none of those are mandated by the federal government except education - and that's the one of the list that is failing in the most obvious and insidious way, so there ya go.

as to SSI - Obama has already declared (to our military no less!) that it's not a product and not a guarantee. He's right. It's a tax. And it's also one of your list which is so badly managed, so often raided, so nearly broken so much of the time as to have needed major reconstruction. It's also of the few that are federally managed. so there ya go.

For the record, I say this but I'm not a Democrat and I think the individual insurance mandate is most certainly unconstitutional. As to any other qualification about it, that's a full on stop. If we citizens wish to mandate and can change the constitution to reflect that we would *then* be in line with a government ruled by law. Whatever else you say about federal efforts (from all three branches as well as the czars, bureaus, and departments not elected) you could hardly make the case for constitutional conformity.

and the list goes on.

there weren't a lot of them but the Heathkit store was a great thing. I was able to get credit there and see what I was buying and hold/touch/examine it. I really doubt there's much market for online-only DIY kit store aside from what is already available such as so many here have already mentioned.

Hopefully Heathkit has some other marketing strategy. In my nostalgia I *want* it to succeed. But I'm far too old to want to build a 2M radio....

says nothing at all. using C++ or C# or Java is a conceptual skill quite apart from machine level programming. Everything from threading to object/data maintenance to looping is different in a fundamental way.

I'm one of those "uneducated" (my background is Electronics, not CompSci) java programmers doing mostly business applications. I would only assert my competence. I also entered machine code in Heathkit ET3400 as well as C= Vic20/128. I repaired arcade video games like Defender and MsPackman also.

People learn what they're interested by and what they are required. The "average" anybody is not going to excite... talk about red-herring...

The truth of the matter is that C and below programming is really not necessary to the majority of today's programmers. I also modified xmodem on a coherent system where I had dial up. I did that to skip the 64, 128, 256 progression it did to bring up to speed. most of my transfers were 1k or greater and starting at 1024 made a huge difference in the kind of quick transfers I needed to do. I got my first job in software programming by showing the place in that C source code that I modified... why and how.

Even today I think the better, elegant solution eluded me at the time. But it worked; both in a pragmatic and preparatory sense.

That's all starkly irrelevant to job-health today for me though.

from within your filesystem perspective there can be only one top level "/" and everything is referenced from there. /usr/local/src/slashcode will always resolve to a specific place. Is that better than DOS's "collection of roots" ? It is more predictable and all the tools integrate with the idea that any directory beneath the current directory can be a different filesystem (eg. find, grep, etc).

The broad support for mounts on *nix also simplifies partitioning of data. For example, /home is often a different disk or partition from most of the system and can be encrypted, mirrored, backed up more easily since it contains virtually 100% dynamic (ie. important) data.

Microsoft's 'Drive Extender' appears to have allowed for similar concepts but has been removed from WHS2011 - http://www.ghacks.net/2011/02/28/drive-bender-merge-hard-drives-into-one/

I'm not too interested in the Why so I'm going to skip looking up their rationale.

Uniform Naming Convention - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Path_(computing)#Uniform_Naming_Convention - is another bit of Windows ecosystem that approximates the concepts of *nix top level containing mounts. That's more of a user-space thing though since it's only context is application, not something defined by the system. Mounted resources are available outside of a logged-in user.

*nix also has the /mnt node wherein most (/media notwithstanding) temporary mounts are defined. It's nice to be able to iterate or list the transient attachments your system might have.

ok I stand corrected. sorry.

that should be:

  eg. G R

the search term is GR so Gramps program is displayed in results.

