Agreed...why is this on slashdot?

I would be interested to see your facts that back this up (spent naval nuclear fuel reprocessed and reused in domestic, commercial nuclear power plants).

They should pick custom avatars with Majong as James T. Kirk and Bethusda as the Green Lizard Man...

I don't know much about it, but isn't that the basis of Google's Chrome OS?

They are only different once you get caught.

When I was a Facilities Engineer I had a lot of problems with people placing their desktops/laptops with the exhaust facing the zone thermostat. I would get calls that they were freezing cold and alarms that zone temperature was too high because the thermostat was reading the exhaust tempreature.

I would say it has less to do with the daughter's 'perceived fragility' than the fathers knowing what is ( or is not) going on in other boys heads at that age.

Probably could also try Earth by David Brin and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. I'm reading Zero History by William Gibson.

My in-laws, who are in their late seventies and have never owned or used a computer, learned Vista on a laptop. Probably far worse than giving them a machine with ubuntu loaded on it. I think I would probably have had fewer 'service calls' on an ubuntu machine.

Green Zinc Chromate...one of my favorite colors when making model aircraft as a kid.