Windows Server has long been the way to get the expert's version of NT. On occasion, though, it has had DirectX compatibility issues.

Are you aware that BMW and Mercedes reliability has gone into the toilet since the 1980s? I hear most Porsches that don't catch on fire spontaneously are pretty reliable, though.

Gee, is that all? I remember doing quite a lot on my desktop in 2000.

I'm betting it would depend on which benchmark you were running.

Assuming that the obsolete compute modules are of standard size/pinout (or, more likely, that compute chassis are only produced for phones that ship in sufficiently massive volume to assure a supply of board-donors), this scheme would work; but I have to imagine that a phone SoC would make a pretty dreadful compute node: Aside from being a bit feeble, there would be no reason for the interconnect to be anything but abysmal. For efficiency's sake, SoCs tightly integrate all the parts that need to chat at high speed with one another(along with whatever else fits, just to save board space), and only such interfaces as are absolutely necessary are brought out of the package, much less broken out on the board in some sort of civilized connector. In terms of dedicated interfaces you'll have some dubiously appropriate wireless stuff, a USB slave or host/slave interface, and a few GPIOs. The only options with really serious bandwidth or low latency would probably involve creative(and not necessarily possible, depending on the situation) abuse of camera and screen interfaces.

For all those nice, tractable, problems that behave well on loosely coupled nodes, each individually quite feeble, I guess it'll work; but that certainly doesn't include most of the really obnoxious computational crunching problems.

How do I turn all this crap off? I do not want "charms" or active notifications or dancing paper clips.

Just run all my programs fast and don't make me notice your interface. Why is that so hard?

Sure there's always a few garage developers/wanna-be entrepreneurs/SOHO users, but they're a niche.

But certainly, you don't consider all the people who have PCs on their desks at work to be a "niche", do you?

Is it "pro-science" to want to keep the provenance of consumers' food a secret?

Yes retard.

The pro-GMO argument distilled to its essence.

"Safe" doesn't even have to be the issue. The issue is, why are these people so keen to make sure consumers don't know where their food comes from? Even more important, why are they so keen to make sure that consumers don't know where their food money is going?

When I buy a bag of rice or an ear of corn, I want to know whether or not my money is going to pay for a license fee for intellectual property covering a basic foodstuff. Because I would rather it did not. And for some strange reason, there is a group of people out there who believe I should not have that choice as a consumer, and they use "science" as their reason.

So get a domain, put together a shiny website, and shop the article around to all the wire services you can find...

In theory? Sure. In practice? Not so much. Oligarchy link is already provided on a comment very near to this one, but here 'tis again. Direct democracy or GTFO. For anyone who wants to cry "mob rule", quick quiz before anyone should give a shit what you think: 1) how many times in history has the electoral college disagreed with the popular vote? 2) what were the last two times that happened? The results should shut you the hell up, if you find the correct answers.

In countries where the people get to vote on bills, there may be democracy. I don't know, I don't live in one of those. In countries where more than two choices working for one master are presented, there may be democracy. I don't know, I don't live in one of those either. Here in the USA, we have two different colors of wolf arguing over one sheep.

Here's the problem with that argument: even in cities where population is, most Americans still have crappy internet by modern standards. That's why you don't get to apply the "America is huge" argument to speeds, only to coverage. It's not surprising that many people who live in the sticks can't get cable or DSL, that happens because America is huge and our population is actually relatively distributed. But it is surprising that so many people who live in densely-packed regions still can't get even 25 Mbps, let alone the vastly higher speeds now available for a reasonable price in many nations which did not invent the internet.

Yes, but the FCC can't really do that even if they want to, not by themselves. Raising the definition of 'broadband' (heh heh) is something they can do, hilariously enough.

I don't think it is. Think about all the Android phone users who have backup turned on, but only on Wi-Fi. They're out shooting videos and taking pictures on their phones, and then these files are getting the cloud backup treatment. I think people are going to get used to this sort of thing in general if they get a chance.

As much as I'm deeply displeased that the attitude would be 'give us what we want or we'll take it, Stasi-style'; I'd see a situation where the spooks are forced to resort to physical intrusion as a vast improvement.

Implicit in the GCHQ flack's 'threat' is the idea that totally invisible 'no touch' surveillance is somehow better and nicer. In the sense that it has better PR, and is easier to maintain (and on a massive scale) without public outcry or logistically overwhelming amounts of black-bag work, this is true. In terms of the relationship between the clandestine agencies and even the pretense of democratic government, though, I'd say that it's exactly the opposite.

If team spook has the advantage of technology for scale and efficiency, and is capable of invisibly watching more or less everything without any visible signs of having done so, you have about as imbalanced a situation as one could reasonably imagine. A perfect panopticon; but so subtle that you sound like some sort of schizo nutjob for suggesting that it is happening. If they actually have to break and bug, this will mean more physical intrusion; but it also creates a de-facto limit on how broadly they can pursue fishing expeditions, and how reasonably they can make the assumption that they will never be caught.

If what he says about more encryption is true; bring it on.

So I haven't actually tried to use my SIP trunk credentials with the Android SIP client, but I'm having a hard time imagining it working...

I'm in that same boat. Within a bowshot or so, there's both cable and DSL. Where I am, I can get access to a WISP which [sometimes] gives me 6 Mbps for $60/mo, recently revised-without-notice from 5 Mbps for $50. As lousy as it is, DSL would be a better deal for me if it worked, but this is some heinously old and multiply-spliced copper where it wouldn't work well anyway.