Yes, I'd certainly prefer smokers did smoke inside their homes rather than outside, even if it destroys their electronics. Why? Because then I'd be less likely to have to smell the disgustingness of it. I hate being stuck behind someone on a sidewalk who smokes. I also hate being stuck behind a car that smokes, because it then gets sucked into the air intake coming into my car and smells inside my car. It might be one thing if smokers would smoke their damn cigarettes, but it seems like half the time they're just standing there polluting the air with their cigarette in between their fingers and not actually smoking their cigarette. I don't think smoking should be illegal, but I think it should be something that is illegal to expose other people to, especially children.

I wonder what my UID would have been if I'd signed up when I first started coming here instead of lurking for 6 or 7 years first heh.

GIMP takes me 12 times as long to get ANYTHING done with. I'm certainly not a power user in photoshop, but simple little things take me a lot longer because of just how different GIMP seems to work. One of these days I'll get around to installing photoshop in WINE and then I can disregard GIMP totally.

Actually installing office works just fine in Linux (Office 2007 at least). Though MS Access doesn't seem to work currently, how many home users really use that anyway?

I agree. I run on Linux for my own personal use these days (though I do still have to boot into windows for a couple of Windows applications for my work), but my family is die hard windows only. I've recently started converting them to limited user accounts as I format their systems to repair the terrible damage they've done to them. My father, who's been using computers for around 25 years now, is the only real holdout I have who refuses to use a limited user account. The only problems you might run into is a lot of windows applications insist that they need administrator access to run properly, so be prepared for an onslaught of dealing with this. It's especially bad if your users are on something like Windows XP, where it's not as easy to elevate the privileges temporarily. For instance, my mother uses a loan processing/origination software for her work called Calyx Point. In XP it does not run on a limited user account by default without messing with the registry and permissions of the directories. Same deal with a lot of games as well. When I setup my nephews PC I put him on a limited user account on his windows xp system, and when he wanted to start playing Diablo II, I had to do some searching to figure out just what I had to change to let it run on a limited user account. I haven't had these limited user systems up long enough to really see a noticeable difference in if the systems get as fouled up, so it will be interesting to see. I did use all my normal security settings and programs on top of the limited user accounts. Hopefully this will keep my family from trashing their computers twice a year. I'd suggest trying the same thing. Of course if they don't have to have windows, by all means stick them on something like Ubuntu, just be prepared for all of the "Why can't I see the dancing bunnies?!" questions you'll get heh.

I've modded a couple of my systems over the years. Most notably my sega saturn? The main reason why? As games get older and older, and become harder and harder to find, I'd rather play my backups than originals as it gets harder and more expensive to replace them. This is especially true of optical media where one small mishap can render a game unplayable.

Another reason IE has market share: there are industries where the websites that are required to work in them requires IE. For instance, I'm a real estate appraiser, and every year or so I attempt to login to a paragon MLS system with firefox and java to see if it will work. It doesn't, things don't load right if they load at all. It only works with IE and java. For now what I do is use the IE tab firefox plugin for those webpages that require IE, but that's not a real solution by any means. Maybe someday I'll actually be able to do my job from within Linux, until then I have to continue having the option to boot into windows. (In all fairness, my primary software: Ala Mode Wintotal doesn't work in Wine anyway, and I've not seen a real replacement that's compatible with Linux).

Seriously. I used to tell everyone to use firefox instead of IE. Now as firefox seems to get more and more bloated, chrome looks more and more appealing.

Don't you mean "d00d"

The thing I always find scary about zombies is that they can't be reasoned with, there's nothing to connect with. If you look at many of the other horror movie/story staples, there's often something that can be connected to. Frankenstein's monster had some humanity left that could be connected to, the same with vampires, and even serial killers, but the zombie is unable to communicate, and can't be connected to. (unless you're talking about one of those weird zombie movies where they can, like one I watched part of on AMC the other day, I want to say return of the living dead or something, about some kids in a mortuary). At the same time, I find the older style zombie stories about the witch doctors less scary for this exact same reason. Perhaps the witch doctor can be reasoned with, or in some cases even the zombie itself. It's for this reason that I didn't really find the serpent and the rainbow http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096071/ a scary movie at all. At the same time, I did find it an interesting and good movie.

You know, I logged in specifically to suggest just that. Anytime I buy anything online from a store I haven't used many times in the past, I will do as much research as possible on them first. Additionally, I read reviews for said item on as many different sites as I can to try and avoid bias.

Actually every time I pack for vacation I tell my wife it's time for me to go play tetris heh.

Yup. I don't know why anyone didn't start capturing packets as soon as the shut down was announced. I have an excuse at least, I have no idea how to do it and what to do with the data once I had it lol. I guess maybe someone could do it off the korean servers or whatever that should still be up.

Amen. I enjoyed the original, but I won't be picking this up. While blizzard may be bigger than flagship and less likely to just go away all of a sudden than flagship was, I won't take the risk of being burned again. Buying hellgate and not being able to play online in ways other than through their servers pretty much ended how much I enjoyed hellgate.

I hear you there. I'm 6'2" also, and for a while on a health kick I got down to I want to say 230 or so. I just couldn't lose any more weight than that without trying to drop muscle mass (and I'm not a body builder or anything either). I felt the exact same thing about my frame. If I was to try and get into the 'healthy' range for my weight I felt like I'd be 2D. BMI doesn't take into account things like how wide your shoulders are and how big your frame is, and therefore isn't really all that useful in my opinion. Of course on the other hand, it's a pretty quick and easy thing to figure out without needing much more than a tape measure and a scale.