hear, hear! As a theologist with no specific religion (I would hesitate to even call myself agnostic), I find it ludicrous that people can be evangelical about atheism while judging others for being theists of any kind. The enlightenment was over ages ago. Anyone claiming to be an atheist now is just as confused and dogmatic as their predecessors, with the added burden of being self-indoctrinated.

true fact. People often think that a regular release is the equivalent of a regular windows/osx release, which is a fallacy. The LTS releases are the ones we ought to base our opinions on (especially since before ubuntu, nobody did a 6 month release cycle). But, I must conceed, that is Ubuntu's fault alone. They would do well to call their LTS's "regular" releases, and all the in-betweens "alpha", "beta", and "RC" respectively. OTOH, they wouldn't get as much user testing that way, and hence, their LTS releases would not be as stable.

'things like the sometimes-unified-global-menu are frankly infuriating' The global menus work with kde and gnome apps, as well as firefox. The only one not installed by default is libreoffice's menubar. You can get it in the repos, it's called lo-menubar, and will probably be default in 11.10 as it works just fine right now and will probably be bug free by then.

'Basically, the only thing that sucks about unity is the unity desktop itself. The only thing from there I miss is the text search/launcher. If that didn't take up the whole desktop it would be much better.' What?! your desktop is unity, but less polished. I like the fact that you thought of the same things as the unity developers, but what, exactly, are the advantages of your setup?

Are you using Virtualbox 4.0? It was just released recently and you need it. Get it from Oracle's site, install, and make sure that the checkbox for "3d acceleration" is checked on your VM setup. Then it should work (provided you have the guest additions up to date. As a caveat, you have to be able to do 3d acceleration on your host machine for this to work. Enjoy!

the show/hide behavior and scale of the dock can be adjusted. You need compizconfig-settings-manager, though.

install guest additions

What's so hard about Drupal? It was the first CMS I ever used (before that I had built sites with Kompozer, iWeb, and Dreamweaver, and before that, I used old fashioned HTML in the 90s), and I found it not only easy to use, but that being able to use modules for ecommerce, flash, mp3s, rotating banners, etc. made the whole site WAY more appealing to users at a level of complexity I could never do on my own (I tried hacking together bits of java, flash, etc. in the past). Not only that, but once it's set up, like all CMS systems, I can administer from the web, from anywhere, and it just works. I didn't even buy a book, just read tutorials and did google searches on the things I couldn't figure out on my own (admittedly not very much). I had considered myself very much an amateur before using Drupal, and I'm certainly no programmer, but now I use it to administer three of my own sites and two that I was hired to create for people I know. Drupal is great for its flexibility and easy interface, but I would agree that it's a bit overkill for 90% of the sites people create, where all they need is a simple information site with some pictures. If that's the case, use wordpress. P.S. Although I recommend Wordpress for simple sites, when I first used it after having done a couple sites in Drupal, I was utterly baffled at the differences, and I'm sure it works both ways.

We are streaming only. I must admit that most of the shows we watch, however, are not available on hulu where we live, so most of the content we watch in our house is illegal. Ditched cable about five years ago when I found out about torrents, and switched to streaming only about two years ago when the shows we like in our house all became available. Honestly, if you find the right sites, there's not much you can't find. Even old/obscure shows pop up often, so content-wise, it's basically the same as having cable or a dish. If you're going this way, though, make sure to install adblock plus, as pirate tv sites are FILLED with flash ads. However, I would gladly watch all these shows with commercials legally, except for: 1. Most shows are not available in my area legally 2. When they are, the players from local tv stations usually don't work as well (crash more, etc.) as the pirate sites 3. Even when the shows we want to watch are available, and the player isn't buggy (vis-a-vis most discovery and tlc shows), it's just more convenient to stick with the pirate sites, as we can access ALL the content we want through one search portal. It would be a waste of my time to switch to the legal sites, especially as the law here currently doesn't forbid consumers from accessing pirate material, only providers can't provide illegal stuff. If they had a free, ad supported version of "freevideosforwatching.com*" (*name changed) AND it was illegal for me to watch the pirated ones, I wouldn't hesitate to switch for a second.

