I really enjoyed this story, and wish I had been there too.
I remember seeing the Enterprise when it was en route (don't remember which direction) between Florida and Edwards, as it sat on the tarmac at Carswell AFB. My dad drove me out to see it, sitting on top of its piggyback jumbo jet, lit up in the night, and I was awestruck. I think he was too.
I never got to see a live launch in person, though I watched a number of them live on television, and later on the net.
I'm looking forward to the next steps, whatever they may be. It's emotional to end an era, but to be honest, I never thought the shuttle program would run this long. I did think something newer and better would replace it sooner...
It could of [have] been a profe[...], but no[need a comma here] they let deletionists [...] inclusionist wikis out there[need a comma here] but as long as Wikipedia keeps [...]
If you are a Wikipedian reading this, please turn of[f] your computer and go outside. [...]
Please quantify that claim. Other sources differ from your assertion.
From the linked article:
There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.
I'll grant that the article is not numerically specific, but it is more credible than an Anonymous Coward. I'm willing to consider better supported alternatives, but this will be my working hypothesis for the moment.
My concern is that the science will (or has) become invalid because the only research that gets funded is the research that has shown a tendency toward a desired conclusion.
I'm not interested in science as a money corrupted adversarial process a la the US courts. But I'm afraid we're nearly there.
1. The climate is changing (always has, always will) 2. Human activities have some amount of impact on the rate of change. 3. People who do actual research on climate have a range of theories about how much effect human activities have on the rate of change. 4. If the climate continues to change at the current rate, there is a chance of subjectively unpleasant disruptions to the human population of the planet. 5. People who are afraid of the possible disruptions have been trying for decades to get everyone else to consider the problem. Some of them make some money selling books or in other ways related to the issue. Most don't. 6. People who are making money from activities that may have some impact on climate change, or may just be blamed for it, are afraid of not making as much money. 7. People who are making money at something tend to ignore or actively deny any information that might lead to less money. (This applies to both sides.) 8. People who have strong prejudices tend to side with whomever validates their prejudices, regardless of the motive of the validator. (This also applies to both sides.)
Now that we are clear on that, I think it becomes very plain what the answer is:
Why? It is just taxpayers money. There is always more where that came from.
No, I don't really beleive that, but many government workers seem to operate as if they do.
On the contrary, most 'government workers' are struggling to meet the incredible demands of a public which wants all sorts of services but refuses to pay for it. The average government agency is far under-budgeted and far under-staffed for the work required of it.
There are, of course, individuals who don't do a good job, are not well qualified, or are simply burned out and cynical. It's difficult to replace people like that, though, since hardly anyone wants to be overworked and underpaid, and simply firing them would mean even fewer people to do the work. Most of the workers you'll find, though, are busting their humps to get the job done under piss poor circumstances and knowing full well that their work is unappreciated.
This myth of the lazy, overpaid fat cat bureaucrat is a bunch of bunk. You might find a handful if you look long and hard enough, but the vast majority that you had to sort through to find them would disprove your thesis.
Taking a few anecdotes of waste and corruption and generalizing them to the legions of honest, hard working government employees is a vast disservice, and intellectually dishonest. It's propaganda cooked up by politicians to get themselves elected, whereupon they add to the real problems rather than solving anything.
Paying for yourself not practical? I don't smoke and I'm not overweight, and I pay $150/mo for full coverage. If I stay in the hospital, I'm never on the hook for more than $1500; my insurance pays the rest. Granted I am single and young, but I'm not exactly going bankrupt here. I'm sure if you have a large family or are otherwise unhealthy it can be a a huge burden, but if you can't afford that then it pays to not have kids and just take care of yourself.
Last year I worked as a consultant for a firm that offered group insurance but did not make any contributions to it, leaving the consultant to foot the entire cost. I went shopping for individual insurance to see if I could find a better deal.
As it turns out, because of pre-existing conditions, my wife could be covered by a risk pool plan that cost approximately three times the monthly cost of our mortgage. Because of my own pre-existing conditions I could not find any insurance company that would sell me health insurance unless they excluded coverage for my condition. So, in other words, largely useless. Covering our young and reasonably healthy kids was not a huge problem.
So, total estimate: approximately 1.8 times my net income, for insurance that would not cover my current health problems, leaving me to pay out of pocket for those, in addition.
I went for the group insurance, of course. It only cost 10% more than the mortgage.
