What I really enjoy about the 20 or so year old games is the fact they were simple but provided enough challenge to make you want to keep playing. My friend has an old NES and we play Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong Jr. for hours trying to top each others' score. Games started getting longer and more complex to play. Sometimes this can be good in the case of Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior but in adventure or action games you need simple stuff. I'd like to get ahold of an old Atari console, those were some very fun but simple games. I'd play Pitfall for hours when I was younger. Many games around now are just too much at once, if you're blood starts pumping for a minute and then subsides, you're going to get bored right after the action stops. This is the reason arcade games are pretty straitforward and simple. You are playing for short periods but you're replaying a large number of times. Duck Hunt has to be one of the best old games ever.
Pluto is asking to be explored merely as a scientific and technological challenge. There is still plenty to learn from our Solar System. I'd like to see close up pictures of Pluto in my kids' text books someday. There are all of the aguments about pure science exploration because it "wastes" money and doesn't return much of empirical value. If I seem to remember correctly, before the Apollo program computers inhabited a very large room and sucked a great deal of power. Amazingly NASA ended up being able to fit a self contained computer into the Apollo spacecraft to aid the Astronauts in their navigation. Finding faster and cheaper ways of launching scientific flights also solves the problem commercial flights have, the transit from the surface of the Earth into orbit. You don't seem to mind using the technology researched by NASA when you watch satillite TV or make an international telephone call. I've also seen people comment about wasting money going to Mars (and Pluto) when children in various places are starving. Why not dismantle militaries to feed people rather than worry about peaceful programs, or better yet sell your SUV and feed them yourself.
The ISS is such a piece of shit I cannot understand who's billiant idea it was. Not only is the ISS not high enough off the ground to get effective radiation measurements but it also costs way more than a space station ought to. The real purpoe of a space station is to do microgravity experiments and to study how humans can adapt to the environment. An orbital waystation is utter crap, it takes fuel to get the fuel to the space station, and even then once you're in orbit the hardest part of the journey is already over and done with. A good point you made was assembling vehicles in space, it would save a great deal on the individual mission cost if they could be lauched from a high orbit or from the moon rather than from Florida.
Thats not true, at least the part of Jupiter's gravity. Compared to the Sun Jupiter isn't shit. The AB is the point where the dense heavy materials in the early Solar System's accretian disk started to thin out to such an extent they could not form a planet. There is plenty of space between Jupiter and Mars to fit a planet the problem is the lack of dense material in the inner Solar System.
I can't believe there are so many people on here that are supposedly "enlightened" with open source yet so ignorant of anything and everything else. Pick up a book or two on Windows specific programming, not only is the API very very well documented but programmers are encouraged to program directly to the Windows API rather than use low level system calls. This why many applications written for Windows 95 and 98 work just as well under Windows NT. Without penguin coloured glasses one can easily take an abstract look at the various flavours of Windows and see an almost elegant design for the operating system. For some reason Linux zealots scream over the "bloated" code of Windows and the lack of optimization inherent in it. Of course their precious Linux has never had and never will have an error or an ounce of unoptimized code. I really like the idea behind this project and thing if managed properly and done correctly will work out very well. Windows is an extremely well documented system which would allow a clone maker to write their own libraries and such which operated the same as their closed source counterparts. Just look at the Mesa project, they set out to write an open sourced version of OpenGL which worked in the same way and could do all of the same thing and for the most part they have done just that. The Open Windows project is the same basic idea, you use the documentation that exists to write you own code that responds the same way but is written by you rather than Microsoft. Microsoft encourages developers to program to the API rather than the hardware or the low level system because it allows them to upgrade the kernel drivers and libraries without nuking the system. How many times have a Linux kernels been released that broke programs because system calls or functions had changed? Such a system also allows for a group to put together a more efficient way to run Windows applications. In the end it doesn't matter what OS you have, the OS isn the least important part of the computer. The important part is the applications that actually get work done.
Yet people ought to program for using X and Motif and OpenGL all of which are at least ten years old or more. OpenGL was around in many forms specifically under IRIX until SGI decided to port it. Good call jackass.
