Pre-installed apps are only a value-add to the phone maker. It allows them to sell space to third parties that are willing to pay to get mass distribution of their apps.

Honestly, I'd buy a phone that comes with an empty slate, but only to a certain extent. For example, it probably should come with Google Play Store (and that's about it.)

As an aside: can you imagine if Windows doesn't come with Internet Explorer? How would you download Firefox or Chrome? :-D

Kudos to Google to be able to release so many different products. But bummer that they all eventually die. I guess these are likely the successful personal 20% time projects from their software engineers. And when those engineers move on, no one is left to maintain them...

Back in high school, around 1996, I discovered FreeBSD and Slackware while scouring the USENET.

Installed both in turn on my Packard Bell 486DX2 to check it out. Didn't really know how to use it and didn't know anyone to talk to for questions. But was still excited on the idea of a completely free OS.

A year+ later I was in college and learning about it again, first in intro CS classes, this time using Red Hat and with many knowledgeable peers to learn from. Then I started building and configuring the kernel for my PC (Pentium 233MHz MMX). If I remember, the first kenel I compiled was 2.2.10 or so. Then moved on to Mandrake, Debian, and Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

the difference is, you're mostly anonymous here

It was Compaq that bought DEC.

But HP did bought Compaq a few years later.

Exactly. Engineering is not about finding the biggest hammer and applying it on everything. Even though that will work, but there are other restrictions you must satisfy. Asking what type of file is relevant because those types may already offer its own way to do what you asked.

If all I need is to send an excel file that I want to keep from prying eyes, then putting a password on it would be good enough. I don't want to tell the end user to install PGP or GPG, generate their own key pair, then sending the public key to the recipient, and 10 other steps to get everything set up.

A quick and easy solution is generally better than a general, optimized, but slow to implement solution. Of course there are exceptions to this. If you're building a file sharing service, then using a PKI would be a better solution than depending on Acrobat or Excel's mechanism. But you didn't specify that in your question.

Everyone has their Achille's heel, but that doesn't mean they're bad developers.

There's quite a bit of rounded edges on that ship. Watch out, Apple might sue.

Is is a reasonable price maybe 4 years ago. The prices of 16:10's haven't come down at all, while you can buy 16:9's on sale at around $140 (or less).

We really would like to be able to buy 16:10's at around that price. even if at 11% higher price for the extra screen real estate, it should only cost about $155. The price on this website is twice that. It's NOT reasonable because it's at a premium compared to the other ratios.

With all that compensation, he can probably just retire and live a good life.

Or maybe go work full time for the drilling company.

Search Achieva Shimian or Yamakasi Catleap on ebay. There are other alternatives too.

Also visit 120hz.net.

Trinitrons! I finally tossed out my 17" Sony Trinitron monitor earlier this year. It served me well from 1997-2011!

Where have you been?

15" 1024x768 TFT LCD screens used to cost $300+ circa 2004.

I'm typing this message on a 27" 2560x1440 S-IPS LED LCD screen that also costs $300 from South Korea. (It's a bit of an exception, but it was still obtainable here from the U.S.)

There should be a fine against the lawyers holding a secret meeting to artificially create legal events that require the service of lawyers. But then we'll need meta-lawyers!

Bitter that he didn't earn twice as much for the first 28 years?

Ummm, we got there. Voyager 1 and 2? Galileo? No we didn't get into the core, but we can send spacecrafts there just fine.

If we know for certain that there is no rocky core, then it would be pointless to build probes to try to reach/hit the core eh?