Apple's "so called computers" are made from the exact same components as all the other so-called computers out there using the x86 platform as you Apple trolls like to point out endlessly, so if most of the software-stack is made of commodity components, and if people are happy to pay for Apple's window-dressing, then what's the issue?

Personally, I've done the linux on laptop dance before, and found that regessions that break power management don't get much attention from kernel and driver developers. That unresponsiveness, piled on top of the giant steaming heap of shit that is acpi drove me away shrieking in terror. So while I use Linux for desktop and server machines, I've found OS X to be much more dependable on portable machines.

So as far as I'm concerned any "Apple tax" is a snip to pay for a portable Unix workstation which doesn't have twinkly blue lights all over it and which doesn't use the circuit board as a stressed member. The Macbook Pro is on a par with ThinkPads in terms of build quality, but Apple's power management and enclosure pretties sway me in their direction.

To each his own.

No it's true, they are destroying computers. Their servers have a shipping container for a case, and no power supplies, no displays. They're barely computators at all.

Of course, it's 1/25400000th of an inch.

To be fair, I think the "scanning" and "microscope" are the expensive part of a STM, and not really necessary to drive a motor. There are all sorts of devices that can generate streams of electrons cheaply, though it's unclear what the requirements are to drive the motor - in the worst case, it may require something similar in complexity to a STM for precision and a supercomputer to do the job of aiming and timing the power source that's done by a human with a STM in this instance. In that case, it's going to be a while before this sees use in an actual nanoscale device.

Who cares about gears? As far as I can see this isn't a one molecule motor unless you exclude the "copper surface". If you're allowed to ignore half of the motor assembly then all brushless electric motors in fact have only one part, the rotor. A true one-molecule motor would have to work as both rotor and stator which is a nonsensical concept. I know the person who made up the title was trying to be exciting, but it's so wrong as to be idiotic.

*slap*

The radius of the rounding on the tabs is hideous and looks nothing like any native control on any platform, I also hate this new fashion of placing the close, minimize and zoom buttons at some random pixel offset.

This design would work just as well with native looking widgets and button placement and wouldn't invoke the "uncanny valley" effect of being almost correctly placed. Why not just put the buttons in the middle of the web page and make the tabs floating round circles that you navigate between by waving your arms if you're going to ignore platform conventions so flagrantly.

Firefox isn't my platform, I have an OS platform that has already established conventions on how things should look and where they should be placed. Until recently Firefox seemed to finallly be moving in the direction of being a good citizen on it's supported platforms, now this...

Funny, I thought I was just buying a portable Unix machine.
Perhaps you could define this "lifestyle" you speak of?
do Linux and Windows also have "lifestyles"?
If so, how exactly do they differ from each other?

You take advantage of Moore's law and upgrade to a current model. :)

Human suicide is a tragedy, computer suicide is an opportunity.

Microsoft's attempt to embrace and extend Java failed because legally speaking they did what cheap T-Shirt makers do, made an inferior fake product and stamped a brand on it that they had no legal right to use. It's got nothing to do with this case which is about software patents.

On the one hand you have Sun suing Microsoft because they're not happy about them branding something that is clearly not Java with Sun's trademarks, violating the licensing for the latter.

On the other hand you have Oracle suing Google because their VM works too much like Java to not have some Java DNA inside it, much like what happened with Linux and SCO not that long ago.

I was pretty annoyed by the way that faceless evil corporations are polluting the world while everyone else is trying to clean it up, when the reality is that the pollution exists because of the rampant consumerism that people love so much (myself included).

"It's not me, it's the other end of the supply chain"

It doesn't have to go boom to be really, really bad. Just poof!

Inhaled plutonium has a habit of causing lung cancers, plutonium laced ash settling on food crops or preparation surfaces can cause gut cancers, and then there's plutonium's nasty habit of accumulating in bone marrow, so if there is anything containing plutonium that can burn or boil it could cause some pretty toxic fallout.

We can take comfort in the fact that the waste in question is being stored outside, above ground, in tents; which suggests that it's probably not very likely that any highly radioactive waste is at risk -tents not being renowned for their security or radiological enclosure qualities.

Someone's been getting stoned and watching Captain Planet again...

It's 2011, the vast majority of people don't use computers with 4 colors and 40 column screens anymore, and they want to do more than just look at Geocities pages full of static text and pictures. If some small percentage of people want to continue to use absurdly outdated equipment, that's fine - but the rest of us aren't going to turn the web into Gopher just for the insane techno-hoarders out there.

Don't get me wrong, I loves me my computer history. I just don't expect to keep using museum pieces in the modern world. I'd love to keep using my various G4 and G5 Macs, but the world is moving on.

I feel that the continued use of abandoned and heavily-exploited software is the internet equivalent of toxic waste. Using software that vulnerable on the internet seems to me to be irresponsible. I realize I'm an elitist snob, but I really hate botnets.

Firefox 4 still runs fine in Windows 2000, I find it hard to have any sympathy for people who refuse to upgrade hardware that can only run Windows 98/ME.