So you have a copy of Windows as source as reference for your asshole comments? If you're correct I ought to never find an error in the code of a Linux app or the base system itself? Windows programmers also decide they want to be non-optimal while people who program for Linux strive every single second to save every last processor cycle of their machines? You're so full of shit. You can't even be ignored as a troll because deep down you believe your own stupid shit.
that King will never make the money he wants from this book, who REALLY wants to download a book and read it on a monitor. I get eyestrain after reading an Ars Technica article, how the hell am I supposed to read a novel? Even if I had a Rocket e-Book or something like that (why would I pay 300$ merely for an eletric display with a memory card?) I wouldn't want to stare at the text on the bloody thing. I'm also not real apt to print out 50 or more pages on my inkjet printer (ink costs money you know) because it would literally take hours to print it all. Either reading it on an eletric toy or my screen or printing it I'm paying for the price of the book in some way. My monitor is using extra electricity in the summer which costs beaucoup cash, my e-Book cost me 300$ which I may or may not make back in the number of books I read on it, or I spend hours printing and have to spend money on both ink and paper to read the book. This is why industrialism exists you fucking technodweebs. Mass production allows the cost of something to be distributed over a large number of products and customers. When I buy a paperback book I'm paying a very small portion of the production of that book. Everyone else who buys it is also paying a small portion of the production, shipment, advertising, and royalties. Distributing things electronically only cuts off a marginal percent of the cost. It's no different than shopping for a "deal" on Amazon and then realizing you have to pay 4$ for shipping and handling of a single book. This leads you to the logic that you need to buy several books to distribute the shipping cost over many products, oh wait thats why mass production is effective. All these generation-y neo-maxi zoom dweebies need to drop their CS classes and take some economics classes.
I'm not sure where you're at but just yesterday I saw both Cowboy Bebop and BLue Sub 6 on DVD at Fry's. You might want to check your local one to see if they have it. The one around here has a huge stock of movies on DVD including Zombie Grannies and Condorman.
I can't understand how people can be so supportive of something until someone critiques it then they get up in arms as if you insulted their mother. It's fucking computer software you pathetic fuckers. Miguel has an excellent point and a very valid argument. I've seen a few replies that counter Miguels examples and arguments. That is well and good for said programmers and development teams but what about everyone else? Who the fuck cares if the Motif guys have their act together if people can't print or use sound or 3D in their apps. Everyone rallies around modularity and choice but take it to the extreme. If things are broken then fix it, don't defend something that you know is wrong. Miguel's point about Unix being stagnant is so true yet people never fail to point or some "new and improved" copy of something thats been done before. The best thing to happen to Unix recently was Mac OS X and before that it was probably Beowolf clustering. Instead of calling OS X Macix or something lame like that, they separated themselves from the guys at Bell Labs 30 or so years ago. Apple took a stable and mature kernel and built a user friendly interface on top of it. Apple doesn't force you into a command line or make you edit things by hand using pico or emacs. In OS X all the configuration files are standardized and formatted using XML. Users of OS X don't have to think about what is behind their candy shaped buttons and mp3 files. They press the power button and get to work or play. The open source alternatives take pride in their non-uniformity and command lines. You're not going to take over the world with terminals, you take over the world by making the computer transparent and letting the applications take center stage.
Microsoft put GUI code into the kernel? Dude are you fucking slow on the uptake? There's no GUI code in the Windows kernel. All the GUI code lies in Explorer and its libraries, not in the kernel you dumbshit. You can very well mess around with the Windows GUI if you're so inclined, grab a copy of lightstep if you don't believe me. The functionality does NOT lie within the OS, damn you're one stupid fucker. An application is only as functional and powerful as a programmer makes it. If a programmer makes it difficult for a user to use a program that is not the fault of the OS. Is it Linux's fault that most people cry when they try to use vi for the first time? You'd cry foul if someone suggested it yet you accuse it on everyone else.
Have you ever learned to play a musical instrument? For most people it takes alot of work to play something that can be considered a tune. Rock stars are a side effect to the fact that people enjoy the music they write and perform. People performing in small clubs don't make enough money to focus entirely on making their music.
There is no perfect operating system which is immune to the maliciousness of certain individuals. If you have a computer you have something that can pontentially run code that will fuck things up. This is a given and is true for any operating system. When I see people boast that they run Linux or Mac and are therefore immune to virii and exploits I just shake my head and usually sigh. I'm still waiting for one final thing from the virii and worm dudes. Virii as part of a business model. Just imagine a virus that spread as fast as Melissa (in the course of a weekend) that didn't do anything too terribly maliscious but did replace your screensaver and bookmarks with some new internet start-up's advertisements. Or how about a worm that replaced your GUI libaries with logos and ads for some start-up. Maybe companies will get so bold as to unleash virii into competitor's computer systems. We're already at a point where taking out a businesses infrastructure could cripple and/or destroy a company. Right now we're seeing lots of worms just floating about because someone was pissed off at the world because they were a loser who had no other form of expression. What will happen when malicious exploits hit the mainstream of business and are actually aimed at individual companies. Script kiddies can cause a company's servers to stumble for a day but that is all pretty meaningless when compared to a virus bootstrapping all of a company's office systems. It isn't the OS that you need to worry about or boast over, it is how much you'll be fucked if that system fails.
