"Nasty 1" is my rap name.

This new development will be great for my career, but not so good for my street cred.

Oh other things I have done to the notebook:

* Upgraded to a Core 2 Quad Extreme (did that a week after buying the notebook - as usual it was many hundreds cheaper to buy the upgraded processor separately so I ordered it with a mid-range Core 2 Duo)
* Replaced both heat sink thermal transfer pads with copper shims when I replaced the motherboard after the lightning strike (and of course cleaned ALL of the dust out of every nook and cranny of the notebook while I had it torn down to the bare chassis)
* About six months ago the screen hinge FINALLY started to loosen up so I disassembled the screen assembly to tighten all the internal screws on the screen frame. Feels like new.
* Upgraded to hybrid hard drives about six years ago (so, not long after buying the laptop)
* Upgraded the RAM about four years ago

Aside from the above all I've done since is maintain the Windows 7 install (including defrag of MFT and shrinking/defragging registry hives) and update the Linux install (OpenSUSE - my preferred Linux distro for workstations). The processor is still plenty fast for sysadmin work, and even for software builds on occasion.

It has what is by far the best laptop screen I've used - and I do credit that to the RGB-LED backlight array, I've worked with newer Precisions, HPs, Asus, Lenovo, and other desktop/workstation replacement and gaming laptops and none of the screens compare. :-(

I'd like to see a real upgrade to the m6x00 line (their 17" mobile workstations). I am still running an M6400 Precision Mobile Workstation. Why? Because I like a full keyboard, dual pointer options, and the 17" screen. I check the Precision lineup every few weeks hoping an upgrade comes out. The problem with the current models is that they are downgrades; the laptop I have has a WUXGA (1920x1200) RGB-LED backlit display while the current models top out at 1080p, with white LED edgelights. I want to see them go back to the RGB-LED backlight, and more importantly, offer a 1440p or higher resolution display.

They manage to offer WQXGA+ (3200x1800) and UHD (4K) displays in the 15" models - why are those of us who want the flagship 17" worksation left out in the cold when it comes to decent screens now? I also checked the Alienware line (since they're pretty much Precisions/Latitudes with a gamer case and gaming video card rather than the Quadro line) but even they top out at 1080p in the 17" model.. :-(

Until Dell gets their act together with screen offerings on the m6x00 I'll keep my M6400 going. It paid for itself hundreds of times over and it is still going strong. I did have to replace the motherboard after a lightning strike but other than that it has been absolutely flawless. It's dropped from a 4' high ledge onto a tiled concrete floor while running and never skipped a beat; you cannot tell it was ever dropped and the hard drives scanned clean and STILL scan clean (SMART long test and surface scans with CHKDSK and fsck respectively) to this day. It's been an absolute tank for me, and aside from video resolution and video performance (I can't really use it for current games, plus it'd be nice to drive an external 3D display when at home) I am still very happy with it. I am still even on the original battery and still get decent life (almost two hours - when new it would get almost three hours) with the thing. :-)

Dell please throw m6x00 customers a bone - offer a 1440p or higher resolution display, then shut up and take my money.

15" laptops? Not interested. I like larger screen models (since it allows for close to full-size keyboards) with as high of a resolution as possible.

Except that the opinion of people like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk is definitely worth more than any "majority" thinking differently.

Nosense. That's just hero worship mentality. Very much like listening to Barbara Streisand quack about her favorite obsessions.

Bill Gates' opinion is worth more than the average person's when it comes to running Microsoft. Elon Musk's opinion is worth more than the average person's when building Teslas and the like. Neither one of them (nor anyone else, for that matter) has anything but the known behavior of the only high intelligence we've ever met to go on (that's us, of course.) So it's purest guesswork, completely blind specuation. It definitely isn't a careful, measured evaluation. Because there's nothing to evaluate!

