'People', like me, will start to care when the software we run (for me it's games) run *natively* under the freely available operating systems.

THAT is one of the biggest issues preventing 'people' from migrating to Linux.

You must be new he... Oh.. Sorry. Carry on.. ;P

Why not? All of the individual customer connections have to terminate *somewhere*. Why can't *somewhere* be a nice big closet where each ISP can bring in their own data lines, then connect their customers endpoint to their network? The city can decide to add a small fee to the 3rd party ISP for maintenance of the endpoint-to-customer part of the line to help with costs (like POTS providers do to 3rd parties that wish to offer DSL services over their lines)...

Wait -- what's stopping 'the local IT guy" from building his own network *now*? All he has to do is follow the same rules any other service provider does in order to string his cabling (and have the cash to do so)...

It's been my experience that most people that complain about the color of CFL's didn't pay attention to the color temperature of what bulbs they were purchasing. I, personally, prefer the 3500k bulbs. My mother loves those awful 5000k bulbs. Most people I know that like incandescents but hated CFL's didn't mind the CFL's I got them that were in the 2000k range (I forget the exact number) -- they give off the same 'yellow' light that their favorite bulbs do.

It's funny to go into someones house and see three different color temperature bulbs (sometimes in the same room!) because they didn't pay attention when they were buying them... heh

Also, to "cpu6502" -- few, if any, people have to 'drive to the dump' to dispose (properly) of CFL's. I know every Home Depot takes them for free, and I'd like to bet other stores do also.

Probably the same reason I distrust WD drives -- they fail far too often. I have a dead WD800 sitting at home, and a pile of various WD's sitting in my office (WD16000AAJS, WD400, multiple 250GB SATA WD Blue labels, etc). That's just what I have in my office, and doesn't count what we were able to send in under the 4 year warranty we have on our Optiplex systems. Most of the blue labeled drives came out of Optiplex 755's. Most of the replacements we received from Dell were Samsungs (all of which are still going strong, to my knowledge). Of all these dead drives, I have three dead Seagates. Two are the ill-fated 1.5TB drives, and one is an 80GB SATA that is more than 5 years old.

This isn't a recent trend, either. I've distrusted WD drives since the days of sub-500MB IDE drives...

I used to watch TLC pretty frequently. Now it's all programming about decorating things (houses, people, etc), pimping out your toddlers, and irresponsible child birth (both in having absurdly large families, and those that *somehow* "don't know" they're pregnant, etc)... Used to watch Planet Green until it started running reruns from other Discovery channels. I do watch a lot of Discovery Science, though I don't hold out much hope that Discovery Networks won't fuck that one up also. :(

$100k?!

Suddenly my nearly $40k seems so small, and I directly support 50-70 faculty/staff in addition to my responsibilities that directly affect a campus of several thousand (I work in an IT department for a college).

If you have Netflix, all of Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis are available for streaming. No need to actually leave the house! ;)

I actually enjoyed *both* series you mentioned, an am quite turned off at *how they were ended*. Get me involved in a story line and then just cut it off, without a finish?