XDMCP is how you get a networked X server to display the screen or a remote X client box. I have XDM running on my Linux box and connect to it using XDMCP with any other box on my network with an X server and use GNOME and all my other goodies. VNC lets you view and control the GUI of remote boxes, XDMCP lets you USE the GUI of remote boxes. VNCserver is a waste of time to use with Linux because you can use X's native networking ability to do exactly the same way. X has been working over the network since it started. VNCserver on a Windows box on the otherhand has it's benefits because it allows you to remotely use a Windows machine which is generally not an option unless you've got Windows NT Terminal Server.
I meant a standard box to use as a reference system. That way the admins can configure a single system and just ghost the hard drive onto all the machines in the lab or office.
VNC is a cheap knockoff of XDMCP. XDMCP is a much more robust remote graphical login system. VNC is nice for Windows machines but isn't needed if you run X. If you want to run Windows for anything spend a few bucks to get a copy of VMWare. Subnetting though is a very good idea, it allows you to easily administer networks and allow for access restrictions based on addresses.
You can grab some Snap! servers from quantum to make a bunch of diskless clients, the only problem is that is very slow even with a switched network. You also run into problems is a large number (even if you've got small segments) of people try to access the same thing or all write files at once unless of course you have NFS servers with >256 megs of RAM and you cache everything into RAM rather than write it to disk.
It all depends what you're running in terms of apps and desktops. Remember that for each X server you run X is starting up another process (in 3.x and lower). If each one of your users is running E and GNOME you're going to need a hell of a fast system with alot of RAM serving those clients. You also need a beefy network, 10Mbps for five client machines would be crazy. The key to making many things run at once well is to have a huge amount of RAM, about 64 megs per client if you're running X and such.
2500 workstations is quite a load but in terms of TCO you'll be a little more pleased with Linux than with Windows. I hope all your machines are pretty similar, installing on many different system configurations is a bitch. For every hardware configuration set up a reference box that you can set up and configure until things work, once thats done export the config files and compiled binaries to an NFS server and have a cron job get the files off the server every night (or whenever you feel is prudent) that way everyone is always up to date. A good business distro is SuSE's Office Suite. It comes with SuSE 6.3 and a full version of Applix Office as well as several other good office apps. SuSE is a rather easy distro to install and keep updates due to YaST, it's also got default security measures (no remote root logins permitted by default). It's hard to impress that you need way more than 32 megs of ram for Linux. Having only 32 megs might work decently but for real speed on the boxes upgrade to 64 or 96 with your swap set to 192 or 256 megs. This will give you plenty of room to work and to run large projects, especially if any of the boxes are going to be used for graphics. Think centralization:
1. Standardize hardware so you can have a reference box the admins can work with and then duplicate the settings on the server for download.
2. Set up an NFS server to store the user's personal files with a cron job on each client sending to a particular server so you've always have online backups of user data.
3. For security on the workstations disable everything except needed remote access permissions and services. Let users log into the main server to get personal files using FTP or HTTP rather than their personal box at the office.
4. Set up an office wide intranet with lots of online help files and HOWTOs, make your admins rewrite or write HOWTOs that pertain to the hardware and software you're going to use. Being able to fire up netscape to get help rather than call the IT department will save everyone a few headaches.
For actual software on the workstations you ought to probably use the most stable version of XFree you can get away with, 3.3.6 and 4.0.1 are both pretty stable although 3.3.6 is a bit more documented and security related bugs are documented a bit more. Use IceWM instead of a fancy shmancy one, its both stable and fast. You don't need a bunch of extra stuff in the background. I personally feel that GNOME makes the most efficient use of the space on your screen but KDE works just as well. If you really want to be hardcore, load up KDE's widget libraries (or GNOME's if you're using KDE) so you have better range of choices for graphical apps. Applix Office 4.x is a very good suite that has the best file compatibility I've seen. I hope that helps a bit.
