"What he means, I think, is that most computer companies make "consumer grade" machines and "commercial grade" machines. I've not has an Asus or Lenovo, but I've had Toshiba, HP, and Dell. With respect to Dell, I've had both consumer and commercial grade machines, built to higher specifications."

i have owned and used packard bell, HP, dell, compaq(before hp bought em), and a lenovo. the first computer i bought with my own income was a packardbell 80486 dx2 75mhz. that was built like a tank, and was about as useful as a paperweight. it took the thing about 40 minutes to encode a 4 minute song to mp3. and yes i did that on that machine. anyways that was the most reliable piece of hardware i ever owned. it spent 4 years as a desktop and about 11 years as a server, though the hdds failed on it 3 times in the same timeframe. my laptop a compaq pentium 120, ran for 13 years until i hid it in a dumpster, but it had the F00F bug so was never reliable. from there on all my parts lasted less long, the quality went down. my first dell laptop lasted about 5 years less than the pentium120 and my recent alienware rig had a motherboard failure in 3 weeks and a psu issue another month later. that makes it qualify as my least reliable pc ever. alienware laptops aren't even designed by the main fab producers for dell, and still a bad MB. anyways consumer and commercial grade isn't real at dell, and i doubt it is real elsewhere. if you research parts you can build a desktop that is fast and will last a decade, and for only a little more than the 'fast enough for windows8/debianwheezy' laptop. seriously the default WM for debian wheezy is slower than windows 8 i timed them. on the same computer.

" Most recently I purchased a Dell Latitude 5000 series laptop--in Dell's explanation of this computer in comparison to the 7000 series, it gave the 5000 series a build quality of 3 out of 4 stars, it gave the 3000 series 2 out of 4 stars (still Latitude--which implies the consumer grade stuff is 1 out of 4 stars for build quality). The consumer grade machines seem to be designed to last about 2 years or less. The commercial grade machines are designed to last more like 4 years."

i have a laptop that was built like trash grade and it has been more reliable than alienware. of course its running linux with a lighter wm than the default one in wheezy... but it is going to last me another 6 years, as all it does is internet when main rig is in install/update/backup discs mode, and is used as a second layer of virus detection and removal for windows machines not all of which belong to me, and i have no say as to the os on those windows machines.

"The problem is, you have to pay a premium for the commercial grade machines."

there was a day when a computer was $5,000 and was a calculator at massive size. remember the dx2 75mhz? it was about 100 times faster than the $5000 machine i am thinking of and can't recall the specs or useful links right now.

"With Apple, there is no "consumer grade" and "commercial grade"--they're all made to high specifications."

apple products are all one grade of materials. however, they are not any more immune to faulty boards caps etc. their parts are notorious for being high profit, http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/24/iphone-5s-5c-teardowns-suggest-199-183-build-costs-for-apple they buy $183 worth of parts sell it for $1,000 $600 of which the cell phone has you pay over 12 months roughly. the mac lineup is in a similar situation and really if apple gets the chips for that price i doubt samsung pays higher ditto with dell. apple gets by on reputation. they wouldn't have that reputation if they hadn't been in schools or have numerous graphics stuff like photoshop, and the new ipad commercial where they make a whole symphony from one ipad. windows can't buy that reputation. they are the 'buggy, but just works and can game too even if the people you game with are hacking you' reputation that windows has earned, as well as 'benivolent dictator' cause there can be only one survivor of the os wars according to gates philosophy. glad he is gone maybe their recent attempts to be 'apple did it so we can too, almost but without the same apps, so no really its not the same we just had to follow marekting which said copy apple' kind of aura.

then there is gnu. smart people know that free software (though not necisarily $0 'free') is the only way to avoid vendor lockin, and a slew of other problems that closed source software can't address. there is a lot of interesting things going on with open hardware and open source software and custom fabs and xray verification of chips adhering to doing what they were built to look like etc. really knowing what the compiler is doing is as important as using free open knowledge to make the world a better more secure and fun place. someday soon they are going to announce the first 3d printed microchip, and from there hobbiests can build a 3d printer from the 3d printer that is capable of printing itself and all the hardware for an advanced computer, and hobby x-ray gear and a nice hardcopy of the specs for the processor and you can then in theory have a 3d printer where one person knows all the code and can audit it for making a chip in their basement or garage. all the open hardware and open software and new 3d printers make it all possible. to geniunely know that there are 0 backdoors in both the hardware and the software you are using. and still be fast enough to protect the 'rest' of your less secure equipment.

