No, the argument is "Use Mandriva because it is more stable, easier to use and works better out of the box." I've tried them all, including Ubuntu, even Gentoo. None come close to Mandriva's usability and administrative tools. And I mean none at all.

Not quite correct. You had to agree to share the copyright, in other words the contributor and Sun (now Oracle) shares the copyright. Neither has exclusive rights.

That may have been correct at version 1.0 of OO.o, but was less so by 2.0. Version 3.0 involved an almost complete rewrite. The current OO.o code looks quite different from the original StarOffice.

See above. Was true, has not been true for several years.

It's French, not Spanish.

I don't, and I doubt whether many non-OSS purists/evangelists will either.

Of course it's a fork. You (the LO mob) might say you'll contribute back, but considering the lousy QA for the first LO release, I doubt Oracle will accept many of the contributions. That means the code-lines *will* diverge. That is the definition of a fork.

Wake up. Sun was assigned the trademark in the USA *after* it had been registered by a private group. This was done so that there would eb sufficient resources to enforce the trademark. Sun was than tasked by the OO.o community to register the trademark in the rest of the world, since they were the only part of the community who had the resources to do so. When Oracle bought Sun, they inherited the ownership of said trademarks. As for the "Document Foundation", I personally as a long term member of the OO.o community (since before version 1.0 was released, actually) see their behaviour as that of a spoilt child who couldn't get its own way. Yes, there is a need for a foundation, but I disagree totally with the way this was done. It looks sneaky and underhanded from where I sit. And no, I do not, and never have, worked for either Sun or Oracle (I happen to be retired, and have lived in Australia my entire life).

I can confirm that.

At one time I lived directly under the flight path to Darwin Airport (in Australia). That airport is also the local Air Force base and runway, so we had not only Boeing 747s and other passenger planes flying directly overhead at an altitude of less than 500 feet, but we also had Air Force Mirages on the same flight path.

During the time I lived there, the Concorde visited, landing and taking off twice (or it might have been 3 times). I'll tell you straight, the Concorde made less noise on take-off than the Jumbo (and they were much quieter than the Mirages).

A good old-fashioned, generalized Bachelor of Arts. You'll be able to apply for many more jobs with that.

Or join the Masons... :)

Still getting a 403 here (in Australia). I particularly want to read your thoughts, because the Desire goes on sale tomorrow morning, and I'm giving serious thought to it....

'Cause they're all twits?

The idea dates back way beyond then... the Ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (or Lao Tse f you prefer) wrote that "..the only thing which does not change is change itself." (very roughly paraphrased).

Your real problem is that you are trying to use Ubuntu + Gnome = no chance. Try using a decent distro with KDE - I've always found K3B works perfectly every time, even on encrypted DVDs

No such time as 12 PM (or 12 AM either for that matter). The abbreviations "AM" and "PM" mean "Ante Meridian" (before noon) and "Post Meridian" (after noon) respectively. It can only ever be 12 noon or 12 midnight.