My consulting income, which was about 25% more than the full-time position I held previously, ended up being a net decrease.
This year I took a full time position with the company I consulted for, with benefits. I couldn't afford to stay a consultant.
I'm a college graduate with a solid career and good pay. I can't even imagine how someone struggling to earn a living could do it.
No, I take that back. I know how they do it. They have no health insurance, and don't get healthcare until things are life threatening and vastly more expensive. Then the rest of us pay for it when they get treatment and can't pay.
Why couldn't we have paid for them to get better and cheaper care in the first place, if we ended up paying more later anyway?
"History" is also clear that when the climate changes too rapidly, the animals at the top of the food chain become extinct.
Personally, I'm not overly concerned about the global average temperature so long as it remains within a range that will allow humans to survive. Temperatures always have and always will change over time.
However, I do tend to be concerned about the rate of change. Living species, including our own, need time to adapt.
Whether or not humans have made a measurable contribution to the current rate of change, the search for ways we can slow it down is worth some effort, in my opinion. Developing mitigation strategies is also worthwhile. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes is not a recipe for a successful (or extant) species.
If writing computer programs and acquiring money are the only meaning your life will ever have, you might as well step in front of a bus. Waste of a life.
I left college with no debt at all. I worked to earn the money to pay for it, going part time some times, and got a few grants as well. I didn't finish in four years, and I lived dirt cheap, but I made it, and I will never regret it.
200k is insane. Go to a cheaper school. And get your employer to pay for certs. If your employer won't pay for them, you probably don't need them. For that matter, get an employer to help pay for college. Lots of them have tuition reimbursement programs.
I think this whole 'don't need college' business is a bunch of lazy asses looking for an excuse to quit.
Seems to me that "college is a waste of time" is an economic, not an anti-learning argument. Economically college can be a waste of time.
It seems to me that the important part of that statement is "can be". There are plenty of economically well off folks who went to college, and use what they learned to make money. The fact that a few high profile dropouts became billionaires does not make ignorance a statistically likely path to riches. It's demonstrably true that a college degree is not required for financial success, nor for most other forms of success, but I'd posit that the path to riches is paved with being smart, working your butt off, and being lucky, in various combinations. Having or not having a college degree is almost orthogonal. It is but one way of learning what you want or need to learn - but it can be a very good way, provided you apply those other factors (smart, work).
How many English majors are out there making huge bucks vs how many of them are working at Home Depot? How many people got a degree in "web design" or some such fluffery in the 90's only to discover that, gee, there's not a huge market out there for such services.
If I'm going to end up working at McDonalds after I get my 4-year degree, then I might as well skip the degree and work at McDonalds 4 years early.
*raises hand*
B.A. Cum Laude, English Literature. Currently enjoying a reasonably successful career as a software developer/architect. Huge bucks? No. But I'm comfortable, I've raised a family, and gotten one child successfully through college and another in the process. And no, I didn't learn software development in college. I learned how to work hard, be persistent, and figure things out on my own, all of which I use every single day. Could I have learned those things elsewhere? Sure. But college was a crash course in them, where spending 40+ hours a week at a fast food joint or other unskilled career would have atrophied my mental agility worse than public schools did.
As for learning, dunno about the rest of you guys but my college education was largely an exercise in bullshit. Repeat what the professor said if you want an A. Disagree with his premises if you want an F. That's not learning. It's regurgitation. Parrots can do that too, and they don't attend college to do it.
My friend, you did it wrong.
"Making an A" and "Learning" are two very different things. I learned that in college. Trying to make As is what you do while you are in the process of learning. It's also good preparation for Real Life (tm) where stupid BS is de rigeur.
My college education was awesome. I learned a million things, a few of them even in classrooms. But in any other environment I'd have missed out on most of those things, classroom or otherwise.
And of course there's the student attitude side of "education" as well. A good number of my "getting educated" classmates liked to say stupid crap like "well I paid for the class and so the professor owes me an A." Those guys aren't there to learn. They're there to get a piece of paper that says they went to college. That piece of paper is worthless in and of itself. The value comes from either having learned something (and these guys pretty much limited their learning to the fluid dynamics of beer bongs) or from getting a job that you could not otherwise have gotten.
See above. College is an opportunity which can easily be squandered even while earning a meaningless piece of paper. Or it can be seized and squeezed for every last drop of good it can do you. The choice is yours.
