It's always a mactard when apple criticism is replied with calling the criticizer a windows user - very offencive too, mind you.

Finland too. And people, in general, don't find drivers test that hard to pass - even though they have to do it with the dreaded (wooo, scary...) manual transmission. People who can't handle that don't have what it takes to be safe on the road, no matter if they drive manual or auto.

Auto transmissions are rare breed here in Finland and I rarely (very) see this kind of lack of any driving skills on the road here. These people actually got approved for a drivers license? Manual or automatic, I think those people are probably high risk on the road anyway - they shouldn't be there, not on the drivers seat anyway.

I sometimes help people with windows problems, however I point to them that they could live with less problems and when they had one I wouldn't ask them to compensate my help with anything... I actually like helping people, but it frustrates me to no end that people who don't do anything they couldn't do with any other OS refuse to try out Linux, which I've installed to several not very computer savvy folks and received way fewer help requests after and only positive feedback of the system in comparison (people who like/want/need to use software not available for Linux are not the subject of this mini-rant part).

Anyway, I like helping people, but I don't normally promise to people that I will be there for them any time, any day for any problem - however I have committed myself to helping people who have decided to try Linux because of what I've told them. Part of my "selling speech" actually includes supporting them as long as they have the Linux, without compensation.
I like to think of it as my small contribution to Linux and Open Source community.

no, dhat was coal!

Damn, you have TEH MOAST INTERWEBZ!

(typing that actually hurt my soul)

Strange that it is I know what you mean and share, up to some amount, the same feelings.

You know what I also miss? BBS systems, actually dialing up them (not the newfangled telnet connection which was just a useless layer to slow down the communication which wasn't exactly fast to begin with), playing Lord on them, sharing pirated applications via zmodem protocol, and most of all I miss Fidonet. But these things don't really compare to what you said because they actually weren't crap, they were awesome - and I don't miss shitty BBS's, only the good ones :)

Nowdays nobody buys landline phones in Finland anymore - would it be, in theory, possible to use cell phone + PC to run a BBS? :D

I think the first browser I saw was Mosaic in library - I didn't know anything about web except that there was supposed to be hypertext links and images mixed in text on webpages. I didn't know where to go - but there was a huge address book, an "internet phonebook" if you will with subject categories.

I don't think the librarian knew what the book was about or about the computer and software either. There was only standard installation of Windows 3.? with only the Mosaic, if I remember correctly, to use for accessing the web. I was baffled because none of the addresses in the book worked so I got nowhere and nothing out of it - later when I became just slightly aware of this stuff (back then I didn't yet even have a modem to access BBS systems) I've learned that the book was basically a printed list of *usenet* groups, not web pages :)

I feel so guilty and ashamed of my past right now... But then again, in the mid-90's, which DooM related website didn't have the game music as .mid - accompanied by animated doom guy or imp.

I know that the genius idea on Unix is to have a large number of small applications that do one job and do it well - so unlike with zip/arj/rar we get to choose our archiving and compressing software independently of each others, or even combine them with something totally different for reason that the authors of these programs couldn't even have thought when they made the tools, but still... ...why would anyone combine tar with feather(s?)? :P

I did fine when my wife had a Linux system. She decided she needed to replace her laptop and we got a "black Friday" special on a Windows 8 laptop. Now it's pretty much a daily ritual to try to figure out how Microsoft obfuscated something that was easy to find and perform under XP or 7. She can't decide whether to stick with Windows 8 because "that's what everyone will want her to know" or take the damn thing back to Windows 7 so we both be productive.

Cheers,
Dave

Any bets that it will get slashdotted when it goes live? This assumes CERN will make it accessible to the 'net in general.

Cheers,
Dave

Monsanto is quite relevant here. It appears you're trying to be funny and failing, or you're entirely unfamiliar with Monsanto's history of claiming ownership over genetic sequences of living organisms and couldn't be bothered to review the material provided at the link above, or you have financial interest of some fashion in Monsanto and are attempting to halt conversation on the topic. Which is it?

Tell that to Monsanto.