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You did not have to tell us that, it is quite obvious from your post.

I AM a professional Linux systems administrator and I have never had to do any of what you described over the last 15 years I have used Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch and various other distributions).
 
Maybe if you chose supported hardware you would not have this issue? You don't seem to mind having to buy supported hardware to run your precious OS-X.

Checks current systems -- ALSA works fine for me out of the box. Extra sound system? I am a control freak so I got in the habit of building my systems up from a minimal install which means that I don't install that POS called Pulse Audio. I will admit that there are little pieces of OSS lying around but they never seem to get in the way.

That is your problem there. GNOME sucks, not Linux. KDE has gotten as bloated as Windows so it is starting to suck too. Fluxbox rules!

Hmmm... I am currently running CentOS on most of my multimedia boxes, mainly because I support Red Hat servers at work. Let's see, minimal CentOS install, install the RPM Forge repo RPM, yum install [fluxbox, vlc, etc.]. Not exactly rocket science there buddy!
 
As far as resources, if you are speaking hardware I have a P-II 300 running Fluxbox on Ubuntu in my workshop. The result is sweet, sweet music while I work on my carpentry projects. Can you even get OS-X to run on older hardware? I'll bet you need a CPU made within the last two to three years to get OS-X to install much less run.

How many interfaces does the Mac have? One? There are plenty for Linux, it is the user's choice as to what to run. Choice is good.
 
As far as office software, Open Office works great for me. I even put it on my Vista laptop because the stupid new MS Office ribbon menu UI sucks big time.

All my boxes have a feel that is exactly right for me, because I know how to set them up that way. They are all internally coherent, which is all that matters to me.
 
I don't like having to run my computers the same way everyone else does because Jobs or Gates/Ballmer dictates that is how it has to be. And I sure as hell don't like having to pay for additional software to do simple stuff like changing the stupid Office ribbon menu UI into the old-school UI I prefer to use.

If you want to give Apple all that $$$ that is your business, I prefer to keep my $$$. Just because you are a major FAIL when it comes to setting up Linux does not mean that Linux is worthless to others.
 
By the way, I checked out your hacks to get MacOSX to boot on non-Apple hardware link. I don't have to perform ANY hacks to get Linux to work on my PCs.
 
The procedures listed on that page ARE system administration tasks and relatively advanced ones at that. Besides, I thought the reason you Mac fanbois run OS-X is because of Apple hardware. Why on earth are you trying to get people to perform the difficult task of installing and running OS-X on non-Apple hardware in the first place?

Informative my ass...

Maybe its just me but I would prefer to read a poorly-formatted article with actual content in it rather than a nicely-formatted one containing no content at all. As far as your brain goes, the first is a good meal and the second is only empty calories.

My preferred way of making documents? I use SSH to tunnel to a VNC session running on a server and then use OpenOffice on the server. Any Windows machine I use only needs a copy of puTTY and VNCviewer available before I can get to work.

The nice thing about doing it this way is that all my documents remain on the server. To me the big PIA is having to move documents between computers at work, school and home in order to work on those documents in those different places. Using OpenOffice on the server means no more unnecessary moving of the documents from computer to computer.

Another thing I like is how VNC saves the state of your session. You can be in the middle of a working on a document and then find out you need to go to another location. You close the vncviewer and the next time you open up the vncviewer again you will be where you last left off.

One disadvantage is that in order to access your documents you have to be on a computer connected to a network. I find that these days whenever I am at work or at school it is rare to find a non-network-connected PC. If I need to get on the network while away from home I can always go to a Starbucks and grab a cup of coffee while connecting to the network from there.

Another downside is that printing is a pain. I haven't bothered to set up remote printing yet, that is on my to-do list. If I need to distribute a document I will usually export it to a PDF file and send that out as an email attachment. PDF is a good format to send to others because everyone has a PDF viewer.

I also use Open Office on my only Windows machine, a Vista laptop. I do not want to run any bootleg software nor do I want to pay for a copy of MS Office. On the most part Open Office under both Linux and Windows works well for me on a day-to-day basis.

I have had only minor formatting problems with documents when transferring files between computers if they have been saved in the older Word 97/2000 format. Unless you are doing some funky document formatting the older Word format should also work reasonably well for you.

