...

I think thats a common story on /., screwmaster. *ducks*

Yes, I'd heard of the power of the Soviet Block **ducks***

Well... maybe. I'm in that group (non-programmer who had windows working just fine). 95% of my computer work is "the basics" (word processing, web browsing, image editing). But I'm way happier in linux. I don't have an argument here; I'm just saying that I'm a counterexample.

Yes, there are many tutorials out there but this one seems pretty good.

As a recent convert from windows to ubuntu, I have to say that understanding partitioning and how mount points worked was by far the hardest and most intimidating part.

I know what these things were, but not how they worked in linux. That means, I knew enough to know that they had to be right, but not enough to actually set them up correctly.

What makes this tutorial good is that it correctly anticipates the problems its target audience will have. And that anticipation is frequently the difference between good and bad teaching. Maybe there are too many tutorials out there already. The fact that people keep trying means that no one has written a really good one yet.

There is a phone ban on airplanes now, which seems to apply to the calling itself rather than the device used (i.e. skype is out.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/31/congress-upholds-cell-pho_n_116187.html This article mentions it in relation to the new wi-fi service. http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,39365108,00.htm

100% success rate was reported as none of the men in the study became pregnant.

Well, as nobody every reads TFA, it should come as no surprise that we are able to populate a whole comment string on 4 lines of fluff!

We're all just commenting on headlines most of the time. At least this time, we aren't guilty of not informing ourselves.

Please stop assuming that all academic writing is scientific. I know the /. community is overwhelmingly gearheads and number crunchers (and I mean that in the best possible way), but some academic writing does not include equations. I'm in philosophy, and while I do have some citation requirements specific to medieval texts that push zotero to its limits, openoffice is more than enough for my needs. I messed with LyX and it really wasn't worth it. If anything, the wysiwym idea behind LyX makes it harder to see the structure of your ideas.

Can we all agree to sent congress to federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison?

ok, mod me down for flamebait, but thanks for the nerd perspective twidarkling! I didn't know Dwight Schrute had a /. account (and, yes, its a much lower number than mine!)

I thought linux was going to be something I tried that one time back in college. Now its a lifestyle. I installed mandrake in college (ca. 2002), and tried dual-booting for a while. Being a literature major, I was not able to make heads or tails of it, although I was able to play supertux a few times. I installed Ubuntu about 1.5 yrs ago, and removed windows about 2 months later. Its not just that I never coded, or couldn't edit a config file (both true: don't have time to get that involved). Its more that Ubuntu lets me learn things gradually. I went from saying "I don't care how easy you say it is; I'll find a gui way to doing it" to being a reasonably capable user. Mandatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/456/

FTFA: "On the downside, the Alpha 680 won't ship installed with many local apps, though users can easily buy and download apps from the Android Market." Is that the only way to get new software? It has usb/wifi capabilities, but what runs on the android platform? Can you get oo.org, for example? I might be missing something here, so somebody hit me with a +5 (informative) response!

Did you really think those are my real credentials? I'm sure I'm vulnerable as I'm not a networking expert, but I don't actually post my info on /.!!

SSN: 322-01-2569 MMN: Jane Dougherty Prince phn # 202-764-8180

most common user: user

most common pssw: password

and do a port scan; its all open.