If you want fast computer, get at least 16GB RAM. Turn OFF swap. Enjoy.

Until you run out of RAM and start losing data. :-)

You made a stupid choice

Not necessarily. They may have violated a stupid law.

A drug offense 5 yrs ago, with proof of a completed drug treatment program for instance isn't going to stop me from hiring a good IT worker.

What if it was marijuana and the guy wasn't actually, you know, harming society? You shouldn't even require a drug "treatment" program for that kind of "offence".

That is an invalid complaint to lay at Objective-C's feet. Objective-C is designed, even now, to be a strict super-set of C. There is no way to overload operators in such a context and still maintain compatibility with C.

And then benefit is to the residence/owner is what, exactly? They have a solar installation on their roof, and you're still charging them the same rate?

I don't know why you hold up the BBC as a shining example. They put out the line of the current government which, as it's conservative, involves regular scare stories and bullshit regarding euthanasia and cannabis.

And you're thinking that George Washington was one of those idiots who thought a little tyranny would work out well?

George Washington the aristocratic slaveholder who crushed the Whiskey Rebellion, screwing over farmers (including many Revolutionary War vets) to pay off bondholders? I'd say "a little tyranny would work out well" might be a decent description of his stance, sure.

* Internet connection required.
** Internet Explorer 12.1 or higher required
*** Requires Office365 or higher. Art cannot be inserted into other documents. Internet connection required to view document with clipart.

I think you forgot:
**** Service not guaranteed to be available 365 days a year.

So is the DRM broken yet?

No? I'll check back in 10 minutes...

Things that were illegal didn't suddenly become legal just because they weren't explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

No, but unless they fell under the Constitutional powers of the feds, they remained state crimes, not federal ones.

OTOH, some things that were illegal in the states did suddenly become legal when the 14th Amendment was passed. Any laws restricting free speech, religious liberty, etc., as well as any provisions creating unequal protection, were null and void from that point on.

Of course, the state often operates under unconstitutional, null and void laws anyway, as much as it can get away with. Jim Crow was illegal, marriage inequality is illegal, much of the War on Drugs and the War on Guns and the War on Copying is illegal, but they've got the guns.

That statement is not consistent with Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Correct. The point is that SCOTUS jurisprudence often has fsck-all to do with the Constitution.

For example, the first amendment has been held *not* to give you the right to incite violence. (See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.)

A perfect example. Chaplinsky was engaging in exactly the sort of political speech that most requires protection and was in no way inciting violence. He called somebody a nasty name, that's all. The Court's absurd and immoral decision had neither law (i.e., the text of the Constitution) nor reason on its side.

Debian will probably continue on its way of becoming a desktop user distro.

I know I'll get crucified on Slashdot for saying this, but in my experience, Windows works OK at being both a desktop and a server distro. You have people using Windows 8 (yeah, it needs Classic Sell or something but that's a UI issue, not a fundamental OS problem) for desktops and Windows Server 2012 for servers, at an enterprise level. This doesn't seem to cause problems, and those 2 OSes I just mentioned are basically the same OS with different features turned on. One time a place I worked gave my Windows Server 2012 on a laptop I was to use for development (don't ask me why). The funny thing is, after I disabled some features and enabled some others, as well as installing some libraries, I basically had a Windows 8 desktop machine.

Is there really a need to have "server-oriented" and "desktop-oriented" OSes in this day and age when we have plenty of storage space, or can we have one OS that can just be configured to behave the way we want it to?

"Uan" is the Italian pronunciation of "One", as the website says.

Erm, but it's not actually the Italian for "one" (which is "uno"). So they're spelling it based on the Italian mispronunciation of an English word. Ugh.

Headline: Kim Dotcom Regrets Not Taking Copyright Law and MPAA "More Seriously"

Article: "My biggest regret is I didn't take the threat of the copyright law and the MPAA seriously enough," Dotcom said ...

Big difference between taking the law seriously and taking the threat of the law seriously. The headline implies that there's some sort of actual legitimacy to the law and that he's almost apologetic for doing something "wrong." The actual quote however is just a recognition that the government thugs are the thugs they are and the threat they represent is real.

[T]here was no reason for such firms to be willing to cooperate with state agencies over child abuse ...

That sentence ought to end right there.