I went in to the Best Buy in the nearby city this morning. I got there at 9:20. The store didn't open until 10:00. Next door was a Staples. They were open, so I went in. A sales guy said that they had 15, and they sold within 5 minutes of opening. He also said that both Best Buy locations in town were sold out (when I left Staples, a lineup was forming at BB). Another customer overheard my conversation with Sales Guy, and said that the Source by Circuit City in the mall across the street showed 2 available on their website. I got there and there was a lineup already. Crap. Light-bulb goes off. In a town about 30km away, there is a Staples and a Source. I high-tail it there, and get to the Staples 1 minute before 10:00 opening. As I walk up, there is a crowd of 8 or so, but I just breeze in past them, ask the opener how many are left. He says 2 of the 32Gb and before he finishes, I say "I'll take one". Score! Herd mentality kept the group bunched together. I was Jonesing and came from a too-fast drive. Adrenalin was driving me. It really is not a bad unit, especially at 80% off. It's actually quite good. It's very functional, but the inevitable Android hack has me excited.

To the person who modded me down: Are you willing to pay more to keep receiving your paper copy of your favourite magazine? If so. how much more? How much profit will you allow the publisher to make? Should the writers be allowed to make a living wage? I'm not being factitious - these are serious, germane questions. Unless we can answer these questions honestly, most periodicals cannot survive.

You have the right to vote with your wallet, but I don't have to agree with your decision. Personally, I initially had a hard time getting used to e-copies of mags, but I adapted. The publishing world is in rough shape right now, and as commercial entities, they have to be profitable. With the economy in the dumps, people aren't subscribing or buying as much off of the newsstands, and advertisers are guarding their cash carefully. Your choice: read free commentary on the 'net with no guarantee of quality or accuracy, or "suck it up buttercup" and read e-version written by professionals and edited by professionals. I'd rather switch mediums than give up quality.

As a member of an organization that also has a publishing arm that includes a periodical (I'm on the Publishing Committee), I can tell you that the costs of publishing and distributing dead-tree copies is astronomical (pun intended), and unless your subscription fees are stupid-high or you have enough advertisers to off-set most of the costs, you will be drowning in a sea of red ink. We had to make the tough decisions to 1.) allow limited advertising, and 2.) go to all digital, with printed copies provided for an additional nominal fee for those that desired them. For those with their fingers in their ears chanting "na-na-na-can't-hear-you", good riddance. Commercial organizations have to pay writers, freelancers, printers, the postal service, utility bills, rents, taxes etc. I'm surprised that so many have survived this long. As a non-profit, we operate on a shoe-string budget. Those of you who begrudge commercial periodicals their meagre margins and who have made the tough decision to keep publishing and keep employing writers, fuck you. Fuck you to Heck. Get with the 21st century or go away. You won't be missed.

Yeah, they may be beaten to an inch of their lives like us, but at least we get a stale crust of bread and a glass of urine in the evening. Are you out of your fucking mind? Being screwed is being screwed, nevermind HOW they are being screwed in the USA. Idiot.

Mod the above post up. I run two Linux servers (ClearOS, Ubuntu Server) and 4 Linux desktops (3 dual-boot) at home. Linux Mint w/ gnome is stable, user-friendly, and recommended 110%. 2 will be migrated to Mint, One already has it, and one will stay with Lubuntu for quick boot/shutdown (down in 2 seconds! Up in 21).

Case Study: Client with 45 users; he's in charge of accounting, warehouse management and oh yeah: IT. He loves IT, has built some custom scripts, manages the domain, has kept the server humming for 7 years. Time for a new server. I do a full IT review/vulnerability assessment and make recommendations (sales/consulting/herb Tarlick guy w/ 20 years experience and a passion for all things IT. My home network is way out of proportion for the needs of 2 people) in concert with our systems engineers. We propose a solution, clearly define the scope - based on best-practices from long experience and membership and participation with a peer organization in our industry, and include in it an estimated cost. We include training for the guy and explicitly mention that he will be a part of the install process and that he will be trained. SLA's are clearly defined. We came in UNDER BUDGET, the network is locked down, solid, and the guy is happier than a pig in poop. He has told me that this was the best learning experience of his career. He figured out why some thing that he had previously set up didn't work, how to do it right, and so many other things that he hadn't considered. By all means bring in people who know what they're doing. Vet them. Make sure that the contract includes training you (involving you in the installation process AND building your skills - skills that make you more valuable to your employer). This is an awesome opportunity for your career. You get to implement a 1st class solution, improve your skills at no personal expense to you, and make yourself more valuable to your employer. Good luck!

