Well, you set the bar so low, it's difficult to to know how to add any useful observations. Virtually every digicam these days will address the most egregious technical faults (focus, exposure, motion blur). So just buy something, start snapping away to your heart's content, and maybe you'll learn what the heck it is you want. It's difficult to envisage what you might find satis/unsatis -factory, or how spending any particular sum on gear might resolve that. For what it's worth (I suspect not much), I don't like digital cameras, and still use film gear.

Apple has had quite a long history of denial about everything from product defects to the conditions under which its products are made. When I buy a product that carries a 150% (and often much, much higher) brand premium, I expect the brand to stand behind its products. And that is why I do not buy Apple products.

"Gimme a break." No. You don't get a break. Windows, life sentence. Enjoy.

Linus is of course entitled to use any DE, and to criticize any particular piece of GNU/Linux (or anything else under the sun) he pleases. I used xfce for a couple of years mainly for it's alleged, 'lightweight' aspect. Then it turned out it uses nearly as much system resources as Gnome 2 and for that matter, KDE 4x for several common tasks. To be frank, in comparison to Gnome and KDE's current iterations, XFCE feels old, kludgy and primitive (the most recent XFCE release shows some incremental improvements buttressing the same, outdated philosophy and poor underlying design principles). I don't hate XFCE, and I don't wish it didn't exist, I just think there are far better alternatives. For lightweight DE's, look instead at something like Openbox (as implemented e.g. on the Crunchbang debian distro). Gnome 3 can best be described as a work in progress. We don't yet know how it's many shortcomings are going to be addressed. Still, I'm glad it's here, and I think it's a very necessary step for the Gnome project. If you really want to try it, skip the vm nonsense (actually, it ran very well for me in VirtualBox), and keep it updated, because the improvements are coming fast and thick. By tossing off these kind of unreasoning and reactive quips about topics on which he has few valid insights, Linus only diminishes his own stature. Just sayin...

You know the old saw about those who know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. I can't speak to the situation today, because for a whole host of factors there seems to have been a general, across-the-board decline in standards and quality for undergraduate study. Suffice to say I did not complete my first round of college (I quit after 3 years), but went on to get a degree in another (somewhat related) discipline much later in life. Perhaps I was fortunate to encounter a few stellar teachers, and I mean world-class, in both situations. I owe them everything. Maybe you can teach yourself coding and/or business at home. Pity if that's all you'll ever learn....

When you contemplate your future dental and insulin bills...

Here's the thing: Apple products aren't cheap, are they? Now... where does that >$60-billion mountain of cash Apple is sitting on come from? Hmm? Care to hazard a guess?

Well, America is accelerating rapidly and inexorably towards failed state status. Perhaps when it reaches that destination in the not-too-distant future, North Korea will be a "superpower", relatively speaking, of course...

Get a life, STFU. FTP just works. Do you hate that? If you have something truly better, it will replace FTP. Otherwise...

Remind me: how many land-based nukes have been subjected to turrists ?

You need to be more afraid of Goldfinger's bimbos with radioactive warhead spear guns!

But the IPhone does suck.

Um, yeah, actually, Oracle is simply carrying out Sun's strategy of attempting to monetize various 'opensauce' offerings, which, if you read the fine print... Oh hang on, you thought Sun was just kidding? We may hate Oracle for acting on Sun's edicts, and I personally wish them ill will, but hardly new, or surprising.

>it will basically end investigative journalism and take the US one step closer to being like Russia or China I think we're seeing a trend here...

"I think having a better understanding of what causes someone to become a terrorist will be helpful." Oh gosh, that's a tough call... Invade their country? Kill their family, neighbors and friends? Install a corrupt puppet regime that tortures everyone in sight? Steal their land?