Try it out, one really good thing about KDE is that you can set just about anything to be the default program quite easily through systemsettings, the KDE "control center".

For example; if you like Firefox, Thunar, and Gnome terminal you can easily set all of them to be the default programs used for internet / file browsing / and terminal emulators. Same for PDF readers ETC.

That said Dolphin / Konqueror, and Konsole are really quite full featured programs. Especially the file browsers, using KIOSlaves for input / output to practically everything is really awesome.

He's saying the truth. 8-9 / 10 asshats on bikes don't follow the rules of the road that they are legally required to. Just a few things:

1: don't stop for stop signs... many times not even slowing down, then expecting traffic to magically not hit them. I have personally witnessed several tickets being handed out to them since my city is FINALLY starting to crack down on them, they will even do it right in front of a cop....
2: riding on sidewalks instead of using the apparently wasted bike lanes, and hitting people walking ( you know the ones that belong on the sidewalks ). Happens with different asshats several times a month in my city alone, and I doubt it is a fluke since you see all the other asshattery anywhere you go. Hell because of #1 I have been hit by a stupid ass biker in a fucking crosswalk with the light in MY favor.
3: they observe speed limits worse than 4-wheel car drivers. School zone? Still going as fast as possible, on the sidewalk where they don't belong. They should be ticketed just as if a car was speeding ( this does occasionally happen, just needs to more often).

There you go, took mere minutes to come up with just a few things that 80% of the observed bike riders do to make everyone look down on bike riders. Sucks for the last 10-20% that actually are courteous, but then maybe THEY should start bashing heads of the rest if they want their image to look better.

Not only that, but they polished the test plate down. What happens when you use a nasty low grit number sandpaper that will leave behind gauges and scratches?

Not only that, but:
What happens when water gets in the crystal structure? It may take weeks+ but water can and will diffuse into the material.
What happens after firing? It doesn't take extreme amounts of heat to alter the crystal structure of steels... you can change the structure of regular / high carbon steel with a home oven quite easily, and destroy the properties of stainless readily to boot.

Typically, if a firearm will be used in a crime the serial number will either be 1: on a stolen weapon, or 2: ground off, not polished off.

If I remember correctly a Japanese geologist also used Muons or some other high speed particle to map out the insides of a volcano, letting everyone see the vent plug and vent path in 3D.

Ummm, yeah,

Just asked Siri on my ipod "Can you get chickenpox from chickens" and all it did was come up with a list of ~15 websites, the top being WebMD, as well as ~15 images of chickenpox rashes.

So, tl;dr version, pretty much the same results as using Google voice search in my GNote2.

Maybe because it's not that easy?

OK, so I go out and collect enough muddy water in a non-contaminated vessel, and happen to have a microscope powerful enough to see particulate matter that can be airborn for 2-3k+ Miles. Say it turns out to be volcanic in origin... then what? I personally have access to a XRD machine, but scans would show.... nothing since volcanic glass is amorphous ( no crystal structure ). Maybe the XRF could pick out a few peaks from microcrystalline structures, but it's highly unlikely that I can get a fine enough focus unless I luck out with a very large light chunk of ash... but funding for the sciences has been going down steadily for over a decade ( cut 80%+ in the last 12 years here ) and the XRF machine has been down for almost as long. We don't even have a mass spectrometer... the only reason our XRD machine is still running is a large school in the next state occasionally sends us stuff to XRD, and will run some of our stuff on their SEM.

Most people wouldn't even have access to a powerful microscope, much less any of the other geochemical tools needed.

Then say I did get same data of chemical / mineral composition, where is the geochemical database for recently recently erupted volcanoes? I can't say with any type of certainty that this eruption came from X volcano since it closely matches the rock compositions from the last eruption 600 years ago. Even data from 6mos - 1 year+ is sketchy since it would be more than possible that the melt from this eruption is chemically distinct from the prior one ( hence why it stopped for a while, then restarted ).

TL;DR: The most a lay person could really do is identify the general origin as being volcanic / or possibly wood in origin, and only if they happen to have a REALLY strong microscope.

It's only because Windows doesn't have chroot. You boot the install media, it starts a live environment that only runs an installer ( VS. many "modern" Linux installers where you start desktop, find the icon for the installer launcher / launch it from a terminal ) which sets up disk partitioning and filesystems then copies over system files >> reboot to an installer environment on ( generally, sometimes in a VM) hard iron to unpack / configure everything >> standard boot.

If MS wanted to bother adding and testing code against tons and tons of oddball hardware configs to the installer they could MAKE a chroot type program and only require one reboot, but it would be just one more point of failure with added potential bugs to boot. Much easier to take the 30-90 extra seconds ( depending on hardware age ) to reboot on the off chance that someone needs to install from media.

Most places where savings could be had from high multiples of installations would have an image the flash to the HDD anyways, not install from physical media for hundreds / thousands of PCs.

Ahh, but that 3mm per annum is GLOBAL sea level rise. You need to look a RELATIVE sea level change ( in which GLOBAL sea level change plays a more minor role) in a per area basis due to crustal load change from isostatic / subsidence adjustments ( for example pile a bunch of sediment on the crust and it sinks from the extra weight ), and just plain changes in sedimentation / erosion rates. Don't forget that sea level displacement is somewhere in the 200-300:1 intrusion:height ration. That means for every 1mm of rise the water will go inland on average 200-300mm.

