The summary links to four different commentaries but not Asimov's original article. I'd rather get it from the source.

It's already queriable via DNS.

dig +short txt ${1}.wp.dg.cx

Throw this into a script, invoke it as "script TOPIC".

Yeah, I had a few unfortunate websites I was keying in out of muscle memory. I found that the solution ultimately was to add an entry to /etc/hosts until the habit faded. It may come time to do that with Slashdot if this crap keeps up.

"A fraction of the cost," while technically true, is far from the truism it used to be. Gone are the days where you could spend $800 and get the equivalent of a $3000 prebuilt system. In many cases, you're hard pressed just to break even today.

This is something of a dated way of thinking. In 2012, you don't usually see component failures; while it happens, it doesn't happen nearly as frequently as it used to. Therefore, "knowing what's in the box" is a value add of dubious value to many users. "Seagate, Western Digital, I don't care, I just don't want it to break on me."

Some people just want a computer, not a hobby.

Oh wow, it gets worse. Oracle won this with a $88.5 million bid; what the hell took the Air Force so long to pull the plug with that kind of overrun?

Seems that this is a common theme with ERP rollouts-- scope creep tends to get them all in the end. Granted, most organizations seem to wave off long before the $1 billion mark...

Well... yes. My employer runs three racks of servers all in; we don't have the bandwidth / R&D budget to investigate better options. The big players (Google, Amazon, etc) need to pioneer research in this area, at which point it will (ideally) trickle down to the masses.

Sometimes.

I'd argue this is part of the geek/hacker mindset, and while it's a valuable asset, we have to remember that this places us outside of the mass market in some fairly significant ways. As a direct result of this, we're no longer the "target market" for consumer electronics.

The problem with this approach is that it ties you to your ISP. When you move or they get bought in ten years, you have to try to recall EVERYONE who has your email address, and convince them to update their address books.

Postfix didn't exist until December of 1998. Before that, you were likely using Sendmail, or (god help you) qmail.

This was more sensible a decade ago; nowadays with so much of our lives online (banking, shopping, correspondance) it's no longer "reasonable" to not do anything "personal" on the internet while you're at work.