Lenovo shipped 16 million PCs last quarter. If it received $500/PC for "boatware" for half of these, the revenue would be 4 billion dollars, which obviously didn't happen. If it reveived a more likely $5/PC, the revenue would be 40 million dollars, which is probably more than enough to support their tech support department.

At the very least move the kid to a class with a more capable teacher.At the very least move the kid to a class with a more capable teacher.

And if the principal does not allow you to move the student? School is not what it used to be.

Why not try to rehabilitate them? The Free Software Foundation agrees with your statement "we need computer hardware that is free and open all the way down to the hardware", but instead of sacking them they suggest telling them to "respect user freedom" etc. When I read the changelog from official Thinkpad BIOS updates which include the word "Linux", I'm more encouraged than discouraged about the company.

I think learning to write computer programs helps develop logical reasoning skills. Why? Because it helped my logical reasoning skills, and I like to generalize my own experience to the whole world :) Now, I don't think teaching "coding" to totally uninterested kids helps develop their skills, but exposing everyone to "coding" will get interested kids started as early as possible, which I think is good.

I agree. Writing "10 PRINT "Hello"; 20 GOTO 10" is not rocket science. Nor is doing something marginally more advanced. The "problem" most people have with programming is the same with math: "why would I even want to do that?"

I get requests to connect from people I do not know and when I check they usually are in some business that sells products in my field...
I can't prove this, but I strongly suspect all those linkedin requests I get from unknown people are generated by robots. I closed my account recently. Say no to spam.

Great point! Now tell me, which OS do you use? WIndows 8 Home, Windows 8 Pro, or Windows 8 Enterprise?

You might find Apophenia ( http://apophenia.info/ ) useful. A simple exam is here: http://apophenia.info/eg.html

Shit. I wish I had mod points today. I'd mod you "overrated" just for fun :)

Lollipop is way more aggressive at saving battery life than all Android predecessors. For my tastes, this is a Big Deal. As a result, I'm thinking of keeping my Nexus 4 at least another year before I consider upgrading.

The proles, apparently.

I *used* to think car lights were easy to replace, since my first cars were early 1990s Saturns where you only needed to unscrew the cover and replace the headlight bulbs. It was almost as easy as changing a lightbulb in your house. And then I tried the same on my wife's Honda Civic, which was, well, not as trivial, and obviously by design.

No, he/she IS on the spot. Remember, the slide rule was mainly a source of inspiration, which help the GP understand relationships between numbers and motivated GP to learn more. Choice quote:

I did a 180 on math subjects - even without using the slide rule.

It is not a "learning styles" issue. Learning styles is a fiction.

I think Knuth's "made-up" assembly code looks generic to anyone who knows any assembler at all. I first saw assembly language in a Commodore 128 book decade ago, and reading the first few pages allowed me the grasp the big picture for Knuth's MIX language.

And I think you're incorrect about TeX vs LaTeX. Try to write your resume in LaTeX. TeX takes the pain out of LaTeX when you want to exercise good taste.

This is not at all true. The opposite is true. The latest kernel works perfectly fine on any 15 year old x86 machine.