You seem to be highly misinformed about the state of things. For starters, 50% of electricity in the US is produced by the burning of coal. Burning coal is very polluting so for every kilowatt you use to make hydrogen or power an electric car you're pumping a shitload of sulfur dioxide and carbon particulates into the air. Hydrogen fuel cells are fairly clean as they produce pure water but they are very expensive and drive under powered electric motors. Miles per gallon means shit if you can't drive on the freeway. You seem to have read one or two articles on hydrogen fuel and think its the raddest idea ever. Methanol is NOT a fossil fuel you dipshit. It's made by cutting up plant matter and fermenting it. Plants grow readily in Earth's biosphere. Methanol for a fuel is pretty efficient (about as efficient as natural gas) and produces water and carbon dioxide when burned (no harmful chemicals).
Are you somehow slow enough not to think logically yet smart enough to read? A box of this sort isn't some overpowered PC running on an Intel chip with Windows or Linux. This is a highly specialized piece of hardware. It's an uber-router that reads the content of mail packets rather than headers.
I think you've read into the hype a bit too much. While the internet IS a massive network of different networks it can easily be shut down. Information on the net has to travel over a set of physical lines, control these lines and you can control information flowing on the internet. Sure you can use phone lines and short landline connections to network computers but theres no way it could handle the traffic the internet handles now. Outside the US data services are at a premium. Europe and Asia didn't have the National Science Foundation funding the development of internet communications. If someone wanted to shut down the internet proper they'd have to take out key nodes in the "web" and everyone would be reduced to long distance dialup connections if they had anything at all.
Your letters will accomplish jack and shit. We are no longer the government, there's 250 million people in the country. Not only do we have quite a large population for a supposedly democratic country but we're also a democratic republic. Being as such we only have the power to protest to our local congressman which has one vote out of ~700 or we can sue the government and take the case to the supreme court. Teams can and do work with one person having complete control, you might call it facism but it works. Every level of government has a bearucratic leader which basically has complete control over his or her underlings, this is partly why your letters will have no effect.
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I said 20 years as a reference to games past, not saying Donkey Kong and such were 20 years old.
What I really enjoy about the 20 or so year old games is the fact they were simple but provided enough challenge to make you want to keep playing. My friend has an old NES and we play Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong Jr. for hours trying to top each others' score. Games started getting longer and more complex to play. Sometimes this can be good in the case of Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior but in adventure or action games you need simple stuff. I'd like to get ahold of an old Atari console, those were some very fun but simple games. I'd play Pitfall for hours when I was younger. Many games around now are just too much at once, if you're blood starts pumping for a minute and then subsides, you're going to get bored right after the action stops. This is the reason arcade games are pretty straitforward and simple. You are playing for short periods but you're replaying a large number of times. Duck Hunt has to be one of the best old games ever.
Pluto is asking to be explored merely as a scientific and technological challenge. There is still plenty to learn from our Solar System. I'd like to see close up pictures of Pluto in my kids' text books someday. There are all of the aguments about pure science exploration because it "wastes" money and doesn't return much of empirical value. If I seem to remember correctly, before the Apollo program computers inhabited a very large room and sucked a great deal of power. Amazingly NASA ended up being able to fit a self contained computer into the Apollo spacecraft to aid the Astronauts in their navigation. Finding faster and cheaper ways of launching scientific flights also solves the problem commercial flights have, the transit from the surface of the Earth into orbit. You don't seem to mind using the technology researched by NASA when you watch satillite TV or make an international telephone call. I've also seen people comment about wasting money going to Mars (and Pluto) when children in various places are starving. Why not dismantle militaries to feed people rather than worry about peaceful programs, or better yet sell your SUV and feed them yourself.
The ISS is such a piece of shit I cannot understand who's billiant idea it was. Not only is the ISS not high enough off the ground to get effective radiation measurements but it also costs way more than a space station ought to. The real purpoe of a space station is to do microgravity experiments and to study how humans can adapt to the environment. An orbital waystation is utter crap, it takes fuel to get the fuel to the space station, and even then once you're in orbit the hardest part of the journey is already over and done with. A good point you made was assembling vehicles in space, it would save a great deal on the individual mission cost if they could be lauched from a high orbit or from the moon rather than from Florida.
