Hmmm... I like not showing the 'default' tab when there is only one session type. It always whigged me out that it wanted me to select the only option that I have configured.

I would suspect that the vaccine, once as reasonably perfected as possible, would be intended for healthcare workers, researchers, and other individuals who are likely to be exposed to the virus as an occupational hazard, rather than something for mass consumption. Alternatively, if we hear of an outbreak we can ship in a crate of the vaccine and use it as an immediate prophylaxis for the residents of the area to even further limit the number of deaths.

Besides, filoviruses have a rather fascinatingly unique structure. If we can make an effective vaccine against one of those, the techniques developed in the process make it easier to create vaccines against other nasty viruses with similar traits.

Ebola in Florida? A (very) quick google doesn't show any results other than doctors' offices that claim to screen for it or provide summary information about it. Can you provide some articles / references? I mean, sure, there was the Reston, VA case, but that's the only state-side incident I've ever heard of. Not that I've heard of everything, mind you, but a virus like Ebola tends to make pretty loud news when it rears its head...

I can see where he's coming from, as a large number of my daily e-mails are things that I'll never read or have only minimal need for (HR's health reminders, vendor spam, several conversations where people hit 'reply to all', several more conversations where someone doesn't know who to ask and so asks everyone, etc...). At the same time, however, your points are all valid. Technical requests really should be in writing for reasons of both CYA and for specificity. On the gripping hand, our engineering staff only ever uses e-mail to disseminate notes and how-tos. The primary means of communication there, especially when troubleshooting problems, is IM (Lync, unfortunately). Both have a time and place, and the trick is knowing when to use each.

Having said that, e-mail is probably the one piece of tech that I'd love to kill off entirely if I could; even sooner than I'd kill Flash or Java.

Actually, I've found that it depends on the time of day. My calls to VMware between 3:00 PM and 3:00 AM (EST) get routed to India, which is where the worthless people are. From 3:00 AM until around noon EST the calls go to Ireland. My experience has always been that the staff at the Ireland facility are exceptionally good at what they do. Whereas the India drone prompted me to repeat the same ten steps I'd already done (twice, I might add), the people in Ireland looked at the log output, asked what I'd tried, and then, after a couple minutes of thought, said 'Do X'. X fixed the problem right away.

YMMV.

You know, if I still had my old laptop I'd give this a try. I always found KDE3.5 to be a *Very* friendly way to introduce people to Linux. It was Window-like enough that they could intuit their way around the menus. Then again, the wife's laptop doesn't quite have enough power for the KDE4 environment... Might be worth checking out. If only the site weren't already slashdotted...

P.S. - Thank you, Rob.

The first question my boss asked me after the technical portion of my interview concluded was 'Do you read Slashdot?'. To this day, I advise all of our new hires to keep up with it if they really want to have a clue about where the industry is headed.

I didn't realize that Ubuntu was using Pulse by default - I thought that was more of a KDE thing. But it's not like it's hard to remove Pulse itself (just don't touch libpulseaudio) and revert to ALSA.

Huh. I've made my own motivation. For example, I ended up in an environment with several floating islands. So I took it upon myself to climb to the top of the nearest hill (actually mine my way up through it) and then start building bridges to link the islands and mountaintops together. Then line the bridges with safety rails, pave them, and set up waypoints so that I could always find my way back 'home'.

Long-term support? Are we talking about the same OpenSuSE? The one that drops its repositories 1.5 years after the release date? Now RHEL, yes, that's long-term support, and even Ubuntu LTS has patches out for three years after the release date. OpenSuSE not so much.

I've had no problems installing Ubuntu on VMware, and have several customers who, yes, run Ubuntu in a corporate environment. Which versions (of both) were you running? Ubuntu 8.04 went into an ESX 3.5i host painlessly, and the 10.04 installs were just as smooth... Now, I haven't tried it on ESX 4.x yet, but I'm sure that day is coming soon enough.

He's referencing Monster cable, such as this product, and making fun of the fact that 'audiophiles' will spend enormous amounts of money on gear that they have no solid way of proving is better.

Bad grammar on my part. My point is that, eventually, 32-bit native mode will be gone entirely and support for it in any type of emulation will also vanish. Of course, by then we'll probably be talking about having to support 64-bit apps on a 128-bit system, but who knows?

Though, honestly, I don't really know what I was thinking when I hit 'submit'.