Sorry, I'm tired of this. Marginal cost of production, that is, the cost incurred to make one copy of the magazine is NOT equivalent to the actual cost of creating that copy. There is a fixed cost involved with making the master copy. Granted, that cost is fixed, and because it is fixed, as the number of issues produced increases, the contribution of the fixed cost goes to zero.

But asymptotic to zero isn't the same thing as zero. There are costs to be recouped, ROI to be realized, and salaries to be paid. I'm not about to argue that Linux magazine is correct in charging the same amount for print issues as digital, but "free to make and distribute" is ridiculous.

Sorry, I'm tired of this. Marginal cost of production, that is, the cost incurred to make one copy of the magazine is NOT equivalent to the actual cost of creating that copy. There is a fixed cost involved with making the master copy. Granted, that cost is fixed, and because it is fixed, as the number of issues produced increases, the contribution of the fixed cost goes to zero.

But asymptotic to zero isn't the same thing as zero. There are costs to be recouped, ROI to be realized, and salaries to be paid. I'm not about to argue that Linux magazine is correct in charging the same amount for print issues as digital, but "free to make and distribute" is ridiculous.

What do you do?

- Adam Ant

Oh, and my (exceedingly well traveled) parents have had good luck with the Rick Steves series of travel books. I find that series to be a little more "comfortable middle class" travel than the "backpacker" motif of Lonely Planet, but it might fit well here.

Seconded. London is a good destination for a beginning traveler, but, assuming you don't have some (pretty big) project, there just isn't enough there to cover two weeks. I'd have to be convinced that ANY city can fill two weeks, barring some "cooking school in Italy" idea.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not a fan of the "Death March" tour. One of my wife's friends did a tour of Europe with 25 cities in 30 days, which strikes me as horrific. There's a middle ground in there somewhere. Heck, with two weeks, you could even look at another city. Travel to the continent gets pretty simple once you get across the pond.

I concur with the Lonely Planet recommendation, but be a little wary. My wife and I used it extensively in Thailand, but since most of the commentary is user-driven, you can get led astray. For instance, there was a well recommended Italian place in Chiang Mai. We went, sat down, and listened to the chef "highly recommend the lobster." Not what we were down for (would've totally nuked our budget), so we left. I'm sure it was OK, but apply your own judgement, and don't feel bad about just walking out.

For the record, and I didn't test power consumption, but my 945GCLF2 worked fine without the fan running. The setup was, well, non-traditional, as I had it running a fanless dual monitor video card and CF IDE adaptor for the primary hard drive (except for swap, tmp, and home, of course).

Gentoo running xfce, and almost totally quiet, and didn't have problems. YMMV, of course, but it worked for me.

Graphic novel dilettante here, just curious. Sandman?

Torn between being happy knowing how to use the word properly, but having (yet) ANOTHER thing about which to be a grammar nazi.

So thank you, but only a little bit. No, slightly less than that.