I've used Win2K and a recent Linux build extensively on the same machine. While Win2K crashes about once a week ("rarely" by most people's standards), Linux never crashes. NEVER. Not once. Admittedly this is a home computer with very little network activity, so you could probably get Linux to crash with heavier use... or could you? Win2K is only "stable" in comparison to, well, Windows 95, 98, and ME.
Try Ximian's Red Carpet, which automatically determines each RPM's dependencies, downloading and installing them too, and removing old packages where necessary. It even manages to do things line update the Gnome libs or the system's C libraries without restarting. The program runs instantaneously on my machine (tho I have an Athlon 1.4 and 512MB) and wow is the interface beautiful! Admittedly, not all of the packages are up-to-the-minute recent, but the end user won't care. All in all, Red Carpet is the best software manager I've seen for ANY platform.
Saudi Arabia is almost as repressive as the Taliban are/were, yet we call them an "ally" because we need their oil. About half our oil comes from the Middle East, and the percentage is expected to rise as environmentalists here block new drilling, for example, off the shore of Florida. If we weren't dependent on Middle-Eastern oil, we could try to create a few democracies there (in addition to Turkey and Israel) intead of supporting dictators.
Fuel cells are not drastically more efficient than gasoline engines, and both require hydrocarbons at some point. The only way to slow the importing of Middle Eastern oil would be to adopt nuclear power on a large scale, and solar and hydroelectric power wherever possible. Maybe nuclear-powered cars and trucks aren't the answer, but there's no reason for us to be using oil or coal to power any device that can be plugged into the electric grid.
Israel's issues have nothing to do with oil. Neither Israel nor any of the countries bordering it (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, or the Palestinians) contains more than a trickle of oil. The source of the conflict is, and was, that Arab governments blame all their social and economic problems on Israel instead of doing anything to fix them. The Arabs are STILL "all poor and [live] in third world conditions", but having failed time after time to destroy Israel in a real war, they choose terrorism, guerilla warfare, and the development of weapons of mass destruction as tools to destroy the "Zionist entity", as their leaders tell they arey are justified in doing.
If any "imperialist country" is to blame for the state of the Arab world, though, it is the Ottomans. Until 1500 the Arabs possessed the world's most advanced society, but now all Arab countries are among the least developed, sometimes not far above sub-Saharan Africa. What exactly went wrong under the Turks is a matter for discussion, but Great Britain, France and the US have generally made thing better in most of the Middle East, except while supporting corrupt existing governments (as in Saudi Arabia now and in the Shah's Iran)... mainly to preserve our access to oil.
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I've used Win2K and a recent Linux build extensively on the same machine. While Win2K crashes about once a week ("rarely" by most people's standards), Linux never crashes. NEVER. Not once. Admittedly this is a home computer with very little network activity, so you could probably get Linux to crash with heavier use... or could you? Win2K is only "stable" in comparison to, well, Windows 95, 98, and ME.
Try Ximian's Red Carpet, which automatically determines each RPM's dependencies, downloading and installing them too, and removing old packages where necessary. It even manages to do things line update the Gnome libs or the system's C libraries without restarting. The program runs instantaneously on my machine (tho I have an Athlon 1.4 and 512MB) and wow is the interface beautiful! Admittedly, not all of the packages are up-to-the-minute recent, but the end user won't care. All in all, Red Carpet is the best software manager I've seen for ANY platform.
Fuel cells are not drastically more efficient than gasoline engines, and both require hydrocarbons at some point. The only way to slow the importing of Middle Eastern oil would be to adopt nuclear power on a large scale, and solar and hydroelectric power wherever possible. Maybe nuclear-powered cars and trucks aren't the answer, but there's no reason for us to be using oil or coal to power any device that can be plugged into the electric grid.
Israel's issues have nothing to do with oil. Neither Israel nor any of the countries bordering it (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, or the Palestinians) contains more than a trickle of oil. The source of the conflict is, and was, that Arab governments blame all their social and economic problems on Israel instead of doing anything to fix them. The Arabs are STILL "all poor and [live] in third world conditions", but having failed time after time to destroy Israel in a real war, they choose terrorism, guerilla warfare, and the development of weapons of mass destruction as tools to destroy the "Zionist entity", as their leaders tell they arey are justified in doing.
If any "imperialist country" is to blame for the state of the Arab world, though, it is the Ottomans. Until 1500 the Arabs possessed the world's most advanced society, but now all Arab countries are among the least developed, sometimes not far above sub-Saharan Africa. What exactly went wrong under the Turks is a matter for discussion, but Great Britain, France and the US have generally made thing better in most of the Middle East, except while supporting corrupt existing governments (as in Saudi Arabia now and in the Shah's Iran)... mainly to preserve our access to oil.