I say, throw a knife into a group of waiting passengers and let the first one to emerge alive board first.

In other words, let the invisible hand of the free market decide.

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net...

Can you call them "bugs" when they were specific design specifications?

The F-35 is a $300billion dollar abomination. Earlier today, there was a story about a $300million dollar IT mess in federal government and there were howls of outrage.

This useless plane is 1000 times more expensive and unlike the IT mess, the plane's "bugs" are there by design.

When I was at school I wasted vast amounts of time being forced to write stuff out in draft form and then re-write it neatly. Fortunately now we have computers that allow editing. This is progress - I can write a report and edit it without endless copying out by hand.

Kids should have access to computers. Not all families can afford them. By giving all the students the same computers it is easier for the teacher to teach without getting bogged down in technical differences, and allows the school to administer and manage them.

Double kudos for writing it on touch screen devices. I do some Play-by-email roleplaying and at times I do posts on my Nexus 7, and man oh man it's difficult. I wouldn't even dream of doing long prose writing on a tablet.

Chromebooks don't support Java, or Silverlight for that matter, in the browser. There are of course web games, but the school will have their internet connection censored to block those out anyway. The students can't install much on those machines, and in fact I think they can be locked down so that no apps can be installed at all.

It's hardly surprising that schools would prefer laptops with keyboards, since students are expected to do a lot of writing. Chromebooks make sense because they are cheap, virus-proof and don't run Windows games.

I tried ergonomic keyboards but found that because I never learned to type formally, using the right fingers for each key, I was constantly reaching over to the other side because that's just how I normally type.

It's the sort of thing where you really want to get a cheap one and try it before spending serious money on something like this. In the end I found that just getting a laptop style keyboard (and MS one as it happens, but Lenovo ones are good too) made far more difference. Clicky keys are really nice but they are not the best if you have arthritis or RSI or just want something low impact.

What exactly is "free for the taking"? Water? How much may I have? All of it? Half? Or only as much as I need? Do I get more if I want to take a bath, or bathe my dog, or add chemicals and pump it into the earth at high pressure to extract oil?

There's a problem with seeing anything as "free for the taking". There's always a cost. Always a value. To me, to you, to everyone.

Best to ask your neighbors, "Hey, there's water running under my land, you wanna see if we can put in a well and use it? If we pitch in, we can all use the water. That's more useful than putting up a fence, sucking up all the water and then selling it for $1/gallon. Because eventually, your neighbors will cut your throat unless you can hire some of them to protect you from the others, and that will eat into your profits.

Ain't nothing free for the taking. Think of it as free for the sharing. Even, to some extent, yourself. Do you really "own" yourself?

Former CIA spy and writer Robert David Steele talks about a very interesting concept: "true cost accounting". It means that you have to figure in externalities when you derive price. When you go down that road, capitalism starts to look very different. It's like seeing it for the first time. I recommend his books, especially "Open Source Everything". Not so much because I agree with everything he says, but because he forces you to see things differently.

I got your weasel meat right here.

Quite frankly, and this sounds stupid, but I'm emotionally attached to my glasses. I'm 42 now, and I've been wearing glasses since I was six. Frankly I don't even remember what it was like without them. I freely admit it's an irrational and emotional response, but I like my glasses.

If there are any other government agencies out there looking for a new IT system, I can fail to deliver for $100 million.

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I learned in school that almost 50% of software projects fail to deliver at all.

It's a little more complicated than that.

They have big all-in-one installer .exes that setup a full environment for the games.

A great many are run through dosbox, but others are old win95 games or whatever.

We're talking about a month-long project for a couple developers to convert the low hanging fruit that have an easy deployment target like that. And working out details with more modern indie game studios that natively target linux.