http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattro_(four-wheel-drive_system)

Audi's system delivers drive shaft energy to all 4 wheels... they aren't simply free spinning wheels.

That said, Subaru has been doing All Wheel Drive for 10 years longer than Audi. They started offering it in consumer models in 1972, while Audi didn't even introduce it to their rally cars until 1980, consumer models were a few years after that. You can still buy 2-wheel drive Audis, but all Subaru models come with AWD now, and have for almost 20 years. Both Audi Quattro ans the Subaru AWD system deliver 50:50 power distribution to front/rear (60:40 on cars with automatic), with limited slip differentials to transfer power to wheels that have traction.

They don't have locking diff, which you'd want for getting out of the bog when you're off-road, but they're great for on-road conditions, even with limited traction. I've had a Subaru of some sort for years, currently a 2011 Impreza, and it's great, especially on snow/icy roads.

He wanted to try to match it in form factor as well as performance. And yes, that led to some incredibly stupid choices for his design. If he was willing to go with a grey box form factor, he could have gotten a bigger than mATX motherboard, and found something for less which had all of the functionality he wanted. He could also have found a cheaper (but larger form factor) power supply that also would have met all of his needs. In this case, he's paying extra for the form factor.

When comparing point for point against the Apple, that makes sense, actually. But when you don't really care about the physical size of the beast you're making (such as in a business case), then he could have done it for a lot cheaper. He even pointed out, in his own article, that he bought a pair of $3500 video cards (that's $7000 on video cards alone) because Apple had gone with AMD, even though the NVidia would probably have been a better choice for video editing (and a *lot* cheaper, too).

Don't think it's fair to count Android devices as Linux, given that it's a very closed platform and doesn't have any of the basic functionality that most of us expect from a desktop operating system.

Though given the direction Microsoft and Apple seem to want to go with their desktop systems... maybe in a couple of years it'll be a fair comparison. :)

Because most of the alternatives to Javascript suck more.

So submit it as a wishlist to those vendors.

Personally, it seems redundant, when the guest OS has its own firewall built-in (we're talking about XP, right?), the host OS has its own software firewall, and I have a hardware firewall. You're asking for an application-level firewall in addition to all of these.

Insert picture of that guy from Pimp My Ride....

You're wrong. Every single one you listed has the ability to set up a LAN between VM's without bridging that LAN to the Internet. They're configured out of the box to allow Internet access through NAT, because that's what most people using a VM want with it, but it's trivial to set up a non-bridged LAN between VM's. You can even allow the host to connect to that LAN so it can access shared services while still preventing the VMs themselves from accessing the 'Net.

If you want a VM to access your external LAN without accessing the Internet itself? That's a different story, but that's a firewall configuration thing, not a VM thing. And if you *really* can't figure out how to configure your firewall for that, just install a 2nd NIC in the host system, and bridge the VM to that. Once you've done that, you can take care of the rest at a physical connections level instead of software.

Two questions asked, two answers given --

1st -- Some XP software won't run on Windows 7 because the software was not written to be compliant with Microsoft's published security standards. Stuff that's compliant with the standards runs, stuff that isn't compliant, and which relies on some undocumented feature/bug, may or may not run. Or did you mean ActiveX controls? That's a completely different animal, and can still be made to run on a Windows 7 system with the help of XP Mode. You may also want to ask your web designer why they haven't updated the design/layout in 10 years.

2nd -- People haven't upgraded their XP systems because of opportunity cost. Either you need to worry about updating your ActiveX-based corporate intranet to work on a modern browser, or you have to worry about the cost of purchasing a new set of licenses for a more recent version of Windows. While I could forgive a large corporation which may have to pay tens of millions of dollars to upgrade (though my own company has already upgraded its 85,000 employees' systems to Win7), I have a harder time forgiving a home user whose cost would be effectively nil if they were to purchase a new(er) computer. You don't even have to buy a *new* computer any more to get Windows 7 -- it's been out for long enough that I've seen computers in used computer store or on kijiji for the $50 range which would be an upgrade to anything that was sold with XP, and which come with Windows 7 as well. The savings in electricity alone from such an upgrade would probably pay for that within a year -- remember that while the P4 did boast speeds at 3.4GHz, they did it by using several times the electricity that a modern i3 or i5 uses for the same clock speed.

And the re-buy existing software argument doesn't wash. At the absolute worst case scenario, they can run it in XP Mode, which is a full fledged virtual machine which can run anything that ran on XP.

And Windows XP users can switch to Linux too.... it's been a very long time since I've seen a piece of software that runs on Windows XP that doesn't run on WINE as well... a lot of it runs better on WINE, actually. And for that tiny handful of programs that don't run on WINE? You can run an XP VM, with no network access...