I've had Fedora 15 installed in a VM as well as a native partition since it came out. I'm bit by the ATI graphics problems but the VM works fine - after several weeks of updates from both the dist, rpmfusion, and virtualbox. I've kept them both updated at about once a week and try them at each of those points. I knew going in that it would not be "how I was used to", but that is a valid criticism - just weighted differently from the following:

I *hate* the gnome shell.
- I want Seconds displayed wherever possible (eg. Calendar and Clock as well as file times)
- I want to easily encrypt my sensitive files and settings
- I want to have a one-click shortcut to launch an application. An extra click is acceptable to open a collection of similar favorites (eg. Drawer), though why hover never was implemented I don't know
- I want such a shortcut to always (try to) initiate a new instance of that application. [note below]
- I want a quick large storage area for temporary shortcuts (eg. Desktop) which might be files, applications, links, mounts, etc. - the more variety of supported types the better.
- I think the distinction between /home/username/.gconf and /home/Home/.gconf is important
- I want to be able to resize as many dialog windows as possible
- I want a visual indication of activity on other virtual desktops
- If I start typing on an empty virtual desktop I would like a search dialog to open. Both G2 and 3 make me go into a Search context, with differing levels of complexity to get there, before I see results. (eg. G R ). It's odd that GnomeShell makes ALt-F2 run dialog modal.

Fedora built the infrastructure to examine Gnome3 as a Spin but then did not. It's buggy and premature and should not have been released as the primary system.

I took this as a chance to finally try out Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity and truthfully as I match up my reqs I think it comes closer than does Gnome3/GnomeShell. I installed linuxmint on my laptop for a late-July travel vacation b/c of home/ encryption and expectation of a longer life for Gnome2. There's a fair chance that a month from now I'll have switched to Unity but that depends a lot on Fedora 16. I'm finding no reason to push my laptop back to a RedHat-related dist and Gnome3/Shell is a huge factor there.

I cannot truly emphasise how big the "not how I'm used to" is. A big problem with the rollout was the lack of information readily available towards transitioning from Gnome2. I think Jon McCann seriously undervalues its reception and is failing ivory-tower style.

YMMV
-RSH

@SwedishPenguin - I think you have a vested interest in the success of Gnome3/Shell.

[note] I was unaware of the context menu in Favorites that allow launching a new instance. Why does running instances not show on hover?

To my eye this means that anyone not required to register falls into the group of unregistered offenders; quite an assumption on their part I'd say.

The EFF has an action against this bill. Support them, please.

yeah, good point. mark me far less unsettled now ;)

I would SWEAR she says dipshit instead of dipswitch... she's a "brand manager" so not a techie. Now had they actually used an engineer or even better a real DIY'er then maybe they'd make some traction. sigh.

there are so many things I can no longer do with gnome3

- create a launcher on my desktop that has a complex command
- park a link to something on my desktop that I want to review later
- group launchers (ie drawer) for easy click access
- monitor system usage (ie applets)
- ALT-F2 a program (try gnome-ter ...it does not know the program exists)

Many have stated the idea that it's easier to meta-key and search. Well, the program names change both for the actual executable as well as the friendly-name (eg Pidgin) so remembering every program association is far more effort than creating a launcher that I can put on my desktop or into a panel or panel drawer. My current gnome2 requires at most 2 clicks to launch a program in debug mode with a custom working directory... I cannot do that with the default launcher from the search results and even the simplest is several clicks into arbitrary menu structures or abated attempts at searching ("messaging" as opposed to "pidgin".. puhlease!)

I'm at a loss for words as to how sheeplish gnome3 feels. It's like some early beta of windows vista that was trying to mimic a Mac.

In short: I hate it.

The Windows Server 2008 Web edition is included in WebSiteSpark . Considering the OP handle he's probably looking to develop microsoft technology skills moreso than a web site attracting "millions of accounts/hits" ;)

I'd spend a guess that he means Hosting when he says Cloud.

they seem to be saying 'potentially earth-like'. That's far and away from 'theoretical', unless I'm missing something...

this isn't news. It doesn't matter. It's not very interesting to nerds. I'm very very tired of the blatant click-bait. Please.. Stop.

just gonna dump Skype because it's owned by MS now

I have three platforms of interest: android, playstation3, and desktop linux. Add to that the next Wii that is probable for next year. Only two of those currently enjoy support, and they're both linux. Given a reasonable alternative which had a critical mass of users, then the answer is Yes.

I think your point about the XBox is underrated and I fear that Microsoft intention is not, as others say, really the customer base. I think it could very well be a defensive move as well as a technological grab. Primarily Microsoft wants to control the "living-room hub".

Microsoft's Skype acquisition is likely an attempt to position the Xbox 360 and other Microsoft platforms as a standard communication vehicle, in addition to its entertainment offerings