Shhhh, don't mention that those things are expensive. If some Americans aren't eating the right vegan, glutton-free, no-starch, whole-wheat food grown by hardworking indigenous peoples (or even better, grown yourself in your super-convenient garden in your expansive backyard!), it's because those Americans are terrible moral failures.

There are no people who can only afford the cheap foods. There are no people who work 3 jobs and don't have time to do easy, quick healthy natural recipes. Nothing to see here, move along.

I find it hilarious that there are commenters on here claiming to be offended by Dell's soft-focus condescension, and then in the next breath suggesting that everyone should buy a Mac.

Apple PIONEERED the computer-as-fashion accessory market. Who cares what the specs are, it's an Apple, dear. No, you don't understand, it's silver. It will change your life. It will make you a cooler person.

The very fact that the Mac zealots are on here prosthelytizing proves my point. Everyone here should by the computer with the best specs they can find for the cheapest price they can find. A computer is a tool. Do you care what color your stapler is?

Haha, did you really just lecture us about all the careful foresight and data-based analysis that goes into ADVERTISING? Was your post supposed to be sarcastic and I missed it?

Also, a website does not cost anywhere near 100,000 to develop. Especially not when all the back-end e-commerce stuff is already in place from their other site. You could make a similar-looking frontend to Dell's "for women" site in a week or so, for no more than a couple thousand dollars.

Spy satellites don't observe every part of the earth's surface at every moment, they're moving around in orbit and need to be told to take photos of certain regions at certain points in their orbit. It seems very unlikely to me that any spy agency would have had their satellites targeted at an empty stretch of ocean.

Furthermore, spy satellites cameras are limited by the same things as any cameras: clouds and darkness. I suppose it's possible that they would have some sort of infrared or UV instruments that might work better, but all in all, I doubt a spy satellite could spot a moving aircraft, at night, in the middle of a cloudy storm.

The poster who noted that a GPS device only calculates its own position is correct. However, it does seem strange to me that aircraft do not routinely relay their own GPS-determined position to air traffic controller by radio. It seems like this would be a simple thing to have happen automatically on a separate channel from voice traffic.

Patrick, any comment?

This passage: "Most importantly, it isn’t a software company in the same way that Apple is regarding OS X. It doesn’t build operating systems, and to a large extent, it can only be as good as Microsoft allows it to be."

Is incredibly ill-informed. How did you completely miss the fact that most netbooks are available to ship with variants of the Linux operating system?

Up till now, these varients have typically been developed in-house (making ASUS, yes, a software company) and admittedly rather uncompelling.

However, this is starting to change. There are now several excellent Linux distributions designed specifically to target the netbook market.

Take a look at Ubuntu's "Netbook Remix": http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download-netbook

Or, the big dog, Google's Linux-based Android: http://code.google.com/android/

Android is a GUI+API platform built on top of Linux in almost the same way that Mac OSX is built on top of BSD UNIX. It was originally designed with smartphones in mind, but is shifting to netbooks as well.

ASUS hardware+Google/Linux software. There's your Apple killer. Incidentally, that's also the story you missed in this post.

So, this is completely not sarcastic: Could somebody here explain why this is so awful? If the clinic is going to be closed permanently anyway, why does it matter who buys the property? Who cares? Why are TCF and commenters here upset?

For years liberals have been telling us that all bad things in the world were the fault of old, white men, and the unrepresentative institutions they controlled.

Isn't the entire idea behind the diversity crusade that brown people and those with ovaries will bring their holistic, representative wisdom to bear in governments/courts/corporations?

And now, you mean to tell us that girls are just as capable of greedily raping the Earth and destroying the atmosphere? That the gender of people involved in an enterprise should count for nothing next to their actions?

What the heck is going on here? Was it opposite day today and I missed it?

Can somebody please explain to me why you feel that a temporary (pregnancy typically requires about 9 months, yes?) abridgment of that autonomy is a more serious violation of rights than ending the life of an--let's say--impending human being? (Note that the issue is much different where the life of the mother is at stake, a clear-cut case of self-defense)

As pointed out earlier, there are many situations where the state interferes with bodily autonomy: drug laws, incarceration, assisted suicide (should we only allow self-administered abortions?). This is justified on the theory that the benefits to society as a whole, or to a specific member of that society, outweigh the costs imposed on personal liberty.

Can somebody please tell me why a similar argument does not apply to abortion? Especially now, when birth control is so widespread and effective?