Does China handle ICMP packet censorship? If so I imagine that could possible be the worst ping time.

I may be much more experimental on my own but I acknowledge that a trend is farther reaching than the confines of nerd-dom so I personally use Ubuntu with hopes that it will be a useful shared experience with my less nerdy friends, family, wife...

Both Les Miserable (Victor Hugo) and The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) are a couple of my favorite French literature books. Not necessarily life-changing but excellent books in my opinion. The Count of Monte Cristo was much easier for me to read cover to cover. Also Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert).

I don't understand why CO2 efficiency would be as important as fuel source. (Though, I doubt either of these issues are what makes this article significant.) It strikes me that to pose the argument that it's not worth converting from gasoline to electric (or some other alternative fuel source) on the basis of CO2 footprint is equivalent to arguing that the tidal wave currently sweeping towards you isn't close enough yet to warrant evacuation.

99-cents is too expensive! I can barely handle 2 cents in this economy.

To use Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, your computer must meet one of the following requirements: 1) Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 running on Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. You can download Internet Explorer from the Internet Explorer page. 2) Mozilla Firefox running on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, or Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. You can download Firefox from the Firefox download page. 3) Safari 3 and 4 on Mac OS X 10.2.x and later. No support for Linux... just Mac or Windows :(

On the flip-side, I was home schooled from kindergarten all the way through highschool. College was a massive environmental change but I was able to excel in it easily because of the work ethic I picked up from homeschooling and because I had a totally different experience than almost everyone else I was able to connect with people socially on an entirely different level. I learned social interaction and team work environments by building as many study groups as possible and later became an IT manager, learned team building, conflict management and decision making. I think overall homeschooling wasn't a crutch socially even though I'm still quirky when I act myself socially-- I tend to think the quirkiness is the only thing that helps me cope with some of the more intensely complicated programming algorithms.