I've always liked Citroens... I almost bought a Citroen SM that needed hydraulic work (yes, I know that the French-language only manuals are a bitch to figure out). I didn't becuase it was this god-awful pale purple color, and I figured I'd run across one painted something normal one day. I've been kicking myself ever since. I should have bought the damn thing, painted it black, and screw the "originality". Live and learn.
No, the main drawback is that they don't handle worth a damn. They won't turn (they can't due to CG problems; if the tires don't skid they roll) and they don't stop too well either (heavy, crap tires). SUVs, in general, are jacked up station wagons that are bought by people who are too stupid or naive to know the difference.
Don't believe me? Take a look UNDER a typical so-called SUV some time. See those shock mounts hanging down under the rear axle? See those little vaccuum lines hanging in space that engage the "four-wheel drive"? Stump bait. Never mind that even if a stump or rock doesn't rip that tiny rubber hose off, the typical SUV is two or one wheel drive as soon as it get slippery. Most of them don't come with locking differentials. I haven't seen one marketed to yuppies in a LONG time with manual locking front hubs. These are truly useless vehicles. And no, I'm not an environmentalist; I've never owned a "practical" car in my life. And I have owned trucks. But at least I bought the damn things for a reason (Corners well, fast in a straight line, hauls lots of stuff, I can jump it and not bend some cheesy little unbody, whatever other feature I really need... things like that). Every time I get behind one in traffic and I can't see what color the light is because my windshield is filled with a Suburban tailgate with a soccer ball sticker on it I want to beat somebody with a cluebat.
I don't know what the components are for sure (other than Hitachi hard drives) but we've had a run of bad luck with a purchase on IBM Intellistation CAD machines. Power supplies die, motherboards die, hard drives die. Maybe 10% have failed in the three months since they were purchased. Might have been more... I'm not building the boxes. The ones that die do so in a week or two, usually... mainly hard drive and power supply failures. I've been stripping machines waiting to be sent to the end users to keep my own up and running, which really doesn't seem acceptable. Also, the whole batch was supposed to be identical but the motherboards (and onboard components) seem to vary quite a bit. Not real impressed here with big blue right about now.
My guns have safety mechanisms so the don't put holes in things that I didn't intend them to. I've been shooting since I was five, but I was never allowed to play with capguns, or toy guns of any kind. I was taught that if you don't want to put a hole in something, and whatever might be behind it, don't point a gun at it in the first place. Guns are a tool; it's really no different than picking up a pocketknife when you leave the house once you get past the emotional bullshit the left tries to use to change the subject.
I'm sorry, but I don't consider the government (police force) to be competent at that job. Read the earlier post. A college kid got his head blown off at a pay phone half a block from my house a couple years back... real messy. They say he lived until he got to the hospital, but I don't see how after a few 9mm hollowpoints to the face. Not much left of his head. Have they arrested anyone? No. Have I heard from the detective in two years? No. Do they care? Not that I can tell. It's not their job. My guns have protected my several times... in each case the perp knowing that gun was there kept things from escalating, and each time the cops gave me the gun back after running the serial. And arresting the other guy. Who went to jail. You must live a sheltered life or something. Or maybe you're just young.
