Blaming the person using the computer is the reason we still have 12 step processes for codec installs on many distros. Often, these things don't become more intuitive, we just blame a gov't conspiracy or call the end user a lazy moron and tell him to RTFM.

Blame it on the end user or blame it on MS, it doesn't change the fact that the people that are receiving these netbooks with linux don't want them. If people want linux to be accepted, they need to make it more appealing to the target market.

Personally, I could care less if it gains in popularity. I use it for what I need it to do. I'm not concerned with what Joe Enduser has on his netbook.

As much as many of us would like to see it change, linux is still an operating system that works better in the hands of those that have worked their way through it's ranks. Selling linux to someone because it lowers cost will do nothing to increase the user base. Someone who has never used it has no idea what to do with it and once you tell them that they can't buy any apps at their local Wal-Mart, they panic and hand it to the first person that will give them their money back.

I really believe that these attempts to increase linux exposure are hurting more than helping the cause of the people trying to help the OS gain acceptance. Regardless of your stance on the OS itself, you have to concede that it is different and you shouldn't just dump it into somebody's lap to meet a pricepoint.

The articles linked seem to act as if there's only one update scheme in existence and we need to sit patiently until Apple decides if we can use it or not. In my humble opinion, tell Apple to shove their update schema until they reach their elbow and write a(or utilize an already written)schema that is deemed to differ from this ridiculous patent enough to be used. Oh, and quit buying their damned products too. You guys are just encouraging them.

Nobody's forgotten. /. knows that Opera readers will simply build an inline proxy that pre-reads the page, corrects any errors, add missing alignment attributes and then optimize the resulting code before passing it on to the user. For this reason, web development no longer has to take the browser into account.

The same standard as what, Hotmail? Because they never go down with no warning. The only difference is that's considered a stable application. It's all perception. Who gives a flip if it's got a tag on it. I would guess that less than 10% of GMail's users notice the tag.

Tor was never more effective.

I've got facial tics and keep ending up at sites I don't want to visit. For instance, it's taken me over an hour to post this comment because it keeps whisking me off to Richard Simmon's fan site. I've bought "Sweating to the Oldies" and a pink wife beater in hopes that it wouldn't make me visit again, but I now find myself as a lifetime member. Some kind of confirmation would be welcome.

Oh, you thought they do this for the betterment of the world? Well, that's not naive.