Okay.

Huh?

Encryption makes the information secure from snooping, which is pointless in the case of DNS as it is public information by definition.

Signing makes sure the data has not been tampered with. Which is more or less the same as authentication.

That is the general idea of how SSL and the CA's work, only with DNS we don't really care if other people know what you are looking for, we just care that we are getting the correct response from the correct server, which requires signing of the responses, which is authentication. That is, with DNS we only really need signing of the data for transfers and queries, not encryption.

You could also change the PATH variable for the user. It would work more or less the same and you don't run the risk of /tmp being deleted because the computer reboots.
echo "export PATH=~/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

But then Windows isn't free!! We all know that a computer is useless with out Windows, so why bother selling the computer without. Just have the OEM give Windows to the user for free anyway.

:)

On a serious note, I have seen customers that for some reason think that the 60-day trial of Norton (or McAfee) that is bundled with their computers is all they ever need for AV, even if the software complains at them for 2 years! that it's subscription is out of date and to upgrade the subscription (seriously, a computer that I was working on, on Saturday, had its last definitions update mid 2007, and the customer brought it in because it was "acting funny").

If it is a bug in Windows sure, obviously the OEM can't fix it, but I was under the impression that the point of the OEM license was that Microsoft does not directly support it, and as such it is cheaper for that reason.

According to this OEM license on Microsoft's website http://www.microsoft.com/oem/sblicense/default.mspx microsoft does not provide end user support for the license. In particluar section 7 states:

7. End User Support. You must provide end user support for the Software or Hardware. You will provide support under terms at least as favorable to the end user as the terms that you provide to support any Customer System. At a minimum, you will provide commercially reasonable telephone support.

Well even five minutes would cost ~$10 to do it. And don't forget the computer has to be removed from its box and put back neatly, which adds more time to the operation.

Well to quote Isaac Asimov,

It composition may become not very useful to us but its not going to escape the gravity well anytime soon.

Figuring out fusion itself would be a good start.

What you are thinking of is fission, that we have down good.

There are really three uses of cursive.

One as a sibling post pointed out is so that quill pens don't blot, which with ball point pens is quite useless.

The second is cursive forces letter grouping for words. With cursive you break the line when the when you switch words. The result is if you don't space your words far enough apart you can still pick out the words with out resorting to solving the text like a one dimensional word search where you don't have a word list and the words could be spelt wrong.

The third is you can write faster with cursive because of reason two, if you start overlapping letters you just need to follow the lines and you can still read the words (albeit a bit slower going), where as if printing start to overlap it looks like someone scribbled on the page.

Related to three there are letters that I have seen from one of the world wars that had the writing on both sides and in two directions. Four pages of text on one sheet!

What you are describing is how everyone describes the general UI for EvE itself. The UI is just as horrible on windows as it is on linux. The players only put up with that for basically two reasons: 1) the UI is very dense so that it can communicate all of the information that the game generates, and 2) EvE is the only game like it.

Sure your not a programmer, thats fine. The advantage of having the source code applies to all users of the software. For example, if it is important to you pay a programmer to fix it for you. This is no different than a support contract with a appropriator software vendor. The advantage of having the source code thought is that *any* programmer that can code in the language that the software is written in, can write the fix for you.

This is why a smart company that is having another company build them a core system will have the contractor put the code of the system is escrow in case the contractor gets hit by a bus, fails financially, etc. The other company then gets the code from escrow and hires another company to continue building the system.

To go back to your car example, okay so you are not a mechanic and so the open specifications of the car are useless to you personally (as in you can't fix it yourself), but as with my previous example, you can hire any mechanic that is qualified to work on your car and understands the specifications of the car can fix it for you.

Don't forget about opportunity costs. While some people are able to use what the specifications of the stuff they buy or the source code of their software that they use. It may cost them less to have someone else fix their problem for them, while they are doing their higher paying normal jobs.