Just wondering ...
"Data grabbed from the limo biz included names and addresses and credit numbers in a plain-text archive, ..."
I thought that they weren't allowed to store credit card numbers, never mind in plain text?
6077 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
How 'innovatively customised' can you make e-mail, txting and browsing? If you want that, there are dozens of GUI wrappers and data integrating apps in the Google app stopre. There are also many data transfer/sync apps as well, all at a low price. The only customisation I wanted (and got) for my Nexus was the Nova Launcher and its start screen, which I was happy to pay for.
Your prostitution analogy is incorrect. The situation is more like a dating agency. You have a busy life and don't have time to receive broadcast signals at a convenient time. Somewhere out there is a signal that would be just right for you. Aereo can help you to get together, at a time that's convenient for you.
My suggestion: Buy a 32GB PATA SSD (I assume your old laptop uses a 2.5" PATA/IDE drive), you can get a Kingspec drive on e-bay from a chinese supplier for about £40. I did that for my 8-year old Acer Travelmate and installed Mint 13 LTS - works very nicely thank you. A Linux distribution with a big set of installed software will easily fit into 8GB leaving room for lots of personal data or multi-boot installations. Because it's PATA, there is a 100Mb/s limit to the possible data rate from the drive, but it's silent and robust. (If your laptop has a SATA drive, just buy a small SATA SSD.)
With an older and less powerful laptop, LXDE would be less sluggish than MATE (as I found) but there are other Linux distributiions and even lighter-weight DE possibilities out there.
With Linux, you can keep copies of any installed image on an external hard drive (use a Gparted live CD or similar to make partition copies) then you can recover from the inevitable foul-ups as you experiment. A Boot Repair Disk live CD is also a good thing to get and use. Good luck - have fun.
There is a good chance that Microsoft are capable of building their datacentre in another place, outside the area of Des Moines and thus not paying any taxes at all to Des Moines in the future. This is the stick that Microsoft (and other large companies) wave at local authorities while showing a picture of a carrot (future tax revenues). Microsoft are not there and not paying taxes yet. Small struggling companies are there and they can't afford to move.
You forgot about seabed earthquakes. If it 'floated' a few hundred feet off the bottom, in deep water, that might work out well. The cables would have to be designed to snap under heavy strain, etc, but it could be done. As for 'the heaviest objects ever built being made to float', take a look at a large cruise liner.