Maybe I've just been hardware-lucky, but I haven't had any problems with sound in the last few years. Not sure if this is related to my hardware, kernel updates, or KDE updates. Of course, now I run into framebuffer problems (intel hardware) all the damn time.

Ah, "no excuse for accepting the status quo" is much better than the "no excuses for driving a car" that my brain interpolated from the first post. And you are right, there is no excuse for glibly accepting the status quo.

Still, though, I cannot phase out MY cars until there IS public transportation. Can't be done. Couldn't get to work. Couldn't get the kids to daycare. Couldn't get to the store.

So me getting rid of my car will magically (and overnight) prompt my town to get a ton of buses, figure out how to route them, and offer to drive me into the town I work in? There are plenty of excuses.

Most of the midwestern U.S. simply does not have the transportation network in place to make it feasible to travel w/out a car. The town I live in actually has NO public transportation.

Thanks for the clarification on the first part. Metaphors only carry so far and your clear description of the terms without the book metaphor were helpful.

I suppose that is a legal grey area. If the author has not given you permission to read it, who's to say? Would likely have to let a court decide. If you find a book in the street and choose to translate it to a language you find to be more readable... well, that is POSSIBLY okay under fair use guidelines depending on a host of other factors (and once again, a court would have to decide if it actually qualified as fair use). But strictly speaking... you can't do that.

Source code will be available... Grab it, remove all click-through and other aggregates, throw your own 'private' URL shortener out there (public domain, please).

Or like publicly playing covers of simple songs? Or redrawing a simple logo and using it for your own purposes? The copyright is still there. Without the license, you wouldn't (legally) be able to do ANYTHING with this.

They just hired a new UI designer... earlier this year, sometime (spring, maybe?) to work on v10. I haven't kept up on any UI changes that have been taking place in 10, though.

Ah. I should read more carefully. Thanks for pointing that out.

OK, I've sat in front of a judge and had a sentence dictated to me. Unless the defendant is used to this sort of thing, really couldn't care less, currently on some pretty serious drugs, or trying to be a dick... I can't believe that they could be capable of involuntarily yawning at that particular point in time. But, in all fairness, maybe that's not the case for everyone.

Within reason, of course:

See question/answer #9 in the Recycling FAQ for a nice graph and a source of that quote: http://pacer.resource.org/recycling.html

See question/answer #15 (digital offsets) in the recycling faq: http://pacer.resource.org/recycling.html