Meanwhile, Nintendo-Gamer (previously N-Gamer, NGC Magazine, N64 Magazine, Super Play), which I've been subscribed too since 1994 has also died.

I used to read that magazine over and over, copying the artwork, trying the cheats, spending hours which two games I was going to ask for for Christmas/my birthday (right next to each other).

Sad times.

9 years here (although I first dabbled back in 2000). Cheers!

I use it at work too. I'm totally happy with it, far more so than with Windows, considering the hassle I've had to go through installing and maintaining it (whilst paying for the privilege). I'll admit that I've given up on the days of working on Gentoo, and went the easy route with Linux Mint Debian Edition, although I'm tempted by Arch.

As soon as Steam is available for Linux, then I'll never have to boot into Windows ever again. That's the only think I think needs fixing.

How about Resident Evil on the GameCube. A fantastic update over the Playstation original.

I do very much the same, frequently running xmaple (which is only installed on the server) and octave (when I'm doing heavy duty stuff) on the server.

It works brilliantly, why would we want to lose that feature?

I'm just finishing my PhD in mathematical epidemiology (and before that I did an MSc in applied maths).

Yes, I use calculus: it forms the basis of almost everything I do. I've used systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) to model disease spread, and the effects of culling. I've also used spatial stochastic models to examine the effect of space and small population sizes, which are based straight from the ODEs.

Partial differential equations (PDEs) are also commonly used to study spatial effects at both large scale (e.g. spread of disease at country level, waves), and small scale (e.g. tumour spread).

Programming is pretty important for me. My models range from simple (100 lines in GNU Octave to examine long term effects of changing parameters), to intermediate (2,200 lines of C for the spatial stochastic framework examining population based models), to huge (for the stochastic individual based models that I'm looking at next). My supervisor (whose supervisor's supervisor was Peter Higgs) started out as a physicist, and still uses Fortran 77. Some people I work with aren't big on coding, and just start with someone else's model and adjust it, although they usually have problems if they don't understand how it all works.

It wouldn't be terribly difficult to meet half way. Roll 2d10 (or 3d6, or something) + skill level, and then create a Unisystem style success table (e.g. up to 12 is +0, 13-15 is +1, 16-18 is +2 etc. -- that gives you the same mean number of hits for a given skill level).

You'll get a bit more variance (compared to the original system) in number of hits for low skill scores, and less for high skill scores, but it would be a pretty good approximation.

I don't know. Every edition has its strengths and weaknesses, but 3.5e was arguably less good than 3e, which in turn fixed a bunch of AD&D 2e's problems but created a whole string of new really bad ones (mostly by removing all caster restrictions while crippling the fighter, ramping up the complexity with feats, and heavy emphasis on the game board), while 2e was just a Bowdlerised version of AD&D 1e, which was in turn Original D&D with all the ambiguity removed for consistent tournament play.

4e was an extremely well crafted game, but it didn't quite have the same feel, losing quite a lot of D&D's flavour. Had 4e been released without the D&D branding, it probably wouldn't have done so well, but people would have appreciated it a lot more. Pathfinder has good flavour, but it pretty much failed to address 3e's real problems. 5e might be really good, but we won't know until we see it.

Besides, any true grognard knows that any D&D beyond the original 1974 edition is a travesty. Seriously, the original edition is spot on (barring the horrendous editing), which is why the retroclones (including those of Basic D&D) are so popular right now.

Peter Higgs is my PhD supervisor's PhD supervisor's PhD supervisor.

Just sayin'.

Linux took over my desktop nearly 10 years ago, although I first encountered it a few years before that. For me, 2003 was the Year of Linux on the Desktop. I hope it will be soon for you too.

Incidentally, I'm not a Linux power user (I used to be, but gave up caring), but I still use the command line all the time because it's so much easier to do stuff like moving and renaming lots of files, editing small text files, playing movies in mplayer. I only need to use the command line though for a very few things, and they're mostly programmer type stuff.

Windows hasn't been my primary OS for a long time, and whenever I'm back in I find it more difficult to do these simple things because I lack the familiarity, and access to all those handy utilities that allow me to do things more quickly. Windows isn't really any easier than Linux -- it takes just as much effort to get set up, it's just more familiar to Windows users.

Last month I installed LMDE (xfce version) onto my EeePC, and have so far not encountered a single issue with it. None at all. Not even one. The sound works, Youtube works (admittedly I had accidentally set the sound to mute when I tested it in front of some friends, but that was easily fixed), the trackpad works, wireless works. I installed LaTeX, and that worked too. Don't know about DVDs, but my netbook doesn't have an optical drive, so it's not really something I can test. It's reading my Sansa Clip with no problems.

I think the only complaint is that wine isn't in the default repository, but I managed to get that installed manually (and back when I used Ubuntu, I really only used wine to play a few PC games and ZSnes, which 64 bit Ubuntu didn't have, but this laptop isn't powerful enough to run those, and Zsnes is in the repositories, so no problem there).

In the 10 odd years I've been running GNU/Linux, I have never had an install go as smoothly as I had for LMDE.

I used to run Gentoo many years ago. I could get it up and runing (enough to watch DVDs in GNOME) in about 5 hours on a system that was a few years old and only midrange when I built it.

A complete recompile of everything would take about a day and a half. I gave up because I couldn't be bothered with the admin, not because it took too long.

Decentralisation is just another way of saying "divide and conquer". Your rights will go faster than ever before, because it's much easier for a single state to introduce laws that hurt its citizens than for it to be introduced across the country, and once one state has introduced something, it's easier for another state to follow.

Ron Paul is a Republican, which means that unless you're rich, he does not represent your interests. This is just a wonderful way for them to take away your rights while conning you into thinking you're somehow better off.

Disclaimer: I live in Scotland, I have nothing personally to gain or lose from you voting however you want (although I suppose US global policy does ultimately affect us), but I do care about US citizens being taken advantage of by their politicians.

I'll have to admit that I don't know what you mean by "zip", "map" or "parallel-prefix" (although I'd love to know more). The offset is the only thing I've come across so far, which is why I was commenting on it.