Thats not true, at least the part of Jupiter's gravity. Compared to the Sun Jupiter isn't shit. The AB is the point where the dense heavy materials in the early Solar System's accretian disk started to thin out to such an extent they could not form a planet. There is plenty of space between Jupiter and Mars to fit a planet the problem is the lack of dense material in the inner Solar System.
I can't believe there are so many people on here that are supposedly "enlightened" with open source yet so ignorant of anything and everything else. Pick up a book or two on Windows specific programming, not only is the API very very well documented but programmers are encouraged to program directly to the Windows API rather than use low level system calls. This why many applications written for Windows 95 and 98 work just as well under Windows NT. Without penguin coloured glasses one can easily take an abstract look at the various flavours of Windows and see an almost elegant design for the operating system. For some reason Linux zealots scream over the "bloated" code of Windows and the lack of optimization inherent in it. Of course their precious Linux has never had and never will have an error or an ounce of unoptimized code.
I really like the idea behind this project and thing if managed properly and done correctly will work out very well. Windows is an extremely well documented system which would allow a clone maker to write their own libraries and such which operated the same as their closed source counterparts. Just look at the Mesa project, they set out to write an open sourced version of OpenGL which worked in the same way and could do all of the same thing and for the most part they have done just that. The Open Windows project is the same basic idea, you use the documentation that exists to write you own code that responds the same way but is written by you rather than Microsoft. Microsoft encourages developers to program to the API rather than the hardware or the low level system because it allows them to upgrade the kernel drivers and libraries without nuking the system. How many times have a Linux kernels been released that broke programs because system calls or functions had changed? Such a system also allows for a group to put together a more efficient way to run Windows applications. In the end it doesn't matter what OS you have, the OS isn the least important part of the computer. The important part is the applications that actually get work done.
Yet people ought to program for using X and Motif and OpenGL all of which are at least ten years old or more. OpenGL was around in many forms specifically under IRIX until SGI decided to port it. Good call jackass.
So you have a copy of Windows as source as reference for your asshole comments? If you're correct I ought to never find an error in the code of a Linux app or the base system itself? Windows programmers also decide they want to be non-optimal while people who program for Linux strive every single second to save every last processor cycle of their machines? You're so full of shit. You can't even be ignored as a troll because deep down you believe your own stupid shit.
that King will never make the money he wants from this book, who REALLY wants to download a book and read it on a monitor. I get eyestrain after reading an Ars Technica article, how the hell am I supposed to read a novel? Even if I had a Rocket e-Book or something like that (why would I pay 300$ merely for an eletric display with a memory card?) I wouldn't want to stare at the text on the bloody thing. I'm also not real apt to print out 50 or more pages on my inkjet printer (ink costs money you know) because it would literally take hours to print it all. Either reading it on an eletric toy or my screen or printing it I'm paying for the price of the book in some way. My monitor is using extra electricity in the summer which costs beaucoup cash, my e-Book cost me 300$ which I may or may not make back in the number of books I read on it, or I spend hours printing and have to spend money on both ink and paper to read the book. This is why industrialism exists you fucking technodweebs. Mass production allows the cost of something to be distributed over a large number of products and customers. When I buy a paperback book I'm paying a very small portion of the production of that book. Everyone else who buys it is also paying a small portion of the production, shipment, advertising, and royalties. Distributing things electronically only cuts off a marginal percent of the cost. It's no different than shopping for a "deal" on Amazon and then realizing you have to pay 4$ for shipping and handling of a single book. This leads you to the logic that you need to buy several books to distribute the shipping cost over many products, oh wait thats why mass production is effective. All these generation-y neo-maxi zoom dweebies need to drop their CS classes and take some economics classes.
I'm not sure where you're at but just yesterday I saw both Cowboy Bebop and BLue Sub 6 on DVD at Fry's. You might want to check your local one to see if they have it. The one around here has a huge stock of movies on DVD including Zombie Grannies and Condorman.
I can't understand how people can be so supportive of something until someone critiques it then they get up in arms as if you insulted their mother. It's fucking computer software you pathetic fuckers. Miguel has an excellent point and a very valid argument. I've seen a few replies that counter Miguels examples and arguments. That is well and good for said programmers and development teams but what about everyone else? Who the fuck cares if the Motif guys have their act together if people can't print or use sound or 3D in their apps. Everyone rallies around modularity and choice but take it to the extreme. If things are broken then fix it, don't defend something that you know is wrong.
