Yes, I knew that Windows works on X86 hardware, X86 can run Windows, Unix and Linux. I think you've missed a big part of my message: Sugar sucks, and Windows sucks even more. Whether we install Windows on a moon rock or your grandmother's cat, the computing object will then suck more than when Windows was not installed on it. Now try to work your amazing grasp of comp architecture back into the discussion.

I'm a guy thats had 3 linux boxes and all the rest OS X Apples, so I'm not a MS-friendly troll. Sugar just sucks. The array of educational apps are totally fine. I've been tempted to overwrite the OS with Ubuntu, but actually desire the edu-focus for my toddler, who has already inherited this machine. Now that Windows is in the picture I see this whole project as a curse on those its trying to help. My understanding is Sugar was unlike most of the FOSS movement, written by a Temple of one/few people rather than a Bazaar of multiple-minds. An object lesson in failure.

Sold too USA good, sold to Iran bad is a good inconsistency because of another level: Iran is an unpopular theocracy using the technology to sustain their reign. Even factoring in the likely illegitimacy of G W Bush's reign, the rulership in the USA has never been as sustained/entrenched unpopular regime as that of Iran. It is Apples and Oranges, and one should not get the technology.

In my casual reading of local crime cases, the majority of crimes solved rely on surveillance footage. I don't mind being filmed/monitored in any public space, and I vote.

Facilitating features for smart people, facilitates threats for dumb people. Its a story as old as technology.

Life is hard
Its even harder if you're stupid.

I [ the user ] only want to access everything through a web browser.

Within a more nuanced statement, let this be stated: I want to access what your app does or shows from random machines throughout the day, that makes installing a specific executable unacceptable.

On the developer and business side of considerations you may figure out web apps are problematic, and decide to abandon browser based coding. Your decision is a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear. Anything your project makes that does not show in a browser will go unused by the most modern class of computer users.

Oh, and take your punk-ass approach to programming to the Windows 98 forum. Ballmer's lurking there, looking for friends with an anti-thin client stance.

Right on. Living without technology and civilization is a lust only idiots have.

According to my MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: Cities function as a cognitive artifact. Cognitive artifacts are external physical things that aid cognition.

Humans are not all the same, and what most humans were 10,000 years ago has little to do with our default abilities and preferences today. There is not even a linear progression, various climate and cultural filters have output humans with vastly different ideal environments.

The nature-would-do-us-best thesis is a feelgood mythology for people ill suited for the present technological norms most humans practice.

On a personal note have lived in Seattle, Akutan AK (island in Bering Sea), Kanab UT, and Antarctica. My mind did fine in all four places.

This being Slashdot and we are talking about Antarctica I must tell this story. I was at McMurdo 1995-6. In the winter-over we are down to around 190 people, and one unix sys admin for the base. He had been there through the summer, so I had gotten to know him before the sun set and winter began. He seemed normal enough in a loner sort of way in the summer. I even got my first exposure to unix know-how from him. As the winter set in, this unix admin began a new behavior. He would bark. Yes, bark with a real barking sound. He would only bark when upset at someone or something. At the wine bar (yes, wine bar ) someone said something he disagreed with and he just....barked. One very articulate and semantically well-formed bark. A few weeks later I saw a sign behind the bartender that said "No Barking". I lurked in the Crary Lab Mac Lab during my free time, enjoying the early WWW before spam-crud polluted it. One time, as I surfed the net, the unix admin was doing his job on another terminal. I guess he was having trouble with a script or other command line incantation. I heard him snapping his teeth at the keyboard, just a like a dog. This promoted unix like no other marketing campaign, I have been using Linux or OS X Unix ever since.

My answer only goes for 95-96. I'm not sure of the ratio, but maybe females made up 30%. I supply that figure as a wild azz guess, someone out there may be able to data mine NSF reports for the true figure. What geeks want to know: it is very hard to avoid having sex while on the Ice. In explicit language geeks can understand: Sex is prevalent, and distributed almost evenly.

I was at McMurdo 95-96, for 13 months ( Winfly, Summer, Winter, Summer). Yeah, I agree that summer is not that hard. More like: its great. The mating scenarios there are called ice-marriages, ice-wives, ice-husbands. Thats the enduring ones. Then there are the thousands of serial relationship hook-ups. Some got through the winter by logging amazing amounts of hours in bed (WITH SOMEONE ELSE!!). Then there was the whole girls-nude-in-suana-looking-for-a-hookup, thing. Ahem, and a lot of the guys and girls are geeks. My own account is written here: http://lanceville-antarctica.appspot.com/?page=antarctica-alaska As I recall, Christmas at McMurdo was a lot of fun, plenty of people, parties, and the weather is usually great.