And learn to charge your batteries without the power grid. I think that's what you're looking for here-- POTS won't last long during a catastrophe.

Hit the nail on the head. Wish I read this post before I started sitting in an office all day almost not even allowed to work...

I am a computer engineer with a clearance working for the government, and my wages suck. If you're gonna go this route, at least look at contractors instead. Maybe you won't have to put up with quite as much crap, either.

Amen. I'm a guy and I probably would have been uncomfortable with their comments as well. In fact, I'd be just as uncomfortable if a woman made similar jokes. However, I don't look upon either as being sexist, I simply look upon them as being off-color. I think of bad language in the same way.

I'm in the same boat as fearofcarpet-- I use Linux for speed. All I use Windows for is gaming. Other than antivirus, I actually have nothing else installed-- no cygwin, no bash, no perl, etc. And I'm still not surprised that Windows is slow. Linux and Windows are on separate mechanical hard drives with the same model number-- Linux boots in seconds, Windows boots in minutes. Linux logs in in seconds, Windows logs in (and finishes... whatever it's doing) in minutes. "Running in a dream" is a perfect analogy for Windows.

You can't go wrong with OpenEmbedded. BitBake recipes are ideal. It doesn't really sound like you need something as full-blown as Android, but I may be wrong. You say you need app management-- it would be nice to have some more details here, e.g. will the end-user be installing and removing apps on his or her own? I ask because it sounds like it's the only feature specific to Android you would actually use. I bet maintaining a BitBake repo would work just as well in your situation, but I'm just guessing. I would take a look at the Gumstix Overo platform.

"afabbro writes with news that Google is working to follow up its cloud music service with an MP3 store capable of competing with Amazon and Apple and Ubuntu One."

FTFY. I use Ubuntu One more than I use the other two.

Agreed. Similarly, it would be hilarious to jam the frequency and watch them sail through red lights.

"Java can be ~50 times the speed of PHP or Ruby."

That would matter if it was anywhere near as cool as Ruby.

That seriously wasn't one of the options? Well, that's my answer.

I'm jealous that you have one of those. I never got a chance to get my hands on one. Can you run Flash on there with Ubuntu?

Wait, what about those new FTL particles CERN found? After reading about them on every news site that existed and hearing from all the experts they consulted, I have come to the conclusion that faster-than-light travel IS possible!

On anything nearby (unopened mail, newspaper, random pieces of paper, you name it).

Haha, I don't disagree with you-- I think it's ridiculous. I just wanted to point out that that was his *point*.