Useless? Nope. It's not exactly a stellar performer, but it has a lot of uses. Remember, it's designed as an educational product, rather than as a PC replacement. It is not as powerful as your average desktop PC. But it is not useless.

My own Pi runs Samba4 (it's an Active Directory domain controller for my home Windows PC network, and runs a DNS service), it runs CUPS (for network printer sharing), it runs CrashPlan (for backing up my other PCs' data), and it runs the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack so that it can run some dynamic web-based services - the ones I use are Cacti and Observium (for graphing/monitoring my Cisco devices), and Horde Webmail/Groupware.

This is exactly what I used to use an old AMD Sempron box for. Granted, that AMD box was free, and more powerful - but it's bigger, noisier, makes more heat, and consumes more power than the Pi does.

I think the Pi is a fantastic project. It would be nice to see a more powerful ARM CPU and extra RAM on the next version of the board, but I'd be just as happy to see Ethernet being separated from the USB bus, and a SATA connector with the option to set your Pi up to boot from a hard drive out of the box (note that mine does run off a USB hard drive, but it still has to use the MicroSD card as a bootstrap - a SATA controller could also mean faster I/O throughput).

I've always run with Cisco gear at work, so I figured, why not run with Cisco gear at home? Price is only a concern if you're buying new, and even when most people buy new, they don't buy at list price - they find a gold-certified reseller who can offer them up to 60% off Cisco list prices. Me? I bought most of my kit off eBay.

My own current setup is:

1x Cisco 1841 router with EHWIC-1ADSL for my broadband connection (this card supports ADSL2+)
1x Cisco Aironet AIR-AP1231G-E-K9 for wireless
1x Cisco Catalyst WS-C2940-8TT-S for a switch

The router was £60 off eBay. The WIC was £40 off eBay.
The switch was £40 off eBay. Sure, it's only a 100 Mbit/sec switch, but my internet connection is only around 10 Mbit/sec downstream. Works for me.
The wireless AP was £50 in a clearance sale from PCW Business - it was brand new in box.

If I'd bought an 1801, it'd have had an ADSL2+ interface built-in, but I wanted a router with a couple of WIC slots.

Total - £190. This ticks all the price boxes for me.

In terms of reliability - I've had the AP for a few years now and it's fine; the switch and router were more recent, and haven't let me down either. I've used all of these device types professionally for years (including in dirty warehouses, offshore oil platforms, and in Portakabins running off diesel generators), and have never had one fail yet, so I don't expect one to at home.

The 1841 isn't fanless, so it does make a small amount of noise, but it's not too bad (less noise than my peronal gaming desktop PC, but more noise than my Dell work laptop). It lives in my hallway next to the phone jack, so the noise doesn't annoy anyone. The 2940 switch and 1231 AP are fanless and run silently.

For server stuff, I've got a Raspberry Pi running Samba4 (for Active Directory), Cacti and Observium (for SNMP polling / graphing my Cisco kit), rsyslogd (for syslogging) and am currently pulling my hair out trying to get Horde Webmail to integrate authentication with LDAP. I also want to get a TACACS/RADIUS setup going.

No.

Despite the events in the second film, the war would have happened anyway. Why? Because it did happen - in the future, there was Skynet and the war, and the terminators. Both sides sent back a soldier - one to kill Sarah Connor (in order to hasten the end of the war in the machine's side) and one to protect her (in order to ensure the human victory that would have been inevitable under John's leadership).

The second film had another assassination attempt - again, the machines knew they would lose because of John's leadership. John in the future sent the machine back to protect his younger self. Sarah Connor attempted to change the course of the future, but it was in vain - the only reason Miles Dyson and Cyberdyne Systems were working on the Terminator chip in the first place was because one had been sent back in time from when the war had started - this can't have happened if the war wasn't going to happen anyway. All the events of the first film did was change the start date of the war, and all the events of the second film did was reset the date back to the original one anyway - the day of the apocalypse as seen at the end of Terminator 3.

I know I see the world differently.

After playing through the first Assassin's Creed game, I'd find myself looking up at tall buildings, churches, etc. working out the best path to take for climbing up to the roof.

Never actually attempted to climb to the roof of any building - probably for the best; I hate heights.

I had these issues to begin with. But then I used a better power supply and these issues went away. The quality of the power supply unit really does affect how reliable your Pi is. I'm aware that the way they implemented USB power is far from ideal, but they have achieved the goal of producing a (quite surprisingly) powerful computer for $35.

