Or you could have RTFA and read that older systems will gracefully fall back to the slower implementations. The main purpose of using new OpenGL systems is performance. There's no reason why the slower methods can't be used.

Furthermore, it's also acknowledged that the free drivers won't be supporting OpenGL for another year, at least,

Surprise, there are other people thinking about backwards compatibility than you.

That's sort of what I do, but I would like to watch my DVDs on a dedicated device, which doesn't support ISOs.

I have a 3TB RAID array that I'm just beginning to populate. I rip the full ISO, and then rip the videos (usually TV episodes) into h.264+aac in mp4. I used to use mkv, but it doesn't have good device support. I use a UPnP server on my Linux box to share with my PS3, which works great. Also, mp4 (really m4v) is great for iDevices as well, so I have that flexibility if I want.

I encode with handbrake, which is ok, although I'm not happy with the Linux support. Since it's so Mac-centric, there isn't any support for the most recent release of Gnome (so no distros released after March 2010 work), so I have to run a dev version. I want really high quality encodes. I get pretty much perfect quality from the encodes and they run about 600-800MB/hr for film; animation is all over the place, but quality is good: 280-600MB/hr.

I don't plan to delete the ISOs until my disk space is full. This way if technology changes, then I can still encode from source rather than from another encode.

That being said, I think that h.264 will be around for many years.

Usually consumers will buy based on cost. For Intel, if I have processors A, B, and C priced at $250, $260, and $270, respectively, it doesn't mean that each costs $10 more to produce than the previous one. While at the top-end of performance the margins are huge, they also do weird things in the middle. Intel is probably far better off selling certain processors over others, even though they are all priced similarly. If it happens that higher performing (of course, there's no agreed upon performance "score") chips have lower margins, then Intel has a slight incentive to sell slower ones.
I imagine that the performance is pretty similar between the chips in question, and if the model numbers are out of order, then it can confuse the customer enough to maybe buy the higher margin one.
It's a delicate balance not to upset the consumer too much and maximize profit, but I think Intel has it pretty easy because people buying boxes from Dell spend about 1 minute choosing their CPU, and they won't ever compare it to another identical (software, malware, etc.) system to notice that 5-10% difference.

The penalties are real and severe, at least in Missouri. I was in court to pay a speeding ticket and overheard the person in front of me speaking to the clerk. He did not have insurance and was cited when he was pulled over for speeding. His penalty for not having insurance was a $1000 fine AND he was required to have a special kind of insurance (can't remember the exact name) that doesn't insure a particular car (which is the norm, at least in the USA), but insures him, no matter what vehicle he is driving. It's an extremely expensive policy. He has to show proof of insurance to the court every month for two years. The worst part is that he doesn't even own a car, so the whole thing is basically a massive fine.
And by the looks of him, he didn't have the money for the fine or insurance. Penalties for lack of insurance are expensive, and in my opinion, should be.

Exactly. iPhone upgrades have always been free, so developers only need to target the current major version. iTunes prompts for upgrades whenever one is released, so it would be nonsensical to run an old OS. For iTouches, if someone won't pay for a $5-$10 (I think they are $10) upgrade every six months or so, then as a developer, why should I care about them? If my app is free, then there is no expectation that I spend extra work supporting legacy systems, and if it costs money, then why do I care about the cheapskate who won't buy a very reasonably priced upgrade? People who won't buy upgrades won't pay for apps either.

Apple's commitment to iPhone upgrades is the reason I stick with the platform. Yes, there are things that I'm not happy about, but honestly look at how much the platform has expanded since it was released. I bought a 1st gen iPhone and comparing the features today with when I bought it is really impressive.

You don't need iTunes anymore. On Linux, the libimobiledevice project http://www.libimobiledevice.org/ allows you to sync your iPhone with your favorite Linux app (Amarok, Gtkpod, Rhythmbox, etc.).

I've been a long-time iPhone and Linux user. I was ready to ditch my iPhone this summer, but this project has breathed new life into my iPhone.

Dan Williams, the guy behind Network Manager, does a lot of work to get cellular modems working in Linux. There seems to be lots working and steady process on others.
His blog http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/ is informative and frankly pretty hilarious in a geeky way.

Props to Dan for doing a great job.

I don't know what you're talking about with https://./ I just browsed over to my banking site, and https:/// is in the address. It's even green, and the little padlock is on the right side.
My university has an open wireless system that uses a self-signed cert for a logon page. Chrome throws up a big warning. https:/// is in red and is crossed out, not to mention the big warning on the page itself.
I'd say that Chrome's alerts about https:/// are perfectly fine.

Version 5.0.375.38

Exactly. I do tech support at my uni's law school, and I have had about a dozen professors and students come up to me in the last month because they lost a word document (I love finals season...). You know what happened? They opened an attachment, modified it (sometimes for hours), saved (no error messages or anything), and exited. Word happily saved it to a temp folder, and it was never to be found again. No where, not /temp, application data, local settings, etc. That's so stupid that I can't believe Word would do that.
But it's not just Word either. Folders suck. I'm a nerd, so all my files are organized, but it's still a pain. I don't like dealing with it.

Users hate file managers.

I just don't see this mattering to the RIAA either on Ubuntu or as a general trend. Talk about knee-jerk reaction.

Every time I read asinine responses about "the good old days" I get more convinced that people are deluded. Society is better in every respect than it was two hundred years ago, get over it.