Also of note, AVR and PIC chips are available in a lot of prototype and home lab friendly packages. Many (most?) of the ARM chips are in xQFP, and you can use those at home, but it's quite imposing.

This, or disable them. Snip a wire or two, cut a solder trace, it's probably not tough. In fact, covering the ports with electrical tape would disable the camera completely, and most likely impair the microphone to a great degree.

Right. A bunch of the software in OS X, and a bunch of the libraries that software on it uses are made by the Linux/Unix crowd. You enjoy Angry Birds though, i'm sure that will be practical experience for a job at some point.

Yep, watch out for Gitmo. The secret base, so secret that everyone talks about it all the time, and it gets referenced on almost every news site at least once daily (even if the story doesn't directly have anything to do with it).

I would mirror your sentiments on both the damage ratio between home and professional uses, and also on businesses not buying as much new hardware. Our company used to run a 3 year cycle on computer replacement, but now we only replace when it can't be fixed. Also, I worked at BestBuy about 4 years ago, and when you had business customers at all, it was usually a software issue. With people in general, it was often physical damage.

So in other words... they pirate becuase of DRM.

Oh the horrors! Someone put up a website! Now all the Iranians will have to login and read all of it. You know, people wouldn't rebel unless they agree. If they really are content with their lifes, they would see the site, possibly read it, say "I don't agree", and log off.

Can, but almost never are. Drive down any busy road in any city as proof.

Oh no, you don't think he accidentally a whole iPad do you?

My dad drinks more water than most people I know. He had cancer. Granted, one instance doesn't make a trend, but still. I would imagine people like Lance Armstrong drink a ton of water, and there again...

No, he's right. Look at a list of the wars the US has been involved in within the last 20 years. You will indeed find that we are the biggest threat to peace, you know, provided you are into terrorists or the particular brand of peace/oppresion that dictators bring.

I didn't want to punch them, but the arm insisted it had to be done.

Actually, you're only stomping turtles that are trying to kill you. So, that one is pretty okay too. Going down random pipes in search of new levels though, thats the TRUE menace to society.

I saw the same behavior with a standard cable box. The display even changed from saying the channel I was on, to saying EAS. It locks it down, you can't change the channel until the display goes back to normal.

There isn't a single Apple product that could be considered "seamless", there isn't any large piece of software worthy of that title. I've had app crashes on my iPad and on my Nexus One (and on every computer I have ever used for a decent amount of time). Apple's hardware isn't years ahead of anyone either. Their computers use largely the same hardware everyone else is using. They make good products, if the features are what you are after, but thats all.