Simple. It is called a "wife." The "wife" program is not just an entertainment application, but rather an OS upgrade that limits what I can do. ;-)

My wife loves the convenience of instant coffee. I wanted to stick with a regular drip maker, but she did not like the mess involved in cleaning it up nor how long it took to make a pot. I don't like the expense and the waste of K-Cups, but the wife always wins in these sort of disagreements.

I must admit that the new Keurig makers are nicer than the old ones as they seem to have changed the pumping mechanism. That was always a weak spot with the old ones, especially if you had non-optimal water. Well water could kill an old K-cup machine in just a hundred cups or so.

We moved so no more well water, but I hope that this maker lasts a lot longer. We were also bitten by the DRM. We have some old "genuine K-Cup" pods laying around without the new ink, and they don't work -- at least until I get the time to dig up a very sharp craft knife to do the plastic surgery.

No. No chance of security problems other than possibly having malware pre-loaded in a file on the drive. If you have auto-play turned off and format the card, it should be just fine.

Now, it is still likely that it is a fake. It might be very small, very slow, or die a very early death, but that would only endanger your data on there and not your computer itself.

You may be asking "Why is this the case?" The reason is that the "U" in "USB" stands for "Universal" A USB device could easily present itself as a hub with an Ethernet adapter, keyboard, mouse, and storage all rolled into one. Hell, it could even throw in a virtual MIDI keyboard, scanner, printer, and joystick if it wanted to. From what I understand, this is the crux of the security problems with USB.

An SD card, on the other hand, is strictly for storage. It uses an interface similar to SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), and is, in fact, really SPI on some of the slower modes. There is no way for a SD card to pretend to be anything else besides an SD card. People have actually wedged WiFi interfaces into an SD form-factor, but you need drivers for those, which means that you need to either install the driver yourself, or the bad guys have to get the driver into Windows Update -- not likely in either case.

Curtailing access to them means that some people cannot get them. That may be a problem...

People talk about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. Great in theory, but is MUCH more problematic in practice. Mental illness is not binary -- it comes in various degrees and kinds.

Should a person who hears voices telling him to kill people be denied a gun? Probably.
Should a person who compulsively washes his hands be denied a gun? Probably not.

If a person is on anti-depressants be denied a gun? What if they stopped taking them (this could be good or bad)? What if they stopped taking them last week against their doctor's orders? What if they stopped taking them 20 years ago?

Suppose a person is dangerous enough to require having their rights to arms removed... Who makes that determination? Does it just take one psychologist? Should it take a board of 3 or 7 doctors? Should a judge be involved?

If the person gets better, how are their rights restored? Once again, who makes this determination? What are the criteria?

And suppose a person already HAS guns. Maybe they are a hunter, and love hunting. Because they are afraid of loosing their favorite recreation, they AVOID seeking mental help. Is that a great idea?

Suppose a woman has some mental health issues and is denied a gun. However, her ex has a criminal record for violent offenses and has threatened death against the woman. Should the then be allowed to own a gun to protect herself? If so, who makes this decision? How long would it take for this issue to go through the courts? Would she even live that long?

Seriously. just focusing on the guns is ignorant. Just saying "don't give them to lunatics" is easy to say, but much harder to do in practice. When there IS a school shooting, what is the first thing to happen? People show up to help, with guns.

Amen. A much better way to reduce school shootings is to identify WHY kids want to shoot people. Maybe invest money in training for teachers to identify bullying? Maybe hire another counselor to talk to troubled children?

Given the rare nature of school shootings, you average kid has an approximately equal chance to be struck by lightning.

School shootings are tragic, but they are also rare. If you want to save a child's life, there are MANY better places where the money could be spent.

You say that like stabbings and shootings are the same.
Guns weren't invented because they made killing harder.

So, if guns are banned, then the next step is to ban all knives, because school stabbings also kill people. OK. Knives banned, but people are still beaten to death. Time to ban baseball bats and golf clubs.

Seriously, for every gun used in a murder, there are over THIRTY THOUSAND that are NOT used in a homicide. Also, guns are used to PREVENT crime nearly a million times a year (about 800,000 by the middle-of-the-road estimates).

Grow up. Guns are not evil -- they are tools. If guns are inherently evil, then why do we give them to police and soldiers?

then we just reschedule the exams for another day.

And another evening (or two) to study.

That would be an improvement over the current one.

Worrisome? Stop with the fear talk...

If somebody of a different nationality can make is past the border of the White House security, he deserves a path to have a legal account there. He needs the opportunity to prove that he can become a productive member of the White House network.

Well, since you asked:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Estimates over the number of defensive gun uses vary, depending on the study's population, criteria, time-period studied, and other factors. Higher end estimates by Kleck and Gertz show between 1 to 2.5 million DGUs in the United States each year.[1]:64â"65[2][3] Low end estimates cited by Hemenway show approximately 55,000-80,000 such uses each year.[4][5] Middle estimates have estimated approximately 1 million DGU incidents in the United States

I also love the "FOR THE CHILDREN" argument. To stop child porn, we need to outlaw all encryption. To protect our children from obesity, we have to outlaw fatty foods. Sheesh! Grow up!

Also, lots of children are killed by cars each year. Do you propose banning cars? How about a woman who scares off an intruder with her gun. Is her life and the lives of her children worthless? Put your agenda away and put on your thinking cap.

Same with guns. Venezuela enacted a complete gun ban with "gun surrender centers", with heavy penalties for anyone non-police/non-militia to own one. Now, gun crime is 1/1000 what it was a few years ago, and their gun bans are an example to the world of reducing crime.

Yeah. It works GREAT. Same old tired argument. If you actually ban all guns, then gun crime will go away. But then you need to ban fists, knives, ropes, poison, etc. I guess you COULD show up to the funeral of a person stabbed to death and proudly proclaim "You should be thankful that they were not shot to death." Let me know how well that works for you...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Venezuela is currently among the countries with the highest murder rates in the world.

And looking on that wiki page, the graph sure looks like murders are increasing. But at least less people are shot, right?

By the way, similar story in Australia. Harder to get guns. Murder has dropped, but violent crime overall has INCREASED in the last three decades. In the USA, violent crime and murder have dropped more than Australia during the same period.