But wouldn't it be harder to boot from USB on a UEFI system? Most UEFI systems that I'm aware of default to Secure Boot with Microsoft keys. On the other hand, I guess people smart enough for beta are smart enough to figure out how to go into UEFI configuration and turn off Secure Boot.

An Anandtech review points out that the integrated GPU in Ivy Bridge (previous generation Intel Core) runs Skyrim playably: 46 fps at 720p. From what I've read about the PS3 port of Skyrim, the PS3 doesn't do much better. And because indie PC games tend to be lower budget, they also tend to be lower detail, which means they just might work on Intel.

An alternate submission links to another article about the use of a Debian base system as well as an unofficial torrent.

Nancy Gohring wrote in the IT World article:

hawguy wrote:

Insane secret, so insane bad.

A computer does what the user says, not what the user means, and I'll grant that there's often a fairly substantial gap between the two. PEBKAC, in essence, means the user isn't saying what he means. It's the job of user experience designers to make it easier for the user to say what he means.

Anonymous Coward was referring to a "city bus", and I took this to mean something like Citilink, as opposed to a motor coach like the Greyhound bus you're talking about. I agree with you that motor coach trips are closer to the same category as an airline flight.

That depends on whether "do something" includes "see if anything important has happened that I need to attend to". E-mail and auctions are among these. Perhaps one workaround that Google could implement would involve not starting apps at boot and instead placing an ongoing notification that other notifications have been delayed for x minutes because apps are waiting to start. Then the user could tap that notification, which would launch all the apps that want to run at boot.

I too have a Linux netbook, but I wonder what I'll replace it with now that netbooks are more or less discontinued.

A flight across Pennsylvania shares airspace with flights from one state to another that cross Pennsylvania (interstate commerce) and with airmail flights (post roads). U.S. courts have for decades interpreted regulating interstate commerce to include protecting interstate commerce from intrastate threats.

Connecting that blade server to other Internet services and to customers and protecting your service from hardware or software failure can become a challenge. "The cloud" (someone else's computer) provides Internet connectivity, failover to a fresh instance, and managed backup.

Insane hard to calculate what your costs will be at any given provider. So insane bad for the bottom line.

The impression I get from the article is that the writer found that infrastructure providers' price models make "picking a vendor appropriate for the task at hand" not the easiest job.

I know, like Austin, Boston, or Seattle. The point of that discussion was that if someone wants to program video games, he needs to move somewhere like Austin, Boston, or Seattle, and get a job there. If he can't, he should get into a trade other than game programming. It's not greater San Francisco vs. rest of world; it's just hotbeds of industry vs. coldbeds.

For one thing, it's not just the noise level. Hearing one side of a conversation tends to annoy the brain more than hearing both sides. For another, seating isn't assigned on public transit.

Grunts of frustration over having to fight with T9 on a phone without a QWERTY keypad have an impact on fellow passengers.

City bus trips tend to be shorter than flights. City bus trips also tend to be far more spontaneous, which often requires arranging a ride from the end of the route to the ultimate destination during the ride as opposed to having arranged it days in advance.