i find usb (powered) bluray burners ($80+ on amazon) work on any usb 2.0 or better connection. if you're on a budget a bd-rom/dvd-rw or just a dvd-rw will work. i recommend BD simply because i prefer it to dvd.

"Show me one other alternate universe. Is that so much to ask?"

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu

  it is an alternative to the debian universe repository. hey you said one not what type.

"this exploit could be used to turn Fuelbands into data mules."

all 65k of memory they have too sure you can fit a forkbomb but a 65k data mule?

ok, we can grow enough algae to power all our diesel road fuel consumption. what about the energy to mine all the iron and to electro-magnetically extract it. what about to power all the computers, every iphone requires an infrastructure that is the equivalent of one refrigerator worth of power per user. what about computers that do jobs for humans, what about buildings necessary to shelter humans. what about roads, what about air transit?

sustainability is great, proving the technology works is great. but as long as sustainability isn't on the political agenda then we will never see it happen. as for the plastic, plastic can be made from corn, methane and a lot of other things besides oil. plastic also usually recycles well.

outlook? the germy infection vector for millions finally on android and ios? clearly seal number 4 http://madearth.net/index.php/doomsday/seven-doors/signs

"Eventually the CD might not be supported,"

welcome to the 21st century where music is listened to on phones. devices that are obsolete in 2 years but can store all your music on a tiny bitty chip unless you've been torrenting the best music of the past 100,000 years.

as to 'not supported' there are chinese firms still selling 8 track tape playing devices, despite the fact that all of the remaining tapes should have deteriorated now. they also sell vhs decks which the local wal-mart actually has a model on the shelf. blu-ray playback is not going away anytime soon. i have 2 bluray writers, one for the desktop and one usb powered one for the laptop(s). reel to reel tape decks may now be considered obsolete but there are people who still use them in the industry.

there will be pushes to make new fancier stuff, yes. it is called marketing. the vast majority of my cd-rs are still readable and only some of them have bitrot. but i wasn't organized with my cd-rs so i have a considerable number of discs i don't really know if i still have the data or not. most of the data isn't really mission critical and despite losing my music collection about 4 times now (from windows formatted hard drives) the back ups cd-rs and dvds and now 1 bluray, i have only lost 1 song to bitrot 1 song and it was all because i had backups that survived longer than hard drives.

i recommend HDDs and BD-R discs for backup. BD-R while subject to bitrot are still the lowest energy overhead per GB in the consumer space. HDDs are the cheapest per GB but if left running so as to automate backups draws more power and powering off a HDD in the consumer space means you have to be there to power it on for archival use. though there will at some point be a 'smartphone' app to remotely put them to standby via software. this can already be done with a NAS and Wake-on-LAN and a little scripting. but then the energy requirements are significantly higher on a NAS than on a usb hdd. anyways using both media HDD and Blu-ray offers a better chance of not losing everything. flash memory is nice but i wouldn't expect it to last forever, my compact flash devices suffered from an issue where the memory would take more and more power from devices until the cameras running them couldn't power them from fresh batteries, could have been the camera but it is hard to say but i wouldn't consider any flash memory as reliable when compared to hdds and bluray devices.

my second computer was an 80286. it had 1MB of ram, and we had i believe EGA graphics and a serial mouse for gaming and word perfect. for dos word perfect 5.22, think vi and emacs having a child it is what wordperfect for dos behaved like. it had an extensive array of command line abilities (my teacher had a rolodex with all the commands she used) and yes she needed a rolodex to sort the functionality. but it supported a mouse too and had menus, often triggered by the function keys and/or the mouse. but yes even dos apps had mouse support. and the sad thing is, while *bsd supports mouses and multiple mice automatically (or did lat i used it) linux doesn't do this without modifying configuration files, people like in ubuntu don't worry about the tty's anymore but i loved using copy/paste and scroll lock in FreeBSD when i used it... cause i always did all my root work in the ttys instead of x windows. well once i learned that running x as root is bad... somewhere i learned about su, but i know whenever i was setting up freebsd it was from the ttys most of the time...

but shielded corridors inside a shielded power plant would not allow full building wifi penetration

and those that study history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it.