I have been receiving more .docx files these days, the odf-converter-integrator plug-in really helps as far as allowing me to import those files into Open Office. If I need to work on those documents I will convert them into the older Word 97/2000 format before working on them.

If your formatting is constantly having problems then I suggest you look into using styles to format your document. If you use a style sheet to define the look of your document it will convert more cleanly which means fewer problems with the formatting breaking on you.

Elites, it is plural. It is not one elite but a set of elites that run this place (look up subject-verb agreement).

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia:
 
"For xenophobia there are two main objects of the phobia. The first is a population group present within a society that is not considered part of that society. Often they are recent immigrants, but xenophobia may be directed against a group which has been present for centuries. This form of xenophobia can elicit or facilitate hostile and violent reactions, such as mass expulsion of immigrants, pogroms, or in the worst case, genocide."
 
Genocide as a survival instinct? That is a new one on me.

Having non-White "friends" does not automatically make you a non-racist. Here is an idea, why don't you tell your non-White "friends" that xenophobia is a "survival instinct" and see how well they receive the news. I'll bet your non-White "friends" will start having second thoughts about your alleged lack of racism...

Don't be putting words in my mouth. I did not say all White people were bad. I did not use the word "evil" anywhere.
 
While it is true that White males did give women the right to vote it was not until over 100 years after the US was founded. Also, Black and Hispanic males did not get to vote on allowing women to vote because they were not allowed to vote freely until almost 200 years after the US was founded.

There you go putting words in my mouth again. Where did I say I was a Communist and/or supporter of Communism?

Way to pull numbers out of your ass. Do you have a reference backing up your assertion that "99% of the countries that have tried Communism have failed dramatically?" (this [sic] is also for subject-verb agreement).

Again, I said nothing about redistribution of wealth. That is why I have to keep questioning your reading comprehension skills (again the [sic] is for subject-verb agreement).
 
To get back on topic, don't you think that when Enron tanked that the capitalists running that company stole from its employees and stockholders? You don't think that the capitalists running the companies in trouble right now are stealing when they take huge bonuses as they run their companies into the ground?
 
And isn't capitalism supposed to be about the survival of the fittest in the marketplace? Don't you think that the bailouts being given to AIG and the auto industry are "redistribution of wealth" albeit on a much larger scale?

You really should read some history books and not not rely so much on Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly for your history lessons. You are engaging in demagoguery by deliberately confusing socialism and communism to muddy the waters.
 
Karl Marx was a socialist who married a woman whose family had money. A little research will show that Marx refused to take money from his wife's family:
 
"During the first half of the 1850s the Marx family lived in poverty in a three room flat in the Soho quarter of London. Marx and Jenny already had four children and two more were to follow. Of these only three survived."
 
Reference: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.html
 
That is definitely living out his value system.
 
Stalin and Mao were brutal dictators, and they also would have been so had they been on the right. The only difference is that if they had been on the right they would have been called 'fascists" instead of "communists".

As a Chicano skin color is not important to me, I have family members that range from light-skinned to dark-skinned. It does seem to matter a lot to White people, especially from the US South. I spent two years in Georgia while in the Army and boy was I glad to get out of that unenlightened hellhole. Even though that was over 20 years ago not much has changed in the South since then.

The only way not to bring the past into the present is to forget it. Why is it that Whites in the South can keep bringing up their past by pointing to their Confederate ancestors but when I try to bring up the past I am accused of being racist?
 
If anyone is racist it is those from the South, while the descendants of the Confederates keep talking about "states rights" that is only code for "keep the Blacks enslaved". The Confederates were fighting in part for states to have the right to keep certain people as property; however, the descendants of the Confederates are too intellectually dishonest to admit that their ancestors were fighting to keep Blacks enslaved.

Do have proof of this dubious assertion? If so bring out your facts. Here are the facts according to the US Census Bureau:

Median income (2006)
---------------------
Whites - $50,673
Blacks - $31,969
Hispanics - $37,781

Income $100,000 and over (2006)
-----------------
Whites - 20.2%
Blacks - 9.1%
Hispanics - 10.5%

Reference: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104552.html

If the US was truly color blind then these numbers would even. An before you blame education for the lack of equality in these statistics remember that Blacks and Hispanics tend to have crappier schools than Whites.
 
