I purchased a pass at a parking lot from a machine that, from the timing, is most likely using a modem to register the purchase with the credit processor. Lots of (super)markets still use modems for their point-of-sale systems.

So why is he asking Slashdot?

Seriously, git-annex assistant might be the solution for part of his problem. assistant is a pretty front end to git-annex which uses git to sync repositories of file metadata and several other means (rsync, etc) to schlep the files between repositories. It won't run on his Windows box but does run on OS X and might be easy enough for his wife to use.

Makes perfect sense to me. Most Chinese businesses I know here in LA are cash-only because they'd rather keep all the money instead of giving a share to the credit card and credit processing companies. Doesn't surprise me a bit that a non-English-speaking Chinese woman would want to shop with cash.

Or rather, "S2-35B".

There will be prayer in schools as long as there are tests.

I almost won a distance competition in Boy's Brigade in elementary school with this design. It was just a piece of paper crumpled up as tight as I could squeeze it (I think I stepped on it a couple times too) and thrown as hard as possible. The guy who came in second of course argued that it wasn't an airplane. I got some kind of award, though it might have been some kind of "outside the box" award.

To clarify, the kernel.org announcement says that trojan startup file was added to the server's startup scripts.

Wow, I'm glad I don't work at your company. I've been blessed with a sane IT guy where I work. When I said I needed a Linux desktop, he got me a bare PC, handed it over to me and said, "Your on your own". We get along great.

A decentralized wireless mesh network like Portland's PTPnet would be just the thing for this. Of course, amateur radio enthusiasts live for times like this, have the tools, and are usually pretty organized.
http://www.personaltelco.net/WikiTour#The_Network

From the Intellectual Ventures page on his personal site:

I work part-time at Intellectual Ventures Labs, which enables me to get out of the house and exercise the nerdy predilections that I used to exercise at Blue Origin. This is a sort of all-purpose science lab and thing-making facility where new inventions are developed.

True, CLI is just an abstraction, a metaphor, but it's a layer or two closer to what's really going on. I grew up typing BASIC on my C-64, but after I upgraded to a Mac SE I spent 10 years using only GUIs until "In the Beginning was the Command Line" (by Neal Stephenson) inspired me to explore the world underneath. The passage on Emacs as the Hole Hawg of text editors is hilarious, and after reading that I totally wanted to be a Morlock instead of an Eloi. That essay was my gateway drug into Linux. It's getting dated by it's still relevant.
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

You're right when it comes to servers or desktops, but for laptops it's a different story. Sleep or hibernate are often not supported by Linux on laptops, and given the increasing market share of laptops vs. desktop, boot time is something to pay attention to.