And while I'm not inclined to draw a conclusion from this, it is interesting that we've had quite a few very high intelligences in our society over time. None of them have posed an "existential crisis" for the the planet, the the human race, or my cats. Smart people tend ot have better things to do than annoy others... also, they can anticipate consequences. Will this apply to "very smart machines"? Your guess (might be) as good as mine. It's almost certainly better than Musk's or Gates', since we know they were clueless enough to speak out definitively on a subject they don't (can't) know anything about. Hawking likewise, didn't mean to leave him out.

Within the context of our recorded history, it's not the really smart ones that usually cause us trouble. It's the moderately intelligent fucktards who gravitate to power. [stares off in the general direction of Washington] (I know, I've giving some of them more credit than they deserve.)

What kind of business could have revenue less than or equal to its tax bill but will continue to "pay taxes"?

That's upside down thinking. Corporations pay tax on income which means "profits".

Ergo, all taxes a business will pay must be funded out of revenue.

This is the right-wing brainwashing at work. You can't even imagine taxes being funded out of profits, can you? Please bear in mind that a corporation is simply a legal mechanism by which capital can avoid liability. You have somehow come to believe that a companies costs exactly equal its revenue and that they only exist for the public good.

Banning Mosques is cultural self-defense.

You mean cultural suicide. After all, it violates the freedom of religion, which is absolutely vital for the marketplace of ideas to exist. That marketplace is the essence of Western Culture, underlaying every currently reigning local ideas.

The only thing mosques do is give the local populace a chance to copy whatever good ideas Islam might have, and of course the other way around. And the only ones it threatens are those who are on top in current status quo and wish it to remain.

Raise the tax rate to 75% of the corporate profit and see what happens...

Companies will reinvest revenue rather than pay it out as dividends. Also, stock prices fall as future expected dividends are cut by 75%, and then rise again as said reinvestment makes economy grow faster.

Actually, this could be just the stimulus economy needs...

The only way to do that is raise prices.

If you can make more profit by rising prices, why haven't you done so already?

If I am unable to raise prices that far, then I'll invest the $10 million of capital somewhere else.

"Somewhere else" is taxed too, so it'll do you no good. You'll simply have to settle for a level of profit the market can offer, the same as everyone else. Of course, you could sit on your $10 million and let inflation eat it away.

If my current profit is $1 million and you now say it will be only $100K due to new taxes, then either my prices have to go way up, or the product/service won't be offered.

In the latter case your profit will be negative due to inflation. $100K is the best option you have. And, should you decide to pass as a protest or whatever, that's okay too, your competitors will gladly expand their market.

iot != cloud

No. "IoT" most definately == cloud. Everything that actually respects your privacy came out before "IoT" was a thing.

"IoT" is a euphemism for "home automation, except trojaned so we can steal your data."

The trouble is that just about every fucking "IoT" device is designed to communicate over the Internet to the manufacturer's servers, even when it would make more sense for it to just communicate with a base station/server over the LAN and have the data never leave your house. Allegedly it's for ease of use, but that's bullshit -- it's for data-mining.

Definition of irony:

a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

But if you're aware of the concept of irony, and people find it amusing, and that people are fond of posting things they find amusing, this logically means that you're expecting something unexpected, which thus is not unexpected, thus nothing can be ironic to one who knows of irony, not even this very fact.

There is no parsing of the OP that indicates he's talking about suicide.

If you drive someone to suicide, is it really a suicide or a homicide?

Sure, they're dead because they were too weak to deal with your shit, but then again, the guy I shot is dead because he was too weak/slow/unobservant to shoot me first.

Why just two people? That seems like it discriminates against people who want three people in a marriage...

It does, but removing gender requirements from marriage law is much simpler - and thus less likely to have unintended negative consequences - than allowing 3- or n-way marriages. The law doesn't have proper encapsulation or interfaces, thus every change could interact with anything else - but other laws are already supposed to be gender-neutral, so it shouldn't.

But if you're a polygamist who adopted, who gets the kids...Sue or Molly? Who gets the house? Which one makes the call to keep you on a feeding tube while you're in the coma?

Wouldn't these issues be solved by what this post argued for: incorporated marriage? So the answer to all these would be "the legal entity created through the marriage contract", which is controlled by its members.