Not to nitpick, but structurally, eggshells are incredibly strong. Ok, that was totally to nitpick.

...since when is stealing, selling, or dropping the laptop into a bathtub considered "hacking" it? When I first read the title I thought, "maybe some custom-hardened BSD variant?", then come to find out it's just Window$ 7?!?!?! What a joke.

I've used more than my fair share of distros, since I like to tinker. Right now, I using Fedora, CentOS, and Debian Stable on a few of my machines. But, I have yet to find a distro that is superior to all others in every way...which, IMO, is one of the best things about GNU/Linux, since what you require is probably not the same as what I require. Flexibility is king. And keeping /home separate from / has been a lifesaver for me on more than one occasion, not just for ease of installing/switching distros, but for general data and system security/stability as well. Just curious, what do you mean by "resort" to my method? Do you keep everything on a single default partition set up by an installer, just because it's the easy way to go?

I probably should have tacked a YMMV on my post. Yeah, I'm sure some people haven't had problems upgrading, but I'm certainly not one of them...I suppose your distro of choice influences this as well. I've just always been the "err on the side of caution" kind of guy when it comes to hacking around in my system.

IMHO, if you're smart enough to be regularly using Linux, you should be smart enough to know that you should never "upgrade" a distro in-place. Keep /home on a separate partition, and do a clean install every time. It'll save you loads of trouble.

Oh my god, you're seriously comparing the two? Get over your inflated sense of moral superiority. But okay, to assuage your delicate sensibilities, I refer you to the final 6 words of my previous post. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash my hands, then immediately set up a monument to the bacteriological Holocaust I'm about to commit.

You're missing the point here...Schroedinger's Cat is just a simplified example of a two-state system. No one is claiming that the object of the experiment is to produce a fuzzy superposition consisting of a living and a dead virus. The two states here are the virus' ground state energy and that of an excited state. Nothing more. So please, people, stop bitching about whether viruses are strictly classified as living organisms; it is not important in the context of the experiment.

I'd bet money on private corporations "buying-out" ISS or "renting" time/space for things like manufacturing insanely pure insulin crystals (e.g.) in microgravity, or something along those lines. I've no doubt ISS will be useful for many more years to come.

I've got the perfect domain name for you! Has only had one owner for the last 25 years, and it was a little-old lady who only accessed it on Sundays! Whaddya say? Should I start the paperwork?

The day my toddler texts me from the other room to tell me he wants some "gam cackers n apple joose" is the day I climb the clocktower.

I think I just vomited a little in my mouth.

The classiest way possible to tell someone "eat me".

Good News Everyone!

Hi everyone, I teach astronomy, and I see this all the time: the term "dark matter" is almost always misconstrued to be some strange, exotic form of matter. In reality, its just an umbrella term meaning ANY kind of matter that, for one reason or another, is obscured from our observations. So yes, IS dust clouds could be a significant contributor to the "missing matter" that we think is out there. Really, anything we can't directly observe. Think about it: no detector is 100% efficient, and no observation equipment can scan ALL the frequencies of the EM spectrum. We can cover good portions of it, but not all...so there's some vital information missing. Also, cool objects emit vastly less broadband radiation, so objects like old dead dwarfs (red, white and black), "failed" stars like brown dwarfs, exoplanetary systems just to name a few do not contribute much to the "light" we receive from the rest of the universe. And light is really ALL we have to go on in observational astronomy. And let's not get started on neutrino mass... :)