I am a pretty big rts fan. Even though I don't play all that much computer games and even though I run Debian on my desktops I actually purchased copies of Warcraft III and Starcaft. I believe those are among the very few games I ever bought. And the only Windows games I bought within the last ten years (I got myself Tribes 2 and Civilization CTP from Loki and UT2004, all for Linux). I was really looking forward to Starcraft 2 and even considered a Windows partition or a purchase of Crossover Games (Wine on steroids for money). Since I don't follow game news I never thought Blizzard would become one of THOSE companies.

I will definitely buy a copy of Starcarft 2 as soon as I can play it whenever and whoever I want. But now? I tell my friends not to buy Blizzard anymore. They are free to pirate that crap.
I thought Blizzard got it, when a recent (within the last two years or so) patch for Warcraft III removed the need to have an original cd in the cd drive bay. I guess I was wrong. Blizzard can kiss my behind.

If you don't want to go cloud you will either have to set up your own server or directly sync between the desktops and the phones. Since you are already set on Evolution you will have to find a solution that works with Evolution. I have done a lot of research into syncing for myself and for my job. For Evolution there is a mature solution called SyncEvolution that even has corporate sponsors. SyncEvolution speaks SyncML, so you simply have to find either phones or a server that speaks SyncML.

For servers: http://www.synthesis.ch/ or http://www.egroupware.org/

Certain phones can speak syncml. For example the Nokia E-Series (business phones). Also said company Synthesis does offer an Android app to add SyncML capability to Android phones.

Come on. How many times do you need to check your eyes. And shouldn't somebody do this that has an idea of what they are doing?

This is the first insightful post I came across browsing at +4 from top. There are 8 (eight) +5 insightful comments discussing just shooting pirates (which is what a five year old would say without thinking first).

Now I know what everyone will now say: "This is /. You didn't come here expecting to read anything remotely insightful."

But I remember a time when I was browsing at +3 and everything I read was much more insightful than the original story. Be it from the NYT or just about anywhere. And there used to be a time I posted a lot of comments. Even some "First Post" ones. And then I started caring about karma. That is when I started posting only once or twice a month. Got modded up every single time. Often to +5. Because I only posted when I had something really smart to say.
And then I stopped getting modded up. It wasn't that long ago. What really got to me was not that I stopped getting modded up, but what other posts were modded up. Most of it was really dumb. So I stopped posting. Has /. gone stupid or have I just outgrown it (I doubt the latter, I am not that smart).

Since you seem to make insightful comments I was wondering how you managed to getting mod points for actually good posts.

Disclaimer: I wouldn't have ranted like this, but 8 (eight count em again) comments discussing just shooting pirates are too much or me. Glenn Beck seems to have really taken his toll on the US.

Why did you get "insightful"? The problem is that big parts hit each other and then produce A LOT of smaller parts. We need to get the big parts first. Then we can worry about small stuff. I heard they wanted to try and smoke those with "friggin lasers".

I was a US exchange student in Napa, CA during the trial. When the verdict came they actually shut down the school and got everyone in classrooms with tvs, so they could watch it. I always thought that the interest in celebrities (which I partly share) is more of a guilty little secret, rather than something to cherish. So I kinda walked out in disgust. No one could understand that. At least in my school I was the only kid outside at that time.

People were furious, and again I didn't get it. At least once they didn't "fry the black guy", which I thought speaks for the traditionally racist judicial system.

Since you want a browser, you probabely have a choice between w3m, lynx, links, elinks or some very inadequate X11 browser. I don't know if Dillo is up to the task of displaying current webpages in a proper way.

You should look at older versions of Opera (they have an archive). Some run on very low spec hardware and also check out how much you can tweak a current version of Firefox to run on those very low specs.

Since someone suggested Debian, please make sure it is compiled for i486. Some distros nowadays compile for the Pentium.

Neither Microsoft nor Intel had it. The perfect monopoly was always the duo. Both of them. Hence it was called Wintel by many in the industry. And AFAIR Intel was really up there with Microsoft when it came to playing hardball with the competition.

Well, many malware apps still spread simply because users will click on anything and also try to click away checkboxes as fast as possible.

The problem is the user, not the os. It doesn't matter how secure your system is.

So this comment is actually very insightful. Replace "malware" with any app that the certain user REALLY wants to have (like Facebook-Hack-And-See-Pictures-Marked-Private-In-Profiles-Application) and they WILL install it. Even if the procedure is complicated.

