I agree with your printer argument, but not your HP example. I will ONLY buy HP printers for Linux machines as they are very nicely supported by CUPS and HPLIP. The last inkjet I bought actually had .rpm and .deb drivers on the drivers disc.

Source?

Anybody want to post their bookmark list of Microsoft KB articles which specifically REQUIRE entering the registry to resolve? I'm no where near the office right now.

Having used nothing but Linux outside of the office for the last 6 years, I was wondering just the other day how Windows users find software. Honestly, I was digging through the mountains of software available in YaST trying to decide what I was going to install and check out for the day when the thought came to me. I'll be the first to admit that not all Linux software is what I would consider functional, let alone useful, but when I need a program for pretty much any task, I can usually find it quite quickly. If it's not in the official repo's than it is likely in PackMan. (OpenSuSE user)

It actually seems quite quaint to go to a store and interact with a person to receive software.

You are aware of exactly who makes the "Dell" branded printers and scanners, aren't you?

Are you certain about this? Perhaps we should have a poll about this.

-- It may be flamebait, but it's funny.

Forgive me if this comes across as sarcastic

If faster computers cause the system to become more complex, thus slowing generation, then wouldn't the older computers become less desirable despite not physically having changed? Mathematically, how would this work out if I created the next "Big Blue", then after joining the network, suddenly I am the only one capable of generating a coin as the bar is raised higher than the peers are capable of reaching??

I'm not aware of any usable statistics regarding careless sex, my experiences are purely anecdotal amongst associates who are sexually active. To me it would appear nearly 1.5% of average people will continue to be sexually active after they have been diagnosed and before being treated. For a certain group who call themselves 'Jugalos' it would seem nearly 87% just don't care. All of this is strictly on background, so I cannot prove any of it to you. If you are aware of any peer reviewed studies on this subject, please let me know as I would be most interested.

My uncle contracted HIV in the mid 80's from a blood transfusion. He was dyeing of AIDS in the early 90's. It's downright scary to me that you consider it "moderately hard to pass from one person to another." His fear was that if he were involved in an accident, his blood could infect another person in the act of trying to save HIS life.

As far as your rant as to the personal thoughts and actions of a person whom you never knew about until quite recently, perhaps such descriptions as psychopathic and narcissist are a self reflection. In case I had not expressed it clearly in the OP, his reasoning as he stated to me was that had the virus been pruned before he would have never received it. Were it to have been pruned then, there were millions more good people who would never need to experience it.

I never said it would have had to have been on a voluntary basis. If you check the references I noted, you will see that in the early 80's the problem was by-and-large an American problem. I'm sure the rest of the world can thank us for handling the issue in a 'moral' way.

Please explain to me the number of people who knowingly fraternize when knowingly infected with lesser STDs and where the difference lies. People in general are self centered, arrogant low-lifes.

See my justification/reply here.

In 1985 there was a reliable test for AIDS and 36,526 known cases worldwide. I stand by my original numbers of there being in the 100s of thousands of cases or less at the time.

Given that there are an estimated 33.4 million people currently living with HIV/AIDS in the world and millions of people dyeing each year. I also stand by my numbers of millions of lives saved. Could all HIV/AIDS infected people now be removed from population to limit the continuance of this virus? Not likely IMO, I feel it would certainly have been curtailable in the 80's though.

I don't do the fancy pseudo-math to fudge around with the margins of error to find the number of false-positive deaths as well as the number of false-negative slips, but I do guarantee that it wouldn't be 33.4 million living dead now.

No, I am not from china. I am from the "good ol'" USA. And yes, the only actual "cure" for any virus to date has been a high velocity lead injection or a super sized dose of truth serum (sodium pentathol). Even the common cold (rhinovirus) simply has to run its course. Compulsory testing and removing the virus from the population would be the only solution, draconian or not. Should all virii such as rhinovirus have such measures, not in my opinion. Should virii which have the possibility of pandemic? Only if we wish to save more lives than would be taken manually.

I can't respond as far as upper class goes, however when I had Hodgkin's lymphoma as a lower class child the government covered nearly every dime of treatment. When I move out on my own and became lower-middle class, simply having an abscessed tooth cost me about 2 months of my gross pay. Getting injured and taking an ambulance ride cost me about 7 months gross pay.

Given those experiences, I would be inclined to agree with each or your posits.