SBC did not buy Ameritech, or, if they did, it was not a significant purchase. SBC bought BellSouth, which owned Cingular. They did not buy AT&T -- AT&T went under, and SBC bought only the name, although it might have included whatever was left of AT&T Long Distance. Much cheaper transaction.

Mandrake 9 was the first Linux I actually got to install and run on any of my computers (after several attempts with others). Unfortunately, 10 did not do so well... and Mandriva did make a mess of things for a bit... My next success was Ubuntu 8.04 HH, and I've stuck with that even through some computer glitches and an upgrade glitch with 8.10. 9.10 Karmic Koala looks really great.

My only complaint with Linux is not with Linux, it's with OpenOffice.org and all the other open document office suites. They all use the same open source conversion program to convert to/from DOC/RTF, and the resulting RTF file is seriously messed up. As I am a professional editor, and some of my documents need to be in RTF format, I'm stuck using Windoze until someone fixes this (I don't have the skills to do so), and OOo has stated repeatedly that they are aware of this bug and intend to do nothing about it.

So now that I am officially off-topic, I will end this post.

I bought two Eee PC 701s and later two Eee PC 901s for various homeless people in Asheville. Of the four, two have reported issues, and one has reported issues with the SSD... it's a 901 with the 20 Gb drive, which they partition into a 4 Gb and a 16 Gb drive. The one with issues can't find the 4 Gb (Primary, Boot) partition, but boots fine if you hold F9 down while booting and then reports the other drive is there and working fine. No clue if it's the drive or the OS is messed up, but I've done Restore a couple times so I suspect the drive.

OOo has always had problems converting from DOC to RTF, creating major formatting issues in the rsultant RTF file. It has been reported, by myself and others, quite often. Usually the response is that they are not interested in working on it. Fixing this one bug alone would allow me to cast aside Windoze and operate fully in Linux... however, as a professional editor who needs to submit several of my documents in RTF, OOo continues to come up short.

I would point out that MailMerge has always been complex and weak at best, but they may yet fix this. I also reported another bug, but it was not important enough to even remember.

Fix one bug. OOo (and Sun) knows what it is, and refuses to do anything about it. That's why OOo will constantly trail MS and other Office packages.

I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is thisâ"who will count the votes, and how. - J. Stalin

Oh yeah. Like AT&T hasn't already thought of that, and prevented it. Let me know if you're right though, I'd love to find another service.

You haven't tried typing on a netbook, have you? Or you have small hands... a 12" screen would make for just enough larger of a keyboard for us big-handed humans to relax a bit.

OK, what does professional wrestling have to do with green groups?

Pete Seeger was right... they are going to find a way to charge us for using the Sun. Also, the rain and the air.

So Microsoft is reviving the ORIGINAL meaning of "Trojan Horse", is that it?

and it's starting to bug me that my posts gets ratings of 1 or occasionally 2, but everyone who comments on them gets 4s and 5s... LOL if my comments are not that provocative, why are they provoking such good responses?

20+ years ago, "Intelligent Design" HAD no place in the public schools. It has mostly been these last 10-15 years that certain fundamentalist groups have managed to get it added to curriculum, often as favored over natural science.

I don't have a problem with an intelligent God, or an intelligent Universe (which to me are the same thing). My problem is teaching as Science a set of (not-that-well translated) metaphors written by a seer thousands of years ago, seen through the lens of many other seers and then taken as religious dogma as "inerrant". I would say the Hindu scriptures are quite a bit more in keeping with "modern science" -- note the discovery of Calculus and most other mathematical theorems far prior to the Greek, and the scientists of the Renaissance being censured, even tortured, by the official Church. I can read Genesis and see that it happens roughly the same as evolution; most who teach "Creation Science" would call me a heretic for even pointing out the similarity. I'm sorry that I am not providing the citation you requested. I'm sure the records are readily available. Nearly all Midwestern states and many others teach Creation Science, as though Gov. Huckabee were the Prophet of God. True spiritual people, in my experience, don't sweat the details.

In my area, I have yet to see a pro bono lawyer or public defender put up a good case. I hope Brittany wins this one, but am not encouraged.

That's not so bad, considering that upwards of 40% are still being taught "Intelligent Design" as "real science" in their school systems.