The amount of necessary components and the stringent control over the process rules this out for most manufacturers that don't have Apple's budget. Any of the bigger PC manufacturers could have done this eons ago but they don't have the organizational structure to make it a reality nowadays. The people here who could do this sort of work are either already at Apple or doing other things nowadays.I see posts about Framework but that's not enough, maybe if they get a bigger budget and are willing to invest in Linux/Freedesktop etc. All that said, who knows.. I'm trying to lessen my dependence on Apple hardware and their ecosystem and threw Fedora on an old Thinkpad p52s, using it as a desktop for the last couple of weeks. I'm tempted to start pulling code and writing patches as well but I wish I did have that laptop or hardware combo target.

Definitely a somber kick off to what was supposed to be a relaxing weekend. Terrible news, i'll always remember the early days of Slashdot as a community of well intentioned budding techs who thought we knew it all... Slashdot was our hub; and roblimo our conductor... That time will always fill me with fondness.

Actually, the protest are because unarmed men, women and children are being killed and not receiving justice. So far, most of the people these protest are about haven't broken any law and further for the outliers; As a nation, we don't kill our citizens when they break the law. We bring them to the altar and scales of justice. As an ex soldier, I find your commentary appalling as well as the behavior of anyone who is against these football players protesting. It's absolutely shameful.

julian, how's life in the embassy, they gave you back your utp cable yet?

"Example: overdrawing a market results in market collapse and creates an optimal environment for competing upstarts to emerge, therefore, a balanced profit draw maximizes long term profit."

Lol, sounds Gordon Gecko is your economics professor. In reality, it costs a huge amount of money to enter a market and build criticial mass and therefore potential competition is stifled and the established players can continue to abuse their (near) monopolies. Have you noticed that there is no real alternative to facebook? Do you really use Bing to find something on the internet (even though google pisses you off with their shitty interface and aggravating "localized results")? Can you name any serious competitors to Amazon?

Throughout human development, monopolies, extreme concentration of capital and profits have been the rule, not the exception. Our few post-war decades were a historical anomaly and we are quickly returning to a pre-war type of society. Don't take my word for it, check the numbers yourself.

Back in 2007, the NY Times endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain in the primaries. So I'm sure they endorsed McCain for the general election, right?

Virginia has an open primary. It wouldn't be the first time crossover voters affected the outcome.

No disrespect intended, but let's say we stop some random people on the street and ask them to name a famous hardware hacker. I bet that question isn't showing up on Family Feud anytime soon!

What can we do to increase the public awareness (and create more hardware hackers)? I was thinking perhaps high schools could have shop classes for nerds -- instead of working on engines, wood working, etc, it would be hardware and software.

Congress/Parliment/etc write tax laws. If companies (or other people) follow the rules to minimize their tax burden, is that bad? Exemptions and credits exist to encourage that! Don't blame the player, blame the game.

my cable modem doesn't do wifi and isn't the cable co's property. Next time don't rent a POS modem from the cable co? The NSA and cable cos would prefer otherwise, of course.

Stick to leather -- it doesn't absorb farts. My buddy has a cloth chair that is oversaturated with farts. Aside from the permanent stench -- which would be bad enough -- it releases a gas bomb if you ever sit in it.

All the ghetto thugs and gang bangers are too busy playing Office Space V, the game where you pretend to be a white collar IT worker cranking out TPS Reports, avoiding Lumberg, and browsing slashdot at work.

You know what's better than free wifi at Atlanta's airport? Avoiding Atlanta's airport.

There have been too many problems with existing crypto code so I've developed something better: goatsecret. Instead of relying on math, it relies on a frenchman's gaping asshole. Basically, the software breaks your message/file/whatever into small chunks and superimposes the data in the goatsecret image. Sure, it's not encrypted, but who is going to stare into the void just to get your data? No hacker/cracker/big business/three-letter-agency is that desperate.

Are you high? Not even php is retarded enough to do that. It's a compiled language. String interpolation happens at compile time.