I don't know about other distros, but Fedora handled the change very smoothly. All you needed to do was use the approved upgrade tool (I don't remember, off-hand if it was still using preupgrade or had switched to fedup.) to download all the packages, reboot into the upgrade and when it completed and you rebooted into your freshly upgraded system, it was using systemd instead of init. Unless you had a reason to check, you never needed to know about the change.

The server rooms all had UPS and passive air vent, but they were across the street. The building I worked in only had things like Tech Support, Customer Service and Sales.

My company in Los Angeles seems woefully under-prepared for earthquakes.

I spent a number of years working for an ISP in Pasadena. The server room was designed to survive a 7.5 earthquake and we had something like six connections to the backbone in different directions because we were so close to the San Andreas Fault. We didn't have any earthquake drills, but I'm guessing that our plan was about the same as yours. I do know that we had to evacuate the building once because a car crashed into a power pole and brought it down, killing all of our electricity. (No way to open the windows, so no air circulation without HVAC.) Even if there were no obvious quake damage, they'd have to do the same thing if the lights went out, so it's not like they didn't have any plans in place.

Worst piece of enterprise software I've ever seen.

Judging by what you write, Oracle should give your company a whole bunch of red shirts as a freebie. If nothing else, it would be a great example of truth in advertising.

Currently, we don't have Comcast where I live, although it's probably going to absorb our cable service, TWC. Even if they do, I won't have to worry because I don't use cable internet. Why? Because unlike any cable service I've ever heard of, our phone company (Verizon) still does its best to give us "nine nines" uptime, and outages here are very, very rare and short. I don't spend all my time streaming video or downloading torrents, so I don't need the fastest possible connection, but I do want the most reliable. And, as I used to do tech support for an ISP, the only time I ever call them is when I need a specific technical detail, such as asking if they're filtering a port I need. When they try to insist that they know more about trouble-shooting than I do, I tell them how many years I spent on their side of the phone and ask how good they are with Linux. Generally speaking, that's all it takes to get them to tell me what I need.

That one computer does not crash does not prove the kernel is rock solid on every computer.

I never said that it did. I was just offering as a counter-example to the claim that the Linux kernel was crash prone on desktops, and that the only reason I don't have longer uptimes is that Fedora updates the kernel fairly often. I will also mention that my sister uses Xubuntu and has had similar experiences to mine.

Fluxbox with no panel and a dozen virtual screens gives me just that.

I'm not quite that minimalist, but I do use Xfce with Compiz because I happen to enjoy the eye candy. And, being retired I can set my computers up to please myself, rather than some corporate standard of what you can have installed and what you can't. I remember, once, showing the desktop cube on my laptop to a Windows fanboi, back when Vista was fairly new. He told me that it was possible to have virtual desktops on Vista but nobody ever bothered because they couldn't see the point. I guess Windows users must think it's better to use one desktop with a bunch of windows, mostly minimized, than to have four times as much screen real estate (or twelve times in your case) than you have screen. I can't help but think, sometimes, that it's this lack of imagination that keeps most computer users from trying something new or looking for ways to get the most out of their computer.

Wikipedia states that all members of the United Nations, the EU and a few other states have ratified it, for a total of 197 countries. As the USA is a member of the UN, you are correct in saying that it's a party to the Montreal Protocol.

As I wrote above, the only reason that I rarely have more than 3-4 weeks uptime is the fact that new kernels come out. Once in a while there will be a longer gap between updates, making my uptime longer.

While Linux kernel is solid on servers for whatever reason on desktop it always was crashing and/or required occasional reboots.

Twenty years ago, you would have been right. I've been using Linux as my only OS ever since Fedora 9 came out, and the only time I ever need to reboot is for a kernel update. It's not uncommon for me to have uptimes of three or four weeks, and I can remember it once reaching 43 days. Of course, Fedora does update the kernel (and everything else) more often than some of the other distros, but how many people are there running any version of Windows on their desktop with uptimes like that?

I don't know how it works in other countries, but here in the USofA, there's a little thing known as "the presumption of innocence," meaning that the accused is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. This does the exact opposite by assuming that anybody who's accused must be guilty and penalizing them without allowing them to present a defense. No judge would ever be stupid enough to rule in favor of Rightscorp, making the idea DOA at best, even if they don't get sued into bankruptcy the first time they try to enforce it.

We try. Good gods we try.

Yes, I'm sure that some of you do. Alas, not enough.

I live in LA, where there are lots and lots of police scandals. Why? Not because our police are so bad, but because we don't put up with police misconduct or sweep it under the rug. Almost all of the scandals out here would be ignored in New York or regarded as "business as usual." Stop putting up with the corruption, get the voters to care enough to vote the crooks out of office and keep them out, and Chicago will clean itself up because it won't happen on its own.

If this software searches out all images of a subject and averages them automatically, that means that there's no human control over which images to use and which to reject. Imagine what would happen if you were to let this program loose to create an average image of Shirley Temple. She started in films at the age of three and reached the age of 85, and the software would create an "average image" by mixing images of her as a small child with ones of her as an elderly woman. Even worse, there's a non-alcoholic cocktail named after her, and pictures of it would almost certainly get included.

The only honest politicians we have here are the ones who at least have the decency to stay bought.

Yes, and as long as that's your attitude, nothing is ever going to change. Start enforcing the laws that are supposed to prevent this type of thing and stop voting for corrupt, machine politicians because right now, you're getting exactly the kind of government you're voting for.

Or perhaps you mean Ubuntu...

...which is based on Debian. Maybe you might consider trying a distro that's based on something else, such as Fedora, based on RedHat. Right now, I'm running Fedora 20 on my laptop and 19 on my desktop because I just haven't had time to upgrade it. Normally, my desktop runs 24/7, only rebooting for kernel updates. Current uptime is a little over 9.25 days and I can't remember the last time an update broke anything. Of course, I'm not foolish to run anything that's as bloated as Gnome, preferring Xfce with Compiz, but It Just Works.