I tell people to buy the least expensive acceptable model. Save the $ for the next purchase or else something worthwhile. My reason? Laptops, cheap ones, usually will do everything people want. AND when the crap goes south in a year, after the warranty is gone, you won't be as heart broken as if you spent upwards of $2000 for a really really nice laptop with all the bells and whistles.

Right now, you can get a Core i3 2.3 Ghz with 4-6 GB ram for about $500-600. Really, what more is a non-techie gonna need? I get people dropbox or box or some other cloud storage for their "stuff", and quite frankly, most people will be just fine with something like that. There are exceptions, but really, most people would be fine with that.

At that price range, you can buy 3 laptops for the price of the Macs people are recommending above.

That explains much. Thanks

Blocking Ads is a result of too many sites trying too hard to "monetize" a site. It is what I call the "rule of assholes". The Rule of Assholes goes like this: Any thing that is legitimate and good can be ruined by assholes. In fact, that is my definition of what an Asshole is; they ruin it (for normal values of "it") for everyone else.

Ads done right, are unobtrusive and might even ad value to a site. However Assholes come along and splatter and plaster the most annoying adverts all over negligible sites. Worse is the fact that often times they don't even vet the advertisers so that they become a vector of malware payloads, and ruin it for everyone else. The result is that you HAVE to run your browser with AdBlock enabled just to have a reasonable surfing experience.

You want to run ads on your site? Sell banner/ad space yourself, serve it yourself and most adblock software won't bother blocking your adverts. It costs more in time and energy, but that is the cost of all the assholes in the world ruining things for everyone else.

I'd watch ads if they weren't so obnoxiously intrusive to the program I'm trying to watch. I've quit TV over Ads, and now watch exclusively HULU and Netflix. The last straw for me was watching a show, don't remember which, and having a three minute commercial, followed by four minutes of program followed by five minutes of commercial ... I kid you not. When a 1/2 hour show is really only about 14.5 minutes long (time it, not counting intro and ending credits), you spend more time NOT watching the program than actually watching it. My time is worth more to me than being peppered with stupid ads, commercials for crappy shows (while they cancel every good show I like). I mean Jersey Shore is going on what ... 8 season now, but the cancel Firefly after two? No thanks, I'll pass.

I do that, except I'll go back every couple minutes or so and say .. can you hold on, I really want to talk to you, but I have to finish this one thing ..

I keep a log of how long they will hang on ... the current record, for some insurance company, was nearly 35 minutes before they hung up. They did call back three time afterwards ... but didn't hold on much more than a couple minutes.

My goal, keep them online, but not making a sale for as long as I can. If everyone took 30 minutes for each of these sales type calls and never actually buying, then they would stop calling, as the profit margins would sink.

I had a similar call about a month ago. My wife answered it and then hung up. I wish she would have handed the phone to me. I would have had a field day, acting stupid, and getting as much info as I could so that I could return their "favor".

Touche'

Many Android Phones using stock Google Code do not account for the issue of the leap seconds. Other versions of Android (Cyanogenmod) do have the correct time. There is even an app that fixes this problem for rooted phones. Just because they have access to this information doesn't mean they use it ;)

Don't take my word for it, take Neil DeGrasse Tyson's ...

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-29/tech/31252904_1_android-phones-gps-satellites-iphone

Boolean Math I get. :-D My problem lies with false premises being asserted as facts ... which is done all the time as "hypothetical questions"

The problem is "IF" leads to "false" conclusions, WHEN the premises are not true.

In your example the premises (2+2, 5) are provable. IF the premises are provable then the answer is no longer hypothetical. 2+2 = 4, any other answer is wrong, no hypothesis are needed. ;) However, since I would not answer 2+2=5 under normal conditions, your question's assumption that I would, is false. ;) Thus the hypothetical question is indeed false (misleading). So the answer is "hypothetically speaking, yes, I would be wrong. However, your assumption that I would answer 5 is also wrong, so no"

Hypothetical questions as Boolean constraints is fine, but that is not the extent of hypothetical questions and their ability to draw people into false conclusions. The boolean construct for your question is A = B and and B C, then A C is true (or A = C is false).

Please understand, I get Boolean mathematics. that is not my point.