I was just thinking the same thing... given the nature of stars, the word persist would indicate something a bit more substantial than "millions of years".

Oddly enough, I actually changed mine to linksys and tossed on some random numbers because when I felt embarrassed that I was the only one in the neighborhood using a cheap, generic off-brand. I also felt that it would throw off potential hackers because they would waste their time trying to hack into linksys exploits and would therefore fail.

That was 2006. It runs 24/7 and has outlived all other SSID's in the neighborhood.

I did however name my Cradlepoints spyware.com and virus.exe to discourage people around me from attempting to use my SSID when I'm traveling.

I'm going to second that. I really liked the idea of Redbox until I looked at the selection of movies that it carried. Sorry, but no thank you. For less than a dollar a day I can get better quality entertainment from Youtube.

First of all, netbooks are great for accessing the net wherever the net is available, but when you travel, your access to the net becomes patchy, sporadic, restricted, unreliable, limited, and in many cases, it's just not available. What most Linux users don't realize is just how hardwired the majority of them are to the net. Even when they use the WiFi, their access is usually through a wireless router they themselves have administrative access to! I bought a couple Eee PCs. First there was the 701, and today I use the 1000. Both came with the custom Xandros, and both are currently running XP. I'm not a developer, and I really don't have the time to learn to write my own drivers and software. I just needed a highly portable computer and the netbook fills that niche. Having been a long time Mandriva user, I gave Xandros an honest try on the 701, but I found that it lacked certain tools by default and relied too heavily on 3rd party repositories. When I tried to tinker to get the applications that I wanted, it would cause unpredictable behavior. It's not like I have time to go in and read nonexistent Man pages, so I'd just used F9 (Eee's "reset") and started over. Its over-dependence on the web at that point was painfully obvious when you realized that repositories to recover your preferred basics can't just be stored locally.

So the other distributions of Linux weren't quite ready for prime time on the netbook just yet, and the Linux versions of Eee came with Windows drivers. Slipstream SP3 with nLite, and installing Windows is a snap! All the hardware "just works". The sound, the microphone, the camera, the bluetooth, the true DUAL SCREEN VIDEO, the WiFi, the USB ports, the power management... ALL THIS STUFF JUST WORKS! It's a no fuss system!

Of course you have to add in a few extras to make Windows behave... my short list- Audacity, CCleaner, FoxitReader, Firefox, OnlineArmor, OO.o, Vlc, and don't forget to tweak the registry, toss in the lame_enc.dll, and all of the other install files that can be stored locally on a backup drive. Best of all, these are all non-gratis!

Of course Linux has its place: Use Parted Magic to backup your highly fresh activated install of WinXP to a partition on a USB drive. You have the perfect "system restore"! Suddenly, my netbook isn't so helpless without the net anymore. I can do everything a typical PC user can do. RIP/Burn DVDs? Got it. Organize MP3s? Yup. Log in with my CAC? Done. Play Half Life? Sure! Writer, Calc, Impress? Check, check, check!

Now it doesn't work as nice, but occasionally I'll boot from an SDHC on the 1000 into Mandriva 2008.1 (KDE 3). I have to use the NDIS wrapper to get the WiFi working, never got the camera up and running, and capturing audio... eh... it's still a little dicey. Don't expect the dual screen to work just right, and if you've got Compiz up and running with an external monitor, there's going to be a somewhat funky "screen in a screen" parallax. The USB ports generally work great, but I've never figured out how to get my SCR 331 to work in Linux.

So what's complicated? It's not Linux on the netbook... The complicated part is just Linux and the fact that it generally relies too heavily on access to a network. Period! Linux on a cell phone? No problem! Linux on a router? It's a go! Linux at home? Cool beans! On a server? You bet! A single purpose box like a kiosk or PVR? Great idea!

Linux on a traveling netbook? Blows.

How complicated is that?

a broken disk is going to complicate things no matter what.

Ouch. That just gave me a /0 error.

Reason:
The continent sits on the South pole. Every direction is north, and east/west is arbitrary!

Still, it's interesting info to know. I would never have thought flowering plants would grow down there. What pollinates them?

Not to be too morose, but technically one of the pipe benders did bite someone at that plant. It was a rather chilling site that I unwittingly stumbled upon. The man's fingers and a pool of his blood were on the floor and he looked so helpless with the meat of his hand still clamped in that monster. There were people already on the scene to rescue him, so I quickly did an about-face as soon as I realized what was going on. This was back in '95.

Four years later I found myself at a different facility and ended up getting my own fingers caught in an automated 25 ton thermoset injection molding press. Don't worry, they were able to re-attach them, and I regained full functionality. In both cases, I do not consider these machines to be "robots". Even though I feel that it's a given that a robot is controlled by computer; "computer controlled" does not necessarily equal robotics in my mind.

And since I no longer work in that field, "Bender" can kiss my hairy yellow butt! :-P

This probably isn't the most helpful commentary, but it's a slight rant on semantics.

