...and that, ultimately [IMO] is why OS/2 failed. I never had serious problems with OS/2 Warp, but it became obvious to me [lack of apps, lack of drivers] that its days were numbered. I made the decision to switch to Win 2000 and haven't looked back. Kind of like switching from Blackberry last year to Android. Good system but it just fell out of favour and started to trail the pack too far. [I liked Betamax too...oh well...].

My first and main reaction to this story is hilarity. The PC world appears to be well on the way to self-cannibalism...

I loved ST:OS when I was a kid, and these remake/homages definitely capture the fun and a lot of the spirit [and a bunch of the cheese] of the original. Definitely worthwhile.

Kids nowadays....you can't understand how groundbreaking and exciting Star Trek was back in the '60's.

Electronics? No.

If you count .22 rifles and fireworks, well..... [cough]

Yeah, my name is common as dirt too, although I'm quite careful not to use my middle name _or_ my correct birthdate, so good luck sorting that out [usually I use my ex-wife's birthdate...heheh]. Of course I'm a pretty obscure person anyway...nobody is likely to come looking for me anyhow.

My mortgage is paid off. I get a pension from my last job [there for 23 years]. I can commute to work in 10 minutes, and I like the work and the people there. My wife makes six figures at her job... Nah..I don't need another job, even if it did pay a lot better. What would I buy? More toys? Ho hum.

How about 'Just Enough'?

To paraphrase Woody Allen -- I don't want to achieve immortality via web presence....I want to achieve it by _not dying..._

Ok boys and girls, there's the scoop from the other side. I am an armoured car guard, and my principle job is refilling ATMs...some of them in public access areas. People doing my job have been attacked, robbed and murdered for the contents of ATM safes...that's the reason for the guns, body armour and all our other equipment. For this reason we take a VERY SERIOUS ATTITUDE toward people who show too much interest in what we do, or give us a hard time about it.

If Shane Becker had had the simple courtesy and decency to co-operate with the Loomis guards it would have taken a minute out of his day. Instead he was an asshole and acted suspiciously. Believe it or not, some robbery attempts start with people pretending to be harmless assholes, getting in arguments with truck guards or otherwise distracting them from their jobs. That ATM was being loaded with tens , if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, right out in the open. Why would any sensible person crowd up to an armed guard going about dangerous business? Sure, maybe he was simply curious...but why should any guard take a chance?

I'm a Canadian, so I can't comment on the specifics of Seattle police procedure or American laws that come into play. However I will say that if somebody's day gets upset because he acted in a suspicious and unreasonable manner around armed guards handling money, that's real tough shit. Maybe it didn't get handled 'right'..and that's real tough shit too. He was lucky he didn't get worse.

People who stand on their right to be unreasonable assholes are the ones who make reasonable people's rights fragile. Having a little sense and discretion would make things better for everybody concerned.

I downloaded Mandrake and Fedora and SuSE, just as it happens. Mandrake and Fedora both failed to enable my Soundblaster Live card or automatically configure my LAN/ADSL connection. I _think_ SuSE got my LAN/ADSL okay, but for some reason it never put a real image up on my monitor display...I got an Sync Out OF Range box floating around on the screen.

HOWEVER....The latest Knoppix automatically connected me to the net and got my SoundBlaster card working fine, without additional input from me.

I'd like to work with Linux, but until I can set up an initial install that just plain _works_, as well as oh, say, Windows XP right out of the box, I'm not going to bother to do much with it.