I still wonder why they didn't build the first XO on the ARM architecture. I only researched via Wikipedia. What I found out was that the processor they used was based on the an old line of AMD (before the Athlon came out) x86 processors. AFAIR AMD x86 processors were inferior to Intel 486 processors.
So why use such an ancient design instead of a modern day ARM. It would have extended the battery life.

I think they now changed it to the ARM.

Is there anyone here on /. that can explain why they used the x86 on the first version? While I certainly am not qualified to say wether that desing decision was good or bad I can definitely say that the XO fell way short of their goal to become a widely used education tool in many countries. Which is sad, because I think it was a great idea and in many ways a very good design.

I am also not qualified to say why the XO failed in that respect, but I believe it was more politics than either good or bad design that was the major factor behind that failure. And including a major company (like AMD) could be good politics sometimes...

This Mac mini has more power than most servers had a couple years ago. Is a HTPC serving all your multimedia needs in your home (mp3s, videos, pictures) a server, or do you also need to use it as a file server? Microsoft has been advertising the concept of a home server for a couple years. What is blurred here?
I got a 10 year old dsl router from ebay for 5 bucks to use as a print server. 10 of those things would have less computing power than my last cellphone (my current one actually has the same computing power as my last computer). And I call it a server.

Has the guy who wrote this ever typed anything into a command line?

However, with the robust capabilities of my butt I will surely find a niche on my couch...

This was on Slashdot a couple times before. Accenture and Microsoft obviously botched the application developement. I wouldn't blame the tools or the platform if something goes wrong. Maybe they chose the wrong tools and platforms. Maybe not. Difficult to say.

I never knew Accenture was a software developement company. I thought they were in labor leasing. Then again, I can't help wondering. Usually when I hear of stuff that isn't allowed to go down it is some expensive Unix contract with HP (HP-UX), IBM (Aix) or SUN (Solaris). With a lot of redundancy built in. Red Hat thrives in that market, because Linux runs good on comparibly cheap x86 hardware, whereas the other three mentioned have their own fairly expensive hardware.

And then there is always the big iron. Really expensive (I only heard about it). But then again, shouldn't a stock exchange be able to afford that?

You can work with any Apple product perfectly, because they come with Steve Jobs magic, that will make any of their products perfect in every way no matter what. It could reboot every 2 min, but still never crash. It could be doa, but still be the nicest thing to have on a rack ever. It is just soooooooo (mhmhm) perfect.

Have you ever thought how you make the PERFECT Apple fanboy? Glossy screens are so bad, and Apple is a really stupid company for putting them in (like everyone else, but I have seen Apple put them in desktop lcds, and I have yet to see Apple even offer the option of non glare). But if glossy is fine, Apple is not stupid. So glossy must be fine.

Don't forget to get one without a glossy screen. It will limit your choices, but you can't work with a glossy screen. Trust me. These days the only models where they offer the option to get non-glossy will be business models. They are slightly more expensive, but also usually more durable.

Second, you should stop the dual-booting and start virtualization. VirtualBox or VMWare or whatever. I don't use VMWare, because they didn't have a deb package last time I tried and the rpm installation was pretty ugly.

For virtualization the best idea is to get virtualization support in the processor. AMD-VT or Intel-V. The cheaper Intel models dont have it. Which I think is very disapointing. I don't know why Intel does this and I don't like it at all. Because virtualization gets more and more important. Maybe they think they can sell new processors later, when people will need that feature. Because these days most people don't need new computers any more. Whatever it is: I usually would opt for AMD, but that REALLY litmits your choices, because business machines with AMD are hard to find. The only model for a good price I could find was the HP Compaq 615. It comes with glossy and non-glossy screens.

I also like the Latitude 2100 netbook:
No drive bay at all, no CD. If you need stuff, get them USB. Much cheaper than proprietary drive bay drives and features.

Obviously you will need to use VirtualBox (or whatever you prefer) to use other operating systems. And the Atom processor is not very fast. So maybe you won't take that one after all.

But netbooks are very nice, because they run very long and are very portable. The Latitude 2100 is the only netbook that comes with non-glossy screen.

Brother has a whole bunch of different models. Even one with a scanner on top that does copying, faxing and scanning. They don't have chip protected toners, so you can get toners from anyone that builts them. Completely legal.
They have network, no network, wireless ...

Over here in Germany you can get the best deals on the standard network model, because they sell large volumes. So it is 20% cheaper than the sticker price.

On pricing you have to check what they have in the US.