I think training (or proof of such training) should be required for a carry permit, but not for ownership. Let's extend this a little... I retire pistols at 50,000 rounds (no, I'm not making that up) and I've worn out more than a few. They still work, they just don't get used as a primary defensive weapon anymore. Now, let's consider the police. They have to qualify every so often, but that requires less than a hundred rounds expended per year. A lot of departments don't provide ammo (due to lack of money) for cops who want to practice more. Even if they do, how many cops want to make time for it? Now, I suppose you have no problem with cops carrying guns. But, have you ever shot a timed combat pistol match against a uniformed officer carrying his issue sidearm? I have. I can hit seven targets with eight rounds in about three seconds, a bit less on a good day. That's not with a speed gun, that's a good quality bone-stock.45 auto (you always carry good quality stock guns so you don't get sued over light triggers and whatnot... cheaper than lawyers) with full power ammo. I've never seen a cop hit all the targets or even finish a round. I've seen more than one go through a high capacity magizine, use the second mag up, then use up the whole fifty round box of ammo that they had in their pocket without hitting ANYTHING. With targets starting at seven yards (think large living room range). Bullets flying all over the place, and nobody was even shooting at them, the stress from a pisol match was enough to make them go haywire. I only know one cop I would trust anywhere near me with a loaded gun that he might actually fire, and he's a SWAT guy who spends his OWN money on ammo to practice. Your "most of the time, a gun fired in defense doesn't hit it's intended target" is total BS. Most of the time the sight of the gun in the would-be victim's hand is enough to end the confrontation. However, I would offer another viewpoint: "Most of the time when a cop fires his weapon, it doesn't hit it's intended target". I intend to keep my guns, and I really wonder about the state of mind of those who would want to take them away or see them as a threat. You're not going to see them, you won't hear them unless you're on the range with me or someone is trying to kill me (or kill you, see where I'm going with this?), and they are not bothering you. Yeah, I burn a lot of ammo and that might seem odd to some of you, but I don't like the idea of having to depend on someone else for my personal safety. I like knowing that I can take care of myself (or at least try) if something happens. One final note: it is not the police department's job (at least in the US) to protect you. They investigate crimes that ALREADY happened so that can try to arrest those responsible. If somebody breaks into your house and kills your wife and kids while you do nothing because you can't defend yourself, YOU CAN'T SUE THE COPS. Defending yourself is your job, not theirs. If a cop did happen to be handy and sprayed your home with random gunfire and killed your wife and kids that way, you might get a settlement though. I'm willing to admit that some communities might have better training budgets than the places I've lived, so if cops read this I'm not saying none of you could hit the broad side of a barn... just that I've only met one who could.
I agree with you completly. I just spent a day debugging an app that was made to work with several programs... a CAD program, a database management program, and an old mainframe. The bug was caused by the way the database software wanted an xml file named. Yeah, this stuff looks slick, until your boss buys it and you have to write the code to make all work together. Fun. It does work, I just hope I don't find more of these "documentation glitches" on Monday.
The search function has gone to hell... why would I want to search a whole hard drive when I know what folder the file is in? I still can't figure that one out. Maybe the "bob" style dog at the bottom explains it.
So, you made one... cool project. I'm usually for full disclosure, but I wouldn't post the CAD files or technical details. I wouldn't want that on my head. True terrorists will just send someone to school to figure out what happens when a bomb explodes from a UAV compared to what happens when it exploded strapped to a pregnant 29 year old woman. And they don't really care, they will will use both. Thing is, you've started on the path of proving a cheapo cruise missile could be done, and you don't really know who bought those plans. Selling those CAD files is wrong, not really caring who uses them is wrong. You might think that this has no effect, but CAD files would have one. Given your plans, without the CAD files, call it six weeks from production desicions to machine shop and in service. With the CAD files, two days, maybe four if everyone called in sick.
What he did is not technically all that complicated. Ok, you aim wrong with the soldering iron, and burn ten bucks in components. Big deal. It's a systems integration problem, other than the pulsejet (which is well documented in it's own right). I really doubt anyone would put a hole in his head since you can just google for the required components.
If you're not an American, you'd be amazed how paranoid our culture is. A couple years ago (pre 9/11) I built a "box" as my photographer friends call it that triggers a strobe from a microphone. It was an el-cheapo way to get pictures of bullets passing through various brittle, inanimate objects. Well, I needed some SCRs and some other stuff from the local radio shack. Here's the problem: the local radio shack had a few SCRs that met the specs I needed, but they had NEVER sold one in 25 years of business. Never. Problem 2: there was a guy in the store who knew something about electronics (freelance alarm guy). This guy was trying to impress the very cute store manager, but he didn't really know what an SCR was... so he told her it was used in "timing cicuits". I actually had to bring the finished product into the store, along with pictures of bullets going through things, before she stopped worring that she was supplying a terrorist or something. And, the friend that I built this thing for left my name off the ads for two of the three shows we did with pictures that were made using this device. Note: gallery openings are a good way to meet art chicks, especially if you live in a city with a famous art school:) Geeks working with artists can meet all kinds of neat people:) Am I worried that that the FBI has my name on a list of "people buying odd electronics"? No. Would I be surprised if such a list existed? No. Am I going back to the rat shack this weekend to buy some resistors and caps to trigger a timed chain of strobes? Yes... but I bought the 555 chips from Edmund Scientific. It's a shame how afraid our culture has become; we are a society of wimps. We're afraid of the terrorists, so we give the government more power. But, we're afraid of the government too. People freak when they get pulled over for speeding. And if you're just curious about something even halfway "techish" bystanders are going to read EVERYTHING into it exept "maybe this guy is just curious and tinkering around". I think this might be the first real political statement I've made on Slashdot, which will probably get modded down but: This country is getting way to paranoid, IMHO. Get a grip, buy a gun and learn to use it if it makes you feel better. Useless for a REAL terrorist problem, but if it makes you feel better go for it. And stop assuming the worst of the "hackers" among you. Just stop.
