As other people have said, the advantage is speed.

Of course nobody is expecting this tech to replace silicon based chips anytime soon. There's obviously a lot of R&D to be done and, let's face it, nothing may EVER come of it. That's just how science is. We don't know in advance what theories and tech will pan out.

As for leakage between structures? I'm willing to bet we don't need perfect isolation. Just enough isolation that the interference is predictable. (Much like electrons in silicon...)

The comment was meant to be sarcastic, to point out that suggesting a system with a 4-5 year support cycle to someone who has hung on to an XP system since 2001 is a fairly silly suggestion. (And to be fair, Apple has gotten a fair bit better about support cycles lately. Maverics and Mountain Lion run on Macs from 2007. Lion will get you back to 2006, though I don't imagine that one is long for the world.)

The only way I know of to accomplish that feat involves a few parts from your favorite computer parts retailer, a visit to the OSx86 project and a lot of dremelling.

Indeed. In fact, just the other day I updated my Mac OS 9.2.2 G3 to Mac OS X 10.9.

I really don't understand why Microsoft is so quick on the draw to kill off their old products with no warning and alienate their customers.

The RadioShack near my school had a large selection of components, including some old-school 74-series ICs. (74AHCxx, if memory serves, but still.) There were very likely catering to CE/EE students who needed parts.

I have not seen a RadioShack since then that wasn't 97% consumer electronics with a few bins of parts at the very back. My usual RadioSshack visit goes like this:

1. Walk in.
2. Walk past all the cell phones. (1/2 of the store, usually.)
3. Walk past all the cell phone accessories. (Another 1/6th or so.)
4. Walk past all two or so blu-ray players and TVs they sell.
5. Go into one of the three alcoves that the parts and Arduino stuff are consigned to. (One of the others is consumer electronics, the other is audio gear and cables.)
6. Don't find what I need.
7. Walk out.
8. Order the part on Amazon/SparkFun/DigiKey/Mouser

sudo ln -s /bin/false /bin/cake

Having had the misfortune of using the infotainment centers in some modern cars, that's a fair point.

That would be if the Windows Update team designed it, yes.

It would also idle for half an hour while the update installed.

I can see this being useful for people who get to work at 9AM and stay at work all day until 6PM.

"My car will be at [business address] between the hours of 9AM and 6PM. It is a [color] [year] [make] [model] with tags [tag number]."

Is this better than having a parcel dropbox at home? No.
Is this better than having them leave it with the leasing office? No.
Is this better than having them ship it to you at work? No.

But not everyone has those things.

Correct. You flash the gapps and some of them are installed as system applications. However, since CyanogenMod has root and busybox built in, it's fairly trivial to remove unwanted system apps.

Terminal Emulator
$ su
# cd /system/app
# rm [app you want to remove].apk

Maybe, but considering that Google pulled the exact same trick, I think they're probably wise it.

Maybe the carriers think they can strong-arm Canonical into doing their bidding a bit more than they can Apple or Google, but I doubt that will be a selling point in the long run.

Do it. The S3 is well supported, if you're willing to put in the initial legwork. Other than a random bit of bluetooth flakiness (which seems to be mostly resolved with 10.2,) I've had no problems with it.

If you're brave enough to try the CM11 milestone releases (I am not,) make sure you have a sufficiently new radio and recovery flash.

Not that I would call Apple and Google *good* stewards of their mobile ecosystems, but they've done a lot better job of it than the carriers ever did.

"We'll let you do whatever you want, so long as you let us watch and sell the resulting data to advertisers."
"We'll let you do a small amount of things that we'll charge you a premium for every time you use it. And also, we'll lock out phone features like GPS from third party apps (what few there are) so there's no competition." (VZNavigator?)

Neither are great choices, but I know which I'd choose.

Yeah, really.

I mean, I know it's not US carriers yet. But when (if) it is, he's essentially just saying "Ubuntu puts the control back into the hands of Verizon Wireless, at&t, T-Mobile and Sprint."

Sounds like a platform I totally want to sign up for.

Yeah, I saw that. I wasn't surprised. That seems to be the common configuration these days. (AMD is guilty of it, too.)

Fortunately, the days of packing my computers with expansion cards are long gone, anyway.

Won't stop me from make a cheap joke about it, though.

... five expansion slots to fit the fans, this time!