E17 "previews" (betas or whatever you want to call them) have been available for years, I had it installed as a secondary desktop on both Mageia releases and on Mandriva before that ... but the official version number was 16.99. (For the record, KDE is my primary DE, but I also install Enlightenment, XFCE and fluxbox.)

No plans on building from source, I'm sure Mageia will have it up shortly.

"WIndows 8 simply has too steep a learning curve. You need to watch instructional videos to figure it out."

Strange ... I still haven't watched any videos. The only two things I needed to know were where the Desktop tile was (bottom left, easy to find) and how to turn off the "swipes" on my touchpad. Of course that one took figuring out where the Control Panel was and figuring out that the swipes were in the touchpad settings.

If you don't want to use apps, then don't use apps. What's so hard about that?

No such thing as instantaneous anyway, magnetic fields propagate at the speed of light. At best, it's the magnetic equivalent of a superconductor. Not that such a thing would be uninteresting, but we're not violating any laws of physics.

I was teaching when the original TI-83 came out - the earlier 81 and 85 came out while I was in college. At the university I taught at, we actually required students to have a graphing calculator for certain classes.

At the college level. it isn't hard for a good teacher (or textbook) to ask questions that actually test the student and not the calculator - at least, unless they have one of those algebraic calculators. Even then, things like word problems require them to identify the right formula and set it up properly (which is more important than actually being able to grind out the numerical answer from there).

Having said that, I'm not sure how some elementary school teacher is supposed to teach fractions when even fairly basic calculators can handle fractions these days (some even displaying the result as you'd write it on paper). Require students to have a specific level of calculator for each grade? I'm sure that would go over really well with parents ...

Of course, I already have one of the Casio CG-10 calculators.

Being a web browser support person, I get to hear about ISPs injecting code in web pages frequently, first time was ... what, 7 years ago? Of course, usually that was ads; in that sense at least Cox is not trying to sell you anything.

First case I recall was a Canadian ISP injecting their own ads into search results. More recently there's a low-cost ISP in India which will inject ads in any (insecure) web page.

Of course, I'm not going to pay for someone's service and tolerate them inserting pop-up ads into the pages I see. If they were giving the service away for free or at a substantial discount (like NetZero does) then that's one thing, but paying near full price for something like that doesn't cut it.

Coming at this from the other side ... as someone involved in tech support (as a volunteer), we've recently had an issue that only shows up with the 3.5 kernels and the Catalyst driver. My own distro isn't using 3.5 kernels yet - the people reporting this were all using one of the latest *buntu versions. Since the original question was about Ubuntu, all I can say is be very careful. If the current LTS version doesn't have the 3.5 kernel yet, then go with that and avoid the issue.

I have had good luck with nVidia systems, but these were all desktop systems with only one adapter present. If there is such a thing in a laptop these days, that would really be my first choice. My current laptop (a Toshiba) has ATI graphics and is dual-boot, but freezes unless I boot Windows then reboot into Linux (my guess is some firmware issue: Windows loads the firmware that somehow my distro is lacking and after that Linux is fine). I wish I could paint a rosier picture, but I can't - that's what it is. Intel graphics may not even be in the same class as the other two big names, but they will work.

Is this about search results? Most similar laws in the past have been about Google News (and similar services from other search engines). If they're asking to charge for search context, then sure they're shooting themselves in the foot - I don't know about you, but I hate results with no context. If they're trying to shut down Google News https://news.google.com/ then it's a slightly different story ... only slightly though, Google does only include snippets there too.

Some years ago, the Opera web browser was ad-supported. Some websites actually blocked Opera because they figured Opera's use of Google content-related ads diminished the value of their own ads. And yes, some users liked the fact that Opera might be showing them ads for competing products, if they visited a site selling antivirus products they'd see ads related to that (typically other antivirus products). Of course, these days Opera doesn't have their own ads, though maybe there's a niche available there ...

I don't use AdBlock+ or related products, I don't mind ads that aren't obnoxious - and I use the built-in content blocker for the ones that are obnoxious and also for web trackers. If some site wants to say "If you block my ads then you can't read my content", that's their right and I'll go elsewhere if the ads they do have are too obnoxious ... which I think everyone else would too. That is, if they use obnoxious ads and require you not to block them, they'll just have fewer visitors. Self-correcting problem.

Ever seen one of those Acer Aspire Revo "nettops"? Mine is the original - 1.6 GHz Atom processor (64-bit), nVidia Ion onboard graphics, 7 USB ports, ethernet, HDMI and VGA. Current models use an AMD processor and graphics for $329 or Intel I3 and Intel graphics for $499. (The $329 model has no optical drive, the $499 model has an 8x DVD+/-RW drive.)

The case on all of the above is about 1.5"x8"x8".

Actually, given that I'm not certain what the NUC is supposed to be offering. Slightly smaller form factor, that's about it ...

Webkit really has a 90% share? I thought that was Opera, which even works on a number of non-"smart" phones. However ...

People have complained that Opera felt it was necessary to support the -webkit- prefixed attributes in their browsers (desktop, mobile and "mini"). To be fair they also support -gecko- prefixed attributes and un-prefixed, the complaint was that Opera supporting -webkit- attributes left developers with little reason to fix their sites. Unfortunately Opera doesn't have that much clout.

In that sense, I'll say that it is good for MS to get onto the standards bandwagon for a change; maybe we really can get mobile site designers to support standards now.

Prior to redistricting, Jim Jordan was my representative. He is as conservative as they come - voted against all the bailouts, even Bush's bailout. Yes, he predates the "tea party", but fit right in. Of course he wouldn't fit as a Libertarian, being pro-life and opposed to drug legalization, but on tax issues and "small government" he'd fit right in. I consider myself a Libertarian, but had no trouble voting for him.

We are talking about an image which they said had layers.

Give them the final image as a flat raster image file, say JPEG or PNG. Since they must be turning their work in as a PSD (Photoshop format) or similar file if it has layers and all that, no problem at all. If for some reason you need to include a sample PSD file so they can see what different layers do, make it of a completely different image.

Don't forget, you may have someone in the class who really is willing (sometimes) to do 3 times as much work as necessary in order to get their image identical to the original. You can't be penalizing someone for doing that (well, any more than they are penalizing themselves).

That's fine for the "or developer" part.

There was a village near here who fired their IT person. She tried to hold the system hostage after they fired her, which obviously didn't go too well for either her or the village council - I forget all the details as it's been a couple of years ago now but it was all over the news at the time. Talk about your nightmare scenaios ...

Z00L00K above is right in general terms - in effect you have a virus or worm where someone has total control of your system. In a worst case, back up the essential data if you can, then do a system rebuild and import you data. No other way to be sure. And of course, make sure they aren't selling your data to your competitor or the Russians or whoever.

I always wondered why someone doesn't make a single chip using lots of cores that are along the lines of the early 8-bit processors. I mean, given the transistor count on modern chips, how many 8080/6502/1802 processors with their own memory could be put on a single chip? Okay, you'd need some sort of controller and so on - I'm sure even a 48-core (or 12 core) chip has some dedicated circuitry so the cores can communicate. It doesn't absolutely have to be 8-bit of course, but we did get work done on the old 8-bit machines. So, 1000 cores anyone?