"I wish all people were as smart as this plant."

anyone ever tell you be careful what you wish for

"Give up some free time now to do your school work, get paid $800,000 more later."

tried that, had awesome grades then no job of course i was unwilling to take up debt to go to school.

"Give up the opportunity to cuss your boss out today, end up with a raise next month, after discussing the issue calmly and professionally."

that is a strawman cussing the boss out will get you fired.

"Give up the girl offering easy sex now, have a self-respecting partner for the rest of your life."

other people covered this so i won't

"Give up the Starbuck's and iPhone 6 today, retire 10 years earlier."

ten years earlier huh? for one thing the smartphone is part of modern culture how can a person who gets their data on dead trees compare to someone who has always on access to all the information in the world? the starbucks premium coffee is still valid, as caffeine is an allergen that shocks the brain into thinking it is under attack and begins circulating blood faster and causes an immune response until you get too tired from it and crash. the brain will swell slightly from going off caffeine and cause a mild headache as the immune response vs the toxicity making the brain (slightly) numb to pain wears off.

http://hippocratesinst.org/Vegan-Lifestyle/mental-illness-or-caffeine-allergy

"Yet another Universal Serial Bus connector. At least it plugs in both ways."

which again is an idea stolen from apple's thunderbolt connector. and apple made thunderbolt because people were frustrated at trying to plug their devices in at night to charge them, alternatives like wireless power were too risky compared to a new connector that goes in without having to orient the cable which when tired/drunk is supposedly really hard.

Something about the mass murderers often shouting "Allahu akbar"

i think i can help you with this one, 'aloha' is hawaiian for hello and then ackbar is the guy who is known for saying 'its a trap' in star wars. instead of saying hello it's a trap' they say what you said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Radeon_Rx_200_Series#Radeon_R9_280X

has 2048 'stream' processors and only 3GB of ram -- true it only has 32 of what most people would call compute cores, but it is getting data from thousands of threads processed from its stream processing units. i have one of these devices and it was about 75 times faster at altcoin mining (dogecoins specifically) than the general purpose so called 8 core fx 8150 cpu. even though it's 8 threads the wiki doesn't explain why they can call it an 8 core but i know shortly after i built the rig computer parts changed generations and got slower.

basically speaking programming for thousands of cores exists today by having simple tasks that break up complex or end user desired tasks and make them simple to run in parallel.

1. A lot of the movies that are showing are crap (and that is being kind).

this has always been true.

2. The cost of my going to a movie and wife along with some munchies, well, I can buy the DVD in a few months for less money.

or rent for considerably less. i heard a rumor that one can use software to make a rental disc into a mpeg-4 stream or a dvd stream or a bluray stream.

3. We can pause the movie at any time and take a break or grab some munchies (and not the over-priced crap in the theatre).

movie theaters are still more fun than the investment in jiffy pop or whatever you're getting from wal-mart for home viewing

4. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?

yes, i have a book rating some 4,000+ older movies most of the movies get 2 stars.

5. We can skip the various 'ads' at the start of the movie. I want to see the movie, not pay to see advertising.

ahah! not without the rumored software for removing prohibited user operations. sure some discs are clean and some blurays only play ads when 'online' (ps3 can disable the internet access to blurays) but many especially new releases may have as many as 12 trailers each PUOped to be unable to be skipped, some players have a cheat code to skip straight to menu but the normal controls don't skip past adverts on discs out side 'cheat codes' which vary from player to player.

6. I don't have to put up with people talking about the 'good stuff' coming up and spoiling it for me.

you been on the internet long?

7. I don't have to put up with the cell phones going off.

apparently you just switch to vibrate?

8. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?

again this is nothing new. i hear the internet is overrated and good books are hard to find.