Well, you probably can't get that job in this economy anyway, and meanwhile manufacturing jobs are starting to open up, and remain open because companies can't find qualified welders etc. Economically speaking, currently anyway, it makes more sense for a lot of people to go to a trade school and learn how to weld than it does
Oh jeez not the "go to college to become a better rounded person" argument. College costs as much as a mid-range to high-end sports car. Lower and middle-class people don't have the luxury of going to college for the pleasure of learning. There must be a return on such a significant investment. It's that simple, it has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism.
Because we're ignorant, and we want to stay that way, only with money.
Sorry to hear that you've had trouble. Personally, I've been quite pleased with Natty, especially since switching to xfce.
I like it so much that the next time I do a full OS install I'll be using Xubuntu. (Currently just running xfce on plain ol' Ubuntu, 11.04 upgraded from a fresh install of 10.10)
Do bear in mind, though, that I'm the sort who thinks a widescreen monitor is best used rotated 90 degrees because emacs works really great that way.
It's not. The payment will still go through your credit/debit card account, unless you sign up for a Google pre-paid account, which is just another debit account anyway. (And is only 'google' in name - google won't be handling your money.)
Google is just providing a new way to access that means of payment, in a hopefully convenient and secure way. I say hopefully, because this thing is beta, with as yet unknown bugs and problems still to be worked out.
I'll leave the clustering distro advice to others, but if I understand your needs regarding X-windows, what you need is an X server running on your windows (or other ) client machine so that the program running on the cluster can display on your desktop/laptop. The X programs may need appropriate libraries, but you don't need an X server running on the cluster.
See Xming for a good, free, open source X server for windows. There are other options available, but that's what I use, and find it to be stable and reliable. (For a Windows program... )
Then use putty to SSH to your cluster, with X11 forwarding to your locally running X server.
The problem is supply and demand and changing technology leaving behind a formerly profitable business model that is slowly but surely going extinct, and not going quietly into that good night. The recording industry would do well to spend their efforts on figuring out a business plan that fits tomorrow instead of yesterday. Some will make the transition, some won't.
As for TPB, they merely supply a place to discover what other people are offering - whether illegal or legal. They profit from the traffic to their website creating ad revenue. One might successfully claim that they encourage illegal acts, and that they facilitate illegal acts, but they aren't selling anything but ads and TPB paraphernalia.
As for the artists, they are getting publicity and growing fan base at the low low cost of $0.00, which is one heck of a lot less than what the big labels charge them. (Give up your artistic freedom, give up your publishing rights, give up nearly all of the profit from selling recordings, etc. etc.)
The fact is, for most artists the labels provide a valuable service for a steep price. However, the value of that service is decreasing, but some labels still see more profit in fighting change than in revising their way of doing things. The future is bright for labels that offer good service with equitable terms to artists, and fair prices for desired products to consumers. Fact is, though, the value of a commodity is how much someone is willing to pay for it, not how much it costs to produce. And bits are cheaply and easily obtained - unlike in the past.
I really like Unity, too. It got me to finally try Xfce, and I'm very happy with the change. (I've been meaning to try it out for ages, but never got around to it.)
After switching back to 'classic' I just fired up synaptic, installed Xfce and whatever recommended additions I thought looked good, logged out and back in using Xfce, and I haven't had an urge to go back yet. Granted, it's only been a few days, but the things I do every day work as well or better.
I liked it so much that I installed Xubuntu on another system, and really like the defaults they put in place there.
I think the next time I reinstall the OS on my 'regular' computer (as opposed to just upgrading Ubuntu) I'll be grabbing Xubuntu.
Slashdot Mirror
... the site used to be a fair bit more personal than it is now. And I daresay, most of us liked it that way.
Hear, hear.
I certainly did.
I really enjoyed this story, and wish I had been there too.
I remember seeing the Enterprise when it was en route (don't remember which direction) between Florida and Edwards, as it sat on the tarmac at Carswell AFB. My dad drove me out to see it, sitting on top of its piggyback jumbo jet, lit up in the night, and I was awestruck. I think he was too.
I never got to see a live launch in person, though I watched a number of them live on television, and later on the net.
I'm looking forward to the next steps, whatever they may be. It's emotional to end an era, but to be honest, I never thought the shuttle program would run this long. I did think something newer and better would replace it sooner...