Speaking of color blindness, blindness is considered a handicap in most cases, why not in this case? Why is it that Whites can celebrate their culture and proudly point to being descended from Scottish or Irish or German or French people? Why is it when Blacks and Hispanics say they are proud of their heritage they are accused of being racist? That is a big double standard there.
 
Besides if you are color blind then you are ignoring a large part of who I am and where I came from. You are also consciously denying any contributions that Mexico and Spain had in the past in building the US.
 
The answer is not to ignore race but to not make negative judgments based on race and that has to start with the Whites. For example, the KKK has been around since the 1800's and yet they still exist. If Whites truly valued color-blindness then you would think that he first place to start changing things would be with their White brothers and sisters.
 
To me "color blindness" is code for me to become White. Dress like Whites do, speak like Whites do, believe like Whites do. Now if I do that because I want to do so that is one thing but when success in the US is predicated on that concept then you are forcing me to become White to succeed in this country. There is another word for that, tyranny...

Again, you need to qualify: a step in the right direction for White males.

The topic was that of slavery in the United States, not slavery anywhere else. If you want to talk about slavery elsewhere, did you know that Mexico outlawed slavery in 1828, more than 30 years before the US did? And without having to fight a long, bloody war?
 
Did you know that it was illegal to own slaves in Texas yet the White male descendants of the "Founding Fathers" illegally imported slaves when they settled in Texas? And that one of the first things they did after the gaining "independence" for Texas was to re-institute slavery of Blacks?

I said: OK, your "Founding Fathers" and the nation they founded. Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension skills?

Hah! Xenophobia as a survival instinct, that is a good one. Maybe you need read up on nativism in the US during the 1800's. How was keeping out non-Whites from the US a survival instinct? This makes you sound like a closet racist or a subconscious racist.

And capitalism is not about selfishness and greed? The economy is currently in the toilet because of selfishness and greed. The sad part is that much of the selfishness and greed was by the White male descendants of the "Founding Fathers" who make up the elites that currently control many of the financial and governmental institutions in the US.

OK, so you claim the "Founding Fathers" gave up their wealth and power. So why is it that it took over 240 years to elect a non-White president? Why is it that the elites are still disproportionately made up of White males? Why is it that today poverty disproportionately affects non-Whites?
 
I'll bet that you fancy yourself a libertarian and that you believe that the US is about the potential for individual success no matter who you are or where you come from. If that is so then it must be the moral failings of non-Whites as to why non-Whites are not doing as well as Whites are here in the US.
 
Like I said above, either you are a closet racist or a subconscious racist if you do not see that the condition of non-Whites today is due in large part to 240+ years of this country favoring Whites over non-Whites. I would rather believe that you are not racist and that you are just the victim of a piss-poor US educational system.

It was not that the "Founding Fathers" COULD NOT abolish slavery it is that they WOULD NOT abolish slavery. All that was missing was the WILL to do so.
 
Had the "Founding Fathers" done so then I would be agreeing with you as to their greatness. However, since they did not do so then to me they are just another group of ordinary White males who did their level best to set up a utopia for White males, the whole time exploiting labor from non-Whites to build their utopia.

White European male aristocracy == elites. Way to undercut your original argument that Fascism and Communism are about "which set of elite [sic] get the power and money". If you don't understand that capitalism is also about "which set of elite [sic] get the power and money" then your knowledge of economic and political systems is severely lacking...

OK, your "Founding Fathers" and the nation they founded:

1) did not allow White females to own property and vote
2) owned Black Americans as property
3) instituted a policy of genocide towards Native Americans
4) killed innocent Mexican Americans and stole their land
5) threw Japanese Americans in concentration camps

I think the examples above illustrate my point that your point is valid as long as you are talking about White males.

And no, pointing out racism does not make one a racist...

There, fixed that for you.

Microsoft did not just package IE with Windows, it illegally tied the it to Windows where the user had no choice about it being installed and they could not remove it easily. The US and EU governments have investigated and have accused Microsoft of being a monopoly, it is not just fanbois making that accusation.

You yourself are either a fanboi or an astroturfer. I mean come on, a content-free post complaining about other computer users complaining about the software installed on THEIR computers?

If you are an astroturfer, does Microsoft pay well? If you are doing this for free why? Why do you feel compelled to defend a large faceless corporation like Microsoft? Especially given their past criminal behavior?

Too bad you can't channel all that time and energy into some productive activities that benefit humankind instead...