As someone whose desktop needs are pretty simple, I agree with this assessment. If you want a *nix that's point-and-click configurable, looks nice, makes it easy to install software, and generally doesn't get in your way, Mint is definitely the way to go. I've tried all the popular distros, from (X/K)ubuntu, to Debian, to Fedora, to Arch and others, and I inevitably keep coming back to Mint. Just my 2 cents.
Absolutely. Two days ago (before the open source announcement), I begrudgingly started learning Swift for a school project in iOS development. Now I'm itching to dive into the language.
Remember, this a secret court, whose judges are likely highly biased in favor the government, with secret proceedings where only the NSA gets to make a case. Not exactly a legitimate safeguard.
I also have reservations about the grandparent comment, but PRISM is still pretty awful.
No, you'd just need one increment after all of them. An increment in every else-if block is redundant because only one condition can be executed per loop.
It's a cryptographic mechanism. MS has a private key they apply to each Windows update to mathematically prove A) they're the ones who issued it and B) the content was not modified in transit.
(I am not experienced in cryptography. This explanation might be a little simplistic.)
Same deal for Howard County, MD. We had to get up at 6 to be on the bus by 6:30, and it was pitch black outside in the winter months. Luckily I had an forty-minute bus ride, which provided the opportunity for some extra rest.