Thanks for sharing the experience.
It could of [have] been a profe[...], but no[need a comma here] they let deletionists [...] inclusionist wikis out there[need a comma here] but as long as Wikipedia keeps [...]
If you are a Wikipedian reading this, please turn of[f] your computer and go outside. [...]
Edited that for ya.
Humans put out less CO2 than one volcano.
Please quantify that claim. Other sources differ from your assertion.
From the linked article:
There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.
I'll grant that the article is not numerically specific, but it is more credible than an Anonymous Coward. I'm willing to consider better supported alternatives, but this will be my working hypothesis for the moment.
You do make good points.
My concern is that the science will (or has) become invalid because the only research that gets funded is the research that has shown a tendency toward a desired conclusion.
I'm not interested in science as a money corrupted adversarial process a la the US courts. But I'm afraid we're nearly there.
OK, let's break it down:
1. The climate is changing (always has, always will)
2. Human activities have some amount of impact on the rate of change.
3. People who do actual research on climate have a range of theories about how much effect human activities have on the rate of change.
4. If the climate continues to change at the current rate, there is a chance of subjectively unpleasant disruptions to the human population of the planet.
5. People who are afraid of the possible disruptions have been trying for decades to get everyone else to consider the problem. Some of them make some money selling books or in other ways related to the issue. Most don't.
6. People who are making money from activities that may have some impact on climate change, or may just be blamed for it, are afraid of not making as much money.
7. People who are making money at something tend to ignore or actively deny any information that might lead to less money. (This applies to both sides.)
8. People who have strong prejudices tend to side with whomever validates their prejudices, regardless of the motive of the validator. (This also applies to both sides.)
Now that we are clear on that, I think it becomes very plain what the answer is:
Humans are stupid.
$sudo apt-get install InternetExplorer
hmmm. I guess I won't.
Why? It is just taxpayers money. There is always more where that came from.
No, I don't really beleive that, but many government workers seem to operate as if they do.
On the contrary, most 'government workers' are struggling to meet the incredible demands of a public which wants all sorts of services but refuses to pay for it. The average government agency is far under-budgeted and far under-staffed for the work required of it.
There are, of course, individuals who don't do a good job, are not well qualified, or are simply burned out and cynical. It's difficult to replace people like that, though, since hardly anyone wants to be overworked and underpaid, and simply firing them would mean even fewer people to do the work. Most of the workers you'll find, though, are busting their humps to get the job done under piss poor circumstances and knowing full well that their work is unappreciated.
This myth of the lazy, overpaid fat cat bureaucrat is a bunch of bunk. You might find a handful if you look long and hard enough, but the vast majority that you had to sort through to find them would disprove your thesis.
Taking a few anecdotes of waste and corruption and generalizing them to the legions of honest, hard working government employees is a vast disservice, and intellectually dishonest. It's propaganda cooked up by politicians to get themselves elected, whereupon they add to the real problems rather than solving anything.
Paying for yourself not practical? I don't smoke and I'm not overweight, and I pay $150/mo for full coverage. If I stay in the hospital, I'm never on the hook for more than $1500; my insurance pays the rest. Granted I am single and young, but I'm not exactly going bankrupt here. I'm sure if you have a large family or are otherwise unhealthy it can be a a huge burden, but if you can't afford that then it pays to not have kids and just take care of yourself.
Last year I worked as a consultant for a firm that offered group insurance but did not make any contributions to it, leaving the consultant to foot the entire cost. I went shopping for individual insurance to see if I could find a better deal.
As it turns out, because of pre-existing conditions, my wife could be covered by a risk pool plan that cost approximately three times the monthly cost of our mortgage. Because of my own pre-existing conditions I could not find any insurance company that would sell me health insurance unless they excluded coverage for my condition. So, in other words, largely useless. Covering our young and reasonably healthy kids was not a huge problem.
So, total estimate: approximately 1.8 times my net income, for insurance that would not cover my current health problems, leaving me to pay out of pocket for those, in addition.
I went for the group insurance, of course. It only cost 10% more than the mortgage.
My consulting income, which was about 25% more than the full-time position I held previously, ended up being a net decrease.
This year I took a full time position with the company I consulted for, with benefits. I couldn't afford to stay a consultant.
I'm a college graduate with a solid career and good pay. I can't even imagine how someone struggling to earn a living could do it.
