The desktop support dude knows what's going on. He knows that GB values, as printed on the box, is always optimistic from the marketers vantage point.

The computer science dude already thinks in hexadecimal, so the casual mention of a number like 12 GB is intrinsically confusing. Is the "12" base-10? Is the "10" in "base-10" decimal? Or is it "base 0F+1"?

Everyone else just gives $127.39 to the GeekSquad weenie for installation. They think in dollars, and want to know how many pictures will fit.

I only get paid to attack particular businesses and politicians.

I'm sure the hell not going to bother to attack someone else for free. Someone has to pay for it.

Which is a discomforting potential invasion of privacy?

• Manufacturer knowing if a computer has been submersed in water, or subject to -40 temperatures, or experienced 100+G shock, when machine is submitted for warranty claim.
• A car that "remembers" your speed, driving time, and radio volume at the time of a crash.
• Cell phone company selling your detailed inbound and outbound call record + your location when call was made/received
• Credit card company selling your detailed purchase history, knowing that you bought Pampers 24 pack on sale at a particular time and place.
• Bringing your PC into GeekSquad for repair

All of these happen today. Your letter to your senator is WAY TO LATE.

The author notes that the fancy diamond paste results in LESS heat at the heat sink.

Conclusion: The home-made paste is more of an insulator than the commercial stuff, as the same amount of heat is being generated, but that heat just isn't making it to the heat sink!

I wish that all people with Computer Science degrees would remove the stick from their butt.

You have an excess of hubris there buddy. Like you, I have an MS in Computer Science from a name-brand university. But undoubtably many smart and competent people have a degree in "Business Administration with a concentration in IT".

I don't feel the right or privilege to demean people that simply have a different degree than my own. I've worked with plenty of very smart and capable people with degrees in "business", "IT", political science, literature, psychology, music, etc. Or no degrees at all.

Perhaps those with a "Bachelor of Business Administration in IT" aren't required to take any compiler or algorithm courses or countless advanced mathematics courses. Then again, maybe some do take them for their program and/or as electives. Maybe people with such a degree are smart enough to pick up the essentials without taking a course on the subject. You simply can't judge a person or program based on the name of his or her concentration/major.

One of the brightest, fastest, and hardest working OS programmers I ever worked with only went through an ITT Tech certificate program. You'd likely laugh at his credentials, but he picked up a lot of the theory on his own, and he'd kick the butts of most people I know with advanced CS degrees.

No, you're not.

You're betraying what he feels is the spirit of the GPL. However, the GPL was specifically designed to allow for such charging. If he didn't like the GPL, he and the other "original" developers should have chosen a different license. The fact that he didn't understand what rights he was transferring by choosing the GPL is his own fault.

I appreciate that this developer is put off by your fees. However, he is free to take your efforts (the GPL'd code you've published) and release the application for free.

I think you've gone above and beyond by hearing the guy out and expressing your concerns. However, you're following the rules HE set out.

This is, in a word, wrong.

I have been using an online backup service for my brother's computer. I used to run rsync via cron and retain deleted files, but it was a pain in my butt, so last year I just had him spend the $60/year for an on-line backup service.

This past Thursday his PC's drive died - completely unrecoverable, unrepairable, toast.

The backup service in use had his 200 GB of user data. We popped in a new drive, installed the OS, downloaded the back-up files over the weekend, and now he's back in business. None of his documents were lost.

Was bandwidth too low to recover his data? No. Did it take years to backup and/or restore? No, but it did take a couple days to download it all. Was there space limitations on the service? No.

Did it save all his family photos, documents, email archive and music library? Yes.

Sadly, schools run all this 10+ year old hardware because no one bothers to give them better old hardware.

My school just got thirty used 2005-vintage iMacs from a local business that upgraded their machines to the latest and greatest. Businesses swap out old hardware frequently, and we have a local volunteer that prepares the old machines for new uses.

They clean up the old hardware, test it, and install stock software (OS X, FireFox, Office, etc).

It's a hell of a lot better to spend money on teaching instead of equipment.

The problem is ENERGY EFFICIENCY, not SAFETY. There is no science or technology that suggests that a H2 fuel cell is going to be nearly as efficient in a car as, say, an internal combustion engine. The only advantage of the fuel cell is that you can obtain the H2 from many sources. In contrast, the current fleet is powered by oil/fossil fuels alone.

Not surprisingly, there are other energy storage technologies, such as batteries, which can be more efficient and lower cost than a fuel cell.

Fuel cells are a great technology for some applications, but they don't make sense for cars.

You forgot about the changing value of the dollar over time - inflation. Let's say you bought your CR-V in 1995 and sold it in 2005. $20000 in 2005 had the purchasing power of $25,600 in 1995. Let's use 2005 dollars for your depreciation calculations. (We could just as easily use 1995 dollars in all calculations; the results will be identical.)

($25600 - $6000) ÷ 10 years = $1960 per year, in 2005 dollars.

You're right: the depreciation costs of your CRV was way under $3000, but it was a roughly 33% more than your $1400 estimate.

Note that Real Estate brokers also like you to ignore inflationary costs when trying to sell you property. Watch out and do the full calculation. Inflation is "real" and absolutely impacts the finances of everything you buy, sell, or hold.

Think "get a cab".

It's unthinkable that a cop would put a college scholar against a wall at gunpoint for playing a recreational game with his colleagues.

However, I would fully support them for taking down a group of scuzzy illegal aliens that are found breaking and entering at a pretigious institution of higher learning.

I assume you're in the first category.

Your boss understands his customers and the contracts in place. Your boss understands the political consequences of changing his service under the feet of his existing customers. Your boss has lawyers that understand the legal ramifications of his decisions.

If this is an error in judgement, his customers will let him know by either (1) suing him, or (2) withholding payment, or (3) leaving the service. All three mean less revenue for him no matter the outcome.

Your job is to do what he asks within the law. If you think he is asking you to break the law, talk to your personal lawyer for advice. If you have a moral issue with him, gracefully resign.

Don't stick your neck in the guillotine.

I recently bought some Sun servers. My colleagues told me they were "very slow", but since I had a loaner pair in-house, I decided to benchmark them just for a "baseline".

I benchmarked them, and found that these new machines were the fastest I could buy in class.

Were my colleagues wrong? The answer is no - its just that their benchmarks were useless for my application. Their application's needs were quite different than mine. Their app was FP intense, and mine was memory i/o intense.

I ended up buying the machine they didn't buy. They passed them up because they were slow. But I bought them because they were fast.

YOU have a good rule-of-thumb analysis there. I like it, and it should apply to most normal sites.