Buying online - at least when its physical goods - requires a shipping address. That's a big risk for a thief to take as even if they're using an address they don't live at, if the fraud is discovered while the item is in transit the address may be being monitored by authorities.

Meh - we've been mining and messing with Earth for millenia. We still haven't screwed up its orbit nor leave almost any detectable changes visible from orbit (at least not without magnification). The moon won't be any different.

Who still wears a watch at all? I see almost no one with them anymore - at least not on a regular basis. I actually have on (that I think I paid $10 for) whose only purpose is to go with me on trips where I know my cellphone battery won't last the day (ie, on long fishing trips and such). Gets used maybe 4-5 times per year.

Its all anecdotal, but I've certainly killed a smartphone, and I've seen enough of my friends with cracked screens waiting for their upgrade that it doesn't seem that uncommon.

I've dropped mine a number of times and generally they're fine, but one drop to a tile bathroom floor broke the screen.

Admittedly though, I don't use cases. They bulk up the device too much for my tastes and 1 cracked screen in 4 years of smartphone use is tolerable.

Citation needed.

I don't think anybody called it "useless". They simply stated that NASA has a better ROI and deserved more of a budget increase.

They didn't DEFUND the NIH. They just gave them less of an increase. The real world isn't binary where it's all or nothing.

Apparently there's free as in speech and free as in beer, but there is no free as in electricity.

That is irrelevant to the age of the software though. Floppy disk is hardware. It doesn't matter if its a 30 year old program on that disk or if you just saved it - if the disk is damaged the software is lost. That's has nothing to do with the age of the code base.

Hardware maintenance and backup policies are a completely separate issue.

That's a hardware issue and is completely irrelevant to the discussion of code. We run 30 year old code for some applications here. The server its running on is 2 years old.

There's enough people using browser based music players (Google Music, Amazon) or podcasts that this is just too much of a hassle. Honestly I legitimately listen to something from a background tab far more frequently than random stuff starts playing and that's the case for more and more people as applications become more web based.

I'll agree that it should be a configurable option, but the default should be to play with the option to mute.

Software isn't in the physical world where parts suffer physical wear. It does now what it did 20 years ago. A lot of that code is FAR more tested and reliable than possible replacements.

Don't get me wrong, I've got a hankering to redo some of the COBOL based programs we've got here at work in something a little more modern too, but there's no question that the old code works - and works well. Any replacement would probably need to be in service a decade before it was as well tuned and tested as the original system was.

At this point in time I don't think a lot of machines are necessarily handicapped by no being able to be upgrades anymore.

Intel Core 2 Quad based systems were available since late 2006. RAM has been cheap enough that back then you could still get 4-8GB easy enough. Most users wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that stuff and anything newer/faster and that was nearly 8 years ago. Heck for the last few years many people have been largely moving over to accessing the net from phones and tablets that have specs on par with a 10-year old desktop and seem to be OK with it.

The old pattern where you buy a computer and it quickly becomes obsolete and needs an upgrade or replacement is simply gone. They've become more like everyday appliances. You buy one, you keep it until it breaks (which could be a good long while). I'm sure PC makers aren't going to be as happy with that, but such is life.

I'd say for a laptop that's probably not too inaccurate. Mac laptops are very good - the are good PC laptops out there but there are a lot of crappy ones that will break in 2 years too.

For desktops? I don't think Macs are particularly more long lived there.

FWIW my main system that I'm typing this on I built back in 2009 and its still doing everything I need. I've did the Newegg window shopping several times where I build a new system but before actually finishing the sale I back out because I have to admit - aside from some faster video encodes and the like I probably won't even be able to tell the difference between the new and old systems.

My apologies - I actually misread the data in the original article. Those 45 homicides from 1870 to 1885 was actually the combined number from Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell.

There are some interesting applications of everything being a computer (ie, security systems, the NEST thermostats and smoke detectors), but honestly there just doesn't seem to be a need for any and everything to have a computer attached to it.

Computers are amazing tools granted, but simply tacking one on doesn't always "improve" something.

Granted, I will say that I have enjoyed tinkering with my Raspberry Pi(s), but they mostly just serve as cheap XBMC boxes.