When my biz ancient Deb 12 laptop died -- and, interestingly, took its SSD with it -- I had a Win 10 machine I used for scanning around and used it. 11? Not with all I'm hearing, so I'll probably do the modern "you are not on the machine you are supposed to be" dance with the biz sites. My own fault but worth it. Scanning? Got Vuescan v6 years ago but wanted a driver, not to read a literal book of features to use it effectively. Dug out my registration and updated to 9 the other day and I think after nearly a quarter century I might be an honest 100% linux at home.

I was at a 4-year-and-offering-a-masters-in-ed level public college (before tech schools were renamed community colleges and colleges were renamed universities in the US -- so I can proudly state that college is now a "university") during '70-'72. This was when public tuition was about $7 a credit and my $1.50/hour summer job could handle a year's tuition and fees easily. That was in part because our society supported higher education with significant subsidies.

With major social investment comes individual responsibility. Spring of '71 the President of that college released a letter to be posted on bulletin boards campus wide that would be unimaginable today. He congratulated faculty on maintaining an overall freshman grade average of 2.1. PRAISED faculty for keeping A's to F's and B's to D's not far off statistical variance in a normal curve. I suspect part of the reason it was limited to freshman statistics was the use of so-called "weed out" courses. Within the rigueur of that normal distribution math majors, for example, better be able to handle their freshman year of calc -- with that shock awakening applied mutatis mutandis throughout academic areas. If they could not, time to look to a trade so the student didn't waste time and society didn't waste money.

I seem to remember it was Ronald Reagan explicitly stating that "higher education should be run like a business". You know, as part of the glorious long march to Neoliberal privatization that has made every other aspect of American life so wonderful. If higher education becomes a business, that makes students customers. Doesn't it? And isn't the customer always right? And aren't happy customers good business? So here we are. University football coaches are the highest paid public employees in many states, and we have happy customers with their A's.

And what of society?

Is it the year of the linux desktop? No, because there are Windows computers on every neighborhood street. Still the entropy of monopoly.
Is it the year of hydrogen? No, because there are power lines on every neighborhood street. Still the entropy of monopoly.
Charge against that windmill, Don...
I could _almost_ be tempted to believe hydrogen could become something for aircraft where it could be produced at the same airports where it is fueled without the need for a national infrastructure network.

You know, if it can be proved to pack enough energy for genuinely practical aircraft. Back to Zeppelins?

Which is the executive age market I assume they are aiming this corn at there were still people who actually had been formally taught how to type so I was amused to see what looked like the Microsoft "split hand" keyboard. It might, might not, have been a good idea -- if it hadn't broken training and forced people to relearn their muscle memory by putting three numbers on one index finger and one number on the other instead of 2 and 2. Had a guy try to pawn one off on me. "Only $5! Good deal!"

I've been repairing/upgrading my IBM/Lenovo laptops for ages.

Because the world is currently more unstable.
72 years old and my crowning philosophical realization is that we are simply not an adequately intelligent species for viability. But they got that Senate dress code problem worked out to the satisfaction of primate preening.

Been there. Tried putting a couple senior households on linux. It is a trail of tears. It might _seem_ like a linux desktop is a small jump from a Windows desktop to those of us who have been using linux for perhaps decades at this point because "linux X works almost like Windows X with these small differences...". It is not. And you have volunteered yourself as their daily sysadmin answering questions you cannot believe are so trivial. You can save the technical discussion of OSes for when they download that free game and they want you to make it work. If they are successful at using email, Facebook or whatever they will probably ask their friends about how to do something on the computer and it will never really be the same as their friends and so begins descent down the path of frustration, giving up, and probably resentment toward you for talking them into it. I have taken a vow of abstinence from what would seems like this logical idea.

that there are still people banking with Wells Fargo?

Well, sure, probably safer than crypto. Probably.

Aw, cut him some slack. I'm of the era and had an internal Zip at home, a parallel Zip at work and a Jaz at home and I never remember a 750 meg Zip either. If anything, it probably shows the degree to which everybody had moved on by the time 750s came out, but, OK, search has a picture of when they were on Amazon so I guess somebody bought a couple and this wasn't a confusion with the Jaz.

I don't know who would think this is trolling. Yes, I saw the photo of a 1/2 mile line of SUVs idling for a food giveaway and thought, "What photo could possibly better capture the insane idiocy of today's America?" Should have been photo of the year.

"Heirloom removes that CO2 by heating the limestone into a powder and stores the extracted CO2 underground. The remaining powder is then thirsty for more CO2." Unless the heating is "green"? In which case, why not just concentrate on expanding green energy that much faster instead of solving the problem that is continuing?

Probably late in the asking, but with more money than God to piss away why didn't they just buy Second Life source as a start on their code base? Those avatars have had legs for, like, FOREVER!

Exactly. 20 sounds reasonable. As people have been saying for, what, the last 40 years? So it must be true with that much agreement.

I'd say my HDHomeRun Duo has paid for itself.

I believe it was Saint Ronald Reagan who said universities have to start acting like businesses. They certainly have, in a great many ways, and businesses need happy customers.

I've seen both sides. I'm old enough to have been one of those Boomers where the factory summer job while living at home could, just, pay even out-of-state four-year public college tuition for the year. It was great when public meant something and American society valued an educated population enough even to pay the greater share. Many younger people may have never heard of the darker side, which was "Freshman wash-out". That same public college I have in mind where I spent a couple of my years late one spring day posted a letter from the president across the campus bulletin boards congratulating faculty for being strong and maintaining standards with a cumulative 2.1 Freshman GPA. Close enough to mean! I believe the rationale was if the government was paying for it you should have come already competent and motivated enough to succeed on your own. If that wasn't working out, at least you only wasted one year before moving on to something which would be a better fit.