I know, right? If only we had a beowulf cluster of them. And maybe micro$oft could be involved somehow...

"Yes, in fact, people -do- kill "in the name of atheism", provably, as a matter of simple historical fact, and do so by the millions."

I read your link. I see a lot of misbehaviour, but not a lot of killing - and certainly not enough to constitute "millions". For instance, "In Tsarist Russia, religion was a major source of violence and conflict between religious groups, and State Athiesm was designed to end these problems. Notable atrocities include the persecution and killing of over 200,000 Jews as "Christ-killers" due to pogroms."

So, confiscations, propaganda, suppression, sure... but please justify this claim of millions.

"You seem the sort to easily fall for bullshit marketing terms. Or are you seriously suggesting computer processors should be marketed as "fast", "super fast", "mega fast", "ultra fast", "super mega fast", "mega ultra fast", "super mega ultra fast", "super mega ultra faster", etc? I mean, that avoids meaningless numbers, and each step is fairly pointless for human comprehension of speed.

You've completely managed to avoid understanding any of Apple's very successful marketing. I mean, you missed the boat ENTIRELY. Talking about relative processor speeds is completely off the table. Mhz, GB, dpi - these things are absent from their marketing for a very good reason. Not even the geeks need it in the advertising. If they want it, they can look it up on the web site.

Apple's marketing is squarely focused on what you can accomplish with the device.

"I'll give you that Linux is the cheapest and least restrictive."

Linux is absolutely the most restrictive. They insist you run linux, which bars 95+% of users from participating. :)

They have the tiny slice that the governments allow. If you're American, try blabbing classified secrets. On the more ridiculous side, see how far you get reciting passages from "Fifty Shades of Grey" in a classroom of grade 7 studies. Maybe engage in some hate speech. How about slander and libel? Basically, whatever the government is comfortable with you having, you can have.

Well sure. But my "incredibly tiny" point still holds. Even with a 6 foot radius after dispersion, it's still a six foot beam into a vast sky, somehow accidentally intersecting an aircraft and against all odds making a pronounced entry into the cockpit. It's not going to happen.

"One of the most natural things in the world a kid with a lazer pointer will do is shine it straight up into the sky."

Good lord.

First of all, the odds that a kid would shine a laser into the sky and accidentally hit an aircraft are... well, stupendously low. The laser point is incredibly tiny, and the sky is incredibly large. And the slightest movement of the hand holding the laser has huge implications at the distance where an aircraft would intersect it. If it's not trained and held on the target, it would never be noticed.

So, "no" to whatever point you're making.

"Am I too old to retrain?" "Am I pretty?" "I think I'm fat. Do you think I'm fat?"

Geez. "No, you're just wonderful. You don't need to retrain. Just be yourself."

I got my $60 out of it, and so did almost everybody who's bitching about it. I don't know where anybody got this idea that their one-time payment (that has become progressively cheaper as it failed to increase with inflation) should give them hundreds of hours of entertainment.

If you check your played time and it's over 100 hours, maybe you should stop whining about how crappy you think it is, because clearly your bitchy brain and your gaming brain are having an argument.

Actually, the old man in me wishes the entire gaming community would benefit from a complete media blackout when it comes to video games. Then they can buy a game without expectations, enjoy it without absorbing the negative crap from other gamers, and be satisfied.

Can the author of this editorial kindly explain why there are numerous profitable applications for Windows, during the XP era?

Simple. The publisher themselves often included the security that the O/S did not - things like serial numbers, key generation, and call-home authentication. Also, the market for Windows apps is vast enough that people can profit even if a small number of users pay up.

So perhaps android apps might sell more if you had to get a serial number derived from your device's unique identifier, and supplied by the software publisher... but maybe it would sell less instead.

Certification is not declaration of an absence of bugs. They're not going to regression test your entire app, or pull apart your entire source tree and make sure you didn't screw up - certainly not for just 5 figures.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=21464

I do not own 600 blu rays. That was supposed to be 200+.

After waiting and trying and waiting and trying and waiting and trying... finally conversion to 6GB mkv with full DTS works reliably. I converted my library of 600+ blu rays over the last few weeks.

Using the GPU I get about 70fps, and I've watched about 15 of the movies without noticing any problems at all.

I flat out gave up with trying to support my fricking PS3.

"America! Fuck you!"

Fair enough. Well put.