But then, when you actually drove the two cars, then nice shiny one despite being well cared for and looking sporty, had a top speed of 80 MPH and about as much acceleration as a snail, while the dull and faded one had a top speed of 180 MPH and a 0-60 time of 4 seconds.

Now which one do you buy?

Graphics help. But gameplay is everything. (And what kind of gameplay I like is probably entirely different than what kind of gameplay you like.) Some people will look at the nice shiny car and ask why anyone would ever want to go over 80 MPH and buy that one. Some people will look at the not so shiny car and say "That one will be more fun to drive, so I'll take that one."

Which one is better is an entirely personal opinion.

Sean.

No, a month to get the order approved, sent out, machine delivered, racked, OS installed, SAN attachment approved, cables run for eth and SAN, SAN configured, SAN attached, and at least one user on the system for the project.

That's not at all an unreasonable timeline in a medium to large company.

Of course, where I worked, none of that would even start until the project was approved. Then we could start the process of getting hardware.

S.

Er, which desktop? I took it to mean a non-technical, non-server instance of Linux, certainly not KDE or Gnome specifically. If we're talking about Linux for the non-technical user, then it really doesn't matter which "desktop" is on the system.

Unfortunately, I do still see issues with major distributions installing easily, and being used easily on systems. Last fall, fedora 10 refused to reliably recognise my network card. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't. I solved it by installing another network card I had laying around. Ubuntu seemed to install on an older (not too old) system, but then crashed very reliably whenever I tried to use it.

The computer I'm using -- the Fedora 10 system where I had to install the extra network card -- still won't play mp3s. I did *finally* get flash to work on it, but since this is my work system, playing mp3s is way down my list of importance.

Maybe it's true that most people don't need a lot of games, and that solitaire and the like are okay for them. However, for the person that wants something more complex, Wine really isn't a solution. It's just too slow.

My point is that as much as I dislike the Windows OS as an OS, it provides a couple of things that Linux can't. It provides an easy to use system that for the vast majority of people will just work for everything they need, and it provides the gaming platform for computer based games.

As a server OS, I *really* hate Windows. Linux is a far superior OS in many, many, ways. But then we're not talking about servers, are we?

Sean.

Knowing that a thing *can* be done is not the same as having the ability to build it.

In the case of the time machine, the teleporter and the perpetual motion machine, you don't even know if any one of them is possible.

I don't know much about circuit boards either, but I bet I could, with a tiny bit of research, make a good determination if a thing was possible within the parameters I set.

Let's see... for example, I know that it would be possible to build an amature radio handheld that would allow you to input your ID and someone else's ID, then your radio would only respond when the other ID was calling you, and your transmissions would be the only ones heard by the other ID (assuming that radio had similar software and hardware). We can go a bit farther and make it a standard, putting a switch on all handhelds that either limits your transmission and reception to certain ID, or opens it wide up so everyone can hear you and you can hear everyone else.

It's certainly possible. (It's also probably not viable and potentially illegal based upon interference problems.)

The point isn't that this is an invention, good or bad, the point is, first, that a person can certainly "invent" something without knowing exactly how to build it, and, second, simply because you don't know exactly how to build something doesn't mean you don't know it can be built.

Sean.