Not a problem: Walmart is big enough to build a warehouse/distribution center near the docks or railyard, so you only have to move it a short distance in conventional trucks. They also have to unload and reload anyways: Most of their trucks are likely to have a full shipment for a particular store, not a full shipment of a single item. This truck would be for their own last-mile problem, considering they have stores just about everywhere.

So, for them, it might be a money saver. It doesn't have to work for anyone else.

There's a fair number in the USA too - basically any attempt to teach Creationism in schools. Granted they don't get huge amounts of traction, but still get pushed and get a lot of attention, while environmental concerns get brushed aside as irrelevant or not practical.

I wasn't referring to the Permian mass extinction event - I'm referring to the Permian itself. Coverage of people denying that it (and most of the rest of the Earth's history) even happened - and laws trying to force people to teach that - gets a lot more attention than trying to protect life on this planet.

We should - it's our home, after all, and we'd be protecting ourselves.

But we seem more interested in claiming the Permian never happened, and trying to wipe out most life on the planet.

It could have been the debt collectors - if they can't collect the debt, they'll file charges I think.

That would be my guess at what happened - the video store went to a debt collector, who eventually went to the police. Each step is probably standard practice, and the amount or initial reason for the debt was likely irrelevant at the end; it was probably policy to send all noncollectable debts past a certain age to the police.

Actually, the person themselves poked up in the comments and confirmed it. (And was talked to by the author of the story before they wrote it.) So we have better than usual chance that it's a true story, for a story on the Internet.

(It's even a blog I've read for years and trust, if that helps any.)

I said semi-embedded for a reason: I'm more thinking of hobiest/custom firewalls and routers. The ones from the factory tend to run a version of Linux or PFSense - But you can get similar devices from manufacturers without an OS that you can install your own OS onto.

Not that I'm sure I disagree with you. Just trying to think of a rational reason and give them the benefit of the doubt. However hard that is.

Well, I haven't followed the discussion, but I do know that one of OpenBSD's major markets is basically semi-embedded systems: Firewalls and routers. It's likely they won't have much in the way of external storage attachment, or much in the way of internal storage at all. Given that, it might make sense. I don't know.

I think it's a much better argument that fundamentalists are against vaccinations... (Muslim or Christian.)

The Apple Tax isn't as high as people think it is. Yes, you can build your own for cheaper, usually. But their prices are comparable or cheaper than other big-name brands for similar hardware. (I'll let you Google the links to prove it: There are always a slew of people checking everytime Apple releases a new machine.)

What Apple does avoid doing is selling the 'just enough' hardware: The low end, barely able to run current software. They design their machines so that the base config will work fine for the average user for several years, without upgrades. This means the super-cheap machines don't exist - you'd need to add RAM or a larger HDD in a year or two, or your graphics processor would barely be able to keep up, and Apple doesn't want people having that experience with their machines.

Now, the current discussion on whether PC's are 'good enough' is a separate point - I'd argue they are, and even several-year old Macs would be good enough. Apple did have an advantage in the statistics this article was looking at: Their latest OS release obsoleted any Mac with 32-bit anything. (Including BIOS.) Which means that part of their sales is probably people wanting to upgrade who couldn't. (Still, it supports any Mac made in the past 4 years.)

Not always. ;)

This type of thing being possible is one reason I've never trusted a car with OnStar. (To name the most visible.)

Tarsnap or something similar - locally encrypted before it's uploaded, and the key never leaves your system.

Of course, then you have to back up the key, but that's a much smaller problem.

Sure, but the chances it will happen both locally and in the cloud, at the same time, is very small. If one fails, you recreate from the other.

Just to add to the choices others are giving, you could take a look at OwnCloud. If you are running a php-based website already you won't have to install any new server. (It does need an HTTP server, and has it's own interface.)

It exports things via WebDAV, and it has an Android client. (Or you can use other WebDAV Android clients.) So you can mount the server on you computer as a directory, and you can easily get stuff to your phone as well. The one thing is that you need to upload into it - not into whatever file system you have already. (Though you can mirror into it easily.)

Worth looking at, though it might be a bit more complexity and overhead than what you are looking for.