Hawkeye.. Hawkeye Pierce? ;)

Most secure?

Burn it. End of story.
Nobody is likely to be extracting your precious data off a melted glob of plastic covered in carbon.

As an alternative, for those who are ambitions... Shred it, shred it again, microwave the shreds, then burn the microwaved shreds as well as the microwave. ( if it has not already caught fire )

It's a trifle cheaper to just burn it. @_@

Well, Ill list my own build as an example then
x6 CPU - $200
4 sticks of DDR3 RAM, $160
Motherboard - $130
600 Watt PSU - $100
2, 1TB drives - $200
Case - $60
Optical Drive - $30
Temperature monitor and fan controller - $60
Video card - $255
CPU cooler and GPU cooler - $90
Various fans, cables and extra doodads - $50

There we have a rig that is built with the intent of lasting for the next five years, with a total of $1135.
But Wait! There's more! Government Sales Tax, Provincial Sales tax ( 10% ) - $113.5
Shipping - $70

Bringing us to a total of $1318.5, though all the prices were rounded to the nearest five or ten. So you can add or subtract another $40.

Want to add monitors and peripherals? go for it.

It's nice being able to run everything you throw at it.
I personally set my standards at a point in which my machine is not being destroyed by new software or games that come out after I buy it, as well as buying parts that are interchangeable with the -new- products on the market, ensuring Forward compatibility. It's somewhat like buying the most expensive AGP board when everybody else has moved to PCI-e, and then trying to upgrade. It's going to cost more than it would if the extra money was just spent on the PCI-e board. ( though those are quite cheap now )

Perfectly true. The only problem I would see is a potentially outdated box with an AGP slot and nothing more than DDR RAM, but the number of old boxes is falling.
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Most console gamers I know have never even thought about upgradeability, or about their console becoming outdated.
Most any PC gamer, on the other hand, knows that the second their machine is starting to lack, they can generally upgrade a few parts to bring it back into the pack.
Spend 1200 bucks to put a nice rig together, and slap a new $100 to $200 video card in it every four years. If you ever decide that you want a whole new box, that old machine is still good for something else, unlike a console.

Better yet, one great thing about PCs is the rate prices drop for new parts. If you're not worried about having the most powerful machine *now,* then wait a few months till a few new video cards and CPUs come out. Next thing you know, you're buying those expensive parts you wanted for less than the ones you already have. This makes it fairly easy to keep a decent gaming machine going for a long time.

On the topic of PC controls VS console controllers, I had my friend over who is absolutely obsessed with MW2, he's also an Xbox fan-boy and thinks himself a pro.

I set up a multi-player game between the both of us on two PCs. We plugged a controller into the box he was using, and I played with my mouse and keyboard on my box. His ass was thoroughly kicked, to say the least.

There were a few key things I noticed when I played that match. Slow movements, lots shots trailing behind me ( his running target ) and VERY poor aiming regarding close combat. There were no *spur of the moment* times where he spun around and fired a perfect shot.

I'd personally always stick with the mouse, as when you move the mouse a set *distance*, your view in-game will rotate an amount proportional to that distance moved. So one swift movement can point you in the direction you want.
A joystick on the other hand deals with a movement *speed* and *direction* and thus amount your joystick moves merely influences rotation, while the time held influences direction.
The mouse in my opinion is far more straight forward, intuitive, and overall more functional, though I am not saying that people cannot achieve equal levels of accuracy with a joystick.

I've always wanted the ability to record my dreams. There is some pretty freaky stuff in there, but there's also some stuff I'd like to keep, and review. ;)
Perhaps.. some day..

On the same subject, at the speed this stuff happens in our little minds, we'd probably need some pretty fast storage devices, or a large array of them to keep up.

As for the sharing of thoughts, it would be nice, but no doubt we'd be bombarded with advertising right off the bat. Better be a good way to turn it off or keep things private.

Been there. In the middle of winter with days lasting less than 8 hours and temps below -30C, a light above the door is generally quite nice. Find the door, unlock it, get your ass inside; but by the time it gets bright enough to see you've already fallen and clubbed your head on something hard. I imagine whoever proposed this ban lives somewhere with nice clean power, and a temperature that never drops below 20.

I hope nobody has to start smuggling light-bulbs through some tunnel under the boarder. ;)

What would help the LED bulbs would be a tinted diffuser of sorts, to make the light look more natural and soften it up. One of the reason's I'd never want to switch from Incandescents is the soft warm lighting they give off. These fluorescents just don't cut it either, I've had more CFLs blow up here due to cheap circuitry than any other light I've ever used. One a side note, what ever will become of the heat-lamps that the chickens love so very much?

With a temperature of negative forty seven.. and me being a person who doesn't like the cold, or snow.. It's pretty bad here. ;)

As a student myself, I've been taught little more than.. well, I haven't been taught anything. For six years we had nothing more than 'typing' classes which didn't do a lick of good for the most part for the student body. Following that, they would teach things such as Power point, MsWord, and using spreadsheets. If your lucky you'd get a bit of PS in there, but the teacher knew less than most students who'd never used it before. ( If that says anything at all ) In general, all this builds up a very negative image about computer classes in a student's mind. When you finally get to stop typing drills by tenth grade. There are classes offered for C++ here, but they offer very little. One learns to make a very simple application, which is basically a calculator with text boxes. I found that insulting considering I taught myself C++, and I was hoping to actually learn something beyond the bare basics. If they wanted to grab hold of a students interest ( at least a student like myself ) they could offer a 3D graphics design class of some sort. There's many students with great ideas, and given the tools they could express their ideas in more than two dimensions. Along side that, there are many application suites that are powerful, free, and full of documentation for schools to use. A school could teach the use of UDK, for example. With the amount of effort required to get stunning visuals, it would likely catch the eye of many students. It wouldn't be hard to remove the guns either, if that is a problem. ;) The teaching of the engine, could also create possible job opportunities in the future for some students, considering how widely used the engine is.