Cool. I can't wait until this fall when it's time to update my company laptop. My current Dell Precision M6600 was about twice that when I got it two and a half years ago. I think the upgrade to the Nvidia Quadro 3000M w 2GB of RAM was about $800 of it.

The CPU is only a tenth of a GHz faster on this model than the one I currently have, and I have 20 GB of faster RAM along with a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro and a 750 GB spinning disk. 1080X1920 was the highest resolution I could get at the time, but I think the built in screen is 17". The higher resolution would be a really nice improvement.

The newer one weighs less than half of the one I have now. But I'd be curious what the weight of the power transformer is. On my current system it is about the size of a clay brick and probably weighs close to 2 lbs. I can get about 2 hours out of the battery with no real power reduction crippling the system. Probably 3.5 to 4 under the most favorable conditions. So 9 hours would be a big improvement too.

I'll have to wait to see if Windows 10 is worth bothering with though. I suppose I could always install Windows 7 from the recovery disks that came with my current system.

That's a good one. It didn't work out so well for George W. Bush when the facts changed.

Democrats, Republicans, you're all so full of hatred for each other you're not only illogical, you're blind and stupid too.

I'm old enough to remember when universal healthcare was a Republican goal. The Democrats claimed it would be the end of America. Funny how the roles have reversed.

Of course that's the beauty of the internet. It's been around long enough that you can find videos of just about any politician whose been in office long enough vehemently claiming the exact opposite of what they so strongly state they believe now. But you just keep blindly believing whatever your "team" in the blue or red uniforms keeps telling you to think. It's easier that way I suppose.

I guess you never heard the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue"

Indeed, for the most part the Continental Army did. That's why I stated "particularly the militia". Many refused to wear uniforms, and not lining up in formation was considered pretty unconventional back then.

Which was my entire point. Can you imagine how the history books would have been written if the British won that war? I don't think it would have been very kind to the Continental army, and in particular to the militia.

I wonder if that's what the British thought about the guerrilla tactics of the Continental army, particularly the militia. Don't get me wrong, I'm no supporter of terrorists, but I do find it interesting how one mans valiant freedom fighter is another mans dishonorable terrorist.

For countries with MIVR'ed ICBM's, the dummy vehicles can be replaced with some sort of defensive weapon. In the case of Russia, you could have two warheads with four defensive vehicles per warhead on each ICBM, or the US could have 3 warheads with 3 defensive vehicles each per ICBM. Since they can be independently targeted, the defensive vehicles could arrive ahead of the warhead between the line of site of the laser and the trajectory of the active warhead. A nice thick cloud of opaque smoke could do the trick. And be cheaper than reflective/ablative armor.

From one of the articles I read a few days ago, it wouldn't have mattered if the system was in place and turned on. According to the article the train involved in the crash was an older one that wasn't compatible with that system. I don't know if that's true, or not, but if so, the headline is very misleading.

Did you happen to hear that whooshing sound? It wasn't from a windmill.;-)

Yes, but the majority of those cats eat the birds. I haven't seen a windmill that can do that.

Perhaps we should start a new market by composting the bird carcasses and selling the fertilizer to farmers. I wonder if windmill ground bird compost will be acceptable for organic farms. If so, it sounds like a win-win.

Probably because if you zoom in on the third one to the left of center you can see Tommy Chong trying to spark it up. ;-)

It may be able to react much faster, but due to inertia, the stopping distance for something as heavy as a loaded truck is considerably longer than that of a car. And when a car suddenly swerves in front of the truck and immediately brakes, a slightly improved reaction time is only going to help so much. A train is an even more extreme case. Those can take miles to come to a stop do to all of the inertia.

No kidding. My Corvette is usually only manned by me, and occasionally one other person. It has no armament, and scares the hell out of me when it gets off the ground, let alone leaves the atmosphere. And it might as well be parked, even at top speed, when compared to the slowest space faring vehicles.