And they could add some preference options for people who come from normal computing backgrounds -i.e., ones where the Home and End keys actually move to the beginning and end of the current line.

My computing background has taught me that Home and End keys are represented by CTRL-A and CTRL-E, respectively. When I bought my first Mac, I was pleased to discover that what I learned was still valid and Just Worked as promised. ;-)

Granted, what you say about some of Finder's behaviour is valid, and similarly valid (but often less annoying) for replacement file managers like Path Finder, but I reckon few really care or notice. And of those that do, they probably have trivial needs. File management is important to me so instead of maintaining A Really Big List of why Finder, Path Finder et al suck, I opted for the CMS route, dropping to a terminal as needed and relying on a mix of AppleScript + Bash for routine chores.

If it helps. Option + Up Arrow can take you to Home where Home is the top of a list.

Some of us do not live in markets that Verizon serves. And Verizon is not rolling out any new fiber (I could be wrong).

Someone is paying attention.

From a randomly selected source

[Posted at 02:58 PM ET, 12/08/2011] And even though [Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam] insisted that Verizon will rigorously promote its FiOS video and Internet service in areas that compete with cable, the company said it doesn't have plans to expand the expensive fiber network beyond what's already been announced and scheduled for buildout over the next couple years.

Southampton Council is a Unitary Authority; they sit at district level, which is one up from the lowest level, which is Parish Councils.

Ah, but you've neglected to include what's most pertinent. District level councils report directly to the Ministry of Information, yes? That means if you're a cabbie, or a passenger, you'll end up dealing with the folks at Information Retrieval.

I especially note your use of rsquo, ldquo, and rdquo, and the absence of lsquo.

I don't keep up. Is that Portuguese or Esperanto?

Selective breeding = tinkering with parameters and settings.
GM = changing part of the program binary.

Fair enough. Now explain grafting.

Shiny side in or out?

Considering one of the focus areas of recent MS endeavours is to provide a richer baked-in shell (powershell), OSX has the same CLI credentials as the rest of the *nix world, it's silly at this point to say CLI is dead or dying

Actually, OS X is a step ahead of both (broadly speaking) in that you can script the GUI as well.

Yes, AppleScript is clumsy, uncessarily verbose (worse than PowerShell), etc, and while it's true that some third-party programs aren't as "scriptable" as advertised, AppleScript is there when you need it and powerful enough to handle whatever you need to do.

My own approach is to use AppleScript sparingly (typically as a wrapper for bog standard shell scripts) and use osacompile(1) to make an "app" out of the result. For everything else, I maintain a library of shell functions that make use of osascript(1). Combined with things like OS X's impressive ability to define system-wide or application-specific hotkeys, the unified clipboard, the text-based default(1) system, customisable desktop/toolbars, scripting of any sort in OS X is the Cat's Meow.

And then, of course, there's iTerm. A pleasure to use, with more features than most users will ever need.

I've just finished reading the book in its entirety and highly recommend others interested in the subject read it also.

My thanks for pointing it out.

Apple's foray into legal brigandage

Well done, sir!

For the kids following along at home, here's the etymology according Wikipedia :

The brigand is supposed to derive his name from the Old French brigan, which is a form of the Italian brigante, an irregular or partisan soldier. There can be no doubt as to the origin of the word bandit, which has the same meaning. In Italy, which is not unjustly considered the home of the most accomplished European brigands, a bandito was a man declared outlaw by proclamation, or bando, [3][4] called in Scotland "a decree of horning" because it was delivered by a blast of a horn at the town cross.

The brigand, therefore, is the outlaw who conducts warfare after the manner of an irregular or partisan soldier by skirmishes and surprises, who makes the war support itself by plunder, by extorting blackmail, by capturing prisoners and holding them to ransom, who enforces his demands by violence, and kills the prisoners who cannot pay.

Do they really celebrate Running of the Jew in Antarctica?

[Sorry, someone had to slip a Borat joke]

It's been more than a few years since I've been back, so I'll assume that what you say about Canadian content is still valid. And while I agree with your comment, I'll add that there is nothing you or anyone else can do to give me the years I endured listening to Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray and Rush on the radio.

NPR on this side of the border isn't half bad. There's college stations just about everywhere that stream fairly good music (KCRW in Los Angeles, as one example), in addition to news and commentary, etc.. I stopped listening to music when the Pixies broke up, so I really don't care one way or the other.

Now, if all those Anne Murray songs would leave my head ... and Celine Dion would stop yelling ...

I cannot find an actual server (with redundant power supplies, hotswap drive bays, monitoring hardware) that has a lot of drive bays, but less than 4 CPUs, because the $CPU ones are extremely expensive and I don't need 4 CPUs anyway. The only affordable ones have 4-6 bays max.

I bought this 4U system. If memory serves me right (too lazy to check), it accomodates two power supplies. I opted for just one. The chassis, I think, is this Supermicro chassis. It has 8 hot swap drive bays (plus 2 peripheral).

Is that what you're looking for?

Worth pointing out that the same applies to vegetables and fruits. Winter tomatoes grown in the sandy soils of Florida can't really be compared nutritionally to what someone can get out of their own garden.

Ultimately, it's all about the "ingredients". That's long been considered a truism for chefs in the kitchen as it is for someone involved in raising animals. That this is routinely overlooked, glossed over or otherwise dismissed in the pursuit of economic interests and efficiencies is both funny and tragic. Funny in the sense of "What the hell did you expect?", and tragic in the sense of engaging in (and wasting time and effort with) tortured discussions of good/bad ideas and practices which, ultimately, are workaround to workarounds.