True, but the amount of mercury in a CFL is about 1/4 of the amount of mercury that would be emitted into the air generating the additional energy to power an incandescent light-bulb using the current energy mix in the U.S. Additionally, here in Germany you can easily recycle the CFL's at the dump or at stores where you bought them. The mercury and other materials are recycled back into more CFL's.

But I agree that LED's are the future. They'll get cheaper.

Yes, how true. I work with Libre Office and I do anything my cohorts at work do with their MS Word and Excel. I don't do much in the way of presentations so I don't know there.

Well, it was well documented that MS offered Munich special conditions to not go with Open Office. And anyone who's been involved with corporate sales knows that "favors" are wide-spread. The council comes up with totally contrived reasons and says, basically, we have old versions of OO and MSO so it's obvious that we have to consolidate on a recent version of MSO. Huh? Why not consolidate on a recent version of OO? Or Libre Office?

I know we would consider a person with a technical degree. For us, it means that the person didn't just continue his education and go to college because Dad was paying and it was better than working. Usually people going to technical colleges go there because they are really interested in doing something specific. These are the people who actually remain interested in what they are doing after college and remain productive.

You probably won't command the big bucks in the job market but I think you'll land a job with a company that is about getting the job done (probably a smaller company) and it will be a more interesting job.

I think people run windows for a variety of reasons, some good, some not so good.

1. People run windows because it's on the PC's they buy. MS has done a good job at making sure it stays that way by offering the big sellers (Dell, HP, etc) discounts on Windows if they promote Windows and make alternatives unattractive. That's why a Linux notebook from Dell costs more than the Windows notebook.

2. People believe that the problems they have with Windows are normal. It's normal to have viruses, for example. Though I think with Windows 7 MS has improved that a lot.

3. It's what they know because of the 1 and 2.

4. Apple products are too expensive for most.

5. It has good-enough software for the home.

6. They know that their devices will work with it. (One of the reasons for not going with Linux, for example).

I mostly use Linux (currently Open Suse with Gnome 3).

I'm not an MS fan but a good friend of mine is a died-in-the-wool MS fan and even for him it's too expensive so he's going with an Android tablet for half the price.

I think there's an element of truth there, though I don't think it was paid my MS to take a dive, per se. I think the board was manipulated to hire Elop who essentially was brought in to make Nokia an MS Platform. It was ripe for that kind of takeover. IMHO Elop is still working for MS.

Thank you. Very well put.

How true.

I agree, though I think these are average MPG requirements, so, while the demand for such cars would probably go down, they would still be produced and, I suspect, they would cost more. The hope would be that people who really don't need the gas guzzlers would buy more efficient cars. I don't like big government, but most of the western world is dependent on middle eastern oil which makes us vulnerable so reducing our dependence on that is probably a good idea. You could raise the gas tax to achieve it in a market-based approach, but that wouldn't fly with most Americans (I pay 1.7 Euros per liter in Germany which is about $8 per gallon), so it's in my best interest to not buy an inefficient car.

Agreed. I now live in Germany and I'm always amazed, when I visit the states, at how people "need" a 4WD SUV or truck with 16mpg living in Florida! The reasons people give are pretty funny. Like a "what if I want to take a vacation in Alaska, then I need the 4WD" or people driving a 6-wheel AWD truck who need it in case the garbage people go on strike so they can bring their garbage to the dump or what if they need building supplies (even though this one guy lived in an appartment).

Pretty funny!

Actually, when I was living in Colorado Springs, if there was a snowstorm, it was fun to drive down the highway afterwards because you would see all these 4WD SUV's and trucks stuck in the median or off the road. These guys felt they were imune! Rarely did you see a regular sedan in the ditch. Every now and then when I would get caught in a snow storm I could see why. The people in the 2WD cars were driving carefully while the 4WD cars would speed pass you. You could literally watch 2 or 3 of these start to skid and slide off the road or, sometimes, into other cars in every snow storm.

I drive a 4 cyclinder 84hp honda fit (actually it's a "jazz" here in Germany). I drive it on the autobahn and anywhere else. My girlfriend has a 150hp Audi A4 with conderably more pickup. What I can tell you is that the jazz is every bit as safe and that neither car is perfectly safe. When driving the jazz I know when not to pass and I judge certain situations differently. You can find situations for either car that are unsafe.

You used the argument that merging into traffic at 60mph is unsafe at 30mph. I grew up in the states and can't think of a single onramp where my "whimpy" ford pinto (!) or my ford escort didn't have enough power to reach highway speeds on the onramp even if it was going uphill. Even my jazz with it's 1.4 liter engine reaches autobahn speeds of 80 or so by the time I have to merge.

First Coherent (okay it wasn't "linux")

Then Slackware from floppies (this was pre-internet).

Redhat, Mandrake, Opensuse, Ubuntu.

I live in Germany and the government has forced the owner of the backbone to resell service to competitors so we have much more competition without a whole lot of government intervention. I have a 100mbit line down/6mbit up, with two telephone lines, unlimited free calls within Europe and to the US for 45 euros/month.