Anyone who has ever dealt with a major label knows that all recording/production costs are recouped by the label before the artist makes any money. Plus the record label only pay out a dollar or two per album (I had heard a few years back that Metallica was making $4 per album, but even that figure is ludicrously high). Plus retail also takes a cut (even on itunes). Plus manufacturing costs money if you're making CDs and 15% (this is standard) of these CDs are given away as promotional. So consider the fact that if one spends $50,000 on the recording and production of an album (a modest figure in a major studio), one must sell about 30,000 copies of the album just to break even on the cost of making the album. Music acts make money playing live, and don't recieve a wage during recording (unless they get an advance, which is also recouped, adding to the number of albums which must be sold to break even).

The alternative now is that I can buy the $100 computer (a p4 with 3gb ram will do great), and a $200 soundcard (an m-audio delta 1010lt). I should have been more clear earlier, but the other $700 would easily rent a nice set of drum microphones (if you're even using real drums, and even then, it's usually easier to get a good sound with triggers - ala Nirvana's Nevermind, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and just about every other mainstream record you've ever heard), a good vocal mic, and any instruments you may also need (although if you're a recording musician you probably already have that stuff, major label deal or not). To be absolutely realistic, the costs of the rentals you'll need for tracking (and the old carpet you need for the walls) is probably more in the region of about $200, but I tend to err on the side of caution when I make such broad statements. So you could make an album yourself, and after you recoup the $1000 it took to make it, you start earning money on all the hard work you have done in writing and recording your music. Alternatively, you could make an album with a major label, go into the hole with them for $50,000, and start making money for the same amount of work after 30,000 albums are sold. And when you want to make a new album again, the label won't let you unless you've made money on the last. If you had done it yourself, you could not only start creating again in a couple of months, but your costs for album 2 are 30% less because you already have the computer and soundcard you used the first time

Where do I come up with this stuff? I've done it. Several times. Check out dickmacinnis.com to listen to my debut solo album, which I've already made almost $20,000 on to date. The album took about two months to write/record/produce/master, and I'll be able to continue selling it until the day I die. I'm currently working on the follow up.

DickMacInnis.com

I remember when I started programming basic on a 386. It had only the pc speaker. I had always been interested in music, so I had started programming with basic little beeps and such to play a melody I had written. At the time you needed to spend $50,000 to record a decent sounding professional album in a studio. Nowadays you can make a recording on par with the hits of the 90s (at least) on a $100 desktop with a $200 soundcard. And major record labels wonder why we're not convinced that the major pop acts are worth the money. The reason is they're not. The old days are gone, and anybody with the willingness to learn and a passion for music making can make just as good a product for a tiny fraction of the cost. One only needs to sell about a hundred albums at $10 each to break even nowadays (of course most mainstream pop artists don't have the first clue how to do any of this work, which is why they're so easily duped into a record contract).

DickMacInnis.com

IMHO, listening to these side by side, that Roland MT32 is better sounding than even the cd-quality digital audio. How about that sweet marimba lead line? DickMacInnis.com

Agreed! Besides which, ideas are certainly not the only thing being sold in multimedia content.

I'm a songwriter. You want to come to my house and listen to me play a song. Sure! But if I don't let you in, you're screwed. If I'm playing a song in my front yard and you're on the street, I can't stop you from listening. And even if you learn all the words and how to play it on the piano, I can't stop you from playing it at your house, or to your friends. Try that with a movie. Hang around with a screenwriter, watch what he types, and then convince your friends to act it out with you. Not very good? Well, maybe what you want is a professional movie. Maybe what you want is a professional sound recording. Here's the rub: even if I own a studio, professional musicians and actors don't work for free. A jam band at your family reunion? Sure! A community play? Maybe. The point is, you probably wouldn't watch Transformers (at least not for an hour and a half), if it was acted out by people from your neighborhood with cardboard outfits. And even then, do you think they'd want to do that every night?? And you probably wouldn't want to listen to Radiohead's latest album if it was played by laidoff workers from the local steel mill, and even if you did, they wouldn't do it every day, at least not for free. Even street performers pack up and go home when they don't make a single penny. And yet, people think that they have the right to consume PROFESSIONAL works, which COST MONEY TO MAKE, for free (and yes, I am one of those people). I don't disagree with piracy, but it is CERTAINLY unethical

DickMacInnis.com