230V is superior to 120V because you don't need to push as many amps down the power cable. Amps are what kills you, not volts.

I wouldn't expect a creationist to understand.

That's only the cheapest path because all phones use it now... because it was mandated by the EU. Prior to that the "cheapest" (or more likely, most profitable) path was proprietary, which is why everyone did it pre-mandate.

This is why free-market libertarianism is akin to a religion: the arguments are largely based on counterfactual faith.

Your Android phone uses a common charger because the EU mandated all phones use a MicroUSB charger. Apple gets around that by providing an adapter, which I think is free for people in the EU and for a few dollars here in the States.

Your free-market argument is made in ignorance.

No, they don't care.

nobody is saying that you can't dual boot your own hardware, they are just saying they aren't going to sell it like that out of the box, which is their prerogative.

Sure I saw some stuff, but then *wham* I ran into something that will affect me eventually. It's HEROES EARNINGS ASSISTANCE AND RELIEF TAX ACT OF 2008, section 301 that says that if you emigrate FROM the US you have to pay capital gains tax on your possessions.

Did you see the exclusion of the first $600,000 in section 3?

ex: Yahoo, whatsapp, tumblr, Gentoo, etc etc

Given the way Yahoo's site works in recent years, I am not sure that Yahoo isn't descriptive based on the description of the Yahoos in Gulliver's travels.

please indulge me. you said you could run the same setup for 9x less than $120, over 5 years, right? so $120 / 9 = $13, over 5 years is $13 / 5 = $3 per year, right?

i'm no mathologist, but i'm pretty sure the $47 / year in power is already a lot greater than the $3 / year you quoted, right?

you all you did was factor in the cost of the drive itself, that's $50 for a 1TB drive ... that's still $10 / year over 5 years.

Sounds a lot like AGW denial as well, down to the conspiracy theories.

that's a ridiculous comparison. just some of the many, many things you forgot about,

1. a backup mechanism, that probably involves multiple other drives and a computer
2. networking hardware and a broadband connection (if you are talking about parity w/ drive)
3. electricity to power all this stuff 24x7. just the electricity to power the rig is going to be around $20 / month.
4. your time maintaining the whole setup

BS.

give me some references where someone have been prosecuted for child porn for uploading pictures of their own children to a non-shared, non-public account. no? well, i still hope you achieved your goal of scaring some luddites today.

Since at least the Carter administration, liberals have been thinking about the consequences of burning coal and fossil fuels.
Carter put a plan in place to try and get us off these.

Reagan et al pulled all that out, not thinking very far ahead.

and an X Server. And a driver framework for that X Server. And an init system. And....

That's sorta been the problem. Nobody ever stepped in and sorted out a _way_ to do common things. Sure, Microsoft's way isn't always the best. It's full of holes and quirks. But at least it's something. It's sorta like Ruby on Rails. It might not be the best way to write web apps, but it says to you: This is how we do it. Period. So you don't have to support 8 different ways of doing the same damn thing...

Not only that, but the discrete graphics cards consume substantial amounts of power and generate more heat than the rest of the device combined.

British Steel, like American Steel, couldn't compete with slave labor. Heck, I shouldn't call them slaves. You _own_ a slave, so you at least try to keep it running. Chinese Workers have even less value.