Of course this also ignores the fact that rapid compaction can be an issue in many places that are earthquake prone - the water running from cracks in the ground after an earthquake is literally squeezed out of the sediments in the ground compacting and shifting into a tighter mass, which then sits mm to meters closer to sea level ( or lower if it is in a basin ).

In other words, it's probably a bunch of BS that in 30 years there will be many airports underwater, but it IS possible. A structural / sedimentary Geologist could give a better report backed by data, but each specific locality would have to be studied individually, a study of the west coast where earthquakes are more common wouldn't apply to the east coast where the continental margin is quiescent for example.

This has drastically changed in the last decade or two due in large part to changes in the education system ( I.E. a liberal education where many differing fields of study are required to graduate ) as well as the wide spread dissemination of knowledge from internet connectivity.
100 years ago said doctor / preacher may have known HOW to do research on issues not directly related to his / her field, but may not have had access to the physical books with the knowledge to be ABLE to do the research.

Look at Geologists, we have to know at the very least: Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics on top of Geology. Then for some fields you have to add Biology and Animal Psychology, other fields need to know Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics, and a deep understanding of Thermodynamics.
Many other scientific fields require at least basic knowledge of the other fields as well, meaning a Biologist could and should be able to have an informed opinion of say something in the Chemistry field, even if they don't have the absolute in depth knowledge as a Chemist does.

Could some random Joe on the street have the same qualities? Of course, there are tons of brilliant self educated people in the world. But the general public doesn't know how, or care to learn how to do proper research, hence why the less informed rely on basic websites that, to put it quite bluntly are crap, and quote them as gospel, even after they have been proven blatantly false.

On the flip side, since the camera is front facing ( so you know what you are recording, I doubt it could HUD _AND_ compress AND upload to remote storage worth a shit ) you would know if some dude was recording you with glass too... he would have to stare at you the whole time.

That's the thing, is the upgrade "free for the first year" meaning you don't have to pay for the upgrade license , or is it "free for the first year" meaning after a year you have to pay some kind of subscription fee.

For the time being I am leaning towards the first option since I haven't read anything yet that says MS will have a subscription for the OS ala Office 365 ( if there is official confirmation please do let me know! ).

A subscription for an OS just seems awkward, with too many hurdles to jump. I.E. how long a grace period for renewal, IF there is an auto-renewal option how hard is it to get canceled, especially for business what happens when the version you are on - and don't want to upgrade away from - is EOL'd... I still use a networkless Win98 machine due to upgrade costs to the machine it is connected to being $50K+ just to upgrade from a P2 / Win98 setup.

Then again it _is_ MS we are talking about, they would probably just charge ahead without thinking like usual.

Simple:

It doesn't have Blender in my boot process yet.... just think of all those extra seconds I could be rendering while my PC booted going to waste.

What command line completion are you looking for.... magically knowing what you want so you just have to hit tab? Mavericks and Yosemite both have command completion for commands / scripts in your $PATH just like in Linux. Now if only they had "free" and a modern native build of "htop"

I do miss apt-get, and brew / macports don't work 100% with the CLI dev tools from xcode, meaning you need to install the whole 5+GB package.

As for the rest, you have choices for task switchers and finder extensions ( many of both free even ) to take care of the shortcomings, just as you can swap out features you don't like in Linux. Safari is just crap unless you want to use it for the power savings, it does manage to suck down less power somehow when compared to chrome.

So, my MBP that has Word / PS / and pretty much every terminal app other than "free" from UNIX / Linux somehow does less than a Windows box? Any games I play ( not many ) either work in crossover or a VM so that also doesn't count.

The only thing my MBP is "lacking" vs my Lenovo is HDD space ( 128GB SSD + 1TB external that I already used on the Lenovo vs. Lenovo 1TB spinning rust ) and RAM (4GB VS. 16GB which I really don't need for what I do on mobile machines, I just remote into my Desktop now). Price difference? After the RAM upgrade on the Lenovo about $250 more for the MBP. With the Mac I also gain: I can stack two MBPs to get the same height as the Lenovo, or carry 3 MBPs for the same weight, triple the battery life, a newer generation of i5 with IRIS gfx, and a better screen than the garbage 1366x768 screen in the Lenovo.
The Lenovo also has an extremely shitty keyboard, case, build quality ( came from the factory missing a screw, had to be sent back immediately for keyboard failure OOTB, came back with a cracked case that had to be glued back together.... but at least "working") and trackpad, while the MBP has a great trackpad and a keyboard that doesn't, at the very least, feel like you are trying to type on a waterbed.

So, tell me again, how did I get less with my Mac purchase?

There are some nice touches that OSX does as well ( and some annoyances unfortunately ) that are not worth paying extra for, such as remembering different volume configurations for when headphones are plugged in versus on laptop speakers / HDMI sound output.

So Windows is the best OS since the most people use it? Why bother with OSX and Linux then? The only reason Windows is on top is twofold: ease of use ( comes with most new computers) coupled with familiarity, and this is the reason that 8 didn't do so well... and secondly, it's cheaper than a Mac.

Don't confuse (easier / shinier) for (lazy / gloryhound) devs with technical superiority. Maybe, MAYBE, it will turn out to be better... but most likely will turn out to be as big a kludge as they claim SysVinit is.