On the other hand, it is really hard to be cutting edge and innovative when you spend almost all of your time and resources reinventing and maintaining your own versions of the wheel. Design patterns have important uses no matter the area of software, but it takes wisdom to tell the difference when a DP makes sense and when it doesn't.

You can thank budget cuts for that. You want a smaller defense budget? You get COTS(off the shelf parts) being built into critical areas. Where does COTS hardware come from? China, Taiwan, other places with little oversite or design quality control.

You end up with this, a COTS FPGA with a backdoor. We see this kind of thing all the time on SSD controllers.

Maybe Russia has more access to middle eastern states that play nice with Russia than the U.S./Europe and their ties with Israel do?

Really, the biggest difference between laptops is the brand. Typically, more expensive laptops are better built laptops.

Dells tend to break after a year. HP's, 6 months if you do anything other than leave them in one spot on your desk, a year otherwise.

Lenovo's are basically rebranded IBMs, and are typically decently constructed. I've had good luck with Fujitsu as well, but only for their tablet notebooks (higher end).

Mac's are higher priced, and higher end, but are also built well.

Once you've figured out what brand you are buying, then the rest should be easier.

You can go with a desktop type processor (AMD Phenom/Intel I5) or a more mobile oriented processor (AMD Turion/Intel Atom), with the tradeoff being that typically higher power CPUs make your battery life short. On the higher power processor side, you can usually shop around for a discrete graphics card model, which would allow you some limited videogame playing.

From there, the options are usually HDD speeds and sizes (7200 RPM being fast, but power hungry, 5400 RPM being slow, but good battery life, and SSD being fast, good battery life, but small in space), screen size ( > size == > bulk/weight), and RAM/memory (less practicality for more RAM, and laptop RAM is usually much higher priced per GB).

So it depends on what you want to do.

If you intend to use it mostly on travel, pick one with a mobile style processor, a moderately sized SSD (maybe 32GB-64GB, with Linux, 128GB+ with Windows 7), and a smaller screen size/lighter weight.

If you intend to use it mostly as a desktop replacement, pick one with a good processor (Phenom/I5/I7), a nice sized 7200 RPM HDD (300+GB), a discrete graphics card, and a large screen.

And of course, one that fits your budget (which you should probably increase).

I hope that helps a little bit in explaining the options.

We ban what some faction of the gov't or interest group can convince the public should be banned. There was a push in the 50s to ban rock and roll, but the lack of public support killed that idea.

Bee population die-offs have been causually linked to the systemic pesticides that some GMO crops have been bred to produce. Effectively, the pesticides are a neurotoxin, and traces of the toxin in the nectar bees feed on cause them to slowly "go crazy", breaking down the social structure before abandoning their hives.

So you are correct that it isn't cause by roundup ready crops, but rather some of Monsanto's other products. The roundup ready controversy stems from the treatment of farmers that dont ise roundup ready crops by serving them patent lawsuits when cross pollination occurs naturally.

Right, and the people who jumped off the burning and collapsing Twin Towers did so because they were cowards and chose not to seek help? The world isn't black and white, and you don't know shit about it.

I see it as a sign of the times. 30 years ago, in the depths of the Cold War, of course the US would acknowledge one of their own, a born and bred American, over a competitor from a Soviet bloc country.

I dont know why you are using the UK as the standard... being that it is the only country I'm aware of that still uses the "stone" as a unit of weight measurement.

It is only good business... why would you wait until you are screwed to do anything about it? It is far better to grab spectrum and use up what you have until you can get more, than force yourself to stop providing until you can expand. Telcoms might be evil, but they aren't idiots.