If you don't think that this is the way things are, go to your local rat shack and buy something odd. Have a friend come in behind you and talk the manager up about timing circuits (they won't know anything; they're just trying to sell cell phones these days so the friend can spew absolute bullshit at this stage). Then watch the managers reaction. That's the problem.
The low cost is the only interesting thing here... but it's really not that interesting since that's only the cost of materials. A LOT of slashdotters could build one of these; it's really NOT that hard. I'ts a guided model airplane running off a homemade pulsejet engine. This guy is after publicity. If I were going to build something like this my website would be www.interestingprojects.com/pulsejetplane/etc. Let the evil people figure out the killer applications for it, attract less attention (hint hint), and not wind up in deep shit with the government. There are already companies (British seem to be the best) that will sell you REALLY small jet engines, and the electronics at this point are all off the shelf. There was a Slashdot article a while back about a guy who built a scale B52 with 8 jet engines... yet the sites referenced never mentioned "payload" or "weapon". On a more serious note, with the electronic components so cheap terrorists may very well try something like this. Hard to stop...
Yeah, I noted the "our". Moore is a left-wing propaganda producer, and that's all. If he cared about the country, or were trying to change things, he would go about trying to do so in a less polarizing manner. He's just trying to sell movie tickets, people. He is not the messiah... but if you think he is, that's fine with me, just PLEASE do the country a favor by not voting. Anyway, Moore can go fuck himself.
I hear you.
I just interviewed a guy who listed Perl, PHP, and Python on his interview. None of those would be needed in the job (mechanical engineering) but I know Georgia Tech doesn't teach Perl either. That means he taught himself, or taught himself with the help of Google and some buddies. The inclination to learn, without someone holding your hand, is priceless. Especially in engineering. We gave him an offer, I hope he takes the job.
About 3 years ago, a manager where I work came asking for computer help. His kids were complaining that they could not access the internet from his home PC. He tried to install an ancient version of Netscape, and it complained that it needed 8MB of ram, and he only had four. This didn't make much sense when he tried to explain the problem, so I told him to bring the computer by my house one day after work and I'd take a look at it. He lugged in an early 486, which sure enough only had 4 megs of ram. I dug around in my "shoebox full of ram", found some matching sticks that would work, and gave him eight. His bios wouldn't detect the eight, and I couldn't find an update for the bios on his decade+ old box. Netscape loaded anyway, go figure. I think he still uses that machine for websurfing, some old DOS golf game, and his wife uses it to print classroom banners with an equally old dot matrix printer. As far as I know he hasn't upgraded. For me it would be a doorstop, for him it's all he needs.
I've still got an old 486 100 MHz laptop, clocked at 100 MHz. It's got an 8" screen, I think (BIG plastic border around the actual LCD). It runs Windows 98 just fine. I haven't used it in a few years, now I feel inspired to see if will still boot. Oh yeah, the bios battery died about five years ago.
Let's avoid using the term "hybrid source". A former head of the company that employs this Brown bozo "coined it". That means he pulled it out of thin air, or his ass, and it could mean anything. Or nothing, which is the case here. By using their buzzwords (which are poorly defined if defined at all) you are playing into their hands.
Hey, I've always liked RedHat. Until recently, my servers ran on RH 7.3 with ReiserFS... no issues other than Nvidia never installing correctly. Went to RH 9.0 till it EOLed. Now I'm looking for something else. And you know what? I think the smart approach is to tread water until the 2.6 problems are worked out and go with another distro when they are.
If you have a fast LAN, I've found putty/psftp/VNC to be a better solution than KVM switches or a desk full of monitors if you just want to edit a config file on a headless server (which is what most of my Linux boxes are). The only people I know who dual boot ARE newbies, and they only dual boot becuase I built their box and gave them Linux hoping that they would play with it. Only one has, but now he's running his father's business website off a LAMP server he built himself.
Slashdot Mirror
Mine has that... and it's a cheap vlink I got at Best Buy about 5 years ago.
How would you map this, though? He isn't real specific on WHAT he wants to map/track to predict the market.
Hear hear! Darwinism at work!
