I've gone paperless, so I have tax returns, medical info, SSNs, etc on my laptop. Full Disk Encryption means I don't have to worry about it.

With FDE, you have to decrypt it every time you use the computer, so you're not going to forget the password. If you're worried about that, put the password on a piece of paper in a safe deposit box or some other type of storage at home.

FWIW, I ran Linux full-time from 1994 through 2008. What finally did it for me was power management and the hassle it took to get laptops to work well under Linux. Linux worked well if you picked up a 1-2 year old laptop, because by then you could find support for most of the hardware, but you were in for a world of hurt if you wanted anything new.

Anecdotally, I know a bunch of people who switched to Mac for the same reason. Get a MacBook, and you had a laptop that could suspend and resume reliably... And you had your shell underneath.

TCP/IP isn't really following the OSI layer model, as convenient as that model is for discussion purposes.

If you want to understand how assymetric speeds slow down TCP/IP, here's a paper: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.22.5293

Verizon did it when they were trying to roll out FiOS, but now Verizon has stopped moving into new areas. AT&T has also stopped expanding Uverse into new areas. Instead, they're focusing on wireless where they can charge much more for less data.

That it's finally expanded into the virus industry!

That's exactly what they did. Icarus Desktop is a distribution of AROS, in a prepackaged VM image to make it easy to use. AROS is similar to WINE, in that it can run programs within a hosting OS. It also has native ports, but those progress slowly on the hardware support side.

Yes, that is the precise reason for intellectual property. What's your point?

You don't need to connect to an outside server. You can easily run your own time source (GPS is really easy these days), or have the devices talk to a single internal server which then securely contacts outward. If they're off, at least they're all on the same time. It's really dangerous if everything is reporting different incorrect times.

Why? Because it drives page views, of course.

Well, it's nice that after 12 years, GEGL is finally making its way into everything. Progress has been a little slower than I'd have liked....

I currently sync my files across three computers, each of which does a time machine backup. The files are also backed up via Jungledisk to Amazon S3. Occasionally I do full-disk images of things.

Files that would be inconvenient to lose, but which are not irreplaceable, are stored on a Drobo (redundant drive enclosure). This includes, for instance, my music library which could be reripped from CD.

It's at least been since Flash Player 9 in January 2007. 5 years is more than a token gesture.

Making it easy for things to come apart and be put back together takes space. The bigger the space budget, the more repairable and upgradable things have been. This has always been the case. This is why laptops have been more hassle than desktops, and why the iPad, which is shoved in there VERY tightly, is even worse.

So really, you figure out what's important to you. Is it more important to have a device you can easily repair, or is it more important that it be thin and light? With tablets, few people vote for heavy and repairable since they've been available for years in the Windows Tablet Edition space.

Nope. But that's life.

In my case, I worked to get rid of the company-issued laptop in favor of citrixing into my desktop at work. That means I have to carry less, and since I'm not constantly on the road, works well for me.

My Scansnap can do 20 double-sided pieces of paper a minute. My camera can't.

I to capture documents like books that I can't send through the Scansnap, but it's much more effort.