Exactly, I am not sure why Apple tries so hard to make their device so thin.
Thin cost money, the more it cost the thicker case you will want to put on it to protect it.

The Government Bidding process for services is corrupt by design.
You can make bid for service.
Then you have stipulations which weigh it in a companies favor, not because they are required for the job, but to write the contract for the company.

I have seen State Bids for services for a Web Site. Which has odd requirements, such as 20+ years in COBOL, 10+ Years in RPG, 3 Years of HTML, 2 Years of ASP.NET
When you see these contracts you know they are for a particular person they want to keep on board.

How dare Netflix provide services that the customer wants at a price the can afford!
That people are willing to follow a bunch of hacking methods to get access to a service that they will pay for!

My main issue is we are entering a post desktop world. (No the desktop isn't dyeing, but it isn't the center of our computing world)
So we need the following.
1. A platform to create moble apps.
2. Being able to create these apps on different systems.

It is actually very lame to have to have a Mac to build an iOS app. You really should be able to do it on at least the Big three OS Windows,Mac,Linux. Because we are not desktop centrist anymore and people will go around with different Desktops and OS's freely.

The biggest issue with a lot of of the home grown Open Source Apps, is getting past the dreaded 80% complete mark.
This is the point in the program where all the interesting proof of concepts and interesting algorithms are all set. However that last 20% is a lot of the detail fine tuning that really puts all the pieces in play.
This last 20% mark when it no longer becomes fun, is where the project looses steam and sometimes dies off.
Having a company putting money towards development with management and direction and all those MBA Buzzwords basically means we push the developers to get that last 20% done.
But of course if they are pushing to get that set done, and are putting in resources to help that, it is going to be their vision of 20% not necessary yours.

I know a lot of the Open Source people have this Anti-Corporate everything mind set... However to make it in the world there needs other sources of motivation other then just feeling good.

Analog Data fairs better when it isn't touched, every read could damage it a bit, and copying a copy of a copy using analog methods will degrade its content.

For digital data, it wants to be moved around.
The more you copy and move digital data the better it is.
Raid Disks makes sure you have a couple of copies.
You post it the cloud and it will last longer.
You could get fancy and have a backup method that copies your data from one drive to an other. When it fails you swap the drive out with a new one.

Being that your 32bit Macbooks are 8 years old.
You really should expect to not get much updates in any software what so ever.
I am surprised that Google had 32bit mac support.

I have to agree 2.5 billion for a game title is over the top. Especially as most game titles do not have a long life. Sure it is popular now... However in 5 years? 10 years?
Nintendo got lucky with a few franchisees.
Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon. But these are charactors/story universes. Mindcraft doesn't have such an in-depth story it is just the game fad of the time.

For the most part people are happy with that.
When you own something it is up to you to keep it maintained. When you have these services the owner needs to do the maintenance, if something goes off it is their fault. As well on the average they have the resources to keep all their devices maintained.

Sure I kinda wish these companies can give us the option to own or rent. For those cases where I feel I am better off owning it even with the extra responsibility of ownership.

Being that the iphone is more useful. I expect it goes thew more rigor on the average then an android.

Agnostics that hold no belief are atheists.

Agnostics that entertain any measure of belief are theists.

Agnosticism is a position taken with regard to knowledge.

Theism and atheism are positions based upon belief, faith. The one does not replace the other.

Agnosticism is about knowledge. the Theism / Atheism poles are diametric opposites: belief and non-belief. There's no middle ground definable by knowledge, or lack thereof.

Agnosticism is not a third position. You're either a theist -- that is, you hold some measure of belief in a god or gods -- or you're not, and you don't. From there, you can, if you like, assert a state of knowledge to bolster your choice, or a lack of a state of knowledge to do the same thing. But your position is still either you believe, or you don't.

The whole point about belief, or not, is that it is contingent upon faith. Knowledge is not.

Hope that helped some.

...is a little monitor that hangs over your lips, showing a silent movie of your lips saying (in a loop) "I suspect I'm under surveillance" while underneath, you can be saying anything you like. :)

An interesting issue is, the photons that formed the image were not on their property at the time, nor do they have a legitimate claim to ownership of those photons just because they happened to bounce off their stuff. They probably bounced off a lot of other stuff, too. "My photon! MY PHOTON!" has more than a little bit of the ring of insanity about it. :)

If you don't want a photonic record of your actions, the sensible answer is to avoid photons that can form such a thing, i.e., stay inside your dwelling with opaque curtains drawn, erect a fence and a cover, etc.

Orwell was an Optimist