No, those rural people don't need SUVs, they need TRUCKS! Big difference. How many Explorers does Ford sell with winches on the front?
I've always liked Citroens... I almost bought a Citroen SM that needed hydraulic work (yes, I know that the French-language only manuals are a bitch to figure out). I didn't becuase it was this god-awful pale purple color, and I figured I'd run across one painted something normal one day. I've been kicking myself ever since. I should have bought the damn thing, painted it black, and screw the "originality". Live and learn.
No, the main drawback is that they don't handle worth a damn. They won't turn (they can't due to CG problems; if the tires don't skid they roll) and they don't stop too well either (heavy, crap tires). SUVs, in general, are jacked up station wagons that are bought by people who are too stupid or naive to know the difference. Don't believe me? Take a look UNDER a typical so-called SUV some time. See those shock mounts hanging down under the rear axle? See those little vaccuum lines hanging in space that engage the "four-wheel drive"? Stump bait. Never mind that even if a stump or rock doesn't rip that tiny rubber hose off, the typical SUV is two or one wheel drive as soon as it get slippery. Most of them don't come with locking differentials. I haven't seen one marketed to yuppies in a LONG time with manual locking front hubs. These are truly useless vehicles. And no, I'm not an environmentalist; I've never owned a "practical" car in my life. And I have owned trucks. But at least I bought the damn things for a reason (Corners well, fast in a straight line, hauls lots of stuff, I can jump it and not bend some cheesy little unbody, whatever other feature I really need... things like that). Every time I get behind one in traffic and I can't see what color the light is because my windshield is filled with a Suburban tailgate with a soccer ball sticker on it I want to beat somebody with a cluebat.
What's wrong with multipe SOs?
I don't know what the components are for sure (other than Hitachi hard drives) but we've had a run of bad luck with a purchase on IBM Intellistation CAD machines. Power supplies die, motherboards die, hard drives die. Maybe 10% have failed in the three months since they were purchased. Might have been more... I'm not building the boxes. The ones that die do so in a week or two, usually... mainly hard drive and power supply failures. I've been stripping machines waiting to be sent to the end users to keep my own up and running, which really doesn't seem acceptable. Also, the whole batch was supposed to be identical but the motherboards (and onboard components) seem to vary quite a bit. Not real impressed here with big blue right about now.
My guns have safety mechanisms so the don't put holes in things that I didn't intend them to. I've been shooting since I was five, but I was never allowed to play with capguns, or toy guns of any kind. I was taught that if you don't want to put a hole in something, and whatever might be behind it, don't point a gun at it in the first place. Guns are a tool; it's really no different than picking up a pocketknife when you leave the house once you get past the emotional bullshit the left tries to use to change the subject.
I'm sorry, but I don't consider the government (police force) to be competent at that job. Read the earlier post. A college kid got his head blown off at a pay phone half a block from my house a couple years back... real messy. They say he lived until he got to the hospital, but I don't see how after a few 9mm hollowpoints to the face. Not much left of his head. Have they arrested anyone? No. Have I heard from the detective in two years? No. Do they care? Not that I can tell. It's not their job. My guns have protected my several times... in each case the perp knowing that gun was there kept things from escalating, and each time the cops gave me the gun back after running the serial. And arresting the other guy. Who went to jail. You must live a sheltered life or something. Or maybe you're just young.
