The edit button's in the Revolution4 edition of Slashcode, coming when CowboyNeil stops writing fanfic.

Stallman's peace prize is already done -- but release manager rms refuses to make a formal release until his personal changes to the award are complete.

The important thing about play is the engagement of your imagination. That's why I look back at terrible 8-bit graphics and sound and remember them being so much more than what's on screen. Visuals and sounds that are too good -- or however immersive the motion control interface -- can't make up for not engaging my imagination.

unless all of your IP is kept as a trade secret such that third party disclosure completely fucks you

I think that would be my primary concern with having an outside party maintain my data storage services: trade secret is the term for IP you haven't yet valued and protected with copyrights, patents, design patents and trade marks. But breach of contract is a powerful thing, and having contracts which mandate notification and quantification of data breach within a specified timescale and which have an increasing penalty for late reporting, these contracts would be a core part of my risk management in this situation.

The thing that swings me in AMD's direction each time I put together a computer is that the MB and AMD CPU together are comparable for performance at a lower price point than the Intel chip and its MB.

There's a huge difference is culture with Linux distributions in contrast to Windows. Linux software is largely available under the GPL or other free licence. Debian package and sign 18,000+ packages and offer a central download service. That allows you to get software you want from a trustworthy central location without risk of it compromising your system. However, there are guides to hardening Debian out there on the internet (Google suggests http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/), and there are willing helpers available on IRC.

At a minimum, I would split your / (root), /boot and /home mounts to different partitions and only allow nodev (no device) and noexec (no executables) in your /home partition. Then don't be afraid to blast away the root and boot partitions as often as you want. Create a script run daily using Cron to list your installed packages (something as simple as 'dpkg -l > /home/user/package-list.txt') so that a reinstall puts the base system onto your machine, you connect for signed, Debian-created updates and then you can reinstall everything else you had (using something like 'aptitude install /home/user/package-list.txt').

Even better, if you go the VM route, you can easily save your Windows VM image to an external disk every week or so, and if/when it gets infected, just recover from a backup and be up and running again in minutes instead of days!

Even better, just DD the drive image every week to a backup. Why bother with virtualisation?

DiskPart is the Windows tool, found in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management in XP. It's comparable to PartEd and GPartEd on Linux, but I prefer the GPartEd live CD because of its hardware drivers (now using Kernel 2.6.30) and rsync and dd for imaging.

You'll get modded down and I'll join the long line of people looking to correct you. Sure, it's Microsoft's choice to bundle software with their OS. But the issue raised is that Microsoft used their monopoly to skew the fair market for web browsers and gave incentives to people who didn't include other software in the PC's they built and sold. So, as part of the billions of Euros in fines, Microsoft have to make sure that there is a level playing field for web browsers in the OS they sell in Europe.

anybody who currently uses Internet Explorer ... is not going to change no matter how many browsers are included in the OS

And all the better for market share, improved quality of computer software and the world-wide web if people do have to choose a browser and can gain experience of what it's like without Microsoft's broken standards.

I don't use a mouse because starving rodents will eat butterflies.

Yes, it is possible. You could use Captive NTFS to employ the Windows filesystem implementation.

[P]erhaps you'd leave the right ctrl key where it is and have an asymmetric modifier key layout?

Given that I use the keyboad asymmetrically anyway (my right hand is on my mouse), I don't see the problem. Perhaps alignment and symmetry are far more important to you than to me?

In all fairness, exercise isn't abhorrent to rms when it's folk dancing.

I read a BBC blog that the present HD video equipment they have can only do single-plane focused images, and that good depth of field is difficult because of sensor noise and sensitivity. So to have a good set of lenses and a highly sensitive low-noise frame (and good sound recording) at the price of a 5DmkII would be a tremendous asset.

People will pay in blood and organs for Apple products, if that's the price Steve sets

In fairness, Steve's already after the BRAINSSS! BRAAAINSSSS!!!