Mine has been running for months with no downtime. It's a Samba4 domain controller, Horde groupware mailserver, DNS server, web server, SNMP poller (running Cacti), print server, and it runs Crashplan to automatically back up data from my family's PCs to an attached USB hard disk. I know I'm not the original target market for the Pi, but dammit I *like* mine, I think it's perfectly good at doing what it does for my needs, and I know I'm not using anywhere near its full capabilities (the GPU component of the Broadcomm SoC is supposed to be surprisingly powerful). It's also silent and draws very little power - which is why I used it to replace the old AMD Sempron box that was doing the same set of jobs previously.

Sure, it's not running the latest version of the ARM processor, or running the Ethernet connection independently from USB. But then if it did, it'd be larger and would cost more to build. Cut them some slack; they're doing something amazing - they're getting kids interested in how computers actually *work* instead of just using one to check their Facebook pages, and it's cheap enough that it doesn't really matter too much if they damage it.

Not sure if trolling, but I'll assume you're not (benefit of the doubt) and answer anyway.

HDMI-to-DVI and HDMI-to-VGA adapter cables mean you don't specifically need a monitor with HDMI input. The RPi has RGB outputs as well, so you can connect it to a TV (even if your TV only has a SCART input and not RGB, you can cheaply buy an RGB-to-SCART connector that will let you use the TV's SCART input).

You don't need a big memory card either, especially if you happen to have a spare external USB hard drive - you can have the RPi boot the bare essentials from the card and run everything else off the external disk.

What do you get if you sit under a cow?

A pat on the head.

Yes, DVD players will play CDs.

But most people who switched up to a DVD player wanted to watch films, rather than listen to music. Let me know when you manage to get your DVD player to play VHS or Betamax tapes.

Microsoft were abusing their position to ensure other browsers couldn't be bundled as part of the OEM software builds distributed with new PCs. PC makers were literally not permitted to add any other browsers. See this US Dept. of Justice link, section V.C.2 for a summary. This was Microsoft's strategy for winning the browser wars against Netscape Navigator, and was the reason Netscape died out.

Then they integrated their Internet Explorer browser into the operating system so deeply that you can't actually uninstall it. Internet Explorer is present on EVERY copy of Windows released, whether the user wants to actually use it or not.

This is different from Linux distros distributing Firefox as part of their bundle for a number of reasons - chief of which is that Firefox isn't made by the Linux Foundation, it's a Mozilla product. Secondly, it's been a while since I installed Ubuntu, but I'm pretty certain when I did, the installer asked me which browser(s) I wanted (amongst other software) - it's not like Firefox was just given to me, I could have picked Chrome if I'd wanted to use it.

The reason Microsoft are being targeted here is that this is an anti-trust fine. Microsoft are recognized as the leader in the consumer and enterprise desktop/laptop PC OS markets - there are more Windows installs than there are Linux or Mac installs. By bundling their own browser and not giving users the option during installation NOT to install IE (let alone giving them the option to install something else), they could be viewed as using their dominance in the desktop OS market as a tool to gain dominance in the web browser market. Remember that a lot of consumers will also just go with whatever is installed, either through ignorance (they don't know how good other browsers are, and IE just works, right?) or through not feeling confident / tech savvy enough to install a different browser. You have to go download files and run installers and make choices - that sort of thing scares people, which is why the App Store model is so popular - you just click "install" and it goes and does it all for you. Putting the choice of browser in the installation wizard for the OS or in the "first-time user login" wizard when you first start up your brand new PC should even the playing field, giving users an easy way of picking what browser they want to use. Granted, most will continue using IE because that's what they've been used to in the past, or because of the Microsoft branding on it - but that's their choice.

Having the Chrome browser bundled with Android is pretty much the same as Microsoft including IE with Windows and Apple including Safari with MacOS and iOS - yes there are other browsers available, but they don't give you the choice what you want. There is no reason why the European Commissioner for Competition can't go and levy the same sorts of fines against Google and Apple for the same reasons (maybe they haven't received complaints about this practice by these companies?). It's just been Microsoft's turn this time, and the fine they're being hit with is because of their failure to comply with an earlier ruling - they were told previously to give users a choice, and this demand has basically been ignored.

You don't have to change it at all if you don't want to. The point is, it's about having the choice. You may have the technical know-how to do this, but a lot of people won't, so Microsoft win the browser wars by default.