Windows disaster recovery isn't all that difficult. Just follow the simple instructions that come with the Linux CD. -- Anthony DeBoer

You would have to be crazy to try an in-place upgrade with Fedora. From their saying don't do it, they make you feel like failure is routine. And when I used Fedora for a few years (up through Fedora 12 I think), even minor upgrades (fixes, not full releases) broke sound-production again and again (as in for one fix I would have to add a 3 line alsa script to get sound output and for the next I would have to delete it again to get sound output). So I took their warning seriously and always reinstalled. And Pulse Audio (on Fedora back then) simply never worked.

Ubuntu, on the other hand (I use Xubuntu, Unity makes no sense to me -- I could never find anything I wanted) has upgraded itself many times now without any difficulty (Now running 11.10). So to label both as 'mostly' seems oddly at odds with my experience. One caveat though: Network Manager has been a horror even on Ubuntu and sometimes reappears for no reason I can discern -- deleting Network Manager and fixing a few scripts in /etc is (for me) simpler. Or use 'Wicd' for a laptop that gets around --when you need to accomodate changing circumstances.

Given that the US congress has failed to pass or even consider some laws affecting a given tax year (in recent years) until December of the tax year (thinking here about charitable contributions and about 401K distributions) how is one supposed to plan or predict? This is a ridiculous situation.

The media companies are selling (and generating) artificial scarcity. Historically, each time technology makes a leap the previous owners of the 'goods' work as hard as possible to stop the new tech that makes the 'goods' too cheap. Like folks attempted to stop the printing press when it was new (giving a peasant the possibility to own a book? Horrors!). But new tech changes the game. Copying of data is now free (for all practical purposes) and of course we all know you cannot even view or hear the 'goods' without copying it from here to there (multiple times in some cases) inside whatever device you are working with!

And the notion that the copyright owner can stop you from copying from one device you own to another you own is...just crazy. Nobody accepts that. We know it's wrong to prevent us so we do it. Every day. Copying is unavoidable, really.

Please continue to try to fight the perversion of language too: no copyright issue involves folks with guns hijacking a ship. Call it the copyright issue it is (not that the newspapers will pick it up that way, but try...)

If you really want to understand US copyright and what it really serves (not authors!) simply read "How To Fix Copyright" by William Patry. No, I don't have any financial interest in this or any book or publisher, I simply hope more folks become better informed.

While it's called Piracy by the RIAA and MPAA and the governments seemingly under their control, it is actually (depending on circumstances) actually copyright infringement. Or it is just fair use. Whatever. The real pirates near Somalia have nothing to do with copyright infringement.

The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. -- Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11. Signed by John Adams.

";login: is still pretty good" is, IMHO, the understatement of the day :-)

Yes, I complained about Linux Journal stopping the print edition too, but I broke down and bought a tablet and reading LJ there is great. (happens to be an iPad, so I guess my geek card is cancelled?)

Wait -- folks are complaining about the rounding necessary?

Anyway, your calculations are all wrong, I am the center of the universe. My parents said so. No, I don't still live in their basement.

Any kindle owner knows not to buy any book that has pictures or drawings. E-ink simply does not work for those.

iPad (or the like, I would guess) are fine fine for pictures and drawings. And being able to use non-DRM ePub format documents is great in color. Don't tell anyone, but the ads in The New Yorker look much nicer on the iPad than they do in the print magazine!

It is profoundly annoying that publishers set nonsense prices. Except in unusual circumstances I simply ignore books with those ripoff publisher-set prices. That publishers refuse to put some (text only) books into Kindle at all really makes me angry at times.

Search for 'grok'. You won't find it on this encyclopedia. Enough said.

We considered it, but since it was impossible to buy an Aptera we got a Mini. Plenty of folks would buy an unusual looking car (not sure how many in Nebraska would do so, but in major Metro areas, sure). Besides, full electric cars obviously won't work for rurals where the minimum trip to the store is 100 miles each way (with present technology).

The looks were cute (ok, call me crazy) and 2-wheels-forward is plenty safe, the unsafe 3-wheelers were 2-wheels-at-the-back. Though two-wheels-at-back 3-wheelers have provided endless amusement in the UK! For example in various Monty Python skits...

The 'sealed' design means air-conditioning had to be on all the time. I always wondered what percent of the battery would go to cooling the air.

Pirating got started not to overwhelm the publishers, but to do what the public demanded.

Remember a few years ago? Back then the music publishers would only sell on the web a tiny tiny fraction of what they had, the only way to get 99% of the music out there was to pirate it. Still true, at least in the sense that where you are determines whether and when you can buy something at all.

How do I know this? The owner of a small music publishing house said so on NPR (National Public Radio in the US) (various times over years).