The last dozen CDs I've purchased were from young kids hawking their own music in Manhattan. I enjoy the conversations. Not so much the music, but it's still fun to help them out.

Yeah, the whole archive is closer to 90G. It's amazing how small a collection can be when you actually buy it all. I've been collecting since the late 70's, but slowed down as my kids grew up. I tend to play what I can ... play, and sing along with. The young guys just steer clear of me during the day and I get lots of work done without interruption. I'm getting old and don't feel like collecting as much as I did when I was younger. I've been thinking of getting some Astroturf to put under my desk so I can tell office visitors to get off my lawn. If they persist, I'll pull out the Dean Martin.

I'm still carrying over 300 songs. I don't listen to music all day anyway and I can still get to my collection via ftp or a nfs mount if I really want something. My home archive is replicated to the data center where I work. It isn't much of a problem.

I also drive a Jeep most of the time even though I have a pickup because I don't need the hauling capacity on a daily basis.

I don't find it sad or pathetic at all.

I've found that a larger hard drive just increases the likelihood of me storing redundant data on the same media. I get lazy about housekeeping. I recently pulled the 500G drive from my laptop and replaced it with a 120G SSD. Instead of carrying everything I own, I only carry tools I need. Now I can actually manage a daily backup to a NAS and not have to wait while it completes. If I'd had the extra cash, I would have likely purchased a larger SSD and still be carrying all the cruft that I haven't touched for weeks or months. The only thing I miss is my music archive, but with less music on hand, at least now I know all the words to the songs.

They could have also used a select demographic that would skew their results. Or just as likely, they could have made up the numbers.

Most of my tools use registration keys.

SecureCRT, FinalCut Studio, MS-Office, TextMate, IntelliJ, etc... It's a long list.

Dinner time? If I watch your ad after 4:30, I'll miss the early bird special. Save 75 cents or watch a commercial. Not a tough choice. Not going to watch it after dinner either. I have to get my nap in before bedtime or I'll be tired tomorrow.

I already know who GM is and when I'm in the market for a new car I go look at the dealer lot. Commercials are just irritating. It's the same on CNN videos. If an ad plays, I click away and find the same video from another source.

Sounds like my first PC. Or a new superhero.

You saying we're fat?

Golly! I guess my Palo Alto firewalls are lying to me.

We use these to prevent internal data loss, filter malware, virus, etc... and decrypt all SSL traffic as normal policy. The client never knows the difference because the firewall has its own cert issued by a trusted CA. You could always do the same yourself, but the process has been made trivial with an appliance.

75% of that 2.8% figure is the Flashback trojan. If they haven't patched or upgraded by now, they are not likely to do so.

I must be; the people in my head talk about me all the time.

I'd welcome discussion of the assertion that users were dumped. They're free to upgrade or select a new OS at any time as long as the hardware is viable. Sometimes hardware reaches the end of life because technology advances in a new direction. It happened for MS/PC/DR-DOS, OS/2, BSD, games, etc. As for the Cisco comment, it isn't entirely accurate. Cisco has a preferred browser, but you're certainly not required to use their choice any more than you have to use the OS that was distributed with your PC.

I'm not clear on how those iMac users were dumped. The upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard was only $29.95. The upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion was priced the same and I expect Mountain Lion will be too. The PPC crowd will have a different experience, but that production ended about six years ago when the architecture changed. The path from Windows 95 to NT, 2000, XP, Vista and then Windows 7 cost significantly more and it required new hardware along the path as well. Microsoft does go to extraordinary length to support antique software because of user demand, but Apple has the edge on upgrade pricing. It doesn't quite make up for the extra hardware cost, but the OS is priced reasonably.

Hmm, I work with Cisco gear daily and rarely use a GUI, but when I do, I do it from IE 9, Firefox, Safari, Chrome... Sure, there's a compatibility warning, but it's just another click to get past it. The one device that I had issues with was the CE500, but a newer IOS fixed that and it wasn't a browser limitation anyway.

Probably less irrelevant than inconvenient.

Maybe they would, but after watching my dog's behavior around the litter box, it seems they're content to let the cats handle production.