If we were "everyone else" we wouldn't be the ones people run to so we can explain to them which end of the USB cable is which.

Apple is successful in good part because "everyone else" is heartily sick of having to rely on people like you. It's hardly surprising they prefer computing devices they can use without needing the help of a techie.

If Apple products aren't for you, so what? Ignore Apple and just buy your stuff from other manufacturers.

When you tell me what "everyone else" wants, it doesn't exactly make me want to run out and buy it so I can be like "everyone else".

Yes, I hear that from a few people. They want to be special by not following the trend. But to not buy a product just because everyone else buys it is pretty much the same emotional behaviour buying something because everyone else has it. Fashion and anti-fashion.

It amazes me that there are still people out there who are afraid of vaccinations. They are an important tool in preventing disease, and without them many of us would have died before we reached the age of 5. Just because a vaccine may cause adverse reactions in a tiny percentage of people does not make it bad -- for every life they take, they save many millions more. Vaccinations need a certain percentage of the population to take them to be effective at stopping disease outbreaks. Not submitting to vaccinations is socially irresponsible and selfish.

So why are you still smoking? You surely realise that it has no up sides? I quit a couple of months ago after ~10 years smoking, best decision I made in ages.

A netbook with Chrome OS is the perfect solution for companies with employees that need to access their company's intra/extranet while working in the field. Most of the security is already done, all IT has to do is restrict them to a set of the company's URLs and they're good to go.

I don't see it as anything other than a novelty toy for other consumers, though. But then I don't see the point of netbooks, and people buy them, so I'm probably wrong.

The 360 is by no means a new console, where every component goes at a premium price. If Microsoft is still losing money on every sale, they must be doing something wrong.

...for identifying people who are frightened of being identified as being frightened.

> ...especially the fear in relation to criminal acts...

Bullshit. Someone whos is afraid that customs will catch him smuggling lizards will smell no different from someone who is afraid of flying (the lizards might, though).

It's a popular and wrong sentiment that Republicans are connected with "big business" and Democrats are connected with Hollywood. Clearly both parties are in bed with big business (see Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama). Democrats just have the advantage of support from prominent figures in Hollywood and the old media, but that doesn't at all means that they somehow have no inclination to cater to big business any less than do Republicans.

I sense sarcasm, but I need to make this point.

This article is definitive proof of someone with no definitive proof using the faucets given to them as a journalist to demonize a class of people whom she has little ties with and knows absolutely nothing about. Maybe she forgives on Sundays, but every other day of the week, it appears she's throwing punches.

Considering such hear-say proof will mess with all equations. That is exactly what most of us do, because we do not know better, and how we end up hanging the innocent in the name of justice and faith. Years later we shudder at our own ignorance, and promise we'll do better. That pretty much sums up the history of civilization, and if you think that somehow ends with us, then you are part of the problem.

That is what this article is evidence of.

but e-mail is more like a post card, its wide open for all to see. Its just a plain text stream after all. One could argue an encrypted mail is more like a letter.

Sounds more like it absolutely needs a proper way of shipping software or kernel drivers... I don't see why this can't be solved within a distribution, though. However, the current policy seems to be "if you need that new WiFi driver then either hack it in yourself from a tarball or upgrade the whole system and run the risk of fixing a whole load of things which ain't broke".

Yet competing operating systems manage to let you upgrade drivers and individual software packages as and when they need in the years separating OS releases... Its not even as if its not possible on Linux - its the distro system that dictates the all-or-nothing upgrade approach. I suspect the problem is that the techie types who make the decisions don't think twice about stepping outside the distro and rolling a custom kernel or building a tarball, and fail to realize just how inaccessible that is to other types of user.

I work at a company where every developer moved to Vista two years ago (to help ensure our product ran fine on it, for starters). I've never seen a crash or heard of a crash from anyone.

I think your friends are using really bad or buggy drivers, or have really marginal hardware. It's proably something other than Windows that is crashing, because Vista is rock-solid stable for all I can see, far more so than XP ever was. About the only thing that makes it crash are really buggy drivers, or really bad (failing) hardware.

I see and hear people blaming Vista a lot of things that have nothing to do with Vista... just recently I heard someone bitching that they hated Vista because they couldn't print. I took a look, and it turned out to be the printer driver, not Vista at all. After insalling the correct driver, everything worked fine.

I think Vista is getting a lot of completely undeserved crap.