No, I take that back. I know how they do it. They have no health insurance, and don't get healthcare until things are life threatening and vastly more expensive. Then the rest of us pay for it when they get treatment and can't pay.
Why couldn't we have paid for them to get better and cheaper care in the first place, if we ended up paying more later anyway?
Why do you need it to drop silverlight?
So I can use it. There is no Silverlight for my OS, and Netflix doesn't work with Moonlight last time I tried.
"History" is also clear that when the climate changes too rapidly, the animals at the top of the food chain become extinct.
Personally, I'm not overly concerned about the global average temperature so long as it remains within a range that will allow humans to survive. Temperatures always have and always will change over time.
However, I do tend to be concerned about the rate of change. Living species, including our own, need time to adapt.
Whether or not humans have made a measurable contribution to the current rate of change, the search for ways we can slow it down is worth some effort, in my opinion. Developing mitigation strategies is also worthwhile. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes is not a recipe for a successful (or extant) species.
FYI, all of the criminal charges were dismissed or dropped. This court case is about Glik's suits against the city for false arrest, etc.
If writing computer programs and acquiring money are the only meaning your life will ever have, you might as well step in front of a bus. Waste of a life.
I left college with no debt at all. I worked to earn the money to pay for it, going part time some times, and got a few grants as well. I didn't finish in four years, and I lived dirt cheap, but I made it, and I will never regret it.
200k is insane. Go to a cheaper school. And get your employer to pay for certs. If your employer won't pay for them, you probably don't need them. For that matter, get an employer to help pay for college. Lots of them have tuition reimbursement programs.
I think this whole 'don't need college' business is a bunch of lazy asses looking for an excuse to quit.
Seems to me that "college is a waste of time" is an economic, not an anti-learning argument. Economically college can be a waste of time.
It seems to me that the important part of that statement is "can be". There are plenty of economically well off folks who went to college, and use what they learned to make money. The fact that a few high profile dropouts became billionaires does not make ignorance a statistically likely path to riches. It's demonstrably true that a college degree is not required for financial success, nor for most other forms of success, but I'd posit that the path to riches is paved with being smart, working your butt off, and being lucky, in various combinations. Having or not having a college degree is almost orthogonal. It is but one way of learning what you want or need to learn - but it can be a very good way, provided you apply those other factors (smart, work).
How many English majors are out there making huge bucks vs how many of them are working at Home Depot? How many people got a degree in "web design" or some such fluffery in the 90's only to discover that, gee, there's not a huge market out there for such services.
If I'm going to end up working at McDonalds after I get my 4-year degree, then I might as well skip the degree and work at McDonalds 4 years early.
*raises hand*
B.A. Cum Laude, English Literature. Currently enjoying a reasonably successful career as a software developer/architect. Huge bucks? No. But I'm comfortable, I've raised a family, and gotten one child successfully through college and another in the process. And no, I didn't learn software development in college. I learned how to work hard, be persistent, and figure things out on my own, all of which I use every single day. Could I have learned those things elsewhere? Sure. But college was a crash course in them, where spending 40+ hours a week at a fast food joint or other unskilled career would have atrophied my mental agility worse than public schools did.
As for learning, dunno about the rest of you guys but my college education was largely an exercise in bullshit. Repeat what the professor said if you want an A. Disagree with his premises if you want an F. That's not learning. It's regurgitation. Parrots can do that too, and they don't attend college to do it.
My friend, you did it wrong.
"Making an A" and "Learning" are two very different things. I learned that in college. Trying to make As is what you do while you are in the process of learning. It's also good preparation for Real Life (tm) where stupid BS is de rigeur.
My college education was awesome. I learned a million things, a few of them even in classrooms. But in any other environment I'd have missed out on most of those things, classroom or otherwise.
And of course there's the student attitude side of "education" as well. A good number of my "getting educated" classmates liked to say stupid crap like "well I paid for the class and so the professor owes me an A." Those guys aren't there to learn. They're there to get a piece of paper that says they went to college. That piece of paper is worthless in and of itself. The value comes from either having learned something (and these guys pretty much limited their learning to the fluid dynamics of beer bongs) or from getting a job that you could not otherwise have gotten.
See above. College is an opportunity which can easily be squandered even while earning a meaningless piece of paper. Or it can be seized and squeezed for every last drop of good it can do you. The choice is yours.
