Yeah, because that straw-man attack sure has something to do with running out of storage space...

As if there was any doubt?

I've had more than 90GB of music for over a decade. Then there are pictures, and books, and if this thing is supposed to be a bit of my own personal entertainment while I'm away from a proper desktop computer or my own entertainment system, movies, TV shows, and all sorts of other things that I don't want to have to stream in order to use.

You're assuming that the end owner of the safe even has access to the Windows Shell in a meaningful way. I expect they've replaced the shell with something of their own devising.

I also expect that they spent as little as possible on making the computer-side of the device and didn't even consider the digital security aspects of their choices. Pretty stupid for a security company, but it wouldn't be the first time that such decisions have been made.

I think that's part of the point, lots of people want different things in their phones, but very few manufacturers are respecting those wants.

I want storage expansion and dual-SIM. I wouldn't mind front-mounted speakers. I actually want a real, physical keyboard but I know that's simply not in the cards. I want about double the battery capacity compared to most phones, with a removable battery. I want the LTE bands for my carrier in my area to all be supported. I want a camera capable of about 5MP pictures as I have a real camera that I use when I want ultra high quality photos.

It's really the removal of the memory expansion that upsets me. They're doing it to force consumers to buy new phones in a couple of years instead of simply adding more torage capacity to their existing phones.

I'd like to see a breakdancing porpoise. Sounds novel.

Really? I just enjoy watching the inevitable mechanical carnage from something they missed in their design or build process.

Or is that Thorem simply incomplete?

Ion engines push with the amount of force of a piece of paper on one's hand. They still achieve stupendous speeds through doing this indefinitely. If this thing can match that performance over that timescale then it's still useful.

Ion thrusters still consume raw materials, so there's a finite fuel supply. If this does literally turn electricity into thrust without consuming anything then running out of reaction-mass is no longer an issue, and some probes could even be entirely solar powered.

Additive technologies have some rather important limitations, they can't produce anything that needs incredible strength achieved through pressure. Admittedly a lot of products are produced at STP, but if you need forged metal parts for their strength you're not going to get that inexpensively through an additive technology like a 3d printer. Subtractive technolgies, where that pre-hardened lump of material is machined down to the part that one wants is the only way currently to practically achieve that kind of result.

There's a Goodwill next to one of the hardware stores that I shop at regularly, so I'm in there fairly often. There's always lots of otherwise-obsolete computer stuff in there. Never had a problem finding something useful.

Factor college-admissions as a trailing economic indicator too, where people chase what's encouraged as the hot career path, and it's not exactly a surprise to see cyclical enrollments correlating with business.

After watching the doctom and housing bubbles, by the time the average person hears about it, it's too late to enter that trend and come out ahead. I suspect one of the next bubbles will be in health care. We see a lot of discussion of Nursing and careers below nursing on the pecking-order, and I suspect relatively soon there will be a lot of medical grads that can't find work.

It's kind of amusing to read a complaint about poor use of English that contains a typo.

Slashdot's editors typically don't do much to user submissions. I'm not surprised that an otherwise language-poor summary is published.

SPARC != commodity either. Can't go to the local store and pick up an ATX-form-factor SPARC motherboard and processor off-the-shelf.

Granted, SPARC isn't completely discontinued, but if Debian can't find enough developers to work on the platform then that shows them there isn't enough interest in order to be able to keep it alive.