Use the tools that make you happy and keep you productive.

Lots of us drive old cars - manual transmission, dim lights due to old corroded 6v electricals, always hunting for a good supplier for non-E added gas (eats the gaskets, etc), hunting for parts, living with 0 to 60 times measured in the 15-20 second range, hard starting on cold mornings, no AC, no radio, or AM only radio (or AM, FM, and Shortwave, which is kinda cool). No seatbelts, or lap belts only.

But with out all the mod cons, the old cars are still fun to drive and driving them puts a smile on our faces.

But... when it comes to work place... do what the paycheck signers want you to do. Keep others productive, don't let your enjoyment of the old stuff get in the way of getting the company's business done.

Back In The Old Days, we'd have to wait outside for our pizza delivery. Otherwise one of our many fellow student neighbors would claim it as theirs just to get one *now* instead of calling themselves...

Yup, right along with the first (or maybe second?) programming class - how to really test code, set ups, etc.

Of course, same can be said about Windows

Yup, but every little bit helps especially if you are in the early group.

I started the torrent just before my above post and for a while after getting the whole disk images (i did netinstall and cd-1 for both i386 and amd64) I was uploading at close to 3mb/s for a short while. They've dropped off slowly, down to a trickle of a few K per sec up, so I killed the off about 10 minutes ago. Still, 20gb worth of upload... 20gb I don't need, and 20gb that Debian (or whoever) doesn't have to pay for.

Or hit a car rental agency and see if the on-board computer allows an "average MPG" display... my old '88 Olds Calais had it, my '99 altima doesn't, my 2012 Mazda CX does.

And if you feel it was, perhaps you're better off running Debian testing or some other bleeding-edge distribution, and reserve time for dealing with the "bleeding" aspect of "bleeding edge".

Yup, this is why I keep coming back to Debian. If I need latest browsers, I can add those repositories and update directly from the vendor. But now that I'm not pushing the edge of released software chasing after working 3d drivers, etc (the '99 thru '01 era, with 3dfx being the only real way to Quake/Quake2/Quake3 under Linux) I don't care to deal with any of the bleeding.

Here's your quick and easy way to give back. I don't code in c/c++, I hate writing documentation, so share some bandwidth and seed the torrents for a few hours or a few gb.

Assuming your "friend" is a USAian, then he most likely committed several felonies. Unless, he is a licensed FFL w/ SOT (aka "class 3 dealer") and had a letter of request from a le agency or military or the BATFE (should be a convienence store not a government agency) gave explicit permission for "research purposes".

That is the only BS part I'm coming up with - yes, you can use a shovel for an AK receiver flat. Google a forum name of "boris" and "ak shovel"

Sadly, those who try to live up to moral beliefs - such as only using Free software/platforms, or eating vegan - often have regrets about not being able to enjoy certain things due to their own self imposed limitations.

But, since they are self imposed limitations, it is up to the end user to keep themselves limited and miss out or to take a whack to their morals and use proprietary stuff, view stuff locked up by DRM, or eat a bacon sandwich.

Heh. I'm reading a spot of fiction/fantasy where a massive economic collapse has happened, and the Government is worrying about taxing all the barter/trade going on. Cell minutes become a currency in a heartbeat. When talking about taxing individuals, one Smart Person mentions "how do you compute 10% of a chicken? Do we just mail them 10% of it when we butcher it for dinner? The IRS is gonna be getting a lot of packages full of rotting chicken guts...."

Well, the non-profit I work for is a community college. No sales tax, no hotel taxes, etc.

BUT... have to be college bought, on a college credit card, and show the tax exempt form.

And, if you work for a non-profit or other tax exempt many hotels, etc. will not honor the tax exempt part unless you are paying with a corporate credit card.

Even if you don't use Ubuntu, seed the torrents for a few hours. It is one way we can all contribute to Open Source - no dev skills, documentation skills, etc. required!

Yup, it is one of the few ways that darn near any user out there can contribute back to Open Source.

I can code, some, but not very experienced with c/c++ - just haven't had the need to do it. I hate writing documentation. I do file bug reports, but the stuff I use is pretty darn stable.

So, to give back, I seed iso images for 24 hours or 100gb in upload of any Linux distro release notice I see here on slashdot, even if I don't use that distro.