(1)+(2) I don't think Dell manufactures components but they design their own motherboards, cases, etc and assemble everything. That's a lot different from just reselling stuff. AMD sold the manufacturing part of its business a while ago, they basically just design chips now which is not that dissimilar to Dell's situation.

(3) They could save money by using their own chip designs rather than paying a third party like they do at the moment. I think the biggest gain would be in custom chips for storage/networking kit. I do agree about the investment part though. And selling x86 chips and GPUs isn't their area, especially becuase of the monopoly claims it''s bound to cause.

Overall I think there are some benefits but it's probably not a good idea.

I agree, although I'd settle for a way to collapse it down to just the slashdot logo in the corner. The grey padding at the top needs to go too. This might be ok on a modern high-res desktop machine but on my netbook I want the maximum screen space possible for content.

To be fair, they were the target of 4chan so death threats are par for the course.

On such an epic journey he'd no doubt decide to document the experience by creating a map of all the cities he'd visited. To make it more appealing, he'd probably want to colour in the cities. Of course, it would look odd if two adjacent cities had the same colour...

You can get "Adblock Plus Pop-up Addon" which will allow you to manually block specific popups.

The problem is that the banks that failed were massive and would have taken the rest of the economy with them. You basically have a choice of regulating the size of the banks and letting them fail or removing regulation and potentially having to bail them out. Either way, an unadulterated free market won't work.

Super conducting cables?

I would say put the data in the database too. It doesn't have to be relational, you can use BLOBs. It has the following benefits:

• You can use transactions on both the metadata and the data
• Backing up the database backs up everything in one go
• You can easily set up standby systems that mirror the whole database consistently
• It makes writing applications easier, anything that can talk to the database can get at the data. No messing around with mounts or file servers
• You can use a single security model. Most databases support a decent access rights system

Apparently, according to teh interwebs, you can apply to become a "partner" and share in ad revenue.

That sounds expensive.

This is the same kind of "reassurance" we were given about terrorism legislation which has been used to detain dog walkers and screw over Iceland.

An apples to apples (no pun intended) comparison would incorporate the Adobe Creative Suite price into the cost of the Mac Mini as well.

When the choices are some elaborate disinformation campaign and someone (like everyone at some point) fucking up and deciding encryption wasn't required - I know what I would say the more likely choice is.

You need to actually think about the reason for fines. It is supposed to be a punishment that is significant enough to make you not want to break the law again. If the fines are fixed and you are rich then the punishment is actually less because the amount of money is worth less to you.

This system is designed to right the wrong you describe, giving a poor guy a harsher punishment.

In the UK we have points and a fine, although the fine is probably fixed. Personally, I think points are good for giving people a bit of leeway before revoking their license but fines are better for stopping people who will just speed until they're up to the last point. Getting a point doesn't directly cause you any hassle so it won't be as effective as a deterrent.

Why wouldn't they just sell off most of their land, make a fortune and build a big meat factory?