How many packages do Gentoo have in their repo? about 8000?

If you can name one of the 800 packages (9193 in Portage)in the Mandrake repos that aren't in Gentoo (minus urpmi or whatever), I'd be pretty surprised. I get six million results when I search for "blah" in Google, but I'm probably not going to go past the first couple of pages, if that. Volume doesn't necessarily mean much.

Any distro released every 6 months will have packages that are slightly behind - Fedora and Suse have this problem too. Gentoo may not but often the price is a bit less stability

I've never really understood the "stability" argument. It's not like you're forced to upgrade all the time with Gentoo. It's just an option. You can certainly stick with older versions if that makes you happy.

and less of the polish of a 'shrink-wrapped' distro (installer, hardware detection, out-of-the-box functionality, etc) as you mentioned.

That I'll agree with. I wouldn't describe the Gentoo install as difficult, but it is long and involved. The benefit I see is that you only have to do it once. I always hated having to upgrade Mandrake with every new version.

I'm no blinded fanboi though. I think it's good to have different distributions. Gentoo's right for me, but I know people I'd much rather have running Mandrake or whatever. :-)

We should not ban encryption because it does not stop all terrorists.
We should not restrict driving laws because it does not stop all accidents.
We should not lock our doors because it does not stop all intruders.

Okay...what am I missing? These are logically equivalent, aren't they?

logically, one should weigh the pros and cons of any law before it is passed. Having laws for conduct on the road, or locking your doors have some, hopefully, positive effect on our lives. If it is more trouble for me to lock my doors, than the security locking my doors will provide, I won't lock my doors. And, in such a case, explain to me why I should lock my doors?

Before we pass some laws on encryption, an argument should be made to establish that the benifit that those restrictions will have on our society outweigh the problems it will create. I, for one, believe that such laws will have little effect on what they try to prevent and much damage to the general public. Prove to me otherwise! =p
-Nick