Tax collection cooperation between countries to moot jurisdictional issues would be a way to handle it as well. For the remaining countries, there's always the military & intelligence departments of a large country, such as the US or Australia.

Men and women have faults, does God as well?

The quote I posted was from the Qur'an.

We see slow ongoing changes in the fossil record but there is no shortage of "flood" events. Where we see rapid change as well. Many species becoming extinct and rapid changes in others.

Evolution is one chapter in the book of life, it is not the whole story.

The logic of "Genesis didn't tell us about this" is weak. What do people expect to be told about their origins by the Creator?

It's not covered by Genesis. There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God.

[6.6] Do they not consider how many a generation We have destroyed before them, whom We had established in the earth as We have not established you, and We sent the clouds pouring rain on them in abundance, and We made the rivers to flow beneath them, then We destroyed them on account of their faults and raised up after them another generation.

Guess he was reading the wrong books. And BTW God doesn't have lips, He is the Creator of lips.

Select between Lenovo(Thinkpad) and Apple refurbished, then drill down to whatever models fit the criteria. Then do a favor for them and get them to have the longest warranty obtainable. For Lenovo, this would be 5-year(?, maximum may be 4) onsite service. For Apple, whatever Applecare does is going to have to do.

Either company has some thin and stylish laptops in that price range. Lenovo just happens to make them more maintenance friendly.

Except for that... you know... that whole Android thing. You can drop a couple million here and there on dead end projects if one occasionally turns around and suddenly becomes the largest OS on the fast growing type of device (mobile). Google sucked the air out of the room for anyone doing maps, e-mail, web browsing, and now mobile devices. That isn't to suggest that there are not worthy competitors in all fields, but Google is a god damn gorilla in each and makes its competitors fight tooth and nail.

Google dumps money into pie in the sky R&D. Most of the time it fails miserably as that sort of things tends to do, but when it wins, it WINS. Google is clearly thinking ahead. They saw mobile coming and got their shit together in time to claim the lions share of the market, something Microsoft and Nokia utterly failed to do despite being in a vastly superior positions to do it.

Google's history in R&D is a jerk off fantasy for anyone who does that sort of work. Mobile is an excellent example because Google wasn't just doing mobile. Google was also doing ChromeOS. Why ChromeOS? Google was doing ChromeOS because it covered its bases, didn't truly know what the "next" thing was, and so had plates spinning for everything. If netbooks had ended up being the next big thing, Google would have been ready. It turned out that the answer was mobile, and ChromeOS faded out. That doesn't make ChromeOS a failure. A failure would have to have picked netbooks over mobile and watched as mobile won. A failure would have been to pick mobile and see netbooks win. Victory is picking both, having one of those investments be a minor waste and having the other investment consume market share like it was their job (which I suppose it is).

I am sure that Google is going to slip from their throne and fall someday when technology takes one hard right turn or another. It is inevitable. Everyone fades or fails eventually. That said, I wouldn't be one to bet against Google any time soon. I for one know I would be doing a lot more browsing on the 'tubes if someone offered me up an autonomous car and then used a pile of dark fiber to line the roads with data connections...

On those problems:
CPU: Overclocking can fix that.
Battery: Double-size batteries do exist for the N900, extending the lifetime to a more friendly 8 hours.
Software Support: CSSU, since it does a lot better than the N770/N8x0 days where neither had it.
Upgrade path: The N9, or thank Elop for removing the possibility for future Meego models.