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Which I really like and would use also at work, if there was a portable version (so I can run it without installing it).

If you mean Portable Firefox, it's here. If you mean Portable Chrome, it's here. If you want to try Portable Opera, it's here.

And Portable IE7, though I believe you need IE6 installed, which isn't very portable at all, but it's here.

Actually it does mitigate that vulnerability. Internet Explorer 7 and 8 both have the ability to enable DEP/NX heap protection. Unfortunately, due to certain extensions like Adobe Flash being written like shi... written in such a way that they weren't compatible with DEP/NX (I won't even get into them dodging protected mode, just see: http://keznews.com/4244_Vista_hacked_on_3rd_day_thru_Adobe_Flash__Linux_Undefeated_), but anyway, because of extensions like Flash and Java which weren't compatible with DEP/NX, Microsoft was unable to enable by default the DEP/NX protection in Internet Explorer 7 at release. However, you can enable it now since most plugins have been modified to work with DEP/NX.

To enable this protection in IE7 right now, go to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, and check the check box next to "Enable memory protection to help mitigate online attacks". If you're running IE8 beta 2, you should notice that this check box is checked by default. This change should mitigate a significant number of future remote attacks against Internet Explorer 8.

If you check the advisory, one of the work arounds is enabling the DEP/NX protection in IE7.

OK, so XP or Vista and that card works for you. Great. But things aren't even completely rosy here in Microsoft land: a quick read suggests
many
people
have
issues
with this card even in Windows. These people were doing plenty of, as you say, chicken killing by moonlight.

Another search finds a report that the card does work with the latest Ubuntu release, so you might have better luck if you tried again now.

Considering how many people I know who have become so frustrated with their PC experience in Windows (mainly viruses and spyware) that they threw out the whole computer and bought a Mac, I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest to someone that they might need to buy a new known Linux compatible video card to make things work.

How could Sony get away with closing its PS2 where IBM could not with its PS/2?

Have they really gotten away with it though?

Vista sells 150 million copies

If we use Windows licenses as a proxy for PCs sold, then, it stands to reason that in the year or so since Vista has been introduced, more PCs have been sold since in the last year than Playstations have been sold since inception.

Who knows how big the market for playstation could have been, had Sony opened up the platform in the same way PCs are?

In addition, I suggest you have a good read of the Vista EULA, and also ask yourself how an update system that is set to NON-automatic still somehow manages to update. The OS is *made* for spyware.

I can accept activation traffic. Once. After that there is no reason why a system has to chat with anyone on the planet except form when *I* ask it. None whatsoever. Thankfully it's no longer my problem :-).

http://keznews.com/2727_Vista_Activator_FF_2_1_2_1_2_Stable

There are hacks out there to modify the countthe activation timer so that it never times out. The cracking group Parardox also supposedly released a crack that is suppose to emulate a bios to bypass the activation process all together.

AND having gone to the site and read through the ENTIRE thread on their forums;

What we have here is a random number/letter guesser. It's basically a VB Script that guesses random numbers and letters in a string that is the same length as a Vista Key, then inserts it into the registry, overwriting the existing Vista key. You use Magic Jellybean to check when the key has changed, and then manually check it against MS's activation service. Really this is little more than a person manually sitting down and making key guesses. This is why it's called a "Brute Force" attack. There is no intelligence (ie: an algorithm) behind the key guesses at all.

That said, because it IS so simple, it's almost impossible for MS to defend against, since they can't just "ban" any keys made by it like they would a traditional algorithmic keygen. Also, there is an improved version of it posted as source on the boards there, so if you want to take a peek at the code you can.

Here is a link to the forum post in question: http://keznews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2634