I think training (or proof of such training) should be required for a carry permit, but not for ownership. Let's extend this a little... I retire pistols at 50,000 rounds (no, I'm not making that up) and I've worn out more than a few. They still work, they just don't get used as a primary defensive weapon anymore. Now, let's consider the police. They have to qualify every so often, but that requires less than a hundred rounds expended per year. A lot of departments don't provide ammo (due to lack of money) for cops who want to practice more. Even if they do, how many cops want to make time for it? Now, I suppose you have no problem with cops carrying guns. But, have you ever shot a timed combat pistol match against a uniformed officer carrying his issue sidearm? I have. I can hit seven targets with eight rounds in about three seconds, a bit less on a good day. That's not with a speed gun, that's a good quality bone-stock .45 auto (you always carry good quality stock guns so you don't get sued over light triggers and whatnot... cheaper than lawyers) with full power ammo. I've never seen a cop hit all the targets or even finish a round. I've seen more than one go through a high capacity magizine, use the second mag up, then use up the whole fifty round box of ammo that they had in their pocket without hitting ANYTHING. With targets starting at seven yards (think large living room range). Bullets flying all over the place, and nobody was even shooting at them, the stress from a pisol match was enough to make them go haywire. I only know one cop I would trust anywhere near me with a loaded gun that he might actually fire, and he's a SWAT guy who spends his OWN money on ammo to practice. Your "most of the time, a gun fired in defense doesn't hit it's intended target" is total BS. Most of the time the sight of the gun in the would-be victim's hand is enough to end the confrontation. However, I would offer another viewpoint: "Most of the time when a cop fires his weapon, it doesn't hit it's intended target". I intend to keep my guns, and I really wonder about the state of mind of those who would want to take them away or see them as a threat. You're not going to see them, you won't hear them unless you're on the range with me or someone is trying to kill me (or kill you, see where I'm going with this?), and they are not bothering you. Yeah, I burn a lot of ammo and that might seem odd to some of you, but I don't like the idea of having to depend on someone else for my personal safety. I like knowing that I can take care of myself (or at least try) if something happens. One final note: it is not the police department's job (at least in the US) to protect you. They investigate crimes that ALREADY happened so that can try to arrest those responsible. If somebody breaks into your house and kills your wife and kids while you do nothing because you can't defend yourself, YOU CAN'T SUE THE COPS. Defending yourself is your job, not theirs. If a cop did happen to be handy and sprayed your home with random gunfire and killed your wife and kids that way, you might get a settlement though. I'm willing to admit that some communities might have better training budgets than the places I've lived, so if cops read this I'm not saying none of you could hit the broad side of a barn... just that I've only met one who could.
I agree with you completly. I just spent a day debugging an app that was made to work with several programs... a CAD program, a database management program, and an old mainframe. The bug was caused by the way the database software wanted an xml file named. Yeah, this stuff looks slick, until your boss buys it and you have to write the code to make all work together. Fun. It does work, I just hope I don't find more of these "documentation glitches" on Monday.
The search function has gone to hell... why would I want to search a whole hard drive when I know what folder the file is in? I still can't figure that one out. Maybe the "bob" style dog at the bottom explains it.
So, you made one... cool project. I'm usually for full disclosure, but I wouldn't post the CAD files or technical details. I wouldn't want that on my head. True terrorists will just send someone to school to figure out what happens when a bomb explodes from a UAV compared to what happens when it exploded strapped to a pregnant 29 year old woman. And they don't really care, they will will use both. Thing is, you've started on the path of proving a cheapo cruise missile could be done, and you don't really know who bought those plans. Selling those CAD files is wrong, not really caring who uses them is wrong. You might think that this has no effect, but CAD files would have one. Given your plans, without the CAD files, call it six weeks from production desicions to machine shop and in service. With the CAD files, two days, maybe four if everyone called in sick.
What he did is not technically all that complicated. Ok, you aim wrong with the soldering iron, and burn ten bucks in components. Big deal. It's a systems integration problem, other than the pulsejet (which is well documented in it's own right). I really doubt anyone would put a hole in his head since you can just google for the required components.
So was this the goal to prove that YOU could do it, or prove how easy it was? Just curious.
If you're not an American, you'd be amazed how paranoid our culture is. A couple years ago (pre 9/11) I built a "box" as my photographer friends call it that triggers a strobe from a microphone. It was an el-cheapo way to get pictures of bullets passing through various brittle, inanimate objects. Well, I needed some SCRs and some other stuff from the local radio shack. Here's the problem: the local radio shack had a few SCRs that met the specs I needed, but they had NEVER sold one in 25 years of business. Never. Problem 2: there was a guy in the store who knew something about electronics (freelance alarm guy). This guy was trying to impress the very cute store manager, but he didn't really know what an SCR was... so he told her it was used in "timing cicuits". I actually had to bring the finished product into the store, along with pictures of bullets going through things, before she stopped worring that she was supplying a terrorist or something. And, the friend that I built this thing for left my name off the ads for two of the three shows we did with pictures that were made using this device. Note: gallery openings are a good way to meet art chicks, especially if you live in a city with a famous art school :) Geeks working with artists can meet all kinds of neat people:) Am I worried that that the FBI has my name on a list of "people buying odd electronics"? No. Would I be surprised if such a list existed? No. Am I going back to the rat shack this weekend to buy some resistors and caps to trigger a timed chain of strobes? Yes... but I bought the 555 chips from Edmund Scientific. It's a shame how afraid our culture has become; we are a society of wimps. We're afraid of the terrorists, so we give the government more power. But, we're afraid of the government too. People freak when they get pulled over for speeding. And if you're just curious about something even halfway "techish" bystanders are going to read EVERYTHING into it exept "maybe this guy is just curious and tinkering around". I think this might be the first real political statement I've made on Slashdot, which will probably get modded down but: This country is getting way to paranoid, IMHO. Get a grip, buy a gun and learn to use it if it makes you feel better. Useless for a REAL terrorist problem, but if it makes you feel better go for it. And stop assuming the worst of the "hackers" among you. Just stop.
