Flash works great on Linux. And it works out-of-the-box on a lot of Linux distributions (like Mandriva). Of course, because Ubuntu wants to be "pure" about open source or whatever BS, they won't include flash by default. But that's a deliberate choice they do, not some technical limitation or anything to be blamed on Adobe.

I've lived in Tokyo for several years, and the train system is really convenient. Lots of train, it goes everywhere, it's all very clean, and very seldom late. Maybe you're the one guy there who is forced to take the train while he would like to use something else!

You should give your idea to Nintendo, I'm sure they will love it. Unless they already had the same idea...

I assume you've never been to Silicon Valley, otherwise you would have known that a lot of people live and work in Mountain View or Palo Alto (and walk to work). You would also have known that the Caltrain is pretty popular.

If you really can't afford to save anything, you have absolutely no luxury you can cut, then you have a revenue problem. I think it's time to think about your career, maybe switch to a better paid job or go back to school if you need a degree for that.

If you don't, then the time you lose your job and/or have some serious medical problem you'll be in a real trouble.

There is a huge difference between a game and all the software you're talking about: you can use a text editor, compiler, kernel for 30 years and still need it, while for a game you may get bored. Additionally, there is the story/discovery aspect that make it harder for a game to keep people involved from the version 0.1 to post-1.0. Being involved early spoils your experience of the finished product, and after 1.0 there is few incentive to continue development. Some games don't have a story or can be fun even in a pre-version (like a tetris) but the risk of getting bored is still much higher than for a text editor or a web browser you will be using every day no matter what. That makes games much harder to develop as open source projects than other kind of software.

Maybe you got stuck in the 90's, if you didn't see how the web is taking over the desktop. Close your Windows 95 machine and come with us to the futuristic world of the 21th century!

Well, I guess it depends what you're most used to. I personally think that the GUI you get on Linux (Gnome in my case, but others too) are far superior to Windows (and OSX too, BTW):

* Magnetic borders for window management
* Focus follow the mouse (window management again)
* Virtual desktop (yes, OSX has it and some third party tools on Windows, but they're not as good as X's virtual desktops)

Each time I have to use a Windows machine, I suffer because of the usability of the GUI. (And the command line too, but I can't really blame Windows or OSX for having a command line that sucks - it's not important for their target demographic).

1) They can't, because they're bound to Mozilla by a contract
2) They're not paying Mozilla "to be nice", but because Mozilla is bringing them visitors. It's a simple business contract, in which both parties are benefiting.
Now, if Google decided not to renew the contract after it expire, Mozilla may be able to find an other partner. It may hurt them or not to work with a service different from Google.