tar sands produce a vile sludge that can literally be used like agent orange.

methanol and ethanol production from municipal waste is taking trash out of the 'too dry to rot too much gas to oxidize' landfill and instead produce useful chemical some of which can be safely used to operate machinery like cars, and produce fewer noxious fumes.

if the world was run by clones in thought of you, there wouldnt be a living being on this planet for at least half a million years -- assuming that the colapse of organic life including human life by using pestacides that kill bees (after which humans would live another 4 years) and all the carbon heating the planet from all the pricks driving cars using up the worlds 200 year supply of fossile fuels at the consumption and production levels predicted for humans, based on your view that making a city 0 impact on the environment is some how wrong, and that consuming every molecule of carbon in fire until the skys rain acid like they do on venus, is the 'right thing to do' well we would never survive the consumption of all the fossil fuels, as bees would die first.

yes hydrothermal life can resist an autoclave but... "However, Strain 121 is non-infectious because it cannot grow at temperatures near 37 ÂC.[citation needed]"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_121
also flame throwers are considerably hotter than an autoclave, but they might be able to grow again after being flame thrown we won't know til someone tests it out.

i believe the information is here https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/ and yes i realize it's just a 'plan comparison' page, and that only 2 of the 4 tiers include a phone plan

"Do you know any large system where this works? The big gotcha is that of all the programs you run, you can only code a tiny % of them. And you canâ(TM)t audit everything else."

if you can't audit 7mb of code you're retarded. who has a 7 mb of code to audit it? try openbsd http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html

even for the full iso is only 230MB. plop it on open hardware and you can audit the hardware and the software. someday get a 3d printer and an x-ray camera and you can audit the hardware to see if it followed specs or not. have a password generated to be impossible to remember and requires a hardware decrypter to reform the password but can do so in multiple ways with only the one true way remembered by you, and you're golden against attacks on your setup, which then allows you to run fast computers that maybe have backdoors that are completely blocked by your secure machine, which you know is secure because you did it yourself.

i have had the same experiences as you though not for as long, i also haven't given up fruit. the science is pretty clear and this is why some people burn the 'wheat' they get from first world countries in emergency situations because they don't trust wheat, based on the science against it. the science behind the food charts in the usa is page for page how to fatten beasts for the slaughter. now i don't eat human meat but why are so many people trying to make us more fatty and marbled in texture like cows? even shills like dr oz recommends a wheatless Wednesday. kids are getting sick too it's not just adults. food allergies are higher than ever and we eat more and more stuff that humans and other omnivores never ate. they even want to make an artificial food... http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/beyond_meat_fake_chicken_that_tastes_so_real_it_will_freak_you_out_.html http://beyondmeat.com/ it is plant derived, but some are working to make fake food from mined substances. unlike the plant based fake meat the tech for mined food isn't quite there yet.

" There are asshats who will do this for a thrill, or to get back at a neighbour for a real or perceived slight."

welcome to the real world. there have been many films documenting how bad people are. have you ever heard of tom green? what about jackass? hell why not watch 'telling lies in America' or maybe 'stand by me' the internet is no more immune to asshats than real life is. or are we all supposed to do nothing wrong? get real, people are not morally pure. the bible to mention one popular source says that no man has ever been good. http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ec/7.html#20 the bible conflicts itself on the matter, but it is in there.

"Where did they find them?"

after the teenage burst, its really easy to quit porn. when i was a teen porn there was no such thing as too much porn, but the older i got the less interested in it i was. i think my record is 3 years no porn and of course no masturbation. but then again i am not typical and haven't even had sex, despite being 36 years old. and yes i am still living in my parents basement. but i pay rent to them they needed the extra income and they are getting older and it is good to see them once in a while.

without going into details i have been thinking about the same problem since i was 6-7 years old, never quite thinking things through right, and forcing people around me to (including on irc) deal with a prick who had serious issues just trying to figure out who i am and what i am good at. all to realize i was below average at the things i thought i was good at, which was mainly easy video games... and putting people through hell just to be 'friends' with me. after losing about 300 or so friends online i still haven't quite put the last nail in the coffin of who i was in the past.

lucky me i am disabled because there is no way i could ever support myself with my screwed up brain. oh yeah and i really really am bad at maintaining computers despite it being my hobby.

the sad part is there is a huge market for pv and concentrated solar thermal, and we don't need to build pyramids to do it.
'solar roadways' are far fetched yet they exist and we can turn broken beer bottles into them. but more interesting is a omnidirectional solar concentrator that channels all the solar and moon light with a magnification of up to 10,000 times the concentartion of available light. which then makes solar thermal and solar photovotaics that run in moon light and on cloudy days.
in fact there are so many solar concentrator tech available i don't know which one to link to, perhaps the solar roadways also use a concentrator i don't know, but if we can build 10 billion cars why can't we build all the solar concentrators and pv to power our cities and electric vehicles?
i know this doesn't fix a lot of problems with our society, but having energy that doesn't require the production of greenhouse gasses is something every society needs, reguardless of if they are ready for it or not.