If you don't think that this is the way things are, go to your local rat shack and buy something odd. Have a friend come in behind you and talk the manager up about timing circuits (they won't know anything; they're just trying to sell cell phones these days so the friend can spew absolute bullshit at this stage). Then watch the managers reaction. That's the problem.
The low cost is the only interesting thing here... but it's really not that interesting since that's only the cost of materials. A LOT of slashdotters could build one of these; it's really NOT that hard. I'ts a guided model airplane running off a homemade pulsejet engine. This guy is after publicity. If I were going to build something like this my website would be www.interestingprojects.com/pulsejetplane/etc. Let the evil people figure out the killer applications for it, attract less attention (hint hint), and not wind up in deep shit with the government. There are already companies (British seem to be the best) that will sell you REALLY small jet engines, and the electronics at this point are all off the shelf. There was a Slashdot article a while back about a guy who built a scale B52 with 8 jet engines... yet the sites referenced never mentioned "payload" or "weapon". On a more serious note, with the electronic components so cheap terrorists may very well try something like this. Hard to stop...
Yeah, I noted the "our". Moore is a left-wing propaganda producer, and that's all. If he cared about the country, or were trying to change things, he would go about trying to do so in a less polarizing manner. He's just trying to sell movie tickets, people. He is not the messiah... but if you think he is, that's fine with me, just PLEASE do the country a favor by not voting. Anyway, Moore can go fuck himself.
I hear you. I just interviewed a guy who listed Perl, PHP, and Python on his interview. None of those would be needed in the job (mechanical engineering) but I know Georgia Tech doesn't teach Perl either. That means he taught himself, or taught himself with the help of Google and some buddies. The inclination to learn, without someone holding your hand, is priceless. Especially in engineering. We gave him an offer, I hope he takes the job.
About 3 years ago, a manager where I work came asking for computer help. His kids were complaining that they could not access the internet from his home PC. He tried to install an ancient version of Netscape, and it complained that it needed 8MB of ram, and he only had four. This didn't make much sense when he tried to explain the problem, so I told him to bring the computer by my house one day after work and I'd take a look at it. He lugged in an early 486, which sure enough only had 4 megs of ram. I dug around in my "shoebox full of ram", found some matching sticks that would work, and gave him eight. His bios wouldn't detect the eight, and I couldn't find an update for the bios on his decade+ old box. Netscape loaded anyway, go figure. I think he still uses that machine for websurfing, some old DOS golf game, and his wife uses it to print classroom banners with an equally old dot matrix printer. As far as I know he hasn't upgraded. For me it would be a doorstop, for him it's all he needs.
I've still got an old 486 100 MHz laptop, clocked at 100 MHz. It's got an 8" screen, I think (BIG plastic border around the actual LCD). It runs Windows 98 just fine. I haven't used it in a few years, now I feel inspired to see if will still boot. Oh yeah, the bios battery died about five years ago.
Let's avoid using the term "hybrid source". A former head of the company that employs this Brown bozo "coined it". That means he pulled it out of thin air, or his ass, and it could mean anything. Or nothing, which is the case here. By using their buzzwords (which are poorly defined if defined at all) you are playing into their hands.
Hey, I've always liked RedHat. Until recently, my servers ran on RH 7.3 with ReiserFS... no issues other than Nvidia never installing correctly. Went to RH 9.0 till it EOLed. Now I'm looking for something else. And you know what? I think the smart approach is to tread water until the 2.6 problems are worked out and go with another distro when they are.
If you have a fast LAN, I've found putty/psftp/VNC to be a better solution than KVM switches or a desk full of monitors if you just want to edit a config file on a headless server (which is what most of my Linux boxes are). The only people I know who dual boot ARE newbies, and they only dual boot becuase I built their box and gave them Linux hoping that they would play with it. Only one has, but now he's running his father's business website off a LAMP server he built himself.