step one: install arch. step two: use it indefinitely. in the past three years, the only reinstalls i've done have been for switching hardware.

shouldn't it be up to the "owner" of the information to ensure that others do not obtain that information? as soon as some sort of censorship is placed upon what information people can and cannot share an authority must be appointed to regulate that, an authority that could potentially go on to "regulate" other things at its own discretion. if people want to keep information from being spread, and that information belongs to them, they shouldn't hand it out, and that should be that.

true true KDE makes me feel uncomfortable. the system i use instead is a bit more consuming, as it takes bits and pieces from here and there (the xfce panel, with a mint menu, assorted quick launchers, and gnome-panel applets; compiz, nautilus, and a few screenlets. it takes up some 550 megs when idling (7-8 when firefox is running in all it's addon-bedazzled glory), but is definitely worth it. any application i use commonly is either one or two clicks away, and all the others are assorted neatly in the menu, i have all the useful bits of gnome-panel without having to wait for it to start up, nautilus has addons that allow opening in terminal/as administrator simple, and a rabbitvcs plugin, and compiz makes sure that my screenlets end up on the proper desktops, provides transparencies, and reserves a one pixel bar at the left of the screen for easy scrolling with the mouse wheel.

if you want to travel to cuba, head into mexico and cross from there. it's still illegal, yes, but nobody along the border there cares in the slightest. i know people who do it all the time. :P your point still stands, however.

the thing is, animals here in the us DO need them. they are grown in living conditions which practically guarantee that diseases will spread among them (standing knee deep in their own manure, eating foodstuffs that they cannot properly digest, and being packed by the hundreds into dark, damp areas where they can hardly move without running into one another. they need to have antibiotics pumped into their food supplies just to keep them alive long enough to be slaughtered, and even then a large number of them don't make it. why do you think there have been so many outbreaks of dangerous food contaminations so recently (namely, things like Escherichia coli)? maybe because the food industry is feeding chicken manure to cattle, which then produce heaping mounds of faeces, the run off from which contaminates water supplies and nearbye produce farms...

-update- it was officially announced! http://education.ti.com/calculators/products/US/nspire-family/

have you heard of the upcoming TI-Nspire CX? when Casio released the PRIZM, TI realised that they could no longer keep their sway on the market while selling twenty-year-old hardware. this new model includes: "a full-color, backlit screen, thin sleek design and includes TI-Nspire rechargeable battery. Use images including your own photos. Explore real-world concepts using the handheld's Notes, Graphs, Geometry, Data & Statistics and questions apps. TI-Nspire Teacher Sofware or TI-Nspire student software is required to add images into TI-Nspire documents. Graph and rotate 3D functions. Change the wire or surface color of your 3D graph. Clam shell. " additionally, there will supposedly be an attachable accessory to allow WiFi connection. http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/01/texas-instruments-brings-wifi-to-ti-nspire-calculators/