" Whereas most families (at least the ones that matter) have 2 or more PCs - one for mom, one for dad, one for the kids, etc. And that model will change to probably one for everyone to use when they need it - e.g., school work."

real life doesn't work that way. i am the tech person for my family there are three people here, and here is what works. 1 office desktop with printer, one game/altcoin miner desktop, 4 laptops one of which is dedicated linux to scan and wipe windows flash memory etc., 1 smartphone 'because it costs too much with Verizon..' 2 dumb cells, 1 ps3, 1 ds and 1 tablet (which i use for mp3 because it sucks and i want to get some use out of it)

that is 12 devices. for 3 people. i person owns 7 of them and the other 2 own 5. i didn't count wifi routers. or broken computers. and while i covered dumbphones i didn't count smart/lcd tvs.

have you ever sat 16 hours in front of a computer with basically 95% of that time trying to type commands and move and click a mouse?

do you have any idea what that does to you?

i do, because i have been playing video games since i was 5.
i am 36 now.
most of the games i played didn't cause lasting harm and only one other game had me playing day and night, until i found warcraft 3, and it's expansion frozen throne.
but just one game was so addictive i'd have jitters trying to sit still and not play.
just one game left me not feeling hungry even if i hadn't ate in 14 hours.
just one game did i wrack my brain over what games i had failed my team at to the tune of sleeping 2 hours a night effectively.
just one game where i smashed the discs to because then i wouldn't play until a week later when i replaced the discs.
just one game had me physically destroy 7 keyboards and cause me to kick a computer case causing a short that powered it down, and i had to hammer at the case to get it to work and not short again.
yup frozen throne had me so hard i couldn't do anything else.
what 5% of gamers find this game? the one they can't play without. it nearly killed me. it is a game so fast paced i literally double my heart rate and double the blood pressure in my veins. i can see how gamers who haven't found the game they can't put down might not get how one game can change the course of ones life, but most gamers just play less addictive ones that are still fun but not 'addictive' enough to cause harm.
anyways games movies books etc. they all affect you but the level and extent of change varies.

three hdmi 1080p monitors in 24" resolution for $130 per screen and a $120 gpu (ati 7770) and two display port mini to hdmi adaptors and a decent computer will do just fine for most people and be a fraction of the price because it's standard screen size. if the 7770 isn't fast enough for gaming then a r9 280x is only $300 and is 4 times faster than the 7770. i still play old games though, so there are many models for me to chose from. technically i don't do multi screen except to play back blurays to a 40" hdtv. but i don't have the room for them, and if i were to game with multiple screens i would likely use 3 40" tv sets ($300-400 on sale compared to $700 per screen for monitors) rather than pay for 'only' monitors. but 24" is plenty big. i use 1080p on my best laptop which has a 17.3" display but if i had room for 3 screens i would definitely go big, on a budget. and i am not sensitive to flicker, from crts, florescent lights and other flickery things have never ever bothered me so latency and refresh rates don't apply to me to be willing to spend more for something that doesn't bother me.

"1) Spend little on R&D for an electric vehicle. Sell it just cheap enough (at a loss if you have to) to meet the minimum requirement. Whine about it.
2) Put some effort and investment in developing an electric car that people will actually want with a manufacturing cost that leads to a price people are willing to pay. Refine the design over time so that it becomes that profit center that saves your bacon when the bottom inevitably drops out of the IC car market as the cost of gas heads toward the stratosphere."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-16/where-worlds-unsold-cars-go-die with 10 billion cars and lots where they simply store and refuse to sell 'normal' cars it is crazy. if the resources to build the cars wasn't used building them just to scrap 12 years later because selling them at a loss is unthinkable... and god forbid any auto plants get shutdown because too many car makers are making too many cars world wide. all that iron all that coal to make steel all those factories cranking out cars faster than ever with not one person on the 'sustainable' track of thinking, you know like shutting plants down, or having 4 day weeks and only 2 8 hour shifts instead of those factories. and now every car has a touchscreen tablet built in. and most of them will never be turned on.