$500 in June of 2007 is $750 now with inflation. Thatâ(TM)s close to the iPhone 15 price. You can spend less on an SE (still a great phone) or more on a Pro.

This was beautiful.

Thatâ(TM)s like a month of COVID-19 stimulus spending.

I bought that board a couple months ago. Itâ(TM)s been completely stable, although picky with RAM. The only thing I found it lacking in is fan headers but a splitter took care of that. Iâ(TM)m using an nvme boot drive and dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu. Itâ(TM)s been through major stress tests with days-long runs without any problems. Sounds like you got a bad board. Itâ(TM)s frustrating but it happens. I had a new Intel i5-9600k go bad on me, which is why I switched to AMD. I donâ(TM)t regret it at all.

I should add that I do well on face recognition tests of famous people. My main problem is in vivo situations when people are out of context to me.

I'm not fully prosopagnosic but recognizing faces isn't a strength. If someone is out of context I will have a hard time recognizing them (even people I know very well). What I can do is recognize people from their gaits much better - how they walk and move is more identifying to me than what their face looks like). I'd never be good at describing what someone looks like for a police sketch artist - they have eyes, a mouth, and a nose in the normal positions. That's about it.

I wasn't disingenuous at all. Kodak started the suits (Jan. 2010). Then, as I said, "Apple and HTC sued each other (Apple first)". I'm not defending Apple, I was just correcting the post above implying that Apple started all the suits - they didn't. Besides, Motorola (the company this story is about) went after Apple before Apple went after Motorola.

I meant to include in my previous reply that this particular patent win for Motorola was related to the October 2010 suit against Apple, precisely the one that started this particular battle (i.e., it was not Apple who started the war).

Motorola sued Apple first. They sued before Apple started suing Android manufacturers. I'm not defending Apple or Microsoft or attacking Motorola, it's just that Apple did not start the smartphone patent wars.

Kodak sued Apple in January 2010. Then Apple and HTC sued each other (Apple first) around April 2010. Things started escalating. Motorola sued Apple Oct. 8, 2010 and then Apple countersued a few weeks later. Check out this link for an infographic of the suits (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399098,00.asp).
Also, this article for the Motorola v. Apple suit: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-10-06/tech/29972735_1_motorola-patents-motorola-mobility-patent-infringement.

If anyone started the wars, it was Kodak. Apple has played their part in escalating the war but as far as Apple and Motorola are concerned, Motorola started that particular battle.

"Yeah but in the minds of conservative"

Way to wrongly stereotype all conservatives. This is an example of an extreme minority of conservatives in one part of the country. PETA is the liberal equivalent of these conservatives; I'm sure most liberals wouldn't want to be lumped in with PETA or some of the extreme greens or animal rights activists.

The LDS Church sued, as you said, over copyright. It had nothing to do with trying to "silence critics with lawsuits". It was about protecting copyrighted materials that were used incorrectly by a couple who spent all their time attacking the LDS Church (Gerald and Sandra Tanner); seriously, that is all that couple did (does? I can't remember if they are still alive or not). The LDS Church simply ignores critics (some individual church members will respond though). It is a doctrine of the church to let people worship how, what, or where they may (that includes worshiping nothing or attacking the LDS Church). The Church will on occasion respond to critics but will not try to silence them.

I've seen this same switch in my neuroscience/neuroimaging field (but over the past 4 years). For a long time neuroimaging post-processing was all Windows. Then it went to Linux (mostly). Now it is almost all Linux and OS X (with some Windows). At conferences or training meetings, most people seem to be running Macs. They have all the benefits of Linux/Unix plus, as you wrote, all the benefits of OS X (plus it's trivial to also run Windows on Macs {yes, that's true for most boxes running Linux}). I keep thinking I should be using Linux more than I do but I have no reason to when I have all the tools I need from Linux in OS X and I don't have fiddle around just to get Linux working flawlessly on my computer (some distros do "just work" now, mostly).

Maybe they still mutate. Maybe they are mutant aliens. Maybe they mutated into turtle-looking creatures. Alien and mutant are not mutually exclusive.

"as much as I think Michael Bay is possibly the most inept and visually retarded filmmaker of all time"

That's giving so many other directors way too much credit (obvious example, Ewe Boll).

I really enjoyed the Star Trek reboot. In my opinion, it was the the best of the Star Trek movies (but I was never a Trekkie) - yes, I know some people would hang me over that statement. I liked some of the original TV show and movies (as well as Enterprise) but as I said, my life didn't revolve around Star Trek. I just think the new movie was the best of the Star Trek films.