Even though I'm something of a gnome fanboy, I'd second this. Windows familiarity is the big advantage of KDE from my perspective.

I'd also mention that you don't need to take the leap all at once. You can start getting them accustomed to alternative software choices gradually with free software that runs on windows like OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Amarok, etc.

So, I was mostly just giving him shit because of his name. If you want a more serious debate, here's my best shot: The instructions you described are all relatively easy to define a generally useful specification. My main point was that every application has differing standards of randomness that are required. Do you need real quantum-mechanical randomness, or just a CSPRNG? How many bits of random data do you need, and how frequently? I'm assuming that the request is for real quantum-mechanical randomness. I find it hard to imagine defining a good spec for such hardware component, especially since the vast majority of applications don't actually require quantum-mechanical randomness, and the ones that do are likely to have very specific requirements. Anyways, besides the fact that it's tough to come up with good requirements for such a feature, I bet it's really tough to implement as well. I know just barely enough about about hardware implementations to be dangerous, so someone who knows for real, please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyways, circuits that exhibit quantum-mechanical randomness are, as far as I know, essentially the same as circuits that cause metastability in transistors. Because of the need to control for such problems, implementing such circuits on the same die as a normal digital circuit would likely be very expensive in terms of both die area and yield.

That's like asking "Why can't they add a DWIM opcode to the instruction set?"

for simple plain text stuff: http://etherpad.com/

oblig: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=puns

aside from that though, I agree, I am seriously surprised by housekeeping's showing. I can not imagine a fate worse than having some uppity robot running around my house hiding all my shit from me. Leave my damn keys out on the table where I know where they are smartass. And don't even think about putting that rock band drum set away...

Seriously. How about if the FBI confiscated the luggage from every room in a hotel, just because 1 of them had 50 kilos of cocaine in their room? I have no idea how they've been getting away with these tactics.

Rule #1 is: Security through obscurity isn't.

While that applies to information security. It applies much less to physical security. For example, if "casing" a potential burglary target requires standing outside of it suspiciously, then security is much enhanced even if it's not absolute.

Rule #2 is: Making a huge stink about your private neighborhood against a well-liked company like Google will probably mean you're going to get a lot more attention than if you just let well enough alone.

You're right on the money with that one...

Whoah, the first time I scanned that I read: "ext3 was merged to the mainline kernel in 2001. ext3 was created in 2005"
my reaction was, "Wow, well that makes sense..."