All changes are painful, and there will always be some that will whinge and tell you that can't live with it. So, you have to prepare the ground, persuade people that it is worth it, all the same. Having worked in the industry for 30 years, I have seen a lot of changes, and the thing that I have learned is that you absolutely must do your groundwork if you want to succeed. It doesn't actually matter whether the programs are best in class or whatever - it is amazing what people can put up with if they feel it makes sense; after all, they have lived with Windows and Office, which for most of the past decades has been unstalbe and poorly designed - it is only since XP that Windows didn't unversally require reboot several times per day. I mean, just run that last sentence past your mental SYSRDR one more time - other OSes have stayed up for years since the 60es.

So, prepare people and get them on board (one really can't say this too much); after that, it will be fine. Linux is great on the desktop, as you already know, and if you do have to support people, you can use ssh -X or even Xnest, so you won't even have to climb around in the compund all that much.

IOW: make good preparations (sorry if I repeat myself). Ask people what they use their systems for, what they really want to be able to do in Linux (including the non-work things!) and find out to do it. Make plans for how you will support them and how you will teach them things. Done well, this can be great for everyone.

Here you are:

http://www.mocpages.com/moc.ph...

Now, cough up.

I really don't understand you guys. I really, REALLY don't. I mean, how can anyone believe that a for-profit healthcare can be both better, cheaper and more fair than something run by society? But as soon as anybody opens their mouth to challenge this view, they get 1) modded down, and 2) called 'socialist' or 'communists'. I can only assume that this is an expression of what goes for 'faith': the ability to reject clear facts in order to avoid having to change your mind.

To paraphrase Terry Pratchett - there are certain people who one one hand wouldn't believe it if a high Priest told them the sky was blue, and could show them signed affidavits to that effect from any number of people of good standing, but on the other hand are perfectly willing to bet their lives on the word of a stranger they've met in the pub.

Now, to my mind, and you can call me socialist or worse - and I shall wear that title with pride - that mindset is exactly why America is no longer the greatest nation in the world. You seem to have closed you minds, so how could it be any other way?

In a universe that seems to be infinite in size (or a closed manifold), any point can be declared to be the centre. The reason for saying that Earth and the other planets circle the Sun is that it makes it easy to understand the observable orbits of the planets. But, it is perfectly valid to put Earth in the middle, if you have a wish to do so, just not very useful.

- paid for by the tax-payer.

I like no 5:

Cold feet, or maybe he was just dying for a smoke.

Another, perhaps less amusing thing is that the US actually do care; at least as long as there is a noisy group of displaced, Cuban voters to please.

Well, that's the problem to solve, then.

1) Make it less difficult to learn - this is only a matter of investing in producing good teaching material and making it easily available.
2) Make the idea of mainframes much more appealing. There's loads of stuff in a mainframe and even in z/OS, that is way cooler than the average PC crap.
3) Make it legal for people to download and run z/OS etc on the Hercules emulator for development and study purposes after a similar model like Oracle's

People have taught themselves Linux and Windows, not because it is more interesting, really, but because it is much more approachable; and within the reach of a tight budget. Which teenager is going to invest tens of millions in a mainframe? Make it free, like Oracle did with their database - it worked for them.

- and give the user something they actually want or need. The smartphone is popular because it is flexible enough to cover a wide range of needs that people have, not because it is cool or "wearable". In fact, I suspect that being wearable often counts against a device, because it so often has to be worn in a highly specific way, unlike a phone, which you just stuff into a pocket, bag, glove compartment or whatever.

why they don't just sell their spent fuel? It shouldn't be difficult to find buyers in, say, the Middle East.

Yes? That is of course not right - anecdotal evidence is valid evidence, but one anecdote is not enough evidence to either support or reject a theory. My postulate, if you will, is that is we collect all anecdotal evidence and review it without bias, what we will see is that:

1) There is a growing trend towards more unusual or even extreme weather, and
2) Overall, there will be more anecdotes about unusually warm events than about unusually cold ones.

There, I have now put forward two predictions; if you want to be scientific about it, go and find evidence to falsify them. It is a large undertaking, of course, but it is something most people with access to Internet, libraries etc can do if they want.

Really? Do you happen to know their names and what their branch of science is? And BTW - what is "many"? You are simply postulating vague nonsense without quoting any evidence; unlike the real scientists, who are specific and quote evidence.

As for fear mongering - what you guys are saying is "Look, they want to take our cars and our modern lifestyles away and make us poor"; is that not fear mongering? In contrast, the scientists are not spreading fear and despondency like you; they say it is possibly to avert much of the harm if we work on it, and they point out that we can, in fact, benefit economically from doing so. How is that 'fear mongering'?

Finally, explain this: Many, if not most people of my age (55) in northern countries can remember how, in their childhood the winters always seemed colder and with more snow; now, in N. Europe winter seems more like an extension of autumn. I have seen flowers in February that I remember from late May when I was a child. And so on - there's even large flocks of wild parakeets living in many parks in London now, fig trees thriving and in one place, on the A40 near Ealing in London, there's even a date palm.

Ironically, most Americans (apart from the relatively few Native Americans) were foreigners not long ago.

I can't claim to understand bitcoin (or virtual currency in general), but as far as I can make a mildly educated guess, the value stems from the fact that the work required to produce them is so great that it has to be a collective effort. If it somehow becomes easy, then they are no more than a form of pyramid scheme.

Other currency standards are based on things of tangible value - even gold or diamonds have a practical value far beyond being pretty. Bitcoins, on the other hand, have no intrinsic value - we could wipe them out completely today, and the world would be no poorer in real terms.

As always there is a lot of noise about this, as if it was possible to determine the truth by shouting the loudest. People seem to forget that this is SCIENCE: it means that the scientists are saying "These are our data, we think it means so and so" - and then everybody can in principle go away and check and draw their own conclusions. A lot of very competent people have done exactly that and reached conclusions very similar to the IPCC, and they can argue very convincingly for the validity of their calculations.

I have not, on the other hand, heard any of the so-called sceptics do the same - which is probably why they direct their arguments at the general public, who are not in a position to actually question their explanations. Let the sceptics present their data, like all real scientists do; if their data and their conclusions are valid, then they will stand up.

Ah, but of course, this is where the conspiracy theories set in: You can't get funded, you can't get published etc, and it is not because you are wrong or your research is flawed - no it is the fault of The Establishment of Evil Scientists, who make a career out of milking the research funds dry. Yeah, right.

*Sigh*

The comments on this list really show America in a very unflattering light, sometimes. Fortunately I and many others are less superficial, so I know that most Americans are not complete idiots.

How about reading the article with a more open mind? It is after all about something that is a good idea: using some quite simple, cheaply available technology to do something that is potentially good for the environment. And while judging how poisonous smoke is by looking at it is not accurate, it still gives a reasonable indication in most cases: black smoke is probably full of particulates, white smoke is perhaps mostly steam and so on. It's not as stupid as you make out.

Can it be used for spying? Well, obviously - but it can also be used for billion good things. And as you say in America: "Guns don't kill people ...". It makes little sense being opposed to a technology for what it might be used for by bad people.