The way I see it -- the way my old man always saw it -- is that Microsofts marketing and branding strategy, though dated, makes sense. Ordinary People (TM) are prepared to pay Big Money (R) to get a faster and fresher computer, and if they need to bin their four year old XP machine for a brand new Vista to get it, then that is just the way it is and they accept it. To Computer Nerds (GPL) this stings, because we know that those four year old computers still have a lot of life in them, and that XP can be a quite decent OS if tweaked properly. If Microsoft made the effort to gradually upgrade their products once every other year that would probably eliminate a significant chunk of computer hardware sales. But the loser would be Microsofts most important partners, the hardware manufacturers.

Now the way that my old man sees it is that Windows 7 is a real improvement as far as interface is concerned. Everything from the file structure to basic user interactions such as dialogs or the taskbar and Explorer seem matured and polished. I've been testing Win 7 RC for a couple of weeks, and although I had many stability issues the first week, I'm now completely convinced to make the switch from XP. Right now I'm running it on a Gigabyte GC-230D board with Intel Atom chips (1,6 Ghz CPU) and 2GB ram, Aero turned on, and it performs acceptably. And this comes from the guy who ran Windows 95 until well into 2003, for the fear of XP being another Windows 97, 98, or god forbid Me.

As for the licensing and intrusion issues I have nothing to comment, other than this time around I won't be able to afford to buy a legit copy, so my usage will be determined by the availability of working free copies.

If you like Firefox, why don't you install Personal Menu or similar addon that replaces the Menu bar and remove the Search box and all other un-needed elements? The first time I saw Chrome I was psyched because it looked exactly like I've been configuring Firefox and Konqueror to look like for years. Except the tabs-on-top, which is cool but not really necessary on a standard monitor.

I used Chrome for a few months and I love it as a project, however I actually find it to be about as slow as IE when the number of tabs go above 10. Big no-no.

Of course you do. You need money, as do everyone else. So maybe you should be concerned with the cut that the store puts into their own pockets. In this day and age you can use open formats and platforms to distribute your work pretty much for free, and if your content is good and you charge a reasonable price (which should be easy seeing as a large chunk of it is pure profit) people WILL buy and you WILL spread the butter carelessly.

Don't be afraid. We come in peace from the internets. You are one of us now. We love you.

It would seem so, wouldn't it? Perhaps you should at least try to see how this tragic situation could arise?

It began of course with decades of tyranny that fueled fundamentalist and Soviet-friendly views. But the revolution itself did not rest upon the different socialist fractions or the different religious fractions, neither was it the work of any ethnic group in particular. The revolution happened out of a desire to stop the tyranny, but a lot of people had not really contemplated what should be in its place.

That is why after the revolution the strongest established movement, the fundamentalist shia muslim fractions, could claim power. They had national networks in place to organize on a national scale. They got rid of the most important competition, the communists (thousands are believed to have been executed in front of their co-workers). They organized an election which looked democratic enough that gave them complete power.

What should the common Iranian do at this point? You have already risked your life to get rid of the pest of an oppressive regime with the support of the strongest army in the world. What is the point of trying to overthrow another oppressive regime without any form of organization of how the Iranian society should develop after another revolution?

You know, there may very well be a damn good point to continue the resistance, and Iranians do so in their own subtle ways every day. But you can't blame them for being cynical. I, however, can blame you for being cynical. These are people that need your moral support, not your ignorant judgments. Keep that in mind.

(Irony is not hot anymore)

I think it sucks that they won't package IE, and the EU needs to stop meddling with these things. If they want to support open source software by doing something useful or donating money, that would be great, but to cripple a OS over it is weak. What if they forced everyone to include every alternative software bundled with the product, and what decides which alternative programs will get the special treatment?

Sure, it would be cool to have a Windows install DVD with a special installer that lets you choose exactly what browser, media player, IM etc you want. Perhaps get the latest install files from the internet automatically. But it seems more like something for The Pirate Bay. :)

I don't want no trouble here, but the advertising on this site sucks. This is about how people respond to those arrows they have in the search results now, right? *Checking* No, it turns out to be un-feckin-related to any sudden philosophical shifts within the company... and then some stuff about the people that work at the GOOG... as you resume to call it, you ironic scuttlemonkeys.

The OS is not the UI, at least not for the average Linux user. We like tweaking little things, like the exact package management, or in what way the system detects hardware if you want it to do so automatically at all.

The solution is NOT to merge distros, but there needs to be some rigorous standards for how different implementations can communicate with each other. The KDE people get this and have been working like hell to standardize hardware management (especially audio), but all they get is whining about the UI and bugs. It needs a lot of work, but the foundation is there, and it needs to reach a level of maturity and adoption across distros/WMs so that developers can focus on developing.

The next thing we need is a standardized install method for packages that are obtained manually by the user. I know it is not as simple as just providing a tar.bz2 with source and machine readable dependency instructions, but it should be possible to make compilation automatic across the board if the major distros come together and put some work into it.

PS. Don't know why the paragraphs are not separated. Very weird. DS

As a person who often pirates books (those that I can not afford at least) my suggestion would be some sort of tip jar. If people don't pay you directly, maybe they would at least be willing to send you $5 via Paypal.

On the other hand you should not equate downloads with lost sales. I guess you've heard this already, but lots of people actually download huge collections of books that they never even read. Someone that is serious about learning cryptography, and wants to do so by reading a book on the subject, will probably buy the book rather than download a PDF.

What if a city like mine would buy 1000 bicycles and let those circulate among people? You could build a couple of strategically placed bike garages and just let people drop them of themselves.

This whole thing is a joke right? They did not actually inject people with testosterone in the balls, say that 1/100 pregnancies is a reliable count and post it on slashdot?

By the way, take a hint from my girl. A patch on the hip, and then a cup up the snatch for a day or three. Works perfectly. Cup works for ten years and it generally rules, and the only side effect with the patch was that her tits grew. Come back to me when you can make my sperm do backflips instead of babies.

By using sunshine. No. Privoxy can block scripts, or manipulate incoming traffic any way you like.

I recently built a little box for this exact purpose, so that everybody in our house can keep their computers off when they don't use them. I'm about to set it up for web based torrent management, and streaming media to the Xbox1.

In case anybody is interested these are the parts I used:

• Gigabyte GA-GC230D, Intel Atom 1.6GHz, Mini-ITX, I945GC, DDR2, LAN, PCI, SATA
• Western Digital Scorpio 500GB 2,5"
• Advance 3903B case, 60 W external power supply (no optical drive, loud system fans)
• AData Memory 2GB 800Mhz (clocks down nicely)
• Netgear Switch GS605 with 5 ports

With a KVM switch I'll even be able to use it for most other purposes like surfing the web and writing homework. Then I'll only need the power hungry monster for games.

Vocational education is fine provided their options are always open. By industrial workforce production I mean the assumption that every kid is supposed to learn a certain thing at a certain predefined time in their life. If they already had a particular piece of knowledge, they can not advance faster, and if they had trouble cramming this piece in at that particular time, they cannot be helped without either diagnosing them as special or holding the entire class back.

By the way, how obvious is it not that every person is unique?

Certain parts of education are money down the drain anyway. You can't blame the children for not opening up their heads to what adults sometimes perceive to be "their jobs"; kids function and learn differently from how industrial workforce production is designed.