Miguel's point about Unix being stagnant is so true yet people never fail to point or some "new and improved" copy of something thats been done before. The best thing to happen to Unix recently was Mac OS X and before that it was probably Beowolf clustering. Instead of calling OS X Macix or something lame like that, they separated themselves from the guys at Bell Labs 30 or so years ago. Apple took a stable and mature kernel and built a user friendly interface on top of it. Apple doesn't force you into a command line or make you edit things by hand using pico or emacs. In OS X all the configuration files are standardized and formatted using XML. Users of OS X don't have to think about what is behind their candy shaped buttons and mp3 files. They press the power button and get to work or play. The open source alternatives take pride in their non-uniformity and command lines. You're not going to take over the world with terminals, you take over the world by making the computer transparent and letting the applications take center stage.
Microsoft put GUI code into the kernel? Dude are you fucking slow on the uptake? There's no GUI code in the Windows kernel. All the GUI code lies in Explorer and its libraries, not in the kernel you dumbshit. You can very well mess around with the Windows GUI if you're so inclined, grab a copy of lightstep if you don't believe me. The functionality does NOT lie within the OS, damn you're one stupid fucker. An application is only as functional and powerful as a programmer makes it. If a programmer makes it difficult for a user to use a program that is not the fault of the OS. Is it Linux's fault that most people cry when they try to use vi for the first time? You'd cry foul if someone suggested it yet you accuse it on everyone else.
Have you ever learned to play a musical instrument? For most people it takes alot of work to play something that can be considered a tune. Rock stars are a side effect to the fact that people enjoy the music they write and perform. People performing in small clubs don't make enough money to focus entirely on making their music.
There is no perfect operating system which is immune to the maliciousness of certain individuals. If you have a computer you have something that can pontentially run code that will fuck things up. This is a given and is true for any operating system. When I see people boast that they run Linux or Mac and are therefore immune to virii and exploits I just shake my head and usually sigh. I'm still waiting for one final thing from the virii and worm dudes. Virii as part of a business model.
Just imagine a virus that spread as fast as Melissa (in the course of a weekend) that didn't do anything too terribly maliscious but did replace your screensaver and bookmarks with some new internet start-up's advertisements. Or how about a worm that replaced your GUI libaries with logos and ads for some start-up. Maybe companies will get so bold as to unleash virii into competitor's computer systems. We're already at a point where taking out a businesses infrastructure could cripple and/or destroy a company. Right now we're seeing lots of worms just floating about because someone was pissed off at the world because they were a loser who had no other form of expression. What will happen when malicious exploits hit the mainstream of business and are actually aimed at individual companies. Script kiddies can cause a company's servers to stumble for a day but that is all pretty meaningless when compared to a virus bootstrapping all of a company's office systems. It isn't the OS that you need to worry about or boast over, it is how much you'll be fucked if that system fails.
XDMCP is how you get a networked X server to display the screen or a remote X client box. I have XDM running on my Linux box and connect to it using XDMCP with any other box on my network with an X server and use GNOME and all my other goodies. VNC lets you view and control the GUI of remote boxes, XDMCP lets you USE the GUI of remote boxes. VNCserver is a waste of time to use with Linux because you can use X's native networking ability to do exactly the same way. X has been working over the network since it started. VNCserver on a Windows box on the otherhand has it's benefits because it allows you to remotely use a Windows machine which is generally not an option unless you've got Windows NT Terminal Server.
I meant a standard box to use as a reference system. That way the admins can configure a single system and just ghost the hard drive onto all the machines in the lab or office.
Nuclear fission power plant == > 20 billion dollars (American)
COal power plant == > 20 million dollars (American)
You go ahead and do the math.
VNC is a cheap knockoff of XDMCP. XDMCP is a much more robust remote graphical login system. VNC is nice for Windows machines but isn't needed if you run X. If you want to run Windows for anything spend a few bucks to get a copy of VMWare. Subnetting though is a very good idea, it allows you to easily administer networks and allow for access restrictions based on addresses.
You can grab some Snap! servers from quantum to make a bunch of diskless clients, the only problem is that is very slow even with a switched network. You also run into problems is a large number (even if you've got small segments) of people try to access the same thing or all write files at once unless of course you have NFS servers with >256 megs of RAM and you cache everything into RAM rather than write it to disk.
