There is something called a "vag-com". I don't know what this world is coming to...

Who is playing the games here? If you want the marriage to last, you are going to have to build a trust with her so she (and you) feel comfortable enough to say exactly what she thinks. That is not something that is just "there".

Isn't the purpose of living together to be living together not off in some imaginary world that only exists in a metal box? If this is that big of a deal to you, get a divorce now. Don't wait, do it now. If you are only recently married, it might be easier to get annulment.

Put the games in a separate room and when you want to play games, go there. I might be showing my age because I do remember a game-free house because I was almost 20 when Pong became available. You can argue with me, tell me I'm wrong or whatever you want to do but my opinion is that games should be left behind in childhood and are a complete waste of adult time. Feel lucky that your wife is not interested in throwing you out of the house instead of just wanting you to get a different, smaller system and, perhaps, in another room.

Hughes was a weird dude. I've read engineering reviews of the Spruce Goose which said that it was a good design and would have worked well. However, it was never really flown because Hughes wouldn't let it fly.

The Goblin was trying to solve a very real problem. The B-36 was designed to fly very long distances to drop A-Bombs on the Commies. Our experience trying to bomb Europe during WWII taught us that it was almost suicidal to send bombers when there was no long range protection. If a B-36 was going to make a beeline to Moscow, it would most certainly encounter fighter planes. True, the B-36 could be able to fly higher than any Soviet fighters but the vision of all of those planes and fliers lost influenced the idea that having a ride-along fighter plane might be a good idea. At least, that was the general idea. It is easy to forget the status of aeronautical knowledge at the times all of these planes were designed. Also, there are always political or financial reasons for decisions made. I'm surprised that the Bell P-39 isn't on this list- it usually is. This was another plane that was designed to protect bombers on long distance bombing runs but was judged a failure because, for financial reasons, a turbosupercharger was removed from the design and the plane was unable to perform at those altitudes. The vast majority of the P-39s were given to the Russians who found that it was a fantastic low altitude tank killer.

I know how to take care of this guy: Put four or five pieces of Dubble Bubble in your mouth, chew them soft and get them in a big wad. Slap the wad on Mr. Google's Glass and that is that. He can just feel lucky that I didn't choose epoxy putty which sets up rock hard in ten minutes. I can just imagine the howling a gnashing of teeth.

I get what you're saying. I liked being able to open up my earlier Macs (IIci, Quadra 800, G4 tower, etc) and poke around. I UGed the processor, RAM, HD (numerous times) on the G4 and it was fun. I have a Mac Mini (2007) now and getting it open to change a drive or just to poke around is frightening. I finally made it so I can just life off the top. Getting at the parts inside is kind of a nightmare, too. There are many things which attract me to a Hackintosh. Assembling it from hardware I choose and, I admit it, sticking it to the man by putting OSX on unapproved hardware. The down side is that I'm really afraid that, someday when I *really* have to get something done, something in the hacking will go silly and I'll have to spend an hour or to getting it working again. Still, what really attracts me to the Mac is the OS. I have always (since beginning computing in the mid 80s) wanted a Unix box because of all the cool things that can be done with Unix. With OSX, I have those things in a terminal or X-Window if I want them. I also have some pretty good off the shelf applications available. Hardware geeks don't have a lot to fiddle with in a machine smaller than a Mac Pro. Software geeks have lots of things to play with.

I'm guessing you're kidding...

OK, you were able to do it. However, I made my calculations based on the parts recommended by the referenced article and prices of the recommended vendor. The prices I calculated were 90% of the cost of a similar FactoryMac. The ease of maintenance by using a non-hacked OS is certainly worth the 10% to me.

Sorry, posted too fast. The last line: "It is something that can't be done." should read: "It is something that can be done"

I wish I could say that building a Hackintosh is the answer. Financially, it might make sense to build a Mac Pro level Hackintosh but for the lower performance boxen, the price is the same or even more than an Apple product. I just don't like iMacs because I want to look inside the box and not have to perform mechanical gymnastics to change out a drive or add some RAM. I still want a CD/DVD drive in the front where I can use it where I want it. I may end up with a Mac Mini in a Sonnet server rack-mount adapter. It will hold two Mac Minis and there is a DVD slot in the fron where a drive could be installed, there is on USB port and the power button on the front where it is handy. I would use one Mini and the extra space inside would be used for more drive space. Also, what I consider the real disadvantage others will fine a disadvantage: the gymnastics involved to get the OS to run on non-Apple equipment. I read the instructions with the idea of putting an inexpensive Hackintosh together more for an intellectual activity than anything else. I could say, "Yes, I too socked it to the man and made OSX run on non-Apple hardware". If it all went higgeldy-piggeldy, I could put a Linux on it and have many of the features I like about the OSX (*nix under the hood) and access to off the shelf software through Wine, which is pretty mature these days. When I got to the lines containing all the different types of patching that might (or might not) be done to get it working, I was a bit intimidated. And, with an OS upgrade, I might (or might not) have to go through the whole process again. Those who want to do so, I say go for it. There are hardware lists of parts which will work and plenty of advice on getting the software part working. It is something that can't be done. But, IMHO, it isn't something for just anyone.

There are potentials for sales here.... Right now, today, the Mac Mini seems like a better deal. And, if one really wants to do so, there are a variety of ways to run Windows and/or Linux on the Mini. However, if a faster processor was available as an option and the price went down some, I could see a lot of these in the hands of consumers...

1968- I was a charter member of my Jr. High's Slide Rule Club. Are we havin' fun yet?

I graduated from HS in 1974. The school district had some sort of Army surplus field computer (HP) and a teletype which traveled from school to school (six high schools) and stayed about a month at each one (They may have had more than one- I don't know) It could read cards and the cards could be punched to paper tape. As a school, the math classes did things like program BASIC to do thinks like print square root and cube root tables. Some geeks at lunch wrote a English language program that picked a subject from a list, a verb from the list and an object rom a list and wrote goofy sentences. It was kind of a hoot. t was all written on cards and then punched to paper tape. I think until about 84, 85, the concentration was programming the computer itself to do something. After that, the emphasis was beginning to be placed on using the comuter to use pre-written software to accomplish a task. In 1985, my school where I teach now started a writing lab with eight C64s running off one disk drive (can you say slow?) and some sort of very simple word processing program. In many ways, it was revolutionary because no longer was it difficult for students to revise compositions or take chances writing compositions because it was so easy to make the changes. No retyping of entire pages!