Hear the story direct from Backblaze (bonus: goes into more detail).

So in other words, you refused the "bad" opioid oxycodone by instead being given hydromorphone.

Uh... right.

Well just so long as you stand up for your principles I suppose.

Ok, then; how about "Good luck finding a laptop that you can upgrade anything but the main drive and perhaps the RAM. And even the SSD in the MBPwRD is theoretically upgradeable, since it is on a subassembly with a connector.

The T and W-series ThinkPads have socketed CPUs.

And the displays can be upgraded.

And the drive is removable, so you can add Blu-Ray or whatever you'd like.

And Lenovo publishes complete manuals with step-by-step instructions detailing how to disassemble everything and how to replace pretty much any part (along with a list of the FRU numbers for said parts.)

And they let you order individual parts (or you can just get them from any number of third party suppliers.)

And replacing CRUs doesn't void the warranty.

Your turn.

All the old stuff is better. They just don't make it like they used to. Why back in $YEAR, they were durable and built to last, now $COMPANY's really gone down the drain...

Or maybe that's just nostalgia... I always get those things confused.

The "did the Model M quality drop" issue has been covered in depth at Geekhack and other places, and apart from a reduction of the metal back plate by (IIRC) a couple hundred grams, there aren't any substantial differences. (There was also a change in plastic makeup, for what people speculated to be regulatory reasons, but that's about it.) The reduction in weight corresponded in some people's minds -- yours included, apparently -- to a "reduction" in durability, but that's psychological. People perceive heavier things as being sturdier; it's the same reason why some audiophile companies add weights to their products.

For me the reason to get a Unicomp board in addition to my used Ms was simple:

Unicomp 0) still makes durable, reliable keyboards 1) actively employs people in the US 2) offers a warranty and repairs any Model M you bring them. None of those things are true if you buy a used Model M.

Rand Paul != Ron Paul.

More importantly, Rand Paul !== Ron Paul.

Your assertion that he's failed as a representative assumes that the only goal of a representative is to pass as many new laws as possible.

Parts of the whole "checks and balances" thing is that some people need to act as the checks.

Counterpoint: we now have advanced composite materials that are a hell of a lot better than wood and all sorts of wiring designs that are more efficient, safer, and generally better than what we used in the 70s.

And yet most new houses have at least a wooden frame and still have three-prong good ol' 120VAC outlets throughout.

Why do you think that is?

And before you say that's not a fair comparison, look at it this way: you can't change the electrical system without breaking compatibility and pissing off a lot of homeowners, and wood's usually good enough to get the job done.

Both reasons apply to PHP.

(Conterpoint to counterpoint: wood can easily go up in flames, and 120VAC is dangerous when used by children. Both of these points *also* apply to PHP.)

Which is a good start, but since AMD doesn't sell laptops or desktops, it's nowhere near enough.

We need buy-in from the mobo makers at a minimum (so that we at least have the option of going the DIY route), but realistically we're going to want some laptop or desktop vendors to start shipping boxes with CoreBoot... which in turn won't likely happen until said board makers make the option available. We're never gonna get the big guys (Dell, Lenovo, etc.) on board -- but if we get some board makers to ship with CoreBoot than the boutique vendors like Puget Systems might ship CoreBoot boards in some of their products.

Well he could be mostly right, actually.

Yes, the kernel and BSD userland are very, very similar, but once you move up the stack towards Cocoa there are actually quite a lot of differences. It's not as simple as s/NS/UI/ on the class names, case in point: JWZ's efforts to port Dali Clock.

Yeah, the US is horrible, etc. Got it.

Of course we have less-abusive providers too. Virgin Mobile provides unlimited everything for 55 USD/month. Boost Mobile offers unlimited everything for 50 USD/month scaling down to 40/month after 18 months. Page Plus Cellular provides unlimited talk and text and 2 GB of data -- on Verizon's network, no less -- for 40 USD/month.

Those are just three random MVNOs -- there's plenty more with similar or better pricing (such as Simple Talk, a T-Mobile MVNO, one of a few pushed by WalMart). There's also Cricket, iWireless, and plenty of other regional carriers (most of which have roaming agreements with at least one of the big three). All with no yearly contract.

The smart of us aren't getting "screwed up the ass". It's the ones silly enough to lock themselves into a contract with one of the big three that get screwed.

Yeah, as minimal as possible.

Note the minimal, bohemian lifestyle demonstrated in the linked picture.

He also purchased 20,000+ square feet of house in what I assume must have been a demonstration against the evils of capitalism, right?

Have you ever been so far as to wanting the Microsoft needful search? With JavaScript, you will experience the very social!

As modern Internet Explorer browser and functionality such as JavaScript support, download and try requested site again. ...

Yeah. About that... I'll leave NoScript on, thanks. :D

Come again?

What "family values" are these? If you're talking about the educational values of "yes, your child *can* and will fail if he doesn't work" or "no, we're not going to change his grades because you bitched about it", then I'm with you.

If, on the other hand, you're using "family values" in the way that many "Republican" candidates have... I'm not so sure that's the root problem.

I was about to comment with a similar slam of iOS by linking to the bug tracker and source repository for it, but then I realized that Radar (Apple's bug tracker) is private, and iOS is closed source.

Funny isn't it. When iOS development is in question, $99 to join the developer programme is too much money. But when it's Android, spending $thousands on test hardware is neither here nor there. It's even waved away with fantasies of free test hardware for developers.

Or, alternatively, it's possible that *both* are too much for some low levels of hobbyist developer. The difference is that the Android cost isn't a barrier to entry for version 1.0 by the "bedroom programmer" types.

A lot of good software starts as "some dude writing a program to do that thing that he needs" and goes from there. If he has to pay $99 just to scratch that itch, he might just learn to ignore it. If he's got an Android phone, writing and publishing an app to "scratch his itch" is as simple as grabbing the SDK and firing up Eclipse.

It's important to distinguish between a platform's appeal to the entrepreneurial "professional mobile start-up" types and the classic, "I'm releasing this because it might be useful to you" types. I'd hope that the latter resembles many of us on /. For these people, several large on hardware isn't realistic -- we write what we need for our device and release it so that it might help somebody else. And yeah, for that, $99 often too much.