The 12" Powerbook G4 was the end of my love affair with Apple. Every time I got an MBP, the dang thing would have some mechanical issue (catch fire, lose DVD inside, you name it). That G4 laptop though, it's still going strong with one simple keyboard replacement.

My wife wrote 5 books on the dang thing, too!

The one I use is gray, has a tiny bump connecting a mouse/keyboard PS/2 port, and cost like $20 at Fry's. No brand name, but it works like a champ.

Same here. I have three of these - the one I'm using right now I've used it daily since 1994. Got a 1997 at home, and a 1990 model in the closet waiting for one to die.

I find the poll trend disturbing, because I'm in the same boat as you.

I depends on what length you consider a "book", but with tech manuals in the 100+ page range, I would count those as well.

I probably read almost book a day, sometimes a book every few. Not all of these are massive Tolstoy scale books, lots are shorts (under 50 pages), some are in the 100-150 page range, and a few are enormous (and take a few days).

Probably better to say "How many pages do you read a day" - since for me on average that's probably 70.

As for *new* books - well, Feedbooks feeds my addiction. I have had a great consuming everything written by specific authors, in order.

Got a pile of AIX servers here like that:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/780/index.html

I was kind of wondering about the "modern operating systems" comment... I think he meant "desktop operating systems".
Many of the big OS vendors (IBM, DEC (now HP), CRAY, etc) are well beyond this point. Even OS/2 could scale to 1024 processors if I recall correctly.

I keep hearing a lot of this sort of comment - the devs of diaspora are inept. The devs are out of their league. Etc etc etc.

You know, I don't see anyone else building anything like it. Linus was out of his depth building Linux, and SMTP, HTML, and NCSA Mosaic were certainly created by people completely out of their depth. Most of those people had degrees, and should have known to build security in from the start, right?

You guys have a better product? Let's see it. Until then, stop acting like children.

What "launching"? They aren't launched, they just had a public pre-alpha to invite people to come take a look and provide feedback.

If that *had* been a launch, you'd be right. I tested the pre-alpha, and I provided my feedback. Let's let them go fix it now and see if the beta is better.

Exactly true. Experience is something you don't get until AFTER you need it.

I have checked out the Alpha, even though I am not a fan of facebook or social networking. It's always worth playing with new OSS stuff, because you never know where the next really good project (or even really good idea) will come from. It takes a lot of "almost good" attempts to make one that is good.

Thanks - I hadn't looked at it in a while, so I just went and looked it up again.

This is good: http://linuxandfriends.com/2010/02/03/how-to-truecrypt-setup-on-ubuntu-linux/

Much better than last time I tried it.

I support Unix professionally (RHEL), and my work laptop is Ubuntu 10.04.

My home machine is Win7. Why? Flight Simulator, LOTRO, SimCity, Civilization, and several other games that either don't play at all or are a freaking pain to make work. CS4. A properly working scanner. Portable Apps (ironic, huh? Most are linux apps!). TrueCrypt (which works in Linux but is a PITA to deal with). HDMI support (including sound).

I like Ubuntu 10.04 a lot, and for me it's ideal for my laptop needs. Just doesn't hack it on my desktop. Funny how times have changed.

I do a ton of shooting with my Nikon F100, and it's true - when you take between 3 and 5 shots of the same thing, you only usually keep the one that came out just right :)

Yay bracketing :D

BTW - still hate digital cameras. Own 3, haven't liked one yet.