Did the DOA product have above average build quality? Otherwise I'd agree, but if you read tech reviews lately that seems to be all that reviewers even care about.

KDE2 wasn't really in the same time period as windows 95. KDE1 and windows 2000 were more contemporaries.

WSUS is a great idea but it doesn't make a lick of difference in this case. WSUS must be configured by a setting on the client (and applicable via group policy); if the ISP wants to force you to download updates through them they won't be doing it using WSUS.

"Commonly assumed" isn't exactly a statement of fact, and the wikipedia article avoided citing any source by avoiding stating it as fact. As anyone knows from high school biology the male gene is less likely to develop and so in fact the common assumption is that more females will be born.

I would think that articles concerning the Big Bang would predate the 4 billion years of this story, so probably not. If you consider our past discussions about multiple universes, oscillating universes, and so forth, it becomes even more muddy. I personally would like it just fine if Slashdot managed to make it no more than a week behind the headlines on other sites, versus the months to years that we get sometimes around here. Still, there is no other site on the Internet besides Arstechnica that has the range and intelligence found in some of the comments here.

In the case of a medical doctor, why even bother Geordi? We already have an excellent holographic doctor which Robert Picardo has played for seven seasons and a movie.

I'm a doctor, not a doorstop!

Don't forget about those who have viruses but the malware removal tool was unable to either detect or remove them. If you can't churn out a virus that can beat the standard set by microsoft you're in the wrong business.

There are plenty of people in the Western world who have the dedication to save energy in their daily lives. You just don't hear about them in the media because it's really not all that interesting to make a story about how someone is air drying clothes instead of using the dryer or buying a fuel efficient car instead of a gas guzzler because of their personal insecurities.

Also keep in mind that the "Western world" is not just the United States, but also includes Europe and other countries as well. According to Wikipedia, the average American consumes 11.4 kWh, while the Japanese and Germans consumes only 6 kWh, which is a huge difference.

Here in China, we consume 1.6 kWh per person, but thanks to our huge population and developing industries, we use almost as much energy as the U.S. India is about ten years behind us in development, but I suspect that they will be on a similar track soon.

On a personal level, it's not really all that hard to make a significant dent in your energy usage, and I'm not talking about changing out incandescents for CFLs either. Just simple things like not using the dryer as much, changing the thermostat a couple of degrees, and driving a bit less make a huge difference. I'm not a global warming doom-sayer by any means, but this is our planet. It's our responsibility to try to keep it as clean as it can for our children. Sure one person is not going to make a difference on the global scale, but every movement starts from somewhere.

I'm not against Microsoft including anti-virus software with their OS; to me there's a difference between features (like IE) and protection (like, well not microsoft security essentials).

MSE doesn't currently have a positive impact on OS security, and it won't even if it's built in. Currently popular viruses aren't even detected by MSE and the ones that are usually aren't removable. Sure, it's better than McCafe but given the ready availability to users it's the first AV targeted by virii, and it isn't very well protected from rogue processes.

Even with improvements over XP, windows 7 is a basically insecure platform; UAC was a good idea, but it doesn't work and it's not enough alone. Code signing isn't a valid solution when "trusted" CA's are only in it for the money and they're in a market position where failure increases their potential future market. Lowering exploit counts and making a workable UAC would be time better spent by Microsoft.

He's probably referring to the relationship of an OEM who is granted an illegal discount.

On the one hand this company now has fewer market options; in today's market this is a minor inconvenience and often a blessing in disguise; global markets don't favor companies that have a hundred mediocre solutions.

The OEM's advantage to receiving illegal discounts regards how this effects potential competition - if Microsoft or Intel offer the big players half-off for their exclusivity agreements the barrier to entry climbs for small businesses. This can create a situation where an individual will spend more on the components of a computer than the complete product with support agreements from one of these laughing OEMs.

The lucrative situation doesn't make this any less wrong, it still hurts consumers and small businesses alike.

You mean the GNU Public License?
Just because RMS didn't write a LISP program to write the actual C code himself using emacs on a mainframe at MIT during the 80s doesn't mean it's not GNU.

I just read this article on China Daily this morning about the mad rush for iPad 2s' today, saw a clip of this story on CCTV News half an hour ago, then come to read Slashdot only to find out that this story is the top of the front page. I've been reading Slashdot since 1997, and I'm used to stories being submitted days, weeks, months, and sometimes years after the fact. Apple fans going crazy for new products is too trite for news nowadays, but Slashdot being current is a rather creepy occurrence... I'm not sure whether to be pleased or to expect Duke Nukem Forever to be released next...

A more interesting article from the site is the wearable cat ears that move to your expressions. How long before all of the Cosplay girls start adopting these?

IE7 was slow when it came out, compared to firefox 4 it is truly terrible.

Windows 7 32bit is a different operating system. It doesn't have the security features of the 64bit version, doesn't support large amounts of memory and is in almost all ways inferior to windows XP. I'm tired of people bringing it up.

openvpn is available for android, but not through any regular channels. You'll need a rooted FW that gives you access to a terminal, and then there's no GUI so you better know the command line options.