Yes. A couple of examples:

The Sagradda Familia. It's being in construction for about 130 years now with a forecast finish that will push it into 2030.

The Cologne Cathedral. About 600 years to finish.

Yes, but you are also not getting MS Office, and other in-built apps. I don't know what those other apps are (haven't RTFA), but depending on those, 13GB free space could be very reasonable.

I'm currently living in a compound with a few other aid volunteers, and one of them is a deaf teacher. She teaches kids at a school in this country for special needs children.

I preface my comments with that I think she is doing a wonderful job and is a brilliant teacher but she made the remark to me that she said that many deaf parents, herself included, WANTED deaf children. Not just that they are opposed to cochlear implants, which she is, but they desired deaf kids.

I understand that there may be medical issues with implants, and forgive my ignorance, but why does teaching a child with cochlear implants both an oral language, and a sign language impede their ability to process sounds? They are still able to hear the sounds and associate a gesture with it.

But my other point is that, the "militancy" may not be restricted to cochlear implants, but that deaf people would prefer a deaf offspring to a fully hearing one. THAT strikes me as selfish and yes overly militant.

That doesn't negate the fact that the security risk is apparently true. Who cares if the company is only doing it for PR reasons for potential AV sales? The problem is still there. And Apple's response, apparently, is to go for denial.

It's not so much an issue with the features as it is an issue with OpenOffice formatting documents like a blind walrus vomiting words onto the tundra.

They probably could have given a proper powerpoint presentation in addition to that with a Playbook, given that it has a full office suite on it. They really need to embrace this platform more and not let the bitter tech world scare them.

Why would you be modifying the kernel/adding a system call? The kernel, in this case, is just a kernel.

webOS wasn't killed by patents. Neither was Blackberry. Both RIM and Palm had fantastic patent portfolios. They're untouchable compared to Google.

I, for one, look forward to quitting my job and simply setting myself on top of an inductive charging couch, watching TV, and eating as much fattening food as possible to sell my bio-power back to the grid. I aspire to one day becoming something like a defecating tree.

Believe it or not, there are actually many people who work at Microsoft. Some people are "Business" people. They're the people that pay you to do whatever it is you do and make decisions regarding your company's direction. These people can work to make such decisions as acquiring other companies. Other people are "Engineers". At a software company, they create and maintain software. Because there are MANY people at a big company (more kinds of people than you have fingers!), a company can both create software and purchase other companies at the same time. So, instead of thinking of a company like one person-- you should look at it as a _group_ of people (almost like a small town) who can do many things at once. Working in groups is how people accomplish big things! Think about how in your hometown there are people who sell groceries, people who deliver mail, AND people who fight fires-- but they're not necessarily the same people.

I hope this helps!

You don't see how social science comes into this?

Okay... so you don't need social scientists because you're *so good* at mining electronic data... but they're already mining the data electronically, as stated in TFA.

What do you do with that data? How do you determine what data to collect and how to use it? Assuredly no one has expertise in this field because you don't explicitly understand it. Who do you think actually uses data?

Perhaps Windows users pay less because they are on a platform which has the highest cost associated with ownership/maintenance. You can do very little with a stock windows install other than run notepad and get on the web. They pay for *everything*. Macintosh has a subset of FOSS which works with it (libraries not always compatible) so there are add-on software costs incurred (iTunes downloads). Linux users are more comfortable giving a little more because they spend next to nothing on out-of-pocket software costs. Anything you need is usually readily available via the package manager (Libre Office, Firefox, Tbird, Sunbird, etc, etc).

You said it right there. If you can get on the web with Windows, then you can also get Libre Office, Firefox, Tbird, Sunbird, etc, etc, for free for Windows. I'm quite certain they have handy binaries for download and install for the various incarnations of Windows XP/Vista/7 out there.

An Android-based phone? You really don't know much about how this security stuff works, do you?

If a phone that needs to pass any level of non-casual security certifications is to be linux-based, it's going to imprisoned behind an extremely restrictive hypervisor. If the only thing separating the interface from the hardware is linux, it will never pass the requisite security certifications. No device like that has and none ever will lest Linux cease being Linux.

If people can run Linux on PS3's, then chances are pretty good they will find a way to insecurely boot Linux on their PC's if they would rather screw with conf files than study. On the other hand, there's still no indication that the ability to disable secure boot will be widely unavailable-- the only example you have of a computer with secure boot currently allows it to be disabled. Are you just anonymously angry about the way you imagine computing to be if it goes in such a way that might upset you?