Well, debian does backport all relevant security bugfixes. That aside, there will always be newer, bugfixed software. Debian stable focuses in being a bugfree distribution, not a distribution comprised only of bugfree software. Which means there are, ideally, no version incompatibilities nor out-of-the-box misconfigurations. Given Debian's almost inconceivably big repositories, that's quite the herculean task.

For the record, KDE has been stuck in 4.8.4 for about six months, since the freeze started, but since 4.8.4-2, all bugs that initially affected my machine seem to have been ironed out. Whether that's because they have implemented upstream bugfixes or because they were actually Debian bugs to begin with I can't really say, but if you campare it to, say, Fedora 17's or even Kubuntu 12.04's KDE 4.8, you'll realize how marvelously quirkless Debian's KDE is and why it pays to have stabler distributions.

Bioshock, by itself, could be much better were it quite a lot harder. If you felt like you couldn't survive another encounter (or could not spare the resources for it), like System Shock 2, then navigating the hallways would be a lot more memorable and enemies would be more frightening. I also think Big Daddies should have been treated like those monster-thingies from Amnesia: something you could not defeat. It would add a much needed layer of caution to a game that's already incredibly atmospheric and involving but doesn't exploit those characteristics often enough.

That's what I hate about perceptive generous people and their expensive and thoughtful gifts. They always manage to get whatever you need almost right. That "almost" part is enough to leave you slightly uncomfortable with what you have but not enough to invest money into something better, since your gains would now be disproportionate to the amount spent. Just give me a cheap, ugly fucking novelty tie I can throw away and we'll both be a lot happier.

Not the only competition, though, If that's a factor on your choice of phone, wait a bit and buy comething with Tizen, Ubuntu, Firefox OS etc. Because, from an user's - and society's - point of view, there's good and bad competition. And competition that litigates aggressively to ban competitors, like Apple, or to extort competitors, like Microsoft, is surely bad competition.

Not on the desktop nor mobile markets, no. However, given that IOS, due to its widespread adoption, constitutes a big market for apps itself, and one that's artificially limited by Apple to have only one store - theirs. It could be argued that Apple's SDK provides a means to installing third-party apps, but it's not freely available. I don't see it as a big issue for consumers because it's easy enough today to jump to another similarly capable mobile platform (unlike moving away from PCs with Windows, which is/was a de facto standard).

I'm from São Paulo, too. I have been around, though. Brazilians are very funny when it comes to patriotism. We run around telling jokes about the country and making fun of our politicians, customs et al. However, we're extremely protective when it comes to foreigners. Stallone made a borderline derogatory comment aout Brazil a few years ago and he was immediately and publically vilified. It's not outspoken or even acknowledged like US patriotism, but it's definitely there. And it's worse when it comes to Portugal, due to our history and how it's taught in schools.

Here, this mini-review actually gets more in-depth about the language problems, complete with some funny examples: http://www.thingsmeanalot.com/2009/02/speaker-for-dead-by-orson-scott-card.html

Yes, I am. I also know he visited for a while. However, his contact with the country has been certainly limited. He often mistakes european Portuguese with brazilian Portuguese (he probably did some language research prior to writing the book, but neglected to account for the plethora of major differences between the two dialects, making the end result a jumble that's funny to both kinds of portuguese speakers), makes cultural/historical blunders like a bunch of space brazilians naming a colony Lusitânia when it's somewhat ludicrous to name a colony after your colonizers, especially with the overall sentment towards Portugal being quite adversarial. Not major faults and they don't make the book unreadable*, it just breaks immersion every page or so with nonsensical names (they are all hilarious), misspelled words, bad grammar, bizarre, archaic diminutives, bad translations and so on (often complete with explanations that only make it worse for being plain wrong).

*not for me, at least - I still thought it was a good book, but my girlfriend (who really liked Ender's Game) couldn't get past the second chapter. She read the portuguese version, which is arguably worse as you're reading your native language being weirdly distorted in your own native language.

I didn't really see it in Speaker, so I guess you're thinking of a later novel. What did put me off in Speaker was the atrocious Portuguese. You don't really tie in so many cultural and linguistic references if you're not familiar with them. Really, that whole aspect of the book was very badly done.

Ditto. My mother couldn't even transition to a laptop, since she uses e-mail a lot and demands a full-sized keyboard (preferably far from a trackpad, since it's easy to touch or rub it by mistake and move your cursor and/or click to somewhere it's not supposed to). A tablet left her profoundly disgusted with the experience of typing on an unergonomical hard surface, so a PC it is. And, after lots of time spent maintaining her XP machine, I did the unthinkable: set up Debian stable for her. Works like a charm, breakage of whatever kind is nonexistant and I don't have to worry about viruses. It did take a while to set up initially (while I figured all her use-cases and adjusted the machine accordingly), but from there it has been smooth sailing.

For the submitter, that's what I'd add: any sort of transition will demand lots of your time, don't fool yourself. You can either try to instruct her, which will take very long, or pull an Apple and lock her machine down in a way that she can only use whatever you want her to. As long as you do a good job of predicting her needs, it's far less hassle in the long run.

A final thought: educating an elderly citizen to use VMs is easier than one might think.

Yeah, every freeze sucks, and it's been hard to stomach this last one. glibc6 2.13 and buggy KDE 4.8 (4.7 was great) are really getting on my nerves. I've heard wonderful stuff about Sabayon and loved the live session. If I can't make it to Wheezy's release, I'll give it a serious try (probably in conjunction with Mint 14).

Shuttlework did go to space, after all...

Hum... LG does make crappy phones, but I have never had a problem with their reliability. In fact, from what I've seen, they seem to be quite durable and well-built. The problem is what they're built of. LG has beautiful phones with 4.3" screens, ICS and Adreno 200 - a GPU which was already obsolete in 2010. ( see Optimus L7). The whole L line is utter crap, in fact, being incredibly underspecced. Except for the L3, which would be cheap enough to be a good contender if not for that hideous screen. Really, they can't get any device entirely right. I have an Optimus Hub, an almost decent phone. Its only fault is having 150Mb of internal memory, which is unthinkable for a smartphone. I can, of course, just use a memory card partition for my apps but it's not a very elegant solution and tends to cause all kinds of weird read errors. On top of all that, their Optimus UI is pretty heavy and uglier than stock Android.

Also, the Linux Defenders 911 is made in Flash, which was recently discontinued for Linux as a whole. Really, I think it's a good idea, but it's leaking irony all over.