HTML5 video ads on pages that otherwise have only text and static images.

And even the assumption of Wi-Fi availability during the majority of one's web use time doesn't apply to several groups of people. Some of them spend a lot of time riding public transit to and from work or wherever. Others have an employer that doesn't make a Wi-Fi network available for employees to use on breaks, not even just to check weather.gov to see when to jump on a bike and leave without getting caught in a downpour. Still others live in less-populated areas and are stuck with a quota even on their home Internet, especially if it's satellite, fixed cellular (LTE or WiMAX), or DSL in parts of Iowa.

At one problematic intersection, laying the bicycle down on the ground did not trigger it, and I had to readjust the handlebar mirror afterward. Nor could a bicycle and a motorcycle put together trigger it, despite there being a total of four wheels over the loop.

This intersection has no walk button. There are plenty of working pelican crossings in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but this isn't one of them. It lacks even the usual zebra stripes.

True, but I was responding to Penguinisto's sarcastic criticism of the strategy of becoming "a pedestrian now".

Even if Australia hasn't implemented Know Your Customer yet, its neighbor New Zealand has.

I mentioned QR code as a well-known application of BCH (aka Reed-Solomon) code.

Point me to a working GNU/Linux live USB image for Surface 2 (not Pro, not 3) and we'll stop carrying on.

With the discontinuation of Windows RT, Microsoft is in effect giving each manufacturer the choice of whether to sell a Windows 10 PC under the old rules for Windows on x86-64, which forbid manufacturers to lock the PC's owner out of the Secure Boot options, or the old Windows RT rules, which require them to do so. Consider this situation: Someone buys a PC. Months later, long after the PC's return policy has expired, he learns about GNU/Linux and wants to try it. So he boots the live CD, only to discover that Secure Boot is blocking it. So he looks for something in the machine's EFI options, only to find that it's not there for that model because the manufacturer chose to apply the RT rules.

So I shoot someone in a video game, and I hear it one second later. Or the video and audio in a movie are out of sync by a second. Is either acceptable, and if not, what's the workaround?

Unless the pause and rewind buttons start to get laggy.

True, music production and video games aren't telco, but they need low latency for the same reason as telco.