And enjoy horrendously poorer video quality.

I run all OSes, Linux, Mac, Windows, and I set Bing as my default browser where ever I can. I can accept when Microsoft does something well (I also have a Zune HD). Bing is a great search engine, I find for specific queries, especially academic searches, it provides more accurate, as well as seperated results. Go ahead, type in "Honda Civic", and watch how it divides it based on more specific topics related to the car. The mighty Google has stagnated on its search engine like MS did on IE6 for too long, I'm glad to see some competition, and glad to see Microsoft trying again (as they are with IE8/9 and Windows 7).

The Mac is that expensive whore that comes in dressed fancy and sexy - But doesn't do some stuff The Windows is the cheap whore that may not be great looking - But she'll do anything, easily, and knows how Linux is the Nerdy one that will do anything, but is inexperienced and shy, requiring you to teach her how to do things.

Another reason to avoid Apple's ecosystem. Sure, I hope these thieves do get caught, and it would be fine if that happened. But the fact that they could have the ability to do that because they control the whole product is quite disconcerting.

Only if the thieves are too dumb to turn off location services.

The simple way to tell is by the USB ports, Card Readers, and Chrome Trim.

The 40 GB model was the first one to not have BC, and it was the first one to also receive an RSX reduction to 65nm, along with the cosmetic stripping.

Non-BC 40/80/160 US models can be identified by the following:
-2 USB ports instead of 4
-A matte silver trim near the disc drive and on the bottom, as opposed to shiny chrome
-No card readers.

Also, the non-BC models have less ventilation under the right hand side overhang (where it looks like the UFO landed on the square), most likely due to them running cooler with the new RSX.

It does not work like that. Audience measurement panels (what Neilson runs in the US) are balanced. That means they select a set of demographic factors that describe the population (age, sex, social-class being only three of them), and try to recruit a panel of households that cover those demographics in the about the same proportions as the full population. Next, they apply a weighting step; rather than computing the ratings by simply multiplying by the ratio of population to panelists, they include a weight for each household (ideally, close to 1.0), which reflects how close the panel is to an ideally balanced panel. So, if many more geeks were panelists, all that would happen is that the weight of each geek panelist would be reduced.

I'd be cautious about dismissing RMS too much. It seems to me that RMS should have some "ownership" of the GPL in so far as it's authored by his group. And that group has always been an advocacy group even while acting as a software collective.

I like GNU's philosophy page. And I like RMS' rants. I can't always find myself agreeing or willing to follow the ideas presented. But they're often worth considering.

I've known individuals before who were very much the backbones of any given technical environment. They weren't good leaders. They weren't good with people in general. They weren't the ones you brought to a big presentation with "the suits." But they certainly were the ones you turned to when wanting things to work - both now and in the future. And even if their initial lack of pragmatism could be frustrating, their long-term view was often solid.

RMS strikes me as one of those guys. He's a sort of Don Quixote. You may not wish to emulate his example. But the ideals he presents aren't always without merit.

Torvalds offers his own merits. I wouldn't even begin to present him and RMS as an either-or choice.

It's most likely a different brand, but my wife has had a wireless defibrillator / pacemaker implant since last October. It, too, wirelessly connects to a base in the house, which in turn talks to the doctor's office. They can also remotely activate tests and scans. We joke quite often that she's one of the only people we know that has their own wireless access point. Right before the surgery, the surgeon asked my wife if she had any questions. Her first question? "Um, this thing isn't running on Windows, is it?" He replied that she was the first person to ever ask that, and that it ran on a custom version of Unix.

No, but they ship with Duke Nukem Forever.

Perhaps the initial machine was on sale. They already had a stock of machines of that configuration, preloaded, overstocked perhaps, and therefore, only that configuration was on sale. Any change in that configuration brings it back to regular retail price. Otherwise, when you click "customize" on some sites, a few specs are stealthily upgraded.

I've found that to be true. Where I live, the summer months bring terrible thunderstorms. If there's ever that lightning strike that causes the lights to flicker, the internet always "goes down". Every time, it's always been fixed by unplugging and re-plugging the power to the router.