I think it depends. If it is a low-risk procedure with some tangible benefits, why not? However, if it is about getting a few years more out of your body, then I am inclined to agree. There was an epidose of Outer Limits (the 90s series) with a rich man who refused to die, and constantly underwent medical procedures to squeeze out a little more life. Eventually death itself came knocking to finish the job, feeling a little cheated.

The Doctor tends to use different kinds of medicine. Stashed in a strange blue box.

Your point being? If I suffer excruciating pain, and tell my family to let me die, then I *am* making a choice how I want to die, am I not?
Or are you confusing this with a DNR? The point of the DNR is to let you die in case you cannot choose anymore, for example because you are essentially braindead. But again, you make a choice.

You are right about virtual desktops, but wrong about the start menu.

When you use maximized application windows (which is how windows are used 90% of the time), you cannot access that nice floating menu anymore. You could turn one of the corners or edges of the screen in a zone where the menu always pops up, but what is the point of a context menu then?

In addition, the task bar shows you what's there: a start menu and the tasks. This is hidden in Windowmaker-style interfaces. Oh, and the taskbar is an efficient way of switching between tasks and having these tasks listed at the same time.

In addition, the start menu button is a fixed place, facilitating muscle memory. No matter what you are doing, you always know how to get access to the main desktop functionalities. You always have an "exit path", a way to regain control over the system.

Important things should always be visible and easily accessible. Main menu and the list of tasks are two such things.

So you would gladly return to the bulky and unwieldy handhelds from the '80s and '90s? 3 lbs are not decent. HANDhelds should not tire your arm. Besides, you are forgetting about power density here. More battery mass/volume does not automatically mean higher power density.

But hey, here are some cellphones for you, manliest of men: http://www.lifelounge.com.au/resources/IMGTHUMB/Cell-clutch.jpg http://www.oaktreevintage.com/web_photos/Telephones/Radio-Shack_17-1003_Portable_Cell_Phone_Web.jpg

Indeed. This is totally insane. You'd expect some heavy-duty stuff like CGI rendering, finite element simulations, medical imaging (voxel grids), video authoring to be the kind of software that requires 64 bit. And then somebody mentions that we also need the 64 bit machine for building firefox.

Sheesh, I can even build an entire toolchain plus rootfs using something like OpenEmbedded on a 32 bit box, which gives me a complete system for an embedded device, plus user interfaces, video codecs, player software, ...

The problem with electric cars has always been energy storage. This technology segment sucks overall, not just for electric cars. Just look at smartphones, laptops, tablets. Battery is always the problem.

Their range is enough for most commutes, which tend to be rather short. This is especially true inside major cities.
I agree that batteries appear to be a dead end. I hope for breakthroughs in the supercapacitor segment. It also involves much fewer hazardous materials.
But consider that the fuel cell is an overall game changer. The electrical engine is vastly superior to the ICE, energy storage has always been the actual problem of electric cars. But with the fuel cell, you can actually use existing gasoline as the energy source. This decouples the actual engine from the energy source; should other energy sources become viable, all that is needed is a different kind of fuel cell, or some new fancy supercapacitor etc. Right now, cars are pretty inflexible - when gasoline becomes overly expensive, you can throw away the engine, which often means throwing away the entire car.

I tend to agree, however, keep in mind:
Silicon is abundant. Highly pure silicon is not. You need the latter for microchips.

Problems due to windows updates exist, and are next to impossible to fix on your own. You better hope Microsoft has a hotfix for that. At least, with Ubuntu, there is a chance somebody came up with a messy solution.