I'm pretty sure you can still find 'em... this one for example is on sale this week, for damn near netbook prices. Yes, it's about $100 more than most netbooks cost, but it's in the price range of a midrange tablet, and it has a keyboard.

If you prefer something cheaper, you could, you know, buy a tablet and a bluetooth keyboard for less.

And failing that, there are always chromebooks. That was my plan for my next ultraportable... buy a 13" chromebook, wipe the drive, and install my Linux of choice....

If you're serious about gaming on Linux, you're probably already doing that, actually... with a standard system. Unless you weren't actually planning on hooking it up to a TV in the first place (I wasn't).

I can state, for example, that my USB XBoX controller works perfectly on Linux, and is supported by all but one or two of the games I have bought on Steam for Linux. It also works in Steam itself, for Big Picture mode. I also know for a fact that the HDMI out on my desktop/gaming system supports audio and 1080p to the TV. From there it's really trivial to set a desktop up to automatically login and launch Steam at startup, to launch Steam in Big Picture mode, and put it on a TV.

On the other hand... they're still raising their prices and offering less service for it.

It's already cheaper to send most packages either UPS or Purolator ground ship. Canada Post wins out on actual letters or post cards, but for how much longer? Hardly surprising though... I can't remember the last time I got anything in the mail except for the insurance renewal and my investment statements... everything else is electronic or delivered by courier these days.

They really don't care whether you use beef or poultry gravy on your poutine (for the record, poultry is better). At best, most of the domestic surveillance being done by CSE is keyword searches as part of the former Echelon program, but most of us aren't even on their radar -- they just don't have enough people to worry about the minutiae of all of us when there's real work to be done. There've been a few instances where they looked more closely at individuals closely associated with major events, such as the G20/G8 summits a few years ago, but most of the resources that CSE has are focused on external sources. The RCMP is there to act on internal threats, but only when there's a clear reason to do so, such as a background check on somebody looking for security clearance, or when there's a tip that somebody's involved in something stupid. None of this should come as a surprise to you.

Privacy is an illusion. You can hope to keep stuff from the general public, if you don't put it on the Internet, but most of the details of your life are there for the consumption of anybody with access to it. The only thing that keeps your details private is that they just don't care enough to have a human look at it as long as you're not giving them a reason to care.

I'd post anonymously, but I honestly don't care what they know... I'm not saying anything that shouldn't be public knowledge, and they've looked into my background on multiple occasions already.

60 miles in a car is 1-2h depending on the roads you're taking. If you're actually focusing on everything you're supposed to focus on when you're driving, that can be mentally exhausting. Not physically, by any stretch, but it's not surprising that people say they'd be tired. That kind of endurance can be improved, but it's not the same kind of exertion as physical.

Doesn't work very well in this city... but I imagine that HK has a much better transit system than Ottawa, Canada. Here, to get from, say, downtown to, say, a shopping mall like Billings Bridge, there's essentially 4 routes. Sounds like a lot. But which route you take has a *huge* impact on how quickly you'll get there. There's 3 direct routes, and one involving a transfer. We'll skip the transfer one, because it follows the exact same route as one of the direct routes, just means taking a bus that doesn't go all the way and changing to a different commuter route.

That leaves the #97, which follows a bus-only highway almost all of the way, and then local roads. On a map it's a roundabout route, but it's the fastest because it's on the transitway.
The #1 is a direct route. Single road, no turns, straight line to the mall in question. Also quite slow, because it goes through three major commercial districts with a lot of pedestrian traffic.
The #8 wends its way through a residential area and takes twice as long as the #97 to get there.

If you're just using an app to look at which routes will get you to the destination, you may think that any of the above will work well. But when you actually look into it, the choice of which one you want to take is clear.

For the record, I mix both driving and transit. I take transit for my commute to work, because I don't feel like paying $200/mo for a parking pass when a bus pass is $100/mo and taking the bus is faster than driving during rush hour (because of the transitway I mentioned). But during off-peak hours or weekends, I will drive. As a result, I've needed to learn familiarity with the roads and general layout of the city, but also have a basic understanding of how to get around by bus. I do have apps for both navigation by car and by bus, but try not to rely on them -- sometimes either of them will muck up the directions and tell me to take a route that's longer than an alternative.

They usually use a coating of Gallium Oxide... it's clear enough for the purposes, and the Gallium alloys they use in the thermometer won't stick to it.

That said, the Gallium-based thermometers aren't of much use in extremely cold areas... Gallinstan freezes at -19'C, and I've lived in areas where it can get to -55'C (before the wind chill kicks in).