Unbelievable that in all these discussions the life of another human being is so cheap that the only thing you express concern for is whether or not you stay within the law when you kill them...

We've gone through an extensive consolidation project that threw out V880s/V440s and other older Sun equipment, in preference to M5000, M4000, and M3000. The power draw difference is huge - especially when you compare the fact you can run several V880 apps on a single M5000! They are also noisy. So unless you intend switching off your central heating in summer and wearing earplugs, why would you want one of these in your home? Run a VM on your PC instead.

What everyone seems to forget is that Atari was dominant in the MIDI market - just about everyone was programming their hit records using them in the late 80's (Alison Moyet, Erasure, Bronski Beat, etc), and the music software available for it was second to none!

Oh dear - using correlation to prove causation is fraught with difficulties. Yet you have dived straight in and repeated the biggest lie that the NRA promulgate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

No new parent I know tells anyone what their baby weighs in metric. It's well understood that if your baby weighs more than 10 pounds at birth, you'll never be able to sit down without a rubber ring again.

IRONY! Ironing is removing creases....sigh...

I finished it the day after I got it. Silmarillion IS a difficult read, but the description of the battles and the engagement with the reader within them is far superior to any of Tolkien's other works. I only got bored with all the God stuff, regarding the Creation etc. But it's all useful stuff when trying to put the tales into perspective.