Golf! What a great idea!

Bring back Pope Benedict. At least he was rational. And while we're at it, arm him, and give him troops so he can do something about persecutions of Christians in the Middle East.

You want the pedophile shuffler back? Really?

His resignation was timed to deflect attention from that issue, coming as it was the very week HBO's documentary linking him (and his soon-to-be-sainted predecessor) directly to the pedophile scandals in the US, Ireland, and elsewhere came out.

And it worked. Instead of public outcry at the documented link between the then-reigning popes and the pedophile coverup, everyone was wetting their pants over a shiny new pope who wasn't to the right of Genghis Khan.

That said, it takes a really hardcore right-wingnut to want Ratzinger back.

I can shoot around corners now?! Sweet. Hello Cool World, here I come.

You can also be shot around corners. Welcome to "you don't stand a chance, Bub" world.

It's not rocket science ... oh, wait ...

the AI which hacked hawking's system and is using him as a puppet has developed a sense of humor.

we're doomed, and it will be hilarious.

AWKWARD!

Nice, thanks for the info. Nvidia would be nice, as I want to run blender. Is there a good comparison site for various laptops with high-end graphics and CPUs you know of? I've been poking around online for a while, but determining what the best supported higher-end laptops are for Linux is far from easy.

If Apple's recent stream of security failures has not convinced you to switch to Linux or BSD, you are basically hopeless.

Oh, I've been running Linux for years and years. I was going to dual-boot an apple laptop with osx+linux, but now I have no interest in having osx any more than I do windows. I'll take a look at the new dell.

My Grandmother (she is 85) has an Intel based Core Duo Macbook and Apple has stopped providing security updates [...] When we bought the machine (new) I thought the macbook would be more usable for her than a Linux laptop. While it has been a good machine, being orphaned on security updates is bad form by Apple.

It's not too late:

http://www.odi.ch/prog/macbook...
http://www.codingepiphany.com/...

We are talking apple users here, not Linux users. All three Apple users who know these steps have probably already done so. The other several hundred million are fucked, and Apple has now publicly taken a stance that they plan to hang those millions out to dry.

Ironically, I was going to buy an apple laptop for sheer convenience (and to run more recent versions of scrivener), but now I most certainly won't. Time to research good Linux laptop alternatives instead (ideally with high-end graphics capabilities that support blender's cycles module ... wonder how well Optimus is supported these days). Oh well, it will probably be cheaper anyway. Maybe I can treat myself a 4k monitor with the money saved.

It's only those damn Russians are doing this, all other countries are saint.

Yeah, because that makes it all OK then.

Your comment is designed to distract from the issue at hand, shut down intelligent conversation on the topic, and imply the wrongdoer is just fine because, by implication, "everybody else does it, too" (no evidence to said implication provided, certainly not proven, and probably not true), all without contributing a single creative or new thought to the discussion at all.

Nice job, (Russian?) troll.

Until systemd is removed from a major Linux distro, I would consider that distro to be less secure than even a Windows system.

Some Poettering apologist will probably mark you as a troll, but for completeness there are a number of distros that default to non-systemd init architectures, including but not limited to

Calculate, Gentoo, Funtoo, Source Mage, Dyson, indeed all kinds of distros either default or support running a systemd-free system.

And I thought there were only 43 reasons to cancel facebook. Now there are 44.

There must be 50 ways to leave your stalker^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfacebook.

Scientists and engineers are by definition not supposed to be ethical.

"I just invented the bomb. I didn't drop it."
        --Brice, Max Headroom Episode 1 "Blipverts", 1987

Reference (in particular, the third video clip): http://www.avclub.com/article/...

Back then that line was meant as tongue-in-cheek humor, funny because of its ridiculousness Depressing that we've degenerated so far that you've actually said the equivalent with all seriousness. (The same could be said for many things in that once funny, now prophetic series.)

As engineers and scientists we do NOT check our humanity at the door, or our ethics. At least, good engineers and scientists do not.