It all depends what you're running in terms of apps and desktops. Remember that for each X server you run X is starting up another process (in 3.x and lower). If each one of your users is running E and GNOME you're going to need a hell of a fast system with alot of RAM serving those clients. You also need a beefy network, 10Mbps for five client machines would be crazy. The key to making many things run at once well is to have a huge amount of RAM, about 64 megs per client if you're running X and such.
2500 workstations is quite a load but in terms of TCO you'll be a little more pleased with Linux than with Windows. I hope all your machines are pretty similar, installing on many different system configurations is a bitch. For every hardware configuration set up a reference box that you can set up and configure until things work, once thats done export the config files and compiled binaries to an NFS server and have a cron job get the files off the server every night (or whenever you feel is prudent) that way everyone is always up to date. A good business distro is SuSE's Office Suite. It comes with SuSE 6.3 and a full version of Applix Office as well as several other good office apps. SuSE is a rather easy distro to install and keep updates due to YaST, it's also got default security measures (no remote root logins permitted by default). It's hard to impress that you need way more than 32 megs of ram for Linux. Having only 32 megs might work decently but for real speed on the boxes upgrade to 64 or 96 with your swap set to 192 or 256 megs. This will give you plenty of room to work and to run large projects, especially if any of the boxes are going to be used for graphics. Think centralization:
1. Standardize hardware so you can have a reference box the admins can work with and then duplicate the settings on the server for download.
2. Set up an NFS server to store the user's personal files with a cron job on each client sending to a particular server so you've always have online backups of user data.
3. For security on the workstations disable everything except needed remote access permissions and services. Let users log into the main server to get personal files using FTP or HTTP rather than their personal box at the office.
4. Set up an office wide intranet with lots of online help files and HOWTOs, make your admins rewrite or write HOWTOs that pertain to the hardware and software you're going to use. Being able to fire up netscape to get help rather than call the IT department will save everyone a few headaches.
For actual software on the workstations you ought to probably use the most stable version of XFree you can get away with, 3.3.6 and 4.0.1 are both pretty stable although 3.3.6 is a bit more documented and security related bugs are documented a bit more. Use IceWM instead of a fancy shmancy one, its both stable and fast. You don't need a bunch of extra stuff in the background. I personally feel that GNOME makes the most efficient use of the space on your screen but KDE works just as well. If you really want to be hardcore, load up KDE's widget libraries (or GNOME's if you're using KDE) so you have better range of choices for graphical apps. Applix Office 4.x is a very good suite that has the best file compatibility I've seen. I hope that helps a bit.
You seem to be highly misinformed about the state of things. For starters, 50% of electricity in the US is produced by the burning of coal. Burning coal is very polluting so for every kilowatt you use to make hydrogen or power an electric car you're pumping a shitload of sulfur dioxide and carbon particulates into the air. Hydrogen fuel cells are fairly clean as they produce pure water but they are very expensive and drive under powered electric motors. Miles per gallon means shit if you can't drive on the freeway. You seem to have read one or two articles on hydrogen fuel and think its the raddest idea ever. Methanol is NOT a fossil fuel you dipshit. It's made by cutting up plant matter and fermenting it. Plants grow readily in Earth's biosphere. Methanol for a fuel is pretty efficient (about as efficient as natural gas) and produces water and carbon dioxide when burned (no harmful chemicals).
Are you somehow slow enough not to think logically yet smart enough to read? A box of this sort isn't some overpowered PC running on an Intel chip with Windows or Linux. This is a highly specialized piece of hardware. It's an uber-router that reads the content of mail packets rather than headers.
I think you've read into the hype a bit too much. While the internet IS a massive network of different networks it can easily be shut down. Information on the net has to travel over a set of physical lines, control these lines and you can control information flowing on the internet. Sure you can use phone lines and short landline connections to network computers but theres no way it could handle the traffic the internet handles now. Outside the US data services are at a premium. Europe and Asia didn't have the National Science Foundation funding the development of internet communications. If someone wanted to shut down the internet proper they'd have to take out key nodes in the "web" and everyone would be reduced to long distance dialup connections if they had anything at all.
Your letters will accomplish jack and shit. We are no longer the government, there's 250 million people in the country. Not only do we have quite a large population for a supposedly democratic country but we're also a democratic republic. Being as such we only have the power to protest to our local congressman which has one vote out of ~700 or we can sue the government and take the case to the supreme court. Teams can and do work with one person having complete control, you might call it facism but it works. Every level of government has a bearucratic leader which basically has complete control over his or her underlings, this is partly why your letters will have no effect.