Having tried them, both Unity and Gnome 3 leave me feeling cold and slightly ill for reasons that many others have stated clearly and eloquently. Try Lubuntu. The LXDE interface is light, boots fast (~25 seconds on an old Pentium D 3Ghz, 2Gb RAM) and shutdown takes exactly 5 seconds. It looks Gnome 2.x-ish and even has has multi-desktop, which is important for me. My new work laptop dual-boots to Windows 7 (for work) and OpenSUSE 11.4 (for me) running their KDE implementation. I like it a *lot* which is eye-opening for me as I've found KDE wanting over the past few years. It's worth looking into now. Just my $.02.

Crap. Ok - played with the beta versions of 11.04 in virtualization. I really don't like the interface. I have been using 10.1 and I *like* the Gnome 2.x interface. It's simple, I can add useful things to the bottom app bar, and I like the simple menu structure. Alternatively Gnome 3 is just...just...ick. Really not designed for the PC or for me and the way that I work, so no option there. I also like having current versions of apps installed and their updates automagically done as part of the daily update cycle. No getting rid of Open Office and replacing it with Libre Office unless I do a bunch of things - free time is not something that I have a lot of. Setting up Libre Office in 10.1 is a manual thing initially, but that also goes for many other apps too, unless I bump up to the 11 series. As always with Ubuntu, the first ".01" release breaks a bunch of things - video is usually the big bug for me. So what to do? After trying a few (11 or so) distros in virtualization - Linux, BSD, open Solaris derivatives, I've settles on OpenSuse 11.4 with the KDE interface. I decided to give the "K" another try, and I find that I like it. I can customize it to my tastes, and that suits me just fine. This is the beauty of the Linux ecosystem: diversity = a healthy gene pool, and you can get the system that you want, not the system that's imposed from a centralized corporate self-interested behemoth. Sorry to part company with Ubuntu for now, but looking forward to a new thing. I'll be keeping an eye on what Canonical does and I'll be rooting for them. It's just that at the moment, what they're doing doesn't suit me.

Win 7 does allow you to move the menu bar anwhere around the sides of thescreen. On my work PC and gaming rig (both Win 7), I moved the menus to the top to be consistent with the Linux systems in my home.

I carry a smart phone with me daily and I rely on it for a myriad of things: several IM accounts, integration with my office Exchange server, integration with the office IP-based phone sytem, social networking, news, traffic updates, weather, white/yellow page lookup, routing etc etc. If it's not at my hip I get twitchy. The interface is great for me because it's designed properly for the device. I've also got my eye on a tablet. So, I may be mid 40-ish, but I get it, ok? My laptop, on the other hand, is a traditional computer. I do office-y things with it. I also aggregate my IM accounts onto one convenient app, I use Skype and TeamSpeak for voice comms. A simple and configurable interface works best - for me - because I like my workspace to be set up my way. Boxing me into a confining, however pretty, environment that I may or may not grow accustomed to does not appeal to me, especially if it interrupts my work flow. My set up rather nicely keeps up with our information laden times, TYVM. A patronizing tone does nothing to further your case for putting a tablet-like interface on a PC. Does Windows 7 work as a tablet OS? No? Then why would a tablet-like interface work on a PC? Just asking.

Really? Gnome 3 welcome? It's like having a smartphone OS interface on a large LCD screen. Choices have been removed, the interface is ugly and non-intuitive, and it just doesn't work intuitively. They should have named it something other than Gnome because it's not related to its ancestors. Gnome 2.x was/is great in that it's a clean, uncluttered interface that's customizable and just get's the hell out of the way. Either XFCE, LXDE, or Gnome 2.x will be my environment of choice. Gnome 3 is an abomination. Sorry.

When asked to clarify, Pope Benedict exclaimed "All your soul belong to us!"

Studying religion, to me, is a complete waste of time. I'll stick to Darwin, Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens; Feynman, Weinberg, Greene and Shermer et al. Reality is soooo much more interesting and awe-inspiring than man-made edifices to superstition and ignorance. Maher is funny and sometimes an idiot, but "Religulous" was entertaining more for the earnest idiots on parade than Maher's commentary.

Really? REALLY??? If an "ark" was found on a mountain (almost zero likelihood) and shown to have belonged to some biblical character (even less likely), I will publicly eat my copy of Hitchens' "God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" and renounce Pastafarianism.