Sure, Linux is a capable multi user system but the vast majority of Windows machines that /. would love to see converted to Linux will be single user systems. The fact that malware running with user-level privileges can't touch the files of other users would be of little comfort to single user machines.

Does the sudo part really matter anyway? The most important files on my system are those in my home directory and they're owned by my own user account, thus no privilege escalation is required to touch them.

Having great security around the base OS is a good thing but if you don't also provide good security for the users' files, it's kind of like getting a bunch of guards to protect a bank but leaving the vault in an unprotected building next door.

On the other hand, I really don't want to have to deal with UAC/sudo/etc. every time I edit one of my own documents, so it's kind of an unwinable situation that only good backups can protect against.

I suppose if you're ridiculously pedantic, you'd interpret "can you put peroxide in your ear?" as meaning "is it physically possible to put peroxide in your ear?" and the answer, of course, is yes and you'd have a good LOL and go back to counting the number of hairs on your arm.

Normal people, on the other hand, will interpret it as "is it a good idea to put peroxide in your ear?" which is indeed a valid and good question.

I ran into "error 15" too. I have two hard drives and I think GRUB got the drive ordering mixed up. It put the boot drive as "drive 1" in the boot file when it really should have been "drive 0". Unlike GRUB1 though, it didn't give me an option to manually try altering parameters at that point, which was annoying.

I ended up removing my 2nd drive, reinstalling Karmic (this time it did mark it as "drive 0"), and then reinstalled the 2nd drive after the installation was complete and everything worked fine after that. Hopefully GRUB won't mess things up again at the next kernel upgrade though. I think GRUB has some configuration options to fix bad drive mappings so I'll have to look into that.

Nokia is starting to release phones with its Maemo operating system. Maemo is Linux based and uses a Mozilla-based web browser. The new N900 is, I believe, the first phone to use it.

Nokia hasn't made any statements about phasing out Symbian in favor of Maemo but it at least it's a good start.

It's true Google Groups can be used to view Usenet groups, but you can also create groups that are completely independent of Usenet with it. That seems to be the case here.

Or sell the house to Ted Stevens and tell him that's where his Internet comes out of.

Use a URL shortening service to create URLs to point to your favorite websites you don't want others to see, and bookmark the shortened version.

Then, give the bookmark name itself something non-incriminating. Like just a set of initials for the website name.

These two methods will prevent anything incriminating from your bookmarks showing up when someone starts typing something in the address bar.

This won't help for any pages in your history, but fortunately that parts easy. Judicious use of "Clear Private Data" will take care of that.

A Tivo without a subscription operates like old VCRs do. You can schedule recordings based on channel/time/duration. With a subscription, you can do it based on the name of the show instead.

Once you the movie ripped to a file, just copy it to a flash drive (or a SD card if your notebook has a reader). Then you don't have to worry about either the DVD drive or the hard drive motor using up power (assuming you have a traditional hard drive to begin with as many netbooks use flash-based ones now).

But if you have any programs that access the Internet that have a bug that allow running arbitrary code, couldn't a remote cracker could exploit the vulnerability in that program to invoke this bug, and through that gain root access to the machine? It sounds like the program being exploited could even be running as a regular user.

Checks are still a good way for two individuals to exchange money. Neither the payer or the payee has to pay any service fees (something you can't say for credit card or debit card payments) and there is some protection for the buyer (something you can't say for cash - you can't tell your bank to stop payment on a $20 bill).

Anyway, many banks in the US do allow you to transfer money electronically to accounts at other banks, but many of them charge fees for outgoing transfers. Electronic transfers to other accounts at the same bank are usually free.

In the retail world, many stores will convert checks to electronic transfers anyway. You write the check and they scan it at the point of sale and draw the money immediately.

We traded in my mother in law's old Ford Explorer for a few Hyundai Accent this weekend. Combining the CFC rebate with the manufacturer rebate meant we started off with $6000 off MSRP which, on a car with a sticker of $16K, is a pretty significant amount.

Her original plan was to wait for her tax refund check next year and then go shopping for a used car. Her Explorer (which has 260K miles and is practically falling apart now) is barely worth $500 on trade in, so using CFC to get a brand new car with a fresh warranty ended up being a better deal on all fronts.

The conspiracy nuts will say the reflector on the moon just proves there is a man made object on the moon, it doesn't prove it was actually physically placed there by a person. It could have been dropped on the moon by an unmanned rocket, for example.

You could, in theory, just sell your steam account itself to someone else. Of course, this means selling the entire collection of games in your account so you can't pick and choose. You could just set up a different account for each game you wanted to buy though.