I'd recommend Slicehost.

AFAIK, Windows 7 doesn't make NTFS partitions it comes across into Dynamic volumes (which is probably what you mean by "enhancing"), which would make them unreadable on Linux.

Maybe the directories you were trying to access were NTFS versions of symlinks, "junctions"? I've had trouble using them in Linux, and I know Win7 has them in place for backwards compatibility ('C:\Documents and Settings' points to 'C:\Users', for example).

Welcome to 2007. Try out ntfs-3g. Very reliable and fast read/write support for NTFS. Are you still running Debian-stable or something? ;-)

I would have agreed with you a couple years ago, but ntfs-3g has become quite good - zero problems reading and writing large amounts here, and I use it for work almost daily.

Also, try going to Gizmodo without Adblock on. Note ALL the AT&T "Better 3G Experience" ads - especially the one with fucking Luke Wilson that is masquerading as an ACTUAL FUCKING STORY. Yeah, I'm sure this is a completely unbiased test. And 3G is not slow for me, on Verizon I get sustained 150 kiloBYTE/s downloads. That was my cable internet speed a few years ago, but now I have it on my phone!

2010 is the start of The Future. It's the year we can start pronouncing the year "twenty ten, twenty eleven", etc. You just sound like a jackass if you say "twenty oh nine" right now...

I think the loud minority of Slashdotters (who should be building their own non-laptop systems anyway) complaining about the "Windows tax" has improperly skewed your perception of US computer culture.

In the Twin Cities area (midwestern US), we have many smaller local shops, and at least one big one. At Micro Center (where I go to get parts for clients), I usually stand in a long line of people with their arms full of computer components.

There's also an annual "market/swap meet" type sale at the State Fairgrounds that has the cheap Asian imports.

This is just in one relatively small metropolitan area. I know Micro Center is nationwide, and I'm sure in larger cities there's even more smaller shops.

Don't underestimate us because a few zealots complain about the extra 30 dollars they pay when they choose to buy pre-made :-)

Exactly. I'd like to note that all of Valve's games are still DX9, and they still rule, and they also look pretty damn nice in my opinion.

Film ... is a craptacular 24fps.

Have you ever watched a movie on a new 120hz or 240hz TV, with the frame-interpolation feature on? Try watching a whole movie like that and really getting into it.

Film is 24fps because it is easy to get absorbed into the movie, rather than being jerked back to reality by home-video-amateur-too-real 30 or 60fps.

Alright, so I don't know if that's WHY it's 24fps, but I'm very happy with 24. Unless you've been sitting there playing a 60fps game for hours immediately before, 24fps looks smooth.

Plus, framerate has nothing to do with clarity of picture. But you are right that resolution doesn't matter so much with film, because in my experience a DVD player over component outputting 480p to a nice 720p plasma will look awesome from any reasonable distance (indeed, because of the softness of the picture).

(No longer selling copies of XP, anyone?)

Windows 7 is fantastic. Windows Vista was fine (on nice hardware) once SP1 came out. XP came out over EIGHT YEARS AGO. You can cling to the past as much as you want, but you just exemplify the GP's point. The rest of the world is moving on without you, and no, they don't care about your idealistic anti-corporate view (why don't you use Debian?). If you can't afford the 250 bucks to build a new Windows-7-capable machine, then you need to get a job and move out of your mother's basement.

I'd normally agree with you on OSS zealots making ridiculously biased anti-Microsoft assertions. However, the GP did not appear to be doing that, I think he was just pointing out how annoying it is to have multiple people work on different versions of a file when you have to email it around, and it just so happens that different versions of Word is one of the many problems with that.

Google Docs, despite its weak formatting tools and apparently censorship issues (which I've never run into myself in my heavy usage) is fantastic for sharing and collaborating on one document, and making sure everyone can edit it and has the right version.

Since they probably wouldn't be the ones installing LogMeIn, you can remedy the friend problem. After you install it, remove the startup entry with msconfig and set the services to manual. Then tell them if they need help to double click the LogMeIn icon you put on their desktop.

Doesn't it rain diamonds on Neptune?

$40 for 19 years sure is nice, but who wants to make that kind of investment, assuming there's 10+ bulbs in the house to replace? I'd rather pay $4 for a 6-pack and have to replace them in a few months.

GP didn't mention Interplay at all in his post, and the Russians he refers to made a mod. He was expressing gratitude that Bethesda isn't going after the (Russian) creators of said mod.