87k is not that great a sum of money. If you think a "failure of epic proportions" in the business world involves five figures, you've got a lot to learn about business.

As you say, the internet is really crap at times when you are travelling so why make life difficult? It is also fair to say that you obviously think of travelling as a bit of wandering around in the US. Once you broaden your horizons you will find that the internet is often not even an option.

Skydrive is not going to integrate with Ubuntu (have you read the summary yet?) so it is a stupid option whereas there is a dropbox client. It is still flakey and not going to be easy to use as required so he is still better off doing something that will work well and therefore get done regularly. If he is using some client for a service that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't you can guarantee that the time when he needs that backup will be one of the times that it did not work.

Did you read the summary? Obviously Skydrive is of no use but there are several other alternatives that would be better suited to this purpose although if, as he says, it is for use while travelling an internet based system is useless. I would suggest reading up more on what you can do with dd and writing a couple of scripts to suit your needs. The problems are more likely to be around using USB but you can always write a script that puts a compressed file on your desktop that you manually copy to your USB stick. Old tech is normally most reliable.

From the Wayback Machine:

Regardless of who approached whom, Mr. Shilling was clearly willing to enter into a government-guaranteed loan, and spent several months securing the deal. If I'm mischaracterizing Mr. Shillings' political beliefs, I'm happy to be directed to a more thorough examination of his beliefs.

That said, given Mr. Shilling's political background and positions, I would indeed be surprised to learn he believes that government should take an active role in funding and guaranteeing loans to private enterprise, on principle.

"There can be no question our country is in the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. I also think there can be no question that it falls on us, the individuals, to find a way out of our own personal crisis." - Curt Schilling

It well and truly stinks that this man was ever allowed within ten feet of public funding in the first place. Even more confusing, though, is that he even pursued public funding in the first place.

It's enough to make one think that he never really believed the anti-gubmit pablum he was spouting in the first place.

Apple's perfected their time machine, then, because "wait, there are other phones?" is one of the (several) "joke" responses I got from asking "what's the best smartphone?" on the 4S launch day, amongst other responses like "the one you're holding."

Two minutes on Google backs this up.

C'mon, people. It isn't that hard.

One set of grandparents live in Washington State. Another set of grandparents live in Iowa. Even if we were able to pack up and move, we can't live in two states at once.

I agree with you very earnestly on one point: there are all sorts of things that responsible adults need to balance in their lives, and living close to family is one of those things. My wife and I have other priorities in life that we work to balance against, with one in particular being of note: my wife just spent seven years working her fingers off to earn a Ph.D. in biochemical, molecular and cellular biology. As wonderful as it would be to live close to either set of grandparents, neither set lives in an area with a strong presence in the biological sciences. Thus, to move closer to one set of grandparents, my wife would need to essentially abandon a decade's worth of highly specialized, extremely valuable learning. This would be an enormous waste of time, money, work, and talent, and it isn't something we're eager to do. Even if we did decide to abandon her career, though, we'd still be stuck half a continent from the other set of grandparents.

So yes, we Skype as a family with grandma and grandpa for long periods, several times a week. It's a suboptimal solution to a problem with no optimal solution; no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to avoid having to Skype with the grandparents. You are, of course, free to judge us for the decisions we've made, as is your right. For my part, I'll probably continue to call you out as a sanctimonious, simple-minded ass who would rather denigrate the lives and choices of others than grant other grown adults the benefit of the doubt and start from the premise that they're not whiny, spoiled idiots.

As is my right.

There are a lot of 1984/Truman Show/No Real Parent posts on this thread. Folks, understand that for some families, grandma and grandpa are a time zone away at best, and a grandkid is lucky to see her grandparents in person once a year, if that. Skype/videophone is a fantastic way to help bridge that gap. My parents can read our daughter stories. My wife's parents can sing songs with our daughter. They can see each other and interact in ways that you just can't do over the phone or with text.

Our kid is lucky--she gets to see each set of grandparents in person about twice a year. For the stretches between those times, though, she can still visit with them over Skype. It's far from perfect, but it's a huge leap ahead of a phone call, and helps all sides of the family feel closer.

You wouldn't mock people for calling their parents to let their kid talk to grandma and grandpa over the phone. Why the special hate for the extra level of closeness?

Build a simple, flat wooden box with an opening at the back that you can slide the laptop keyboard into. Add vent holes if necessary. Affix a cheap keyboard to the top if your kid tries to take off the box to get at the laptop keyboard.

"Everyone: You're Being Replaced By Software"
From the and-by-small-purpose-built-robots dept.