Well, you probably can't get that job in this economy anyway, and meanwhile manufacturing jobs are starting to open up, and remain open because companies can't find qualified welders etc. Economically speaking, currently anyway, it makes more sense for a lot of people to go to a trade school and learn how to weld than it does
Oh jeez not the "go to college to become a better rounded person" argument. College costs as much as a mid-range to high-end sports car. Lower and middle-class people don't have the luxury of going to college for the pleasure of learning. There must be a return on such a significant investment. It's that simple, it has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism.
Because we're ignorant, and we want to stay that way, only with money.
Sorry to hear that you've had trouble. Personally, I've been quite pleased with Natty, especially since switching to xfce.
I like it so much that the next time I do a full OS install I'll be using Xubuntu. (Currently just running xfce on plain ol' Ubuntu, 11.04 upgraded from a fresh install of 10.10)
Do bear in mind, though, that I'm the sort who thinks a widescreen monitor is best used rotated 90 degrees because emacs works really great that way.
Here's a good start on an explanation: Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2010-2015. Summary on the web page, pdf with details linked on the page.
What you need to do is keep up a steady flow of completely boring transactions for 'them' to track, and keep all the interesting stuff anonymous.
What sort of interesting things are you doing with your money, anyway? ;)
It's not. The payment will still go through your credit/debit card account, unless you sign up for a Google pre-paid account, which is just another debit account anyway. (And is only 'google' in name - google won't be handling your money.)
Google is just providing a new way to access that means of payment, in a hopefully convenient and secure way. I say hopefully, because this thing is beta, with as yet unknown bugs and problems still to be worked out.
I'll leave the clustering distro advice to others, but if I understand your needs regarding X-windows, what you need is an X server running on your windows (or other ) client machine so that the program running on the cluster can display on your desktop/laptop. The X programs may need appropriate libraries, but you don't need an X server running on the cluster.
See Xming for a good, free, open source X server for windows. There are other options available, but that's what I use, and find it to be stable and reliable. (For a Windows program... )
Then use putty to SSH to your cluster, with X11 forwarding to your locally running X server.
The problem is supply and demand and changing technology leaving behind a formerly profitable business model that is slowly but surely going extinct, and not going quietly into that good night. The recording industry would do well to spend their efforts on figuring out a business plan that fits tomorrow instead of yesterday. Some will make the transition, some won't.
As for TPB, they merely supply a place to discover what other people are offering - whether illegal or legal. They profit from the traffic to their website creating ad revenue. One might successfully claim that they encourage illegal acts, and that they facilitate illegal acts, but they aren't selling anything but ads and TPB paraphernalia.
As for the artists, they are getting publicity and growing fan base at the low low cost of $0.00, which is one heck of a lot less than what the big labels charge them. (Give up your artistic freedom, give up your publishing rights, give up nearly all of the profit from selling recordings, etc. etc.)
The fact is, for most artists the labels provide a valuable service for a steep price. However, the value of that service is decreasing, but some labels still see more profit in fighting change than in revising their way of doing things. The future is bright for labels that offer good service with equitable terms to artists, and fair prices for desired products to consumers. Fact is, though, the value of a commodity is how much someone is willing to pay for it, not how much it costs to produce. And bits are cheaply and easily obtained - unlike in the past.
Does your friend have a website where I can purchase something from him? I'd like to support that attitude.
I went back to 10.4 (or 10.10, can't remember) because of it.
You do realize that you can use many different window managers or 'desktop frameworks' or whatever without having to install an older release.. right?
I'm running Natty with Unity, Gnome, and Xfce installed, currently defaulting to Xfce. It's just a drop-down widget at log in. Srsly.
I really like Unity, too. It got me to finally try Xfce, and I'm very happy with the change. (I've been meaning to try it out for ages, but never got around to it.)
After switching back to 'classic' I just fired up synaptic, installed Xfce and whatever recommended additions I thought looked good, logged out and back in using Xfce, and I haven't had an urge to go back yet. Granted, it's only been a few days, but the things I do every day work as well or better.
I liked it so much that I installed Xubuntu on another system, and really like the defaults they put in place there.
I think the next time I reinstall the OS on my 'regular' computer (as opposed to just upgrading Ubuntu) I'll be grabbing Xubuntu.
Alas that such is the case. Teaching should, in a world not turned upside down by rampant selfishness, be the most respected of all professions.
The only job more important is 'Parent'.