Mr. Carrey? Is that you?

Funny, I've been using Linux to check out e-books from my local library for several months, at least. And B&N's DRM is just as easily defeatable as the ADEPT scheme. Please don't bother posting ignorant comments unless you've bothered to do a rudimentary search first. Hell, the page where you get the info for removing B&N DRM? It's the same as for removing ADEPT! Not to mention there are plugins for Calibre that make it a simple matter of dragging and dropping the DRMed files into Calibre, and getting wonderful DRM-free files out the other side, nicely organized, too.

Oh come on, it's not like everyone doesn't already know your real name. Just switch to Anakin Skywalker...

Of course not! Due process is a laugh, the court of public opinion is the only thing that matters anymore.

And for the life of me, even I can't tell if that's supposed to be sarcastic or not. Makes me a sad monkey.

You can always grab the ePub for that same $1 and use Calibre to convert it to a format the Kindle can use. I just bought it myself, looks great on my Nook.

Oh, absolutely no argument, HDDs are, if not more reliable, certainly faster than writable optical media, regardless of whether it's CD, DVD, or BD. My biggest issue was that you said HDDs were far cheaper per GB, which isn't really accurate. The benefit is that a HDD or USB flash drive is rewritable, but I definitely see a market for BD-R, especially as (or, I suppose, *if*) discs come down in price. This was about the cost for CD-Rs in their infancy if I remember right, and I probably don't. DVD-R as well. Dual-layer discs will likely continue to cost more than twice what single-layer discs do, unfortunately.

Oh, citations.

http://www.amazon.com/Optical-Quantum-Blu-ray-Single-Layer-Recordable/dp/B002LU80QS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308884257&sr=8-1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817130187&cm_re=bd-r-_-17-130-187-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817501067&cm_re=bd-r-_-17-501-067-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118049&cm_re=bd-r-_-27-118-049-_-Product

Verbatim discs seem to be a little more expensive, but not drastically so. One of those is a cheaper brand that comes in at exactly $1/disc but still gets positive reviews. Drives are still fairly expensive at this point, but not nearly as bad as one might expect.

Going rate from a quick look is ~$1/disc for BD-R. 25GB. that's $40 to equal your sub-$100 1TB drive (usually around $70 or so), and 1/20 the price of that 16GB usb drive for 9 extra GB. Sure, it's not rewritable, but it's a whole lot cheaper than you're making it out to be. Yes, it's still a decent stack of BD-Rs if you're backing up a 1TB drive, but try using DVD-R and see how long that takes. It's not pretty at all. BD-R is being adopted faster than you think. Now I just need to get my hands on one.

Two things that you don't seem to realize:
1) Development on Synaptic seems to have stopped already, or at least slowed way down. http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/ gives the last update as January 2009. However, I believe Debian has adopted it and maintains it. It hasn't changed enough to make a difference in that timeframe outside of bugfixes, at least that I can see.

2) USC has been the *default* package manager since 10.04, though Synaptic still shipped. (see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareCenterFAQ)

It really isn't that much of a hardship to drop Synaptic from the default install, as useful as it may be. The people that want it know where to get it, myself included.

Actually they did need the space: Deja Dup was just added as an included backup package. So they may have planned to drop it for quite some time, but they're at least replacing it with something useful.

And of course, as everyone and their dog points out, Synaptic is only an apt-get away if one really needs it.

Again, what does the status bar provide that the add-on bar does not? You keep talking about features and how the status bar going away is so horrible, but you haven't actually given any reason why.

Yeah, I don't see how that's an issue. In fact, I see it as a plus (using overlays for displaying addresses) when vertical real-estate is at a premium. The add-on bar is *part* of Firefox 4, and i don't see what it doesn't do that the status bar did.

Just out of curiosity, what "needed" features were stripped from 3.6.x?

Congratulations, you've recreated the alt.* hierarchy on usenet!

Forgot to mention, they *did* do the theme song for Malcolm in the Middle ("Boss of Me").