As far as I can tell, what's coming out the wrong end of a thorium reactor will be a molten salt soup of toxic, possibly very corrosive, and VERY radioactive materials

As opposed to what comes out of the "wrong end" of any coal-fired plant?

In any case, the above does not sound very pleasant. It sounds expensive and dangerous and potentially hazardous, a lot like how we store spent fuel rods now.

Dangerous *and* potentially hazardous? Well, let's give up and start living in caves then.

There's plenty of info on thorium reactors. Google can help you there. But you're not really interested in anything but spreading FUD. Carry on, then.

Why would I want to buy a 720? I don't like the idea of always-on DRM, because it adds an unnecessary point of failure to the gaming experience. Microsoft's dashboard is designed to serve ads, not to navigate around games. And I imagine it will only get worse.

At least Sony is spending a ton of money on indie game developers...MS doesn't seem to have a plan except "the same stuff, only even more customer-hostile!" I've never been so unimpressed by nextgen offerings.

You realize we're talking about the Mike Rogers representing Alabama, right? Also, why would I let my patents vote? They have enough rights as it is!

They used to solve problems. How do you think we got our country-wide telephone network? Our highway system?

Back then, government wasn't reviled as evil, and we didn't elect people who depowered government to further enrich their rich buddies. Now the expectations are set: government can do no right, so let's deregulate and let the private sector solve the problem (aka enrich themselves at our expense).

I guarantee you that if the Internet had been around in the 50's, we'd have a nationwide fiber network better than any other in the first world. But that kind of coordinated national movement is passe now. The best we can hope for is a little Google Fiber here and there.

Check out the cell phone prices and broadband infrastructure in those Eurosocialist countries compared to the US. You may teach YOURSELF something.

Your life is a whorefest? All I can say is, make sure you get tested regularly!

Condescending moron,

That doesn't change the dictionary definition of censorship. Not to mention " you can choose not to consume a company's products/services" is a rose-tinted view of the world that is generally untrue throughout history.

Any entity can censor...which is not a bad thing in and of itself. The debate is, as always, whether or not they (Apple) should.

Hey there Microsoft,

I'll accept your always-on DRM if you can guarantee 5 nines of uptime for your DRM servers for the next 60 years. After all, I have 30-year-old Atari games that work just fine.

Your modern games should be at least twice as reliable, right?

You're right. It was all the union's fault. Not the 4 management teams in 6 years that bled the company in the exact way OP described.

The majority of PCs had USB, but what used it? A couple of webcams. That's it. I know I had a motherboard from that era that was recalled due to faulty USB ports. I didn't even bother to get it replaced because...nothing used USB. Intel was pushing it, so it was there...but unused.

Peripheral manufacturers did not release anything of consequence using the USB interface until the iMac. Then all of a sudden, we had bondi blue printers, zip drives, CD burners etc (of course most of them worked on PCs as well).

USB also needed to be on the majority of PCs *and* the iMac to succeed. That way, they could target both platforms with 1 interface. The iMac led the way and the PCs finally got some use out of the USB port.

Everyone wants Mongo and Redis and all that jazz these days anyway...and quite frankly, they ARE better for web applications.

I predict MySQL/MariaDB/whatever will slowly fall out of favor in the next few years.

People who feel compelled to explain how desktop X (KDE SC 4, GNOME 3) destroyed their workflow/unhinged their view of the universe by changing the three crucial pixels on which everything stood are mad

Let's get this straight-you don't think OS UI is that important, and you scoff at the idea of a "workflow." Yet you call yourself "KDEUser" and think KDE is the best desktop ever? Schizophrenic much?

PS Yes, Virginia, a poorly-designed UI can inhibit your productivity and make you feel powerless. That's why people are pissed off about GNOME 3. For everyone that's "foaming at the mouth" about it on a blog somewhere, there are 100 more that feel the same way. But rather than whine, they just go back to GNOME 2/Mate/KDE/whatever. I guess that makes them insane?

Linux on the PS3 was a "great feature"? You must have never used it. The scene was dead for a year before Sony pulled the plug.

Maybe if you and everyone else who cries about it on Slashdot had used it and submitted code, they wouldn't have taken it away.

And what's this racist bullshit about "the Japanese"?

We all understand what Sony did. It's nothing like your awful car analogy. Everyone here understands what a firmware update is, and what you're describing ain't it.

You're free to hate Sony for any reason you want...but if you really used Linux for anything other than dicking around, you'd know that PS3 Linux was DOA for at least a year before Sony pulled the plug. That's on the community as much as it is on Sony.

Honestly, I'm much more concerned about the ability to lend games/buy used games than I am about Linux. I'm already disgusted by the lack of value in the console market (pay $60 for an incomplete game, then get nickle-and-dimed with DLC). I seriously doubt I will get a PS4 unless something drastic changes.

I'm sure all 13 of them will be heartbroken. PS Speaking as someone who makes a living using Linux, Linux on the PS3 was beyond useless.

The scene was stagnant for a year before Sony pulled the plug. If even half of the people who cry about it on Slashdot actually used it, maybe Sony wouldn't have taken it away.