Well said. Paying of the mortgage was my priority, and I now live mortgage free. That is a big pay rise in itself and a lot to not worry about ever again.

The single problem with this submission as a slashdot story is that it cannot provoke debate, because there is none.

They may need to boot the PC before flashing it; and possible accept a stinking EULA before they get the chance to flash it

This is why I laugh at small print which says "This DVD was sold subject to the condition that..." because it very well wasn't!

I'm wasting my mods to endorse your point with experience.

The local catholic school to me stands out for NOT teaching children to pass tests and meet standards, but teaching learning and understanding.
The local public school teaches to pass tests and meet standards.

Why the difference? The catholic school has plenty of demand for it's services from catholics and so will not "run out of students" or "fall into poor reputation" and so it can teach for learning and knowledge without any risks to the school itself.

The public school is subject to mass-migration of children whose parents* will not send their children to a school that is "doing poorly". Therefore if it does not meet standards as measured by test results it would close down within years. Thus it teaches to "test results" first and for learning as a second.

(*Parents who look at test results rather than teaching quality are exhibiting poor reasoning skills)

So now all the PC manufacturers need a non-MS alternative... this could be the year... sounds good for EFI being able to boot linux after all!

If they KNOW you do it, maybe they try it to make sure you did it, KNOWING you would talk about them for trying just like they used to. To provide you with the last laugh by checking up on you.

Not only do congress regularly pass bills that most of them haven't read (https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/rtba/), they want to make sure that no-one else can read them first either!

The hard part was finding an experiment where they could use the phrase "offload some of that workload to a computer" without a needing cogitative brain interface for the experiment.

I've not seen it put more concisely than that yet - well done.

In relation to your second line: Practice of science is more engineering that science -
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.

Clearly the human body sets strict targets for pathogens identified and the immune system is pushed to find enough pathogens, even finding subversive and insurgents among friendly substances, even in itself, if that is what is required to meet the targets.

We see the same thing in the operation of government and security forces. We see similar bad behaviour as education and health systems struggle to meet centrally set targets and commence a path of undesirable behaviour in order to meet the target and obtain the incentive.

Just like I have to pay licensing costs for windows whether I like it or not, thanks to the deal MS strikes with most manufacturers.

MS don't mind making the hardware vendors pay a windows tax on each PC they ship without windows, but MS don't want to pay the DVD tax. Hmm.

"In that case the person needs to sit down and think hard about his choice to live where he does."

Subsidy of country living is what makes country housing so expensive for the people who can barely afford to live there.

When there is no broadband and bus service then the price of country housing will go down.

City dwellers who can't afford country housing wonder why they have to subsidise those who do have that enjoyment.

Officer, I can't have been doing 60 miles per hour, I only left home 15 minutes ago