I used to work with Motoman K6's a few years back. Using these robots, we performed plasma cutting, arc welding, material handling, etc... Just looking at the K6, you knew it was a robot. Watching a robot work in a cell after you've trained it to do it's job is a very rewarding experience. Of course we also had other machines that were also very complex in their tasks, but we didn't consider them robots. CNC mills and lathes, pipe benders, other machines that ran autonomously that also had to be programmed and synchronized with the flow of production. Sometimes the line resembled a kind of demented Rube Goldberg contraption, but we were somewhat strict to define only the articulated manipulators themselves as robots.

So when I saw this pile of servos in a glass cleanroom set to the over-dramatic theme of "Bonanza Reloaded", I thought, "Yeah, that's nice, but... It just doesn't strike me as a 'robot' so much as it does an automated bio lab."

And yes, I realize there were clearly robots within the cell, but calling the unit as a whole a "robot" just irks me a little.

Of course in the spirit of all the other bad jokes I've seen posted, do you think this "robot" will use it's genetic findings with the yeast cells to perfect the most delicious and moist cake recipe ever?

No, no... You're missing the big picture. With both Roddenberry and Barrett passed on, the vacuum energy created by the suction of this next release should set their final remains into a "Hyper-spin". This in turn will induce a casimir effect so we can create the first stable worm hole. Since only parts of their remains are being launched into space, this will allow one end of the wormhole to remain on earth while the other extends deep into outer space allowing us travel to the stars at a fraction of the cost needed to produce nanotube beanstalks.

See? It's absolutely brilliant!

Mandriva 2009 really let me down hard with the default to KDE4. While Mandriva worked remarkably well with the hardware on my Eee 1000, KDE 4 was just too bloated to really consider it.

Of course I never could stomach Gnome for some reason. It just bugs me... And don't even get me started with (*)buntu, because that crap just really ticks me off. (I think probably has something to do with their cult-like fan club.)

Eyecandy may be fun, but Linux needs to get back to being more streamline, and nowhere is that more important than on the desktop. KDE 4 Fails hard in this area.

Let's get one thing clear: I am NOT Balmer trying astroturf.

Next: What's wrong with the idea of your Netbook replacing your need for the standard desktop or laptop entirely? Do I really need a full sized desktop these days when an external keyboard, monitor, and mouse can make any netbook just as comfy as the old-school boxen?

Long time back (2001), I patently refused to "upgrade" from Windows ME to XP. That whole "Product Activation" thing left me really cold, and still does. I actively went out and forced myself to start using Linux, and for a while I thought I got pretty good at it. Granted, I was actually just really good at making due with KDE, but it was Linux.

So let's fast forward a bit: Let's just say I took a military job about 3 years ago... Suddenly I've got two very pressing concerns: First I needed ultra-portability. A regular sized laptop would do, but the EEE 701 was simply too wonderful a concept to pass by. Soon after, some serious compatibility concerns reared its ugly head. Linux simply did not deliver like my counterparts' XP machines. As much as I hated to give in, I wiped the SSD and installed Windows for the first time in over half a decade.

I felt dirty... And not in the good way.

Over time I got used to it again... The viruses, the malware, the care and feeding of the OS... Things you never really had to worry about under Linux... Yeah, the old routine is back. It's a minor chore, but it's not that bad. Oddly enough, I noticed something unusual: It felt faster than Linux.

Recently I purchased the EEE 1000. It's a little bigger than the 701, but still much smaller than a regular laptop. I played around with the custom Linux install for about 2 hours to reminisce, then I tore open the XP SP3 OEM disc and stuck that Genuine MS XP sticker on the bottom.

Don't try to tell me that Linux is faster. It's not. Don't try to tell me that Linux can do everything that Windows can do. It can't. I won't tell you that Windows is just as secure, or that Windows can do everything Linux can do, as they are also lies.

What I will tell you is that the software I needed is there.
What I will tell you is that the hardware support I needed is there.
What I will tell you is that the [*]ubuntites are a confusing squirming mass of trustafarians who eat their own, and find spinning cubes to be of more importance than achieving real productivity in a high pressure work environment.

So go ahead and have your coffee shop "luv-in" with Linux, but I needed to have a computer in the field. That meant I needed application compatibility with my netbook. Sadly, that meant I needed to abandon Linux for XP. Perhaps sometime down the road when the various flavors of Linux support Pure-Edge and CAC readers, I will be able to return. Otherwise you'll just have to wait at least three more years before I get out.

And yeah... Sometimes I even miss the CLI and the joys of mpg123, mikmod, vim, and making a simple Perl script to modify 1000+ HTML files in the blink of an eye... But I need the expedience and instant gratification that Windows tends to deliver.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

-f2x

That sounds great. So from my perspective, there's going to be about 15 people world-wide on the internet, one of them is called Zombo, and none will live within 600 miles of me. Fantastic!

Taking it a step further, just think of the possibilities! Spouses won't even be able send one another an e-mail! Google will have determined that the very act of you sending messages to her is just too risky, as it might start an argument.

Back on the main topic, I find the idea unsettling that different people will receive different search results. Isn't that sort of like the concept of "separate but equal"? In theory, it almost sounds good, but in practice you can only have one or the other. Then you realize that some people consistently get better search results than others, and you probably ain't among them.