Is that there isn't anything as awesome as the old MP3.com.

Seriously.

I probably haven't been exposed to one independent song in the past year. When mp3.com was still here, I downloaded a ton, in a variety of genres.

Does anyone know of a (good) site like the old mp3.com that offers the same scope of music AND free downloads?

Someone hack his PC and install the damned purple ape!

Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft implies that the person the item is stolen from no longer has the item. But that's beside the point.

I seldom download movies or tv shows from the internet. I have Netflix and that does ok for most movies I'd care to watch. I often buy CD's as well. However, sometimes I want to download things that I can't get elsewhere. Like missed episodes of TV shows, for instance. (I often buy boxed sets, but sometimes I just want the latest one when I miss it)

While I agree, there's always going to be a number of people who will pirate everything under the sun, there's also people who simply aren't being served effectively who turn to piracy out of desperation, because "legal" alternatives either aren't available or cost far too much. For example, I don't buy MP3's because they're too expensive, it's just as cheap (and often cheaper!) to buy an actual CD.

There's more than one side here. Yes, Microsoft or any other company should fire the foreign workers first when possible. But realistically, it doesn't always work that way.

Say Microsoft has one team working on some craptacular product, say Microsoft Songsmith, that isn't as complex or demanding as another product, say Windows 7. Say they decide to lay off some workers. The Songsmith guys are the obvious choice, as the product royally blows to start with, but wait, we need to fire the foreign workers first. However some of the Songsmith guys aren't foreign workers. Do you take some foreign workers, who are actively involved in the production of Windows 7, and replace them with some of the American geniuses behind Microsoft Songsmith? Or do you just can everyone responsible for that crapfest?

Remember, the companies in question are large. They have many departments and projects, and the skills that make one perfect for one project may not be adequate for another. Thus, they're likely to wipe out all those working on a product, rather than simply removing the foreign workers.

Granted, in the current economic climate, Microsoft should NOT be hiring new foreign workers. However shuffling workers between projects would in order to fire the foreign workers first would be devastating to productivity to say the least.

It may not be that bad, but it still can be somewhat annoying. My whole point is that, having used both Linux and Windows, my experience on both is mixed (though with Vista it's more "pissed beyond belief that I wasted my time on that pile of shit" than mixed). There's really no mythical OS that does everything perfect and right. Unless you believe the Mac fanboys.

I actually like Metallica's music.

Of course the band is full of douches, so my Metallica mp3's are all pirated.

If you think these were bad, you obviously have never been to a bar on karaoke night. Now, imagine that, and this, combined into one horrid monstrosity. Yeah. It gets worse. Much worse.

A quick search on OSAlt.com turns up kivio, Dia, OOo Draw, and ArgoUML. While they probably don't have the feature set of Visio, there are alternatives.

There are a few reasons I don't use Linux on my main box right now, and this hits the biggest of them.

Anyone who has ever tried to install a program not in the repository will know what a pain it can be. Getting stuck in dependency hell is still a very real problem, and while repositories help they are no substitute to fixing the problem.

In Windows, if you get an installer you have a reasonable expectation of being able to run it. Sometimes you hit dependencies, but not often, and they're generally the same for most programs.

Another big thing is having different package managers. What to do when a developer distributes a .rpm but not a .deb, or the other way around?

And I won't even start bitching about the 3D Graphics support...

Still, Windows isn't perfect, and Linux is far better in many ways. Having a software repository is awesome, and saves a lot of time searching for programs. However, until these problems are addressed, many developers will continue to develop only for Windows.

(I do use Linux on a regular basis, and find it does an awesome job for many things. Just not everything)

From my reading, it's not a matter of having no options that can handle it, but a matter of having them all in one single easy to use client with a large feature set.

Unfortunately, SecureCRT is proprietary. So no go on a Linux version, and just a quick search doesn't turn up much in the way of alternatives. One thing it DID turn up was SecPanel, which is a GUI for SSH and SCP. I doubt it has quite the feature set, and I haven't tried it, but it might be worth looking into.

My Windows box only takes 15 minutes, with all the crap that runs at startup! Still, a PC with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 may boot faster than most.