Ok, I should have written GNU/Linux.

First half of the XX century.

Most of the previous generation of scientits were already scientits when they could get a job doing science. And that's all over the world.

You must also not have one of either salt, power outlets or wires. And there ought be a way to reach the couch with N2, I'm just not good enough to come up with it.

Cant we do VR/Computer simulated chemistry?

Some of it, and making lots of assumptions because you can not simulate the solvent.

But the most important impact is that chemistry is a tool for many other kinds of experiments. Ban chemistry and those are gone. (Also, there is applied research - creating a startup on chemistry is about as impossible as it gets.)

Gotta love a grammar nazi that does not know grammar. Take a look on the section about possessive next time.

If it can be fun, with no loss in quality, why make it boring?

Kids certainly learn better a subject if they like it, by the way, thus all else being equal (what I'll grant you that never is), being fun increases quality just by itself.

The Taiwanese and Chinese just copy everyone

Yep, that's exactly what everybody said about the Japanese and Koreans before acknowledging that their products were good.

And looks like poor Joe Sixpack can handle the change quite well, but isn't willing to change to a worse interface.

Or, in other words, critics of both sides were wrong, and the "shut-up and code" people of the Linux side had plenty of reason. I wonder how far Linux GUIs would be today if the hackers weren't offset by "UI specialists" under pressure of a couple of companies.

Why worry? Because you'll be able to deliver more value with less work?

I'm quite sure Google and the NSA won't take money from my bank account, and if they want to know my transactions, they have easier ways to get those than looking at my computer.

Now, there is data that is worth protecting, and it's a serious problem (anyway, MS shares at least as much with the NSA as Google, and they seem much more cooperative in increasing the spying - I hope you are talking about FreeBSD, Debian, or Gentoo), but personal finance isn't worth protecting against them.

I'll only add an except that the "fanboy" experience is a determining factor on how real are his impressions. And the usual experience of a "fanboy" varies widily from one OS to another. (Also, of course, what counts as experience is context dependent.)

Anyway, no, I can't even imagine that people try to rationalize as dumb somebody that knows more than them. Now way, people are completely rational :)

Well, it's quite normal to plug external keboards and mice on tablets, I'd say it's obviour that Android supports that, but you probably had no reason to think about it before, so I understand why you wouldn't know. Android supports most devices out there, with notable exceptions for external DVD drivers (that need root) and TTY over USB (default Android is almost useless for hacking). It also does not support shared memory out of the box, making it hard to run a serious database in it (yes, I've tried). All of those are easy to fix.

I'm also confused about ChromeOS, and I suspect all those Chromebooks are running Linux. Anway...

Are electronics companies so pants-shittingly afraid of being sued by Hollywood that they can't offer a box that wink-wink runs VLC?

In a word: yes.

Good thing you are A/C, that way nobody can come back to you later.

Now, it's my turn: Tablets and notebooks will evolve into only one kind of device. I don't know if we'll still use smething called "Android" in 10 years, but if we do, it will be as powerfull as a desktop OS is nowadays (with as many problems).

Mission critical means that if it fails, the mission fails - whatever the mision is. Now, if you came from a military context (as aviation did), "mission" tends to be something quite frightening, but civilians also have things called "mission".

But anyway, a term has only the meaning we attribute to it, so whatever :)

Money by itself is worthless, and that is one of the few contexts where we should pay attention to that.

If you lend money to a client so he buys your product, you'll only want to do that if you trust that the client will pay you back with something worthwile. China needs the US because the US has a big manufacturing base, and grows a lot of food. It's not because the US is a big consumer.