1. Create dummy company
2. Create functional satellite system
3. Go Bankrupt
4. Sell off hardware to "new" company
4. Profit.

Not that I disagree with your point, but the cursor control did improve from 2.1 to 2.2 which has been wild for a while.

In fact, they just released a beta for a few additional features. Go valve!

I would check my GC game manuals, but all I have are "backup" copies.

electrolytes???

Do they like Vinegar and Sea Salt or plain? Seriously, the Navy could be buying computer parts with backdoors if this is what goes on.

VERY SMALL ROCKS! They're just bangin' them together!

You can't make me unhappy.

Wow, I had no idea the gaming community was dead on PC.. *slight sarcasm* Maybe it is dying, but I didn't notice. I see all kinds of games online through Steam coming out. And I know a lot of them didn't begin as console games. Yeah, anecdotal, I know, but I'm not worried. As for 2k for a gaming rig? It doesn't take that much to compete with the 360 for graphics. 8800GT and you're set. You cant play it all on high settings but I sure as heck can play Crysis with it looking good. I understand the exaggeration, but in my opinion the PC gaming market will not die anytime soon.

I got sprint for two years - it was the cheapest plan @ 35/mo. Ended up paying close to $60 every month.. and I hardly went over my minutes at all. Hidden fees and taxes out the ying yang.

Now I have ATT, wayy more minutes, better service, rollover, and I pay $45 or less every month.

Although a friend highly recommended verizon. What a vicious cycle of pain.

*Living in Alaska and Washington State.

And if they are clever enough to do otherwise, they don't deserve to be put in prison!

I think the idea is more that Linux is rock-solid because they don't have crappy closed-source drivers from every little hardware vendor. Suddenly Linux's lack of hardware vendor support is a plus, since writing their own drivers increased the stability. So Windows is pretty solid so long as you're using well supported hardware with well written drivers, but you get the BSOD when you install some crappy driver from some random hardware vendor and that driver goes AWOL.

Now I'm not a Windows fan, but I've supported Windows since WfW 3.11, and I believe that there's at least some truth to this idea. If you install Windows XP or anything after (maybe excepting Vista when it was first released) on good hardware with good drivers, the BSOD should be pretty rare.

And the thing with Macs isn't just that they only have to support a smaller selection of hardware, but that they get to control exactly which hardware and then test and approve the drivers. If there's some video chipset from a given manufacturer that isn't going to work well for their OS, they just don't include that chipset in any of their systems. It's true that neither Linux developers nor Microsoft have that luxury, and I believe it's at least partially responsible for Apple's reputation of being solid and that everything "just works". It's much easier to make a solid system where everything works out of the box if you're controlling both the hardware and the software.

At this points, in terms of meaningful UI alone, Chrome is a much better choice than Firefox, particularly for unexperienced users (whom you'd just want to move off IE). It just makes sense. Like Apple's stuff, only without the reality distortion field.

I didn't realize they measure to three decimal places - that's ridiculous. Considering the accuracy of breathalyzers is no where near that. My source? Heard it from a cop.

RobDude - I hear your frustration. Personally, it's been quite some time since I had a *serious* hardware problem. Yeah, I struggled, until about the time Suse 9 came out. With that download, everything "just worked" for me. Things have gotten better since then, as well. But, that doesn't help the guy with this thing, or that gadget for which there IS NO SUPPORT! So, I hear you.

Did you contact the vendor of the gadget that refused to work? Yeah - it's a pain, just one more pain in a long list of pains when the gadget doesn't work. But, I hope you DID contact the mfgr, and give them a good cussing out.

Doing so makes them aware that more and more of the world is using Linux, and that they can make money by supplying a driver for us. I've contacted several, myself. It ain't that big a deal, but if it helps to convince one mfr to support Linux, well, I've done a little bit for the community.

BTW - you are aware that not every distro and/or repository supports the same hardware? If you feel like experimenting, you might try some Live-CD's to see which if any makes your gadget work. Just an idea......