Didn't know there was a fifth tier, at least PG&E doesn't mention it. I almost always hit tier 4 which is $0.32/kwh and the bills starts to add up very fast at that point (high 3 digits). At $0.50/kwh it would cost almost $40 to run a 100w bulb 24/7, I'd entertain any possible alternatives at that rate.

Wish I had mod points. Learn the underlying concepts and best approaches. The language is just the tool. It's akin to someone asking "I want to build houses for a living, which brand of hammer will let me build houses?".

... and just what do you think this managed code and garbage collection is written in? Yes you've moved on, but you've only moved up the stack, you're now an end user of what the low level folks write. There will ALWAYS be a need for folks who code in assembler / C, but eventually Java, C#, will be superseded and fade away into obscurity. Don't get me wrong, I kind of like that people don't learn C anymore, more job security for me and some uncomfortable questions for folks I get to interview. Ask any Basic / Pascal people how secure those higher level language programming jobs are in the long run.

"... there will be other mufti-million dollar projects coming up that will"

Millions are soooooo 1990s, chump change is now measured in billions, and apparently, if you want people to even notice, you have to spend in trillions.

No no ... you're right actually

I personally agree with the webcam, but show me the Kindle and/or Nook webcams, that's right, there are none. Also, we have to keep in mind that this is first gen hardware. As for the USB port, open this and scroll to the bottom, connector kits are available:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

Stagnating their own products? I can think of at least 140K ways to prove you wrong there. Also, on your DRM quip, show me 1 thing the MS or Linux camps have done to convince the media companies to drop DRM. MS is busy pushing their own patent and DRM encumbered WMA/WMV, while Linux has no relationship with any of the media companies. Could Apple do more? Perhaps. However, they were instrumental in getting DRM removed from online music sales and (with a bit of time) maybe the same thing will happen to online video sales. Also, just so you know, Apple provides their compiler and IDE for free on the Mac, and there are zero / zip / no restrictions on what you can build there. In fact OS X offers Perl, Ruby, Python, and Java runtimes as well as the GNU toolchains. Also, if you cough up $100 (1/3 the cost of Visual Studio alone), you can get your own cert to do WHATEVER the hell you want on your iPod / iPhone / iPad and 100 of your closest friends devices. If what you want to do falls within some guidelines, you can go beyond your 100 friends and give that app to 60 million of your closest friends.

Ignoring the fact that a netbook isn't a tablet, there's still a great deal of difference between the two beyond the similar price point:

Acer:
$420
3 lbs
6 hour battery life
8 in x 11.2 in x 1.18 in
No touchscreen
Plastic case with lower coefficient of friction

iPad:
$499
1.6 lbs
10 hour battery life
7.5 x 9.5 in x 0.5 in
Touchscreen
Aluminum case with higher coefficient of friction

The fact that the iPad is half the weight, half the thickness, and has almost 2x the battery life is not something you can easily ignore in a device who's primary goal is to be portable. To setup a litmus test, try to argue that using a netbook to reply to an email while walking through an airport is less awkward than using a touchscreen tablet in the same situation.

You're words are truthy enough, but your assuming that synergistic words like irregardless don't have impacts on english as we know it. The facts is that people will use words like that wether we like it or not. This is truely, the case when it comes to American's use of language. Sadly, theirs very little we, as people far more litterate than the average people, can really do about that. If people used grammer checkers, then you and me would not see so many people authoring bad words and having a negative affect on english as it is known and practised today but should be editted and spokened tomorrow.

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Spoken like someone who's obviously never seen, much less used, OS X Server. OS X server is built around standards based enterprise tools like Apache, LDAP, CalDAV, and IMAP. You know, ISP grade stuff like this:
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/specs.html

What standards is your Windows Server / gaming platform, based on?

I'd say that the difference is about how many page loads completed and how fast. IE8 is the slowest of all the browsers compared, so if less page loads completed, then it would probably use less power. I can make my battery last far longer if I only load 6 pages a minute as opposed to 10. The fact that the results essentially lists the browsers from slowest to fastest belies that hidden truth.

I see you haven't used NetBeans. XCode isn't bad, it's far better then the MS IDEs. I think my fave is Eclipse, not because it's a great editor, but because the plugin ecosystem is very good. I give XCode props because the code completion and refactoring are some of the best I've come across. However, most "hard" programmers still fall back to the terminal for building / testing.

You have to twist it a bit and say that you're editing your latest production for Universal Pictures on that MacBook or writing the screenplay for book X on that MacBook. If you data mine the Playboy archives for hottie turn ons, computers, MacBooks included, appear exactly 0 times.

Oh, you mean like C, C++, and BASIC? The reality is the most popular languages for MS platforms were not MS inventions.