Exactly why I mention hybrid thin/bootable devices. I find it exceedingly unlikely that network connectivity will not continue to mature and become more widely adopted at a rate as good as or better then it is currently. That said, no matter how ubiquitous or robust a technology is, shit happens. A hybrid thin client/netboot device could certainly store everything it needs to be functional off-line, including a non-netboot copy of it's own operating system. I don't see any reason that not to trust network available storage in the near term, or even the present. Nobody will make you decide how to use network storage and I imagine the same best practices that apply today will apply perfect to this: 1) keep local copies if it's important 2) if it's private use something like truecrypt to protect your data.

As for your mining concerns, if I'm looking at shifting my computing costs from a box model to a more network-centric service model I imagine I get to choose who provides it and what that service is. If I value my data and my rights I imagine I'll be able to continue to use strong encryption and reputable vendors.

All of these technologies can be considered stop-gaps until we have enough bandwidth to support either thin or hybrid thin/network-bootable clients. The only difference between a smart-phone and a laptop (or workstation) should be it's dimensions and form. If I store my data and environment on the network I can be almost device agnostic. I can use any workstation and access all my data, applications and any running processes. I can upgrade my system or expand/add capacity without needing to replace a single device. If you have the money why not carry a super computer in your pocket? Just don't carry the super computer parts.

Is a property to carry ads. Most people either don't understand this fact or want to ignore it. It's part of a portfolio owned by a major online advertiser like a lot of similar sites. It's branded advertising.

How high are you going to get on 1/4 of a joint?

High enough to measure it's effects against a placebo.

And it's exactly this kind of hostile inability to understand our users that would lead to a free platform not being popularly embraced.

People right now have 3 main choices in platform: Apple and Microsoft's offerings, which focus on usability first, then technology and then various Linux offerings, which focus on technology first, then usability.

Are we really supposed to believe that people that excel at a kind of looping, repetitive, analytic logic are really going to believe in the Great Spaghetti Monster? A God-game is only going to be fun as fantasy or history.

I bought a Curve for myself, as a personal phone (out of work baby!). I can tell you at least 3 reasons I bought it none of which involve c-level thinking: 1) it's not tied to either Verizon or AT&T (I cause enough bullshit in my own life without the help of these service providers) 2) it looks/feels nice to use and carry 3) decent media player (although I use flipside mostly as my media player) 4) lots of useful application (two of my favorites are midpssh and logicmail).

To make the bb phone even more usable try operamini. Oh, and I've just installed google voice which looks like fun.

Naturally I'll be moving to an android when 1) they look/work a little more iphone/blackberry slick (am I the only one who hates HTC phones?) 2) I can actually afford one.

God is a security conscious douche?

I agree about the HA and if you've got a highly transactional application and need enterprise grade fail-over Oracle RAC or some variation of PostgreSQL might work great for you. But for many people MySQL is still a good option and has some nice/useful features (online fs-based backups sans datapump, previously mentioned replication). There's also an amazing amount of information available about MySQL tailored to just about any skill-level, including a number of alternative approaches to HA.

My current project is taking advantage of sphinx, which makes nice use of MySQL and my previous project involved using a combination of replication and sharding to improve reliability and write throughput. Oracle scales nicely across multiple cpus, but because of licensing eventually our growth was limited by database costs. Both Postgre and MySQL have been welcome solutions with my personal preference being MySQL mostly for familiarity and built-in replication.

...a person can be an expert in some subjects and an idiot in others.

Something most slashdotters should be intimately familiar with (myself l;sdkjfaiosuoas included).

So what you're saying is although they tested it, they didn't test it. ;-)

You know, like most things in life, depending on the context (or project) either can be true.

But either way I'm sure if you take the time to make suggestions like this to closed source projects you'll see the only consistent difference is with open source projects if you feel strongly enough about [insert thing] you can dig in and start to do it yourself.

Losing something can be considered negligent. A DoD wipe would be criminal. Which action do you think you'd be more likely to order?

Maybe it's a coast thing, but as a west coast bred gourmet/fresh-food dweeb I've always found my friends love of the greasy, cheese-covered, floppy delicacy perplexing. In fact, it seems the greasier the better and the quality of the cheese seems almost unimportant as long as it expresses the right quality of grease. I don't know how many times I've found myself covertly mopping my slice squeamishly with a stack of napkins as my friends extol its virtues.

Personally give me a good calzone with interesting/fresh ingredients. But by all means, hold the oil!

I love posts like this because it demonstrates a dramatic (and frequent) misunderstanding. The idea seems to be (and I don't mean to fault anyone for this) that there's a great big general pool of Linux/driver developers that get together and decide what to do. We regularly see suggestions (like the one above) directed at how to make better use of this imaginary pool.

But the truth is much of what gets done in terms of development is done by people like yourself, with interests of their own and probably more frequently then you imagine, on their own time. So while the project might not make sense to every possible user, particularly in the terms of some great imaginary directed labor pool, like many open source projects it's intended to scratch the developers own particular itch. And I don't know about you, but when I sit down to program in my free time I like to do something that I'm personally (preferably even passionately) interested in.