lynx doesn't save your cookie settings when the program exits, but links does.

Yeah, mutt + fetchmail + procmail rocks big time.

Did I have too much beer or Slashdot all of a sudden start to support UTF-8? Lessee... "Não entendo patavina de dinamarquÃs, mas gostaria da traduÃão".

Well, it's more than 10 years... UTF-8 should be mature enough by now. Bless ya!

Eight gigs should be enough for anyone. Actually my DE of choice is KDE, since 0.x and proprietary Qt. I've dabbled with GNOME, XFCE, WindowMaker in its time, AfterStep in its time, but none of them gets nearly as close as KDE.

On amnesiac machines, I just run fluxbox (and hope Firefox doesn't thrash too much).

I loved his "First Landing", even though the end isn't as appealing as it could be. The novel is about a "what if" his Mars Direct plan were done in the present.

Well, I confess I'm not a conoisseur of these subjects, but the technology he proposes is one we've had (not really "we", but you Americans) since the 60's: Saturn V launchers, habitation modules akin to the Lunar Module AND the ISS etc. Maybe I'm too easily influenced, maybe I'm too hopeful, but I'm inclined to believe what he said.

As for the amortized costs, what you said is true if we consider "one mission" two, four, six or another even number of lauches as a whole (to put a crew on Mars, Zubrin proposes one uncrewed launch which will prepare the terrain for a follow-up manned launch), but the greatest expenditure will be the design and implementation of this first pair of launches.

He also argues that the proposal for utopical launches, "Battlestar Galactica" style ships (as he words it), which can be postponed to the future until "adequate technology" is developed, is of interest to government contractors, but not to our own wish of sending humans to Mars ASAP.

I've just read an excellent book by aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin, called "The Case for Mars", in which he argues in great detail for the possibility of puting humans on Mars in our own generation. His project is called "Mars Direct", and involves basically a Saturn V class launcher, which can take, on a first mission, an habitat which would be used to generate supplies (fuel, oxygen, water etc.) from Mars natural resources, and on a second mission, a crew of four Earthlings. The idea is that when the crew arrives, the factory from the first mission has generated enough fuel, water &c. for the return trip, as well as to power rovers ando other equipment.

His project is very credible, and he estimates a cost of 30 billion USD (which is peanuts when compared to other manned Mars missions projects [vide "90-day report", on the order of 450 billion USD]) for the first launch, with costs amortized over multiple launches.

Mr. Zubrin also argues that going to the Moon is pretty much useless, because it has nearly no natural resources to be explored and exploited, and almost as costly as going to Mars.

If you will, his site is at http://www.marssociety.org/ . The book is great reading too, and inspiring as it gives me the hope to see one of my own species walking over the Red Planet.

Looks very Brazilian to me. That's about the tale of a typical mid-to-upper class family around here. Now that I'm 31, my kid with 2 years 8 months calls his grandma on his own and even "hacks" our computer (login == password) by matching the letters at the screen with poking at the keyboard. Yet I remember the 486, nearly 20 years ago (who didn't covet an IBM PS/2 in mid '90s?), as if it were yesterday.

I don't see as hatred, but rather as pity for a once great company crumbling down right before our eyes because of wrong decisions. If there is any hatred, it's for Elop.

I, for one, despise the 1366x768 resolution that has plagued our net/notebooks and ultrabooks. Where I live I cannot find a higher resolution notebook for a decent price; to get some decent resolution I must hook (who'd have thought just ten years ago?!) my TV to the notebook. Apple products at least have good resolution, but they still are overpriced and underspecced.

Wii... single-handed... hehehe... whole new meaning for "playing with Wii"

Let me be the first to say that old age and treachery overcomes youth and skill.

That's not to say a thing about dumbing down of the newer generations, bla bla bla get off my lawn!

It already is. I've just updated my Arch and it came with the new kernel.

Education: mine, my kids and my wife. Spent about half my income on education (live in Brazil).

What about fixing TF compiler/linker?

I use vim for programming, tweaking, both locally and remotely. Don't quite like its GUI, I prefer to use it on konsole, xterm or whatever terminal emulator is at hand, even though I use KDE. Nothing beats vim for programming, with its syntax highlighting, fast navigation within a file and among files, reindenting, searching and replacing, window splitting and many, many other features, all available in a couple or two of keystrokes. I consider myself a long time vim user, but I know I've barely skimmed over the surface of its ocean of features. I'm very grateful to Bram Moolenaar and the hordes of brave but anonymous vim contributors.

Hope vim lives on at least another twenty years.