I prefer a real UNIX derivative so i go with BSD, either FreeBSD or OpenBSD, depending on the purpose of the system.

overall i used to have the same problem back in the day. heavy internet use would lock up my old Linksys router about every other day and had to manually power cycle it to clear it up. I ended up replacing it with a PC running a software firewall (originally OpenBSD running pf, now pfSense). all my wireless access points are basic Linksys units but they are running as stripped down as possible. they are really only wireless bridges and don't host any connections anymore. ALL services are handled by my pfSense firewall (DHCP, DNS forwarding, NAT rules, etc.) and I have had zero network lockups or burnouts since.

I have upgraded my PC to a beefed up desktop running VMware ESX hosting the pfSense firewall and now also a FreeNAS file server and an XP session to run my print server as well as my network media streaming for the house. I can easily saturate my 30 Mbit cable connection and still idle the server.. I should not see issues until i am trying to push 500+ Mbit, which wont be for a while.

If the data center is built with the correct architectural planning and resilience, then no it shouldn't affect it at all. these are the same centers that withstood the Earthquake and the horrendous storms recently. Granted that Amazon was a casualty of the storms, but there were so many other organizations that ran without a single hiccup. this is the reason yo want to load balance your service across geographically separate areas. its highly unlikely that a hurricane is nailing your east coast center the same time the Mississippi is flooding your mid west center and an earthquake takes out your west coast center. SOME users will be temporarily inconvenienced, but the service as a whole will be online.

the main things that relate to a data center staying operational:
1) will the building physically survive the incident. no brainer.
2) can power be maintained, including generator support. no brainer
3) can the telco connections stay active. no point in humming servers if a tree takes out your connection to the world.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/289607-data-centers-prove-earthquake-proof

all "Linux" is GNU/Linux. bare metal Linux would be just a kernel. GNU is the Operating System that runs on the Linux Kernel. you can swap the kernel out and get other combos, like Debians GNU/FreeBSD distro. I do agree that Linux should be a bit more genericised, but then the main distros loose the manageability they provide now. the compatibility checks that they all do on their internal code bases. as for patches and updates, most of them will float the changes all the way to the root of the application they are fixing, but have the ability to patch it in their spin of it faster.

start menu is in the same place its been, bottom left of the screen. if you put your mouse in the absolute corner, you get a little popup showing the start menu. DONT MOVE, just click the corner.

Wow. a whole 10 seasons to be aired in the spring. SyFy doing week long marathons of that then to shove 10 years worh of episodes into a few months? :-p still sad the show was cancelled, but the low viewership does make sense. the bad point is that viewership dropped because SyFy moved the show from friday night to tuesday. still dont know why they even show wrestling.

Ahh. you sir are correct. Johnny was a short story published in 1981 in Omni magazine. Neuromancer was written in 1984. For those interested in reading the original story, it is included in Burning Chrome

Johnny Mnemonic was written directly as the prequel to Neuromancer. It was also written directly as a screenplay. the book version came after the movie.

good thing the character that Keanu played in Johnny Mnemonic doesnt exist in neuromancer then.

wel good thing I dont have to worry about that with the linux install on my PS3....oh wait.......

I highly doubt that this would explain all events, especially where "ball lightning" was experience by multiple people simultaneously from different angles. I would expect them to see their own seperate events, not the same event.

i have 20 mbit comcast and i get 20 mbit consistent. i have pegged BT downloads for hours at the speed, and i have downloaded ISO files that maintain the full advertised speed. i think it really depends on the market you are in as to how well your comcast connection is.

considering that you never get full bandwidth on any network. Even if you direct connect 2 computers together at 100mbit and transfer files...it wont be going at full 100 mbit speeds. and in any network, the more nodes you add to the system, the more that network top speed is brought down since it is now shared across many nodes. This is the reason that the ISPs have tier caps well below what the physical interface actually provides as it makes it more likely that you WILL peg out at your tier speed. I.E. i offer a 100 mbit trunk at "up to" 10 mbit to 10 people, you will most likely never dip below the 10 i advertised, but if i offer it to 20 people, then you might be stooping down to only 5 mbit. and anyone else notice that comcast will be offering 100mbit speeds in the near future?

if you read the book SnowCrash, you will understand the exact purpose of second life as it is modeled after the Metaverse. but overall, its just an animated chatroom, kind of like how MSChat made IRC look like a comic book for no real reason