So, he will have even less incentive to NOT hurt HP. The stocks might have given some incentive and/or conflict of interest when faced when challenging HP in any way. Now he can can freely use his ~*amazing*~ competative knowledge against them.

Interesting way to settle a lawsuit. I'm curious how this will play out during the next 10 years with government and large contracts.

uses new interface to control MY imaginary galaxy class ship to completely destroy YOUR constitution class ship.

Now I just need somebody to create an LCARS looking interface for it and I can control my imaginary Galaxy class starship.

This is September. Ubuntu 10.10 will be out next month...Kudos for a 'fresh load' if desired or an upgrade in short order. While OS stability is nice -- supposedly when an application is written for WinXP or Vista or 7, it works on that version for as long as you have it -- however in practice this hasn't always been true. I appreciate having nice clear dependancies...which is sometimes very difficult to determine in windows.
Getting a particular version of an app running right in linux may be a pain sometimes, but at least there are published dependencies that are supposed to get something working.

It isn't really a free gift that you are getting. You are taking the discounted 'friend' rate first hit of drugs. They see it to their advantage to give cheap licenses to educational institutions specifically so that they control the market via training and expectations. If people have spent 4-8 years in college level coursework, and another few in secondary school prior to that using Microsoft Office products...chances are they won't even think twice about buying it for their business or personal use at a later date.
People have no idea what software is on thier computers or even that there are competing office suites. They have expectations, and this expectation has been fed by cheap licensing to strategic market segments that will later trigger purchases. Even non-profits and NGOs, they do business with other people outside of their organizations, and when trading documents they expect it to just plain work all the time...this leads the occasional person that wouldn't have otherwise bought Office to purchase it.
This isn't a free gift. This is a reputation saver, and continues their effort to sweeten the pod of the underprivileged so that they will generate more sales in those that can pay exhorbitant fees for software.

One more company takes the patent troll route after finding out they are incapable of manufacturing something worth owning in the first place. Unfortunately HP printers are approaching Lexmark quality levels and not the other way around. I hate both companies, but obviously avoid Lexmark like the plague. I usually don't even bother trying to troubleshoot them or buy new roller kits -- I just replace the lexmarks with HPs.

Israel. Not the USA.

I've been waiting for mediacom to roll out some DOCSYS 3 / IPv6 forever. This little town I happen to be in, has excellent infrastructure and is physically capable of running it -- unlike most cities. This town is dependent only on major hardware upgrades, not cable plant upgrades.

I've found the UBCD -- Ultimate Boot CD to be quite useful.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It does come in handy, includes many of the necessary tools to determine HDD end of life etc.

It certainly isn't perfect, but I am amazed nobody has mentioned it yet in the discussion. Obviously real tools are on my bench, but when the poster specifically asked for software....this is the easiest and most broad spectrum solution.

mod parent up. rsnapshot is painless and elegant.

amen.

Exactly.

I am air force IT. We've been rolling out "SDC" or Standard Desktop Configuration for years now. Now there is SDC II -- The Vista SDC. We also have SSC -- Standard Server Configuration.
These really aren't much more than supported nLite windows load discs.
The SDC has:
-Most of the drivers we need including SATA, mobo drivers, network drivers, etc
-Obvious fixes to password complexity that pretty much anybody can hardwire after the fact, but ours is pre-set
-Altered admin account name, which again anybody can do after the fact but only ours is pre-loaded
-All the current patches, usually only 5-20 updates need to be applied after installation, and those are all controlled via domain controllers and login
-Biggest advantage really is application testing...if it works under SDC, then it works everywhere

All this, and our networks are still ridiculously porous. I have unix and linux experience. I am also Security+ certified, among many others. My home is network secure than the Air Force. And I don't need to spend millions of dollars doing it.

Bad parenting.
How many kids used to grow up emulating old western movies?
What about the Rocky movies?
Footloose?

Most of the time, decent parents stop the children before they act out gun fights, boxing matches, and tractor chicken.

Stop blaming your environment and start taking responsibility for yourselves!