Get a copy of "Settlers of Catan" and introduce your family to it, by telling them that it's "a little like monopoly but a lot more fun". It's a "gateway game", and once you hook them on it, you can sucker them into other games. It's worked wonders on many of my non-gaming family and friends. To date, I've taken more than a half-dozen non-gamers and turned them into rabid fans. Once you get them into that, try Flux and Gloom next. I've had good luck with both of those as well. At the moment, I can get about 1/2 of my former non-gaming friends and family into a game of Munchkin, and I'm working on the rest.
What rubbish. Next you'll be spouting off some nonsense about how the open water in the arctic circle will drastically increase the rainfall in northern Canada and Russia, thus further promoting the growth of plants once the permafrost melts. I just hope you don't try to relate this to the massive amount of methane currently trapped in the permafrost, created from some organic material or other left over from the last time it was above freezing there.
I put my/home,/media and/games directories on a separate partition. I just had a major upgrade go horribly wrong after I failed to completely RTFM as I am prone to do with alcohol in my system late at night. Rather than muddle through fixing a non-booting system, I just reinstalled the OS. When I booted to the desktop, everything worked. All my settings were there, bookmarks, IM stuff, documents, all the games worked, etc. All I had to do was reinstall my media codecs and video drivers, and I had a full, working system, configured just as I had left off.
Last I knew, on windows, there is no easy way to keep user configs and programs on partitions separate from the OS. Oh, and in addition, when I last wiped and reinstalled the OS on this computer, I just copied/home over from my BU system.....and everything worked. All my configs for games, IM, browsing, KDE settings, etc. With windows, while it is possible to transfer some personal settings, it has never been as simple as on linux. And we all know that most programs require registry tags, meaning that if you reinstall the OS, you either reinstall the programs or have to hack the registry to add them in. Being able to separate programs and user settings from the OS is a very good thing.
..magnetic swipe cards are better than the old way of making a carbon from the raised info on the little plastic cards, but what is the advantage of an RFID credit card? I still need to get the RFID-thing out of my wallet or out of my pocket to use it.
And I have a feeling that this is also use-related. There are a lot more things which demand processor power than GPU power. I bet there are tons more spare cycles on a GPU than on a CPU. I mean really - what maxes out a GPU? I'm guessing just a handful of games, while many other things rely on the CPU quite heavily.
What's funny is that these are the only two distributions that I use. I have Ubuntu on my older machines that I don't boot often, because when I do and want to update them, I don't want to have to let them compile overnight. On my main machine that I use all the time, I have Gentoo because it's fast and stable, and it's on often enough that I can keep it up to date even with moderately long build times. I have yet to find a need for something in between these extremes. Yet I have somewhat of a need for both of them.
I don't know that it even has to be expensive...in the rural NE of America, we have a combination of both the "Canada, count each one by hand" and the "USA, computers will do all our work". We mark paper ballots with a black pen by filling in large squares. Then these are run through a scanner, and deposited into a box. The scanner counts the votes. If there's a problem, the paper ballots can either be re-run through the scanner, or counted by hand.
Every time there's a story like this, I really wonder wtf the problem is. If you have too much shit on your ballot, either have more than one election, or put it on different ballots, using a different color paper for each one. How hard is it really?
In fact, this might be a silver lining - if all major sites need to be machine-readable, they will have to all conform to some unified way of coding web pages....like, I don't know, maybe a standard? If this forces major sites to produce valid, standardized CSS/HTML code, fantastic. It might even mean that the major browser in the world will have to start adhering to standards too. And if this also requires all major sites to offer a fully functional "non-flash" version of their site, even better!
Desiging for accessibility shouldn't be very hard, since there is already a framework to do it. And I agree, a few high-profile cases might turn the tide and make the web better for everyone.
I have to agree whole-heartedly. However, the old adage remains - you get what you pay for. I've dropped 8 hour stretches playing Settlers before, while my attention span for Monolopy is around a third of that. While you're 100% right in the cost scaring casual or non-gamers off, I've watched this game transform those very same people into rabid players. The catch is just getting them to play the first few times.
So for everyone who plays Settlers - bring your copy over and teach someone new how to play. I've got a bunch of people now who request that I come over specifically to play. Most have gone out and gotten their own copies, so they can teach family and friends. As a constructive table-top game accessible to most age ranges, Settlers has far more to offer than most other board games. And I haven't found too many people who feel that the price isn't worth it. Although the German version has nicer pieces...still debating if I want to shell out the extra cash for that. Sometime, perhaps...
Let me second (or third or whatever) Settlers of Catan. I've introduced it to around ten non-gamers (I.E. the occasional board game, no computer/RPG/etc games) and all of them loved it. For real gamers, it's just as fun - while the basic game is not too complex, the expansions add more depth and complexity, so you can customize your game for whoever's playing.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, my recommendation would be to pick up the basic game and play it with everyone you can find. Once you're completely addicted, try the Seafarer's expansion, then step up to Cities and Knights. And while the 5-6 player expansions cost a chunk more, they are completely worth it if you have that many people. I don't generally buy board games, but Settlers has sucked a fairly substantial amount of money out of my pocket in the last 9 months...It's that good....my sisters and my mom go through withdrawal when we don't get together and play often enough.
I have my (unpaid) electric bill here in front of me. I actually live in VT. Over the last year, my peak electric use was last July, when it was smoking hot (a good chunk of the month was above 90) and I was in the middle of writing two 50 page research papers. I spent a good chunk of that month sitting in front of my AC, drinking cold beverages, and using my computer with a 400W power supply. My usage: 575KWh.
I'm in a 2 bedroom apt with a couple of computers and a not-so-efficient bunch of appliances. Even so, I've dumped compact fluorecent bulbs in all the lights I can, and I don't run my computers when I don't need them on. While this is modest usage, cow-power would still cost me (@ an extra 4 cents/KWh) an extra $23 a month.
Now, CVPS is currently looking for a 6.15% rate increase. Granted, they haven't increased rates for five years, but that translates into about a half-cent/KWh increase. If they can hold "cow power" rates steady, or drop them, it could quite possibly become much more economically viable as energy costs continue to increase. That is, if there are any farmers left in VT to provide the cows. Low milk prices combined with high energy costs are driving them out of business...
Well, as someone who's fucking hammered, (introduced to a new tequila today) I have to say, I don't really care. I've been a windows user since 3.1, and a fairly steady gamer since Wolf 3d came out. But for the last 2 years, I've been linux only. Because it works, and I can learn what it's doing and why.
Now, as a slashdotter, that makes me the standard linux fanboy - but wait - my mom had the chance to take an internet course at work, and she chose an intro to linux - why? Because she's sick of how much a pain it is to make MS work. She's sick of dealing with AV and spyware suites. She doesn't understand why she has to reboot after installing digital camera software, and she wants to know why it seems so trouble free and fast when she uses my systems.
When I tell her it's free and available for everyone to work on/dig into/modify, she's amazed. There are at least a few end-users in the world who really are getting tired of the standard MS way of doing business, and who don't care. Hell, my mom doesn't understand why my grandparents went with XP, when Win2k seems to do 95% of the same stuff. She actually complained that their new Dell seems slower and less useful than her Win2k system.
The problem is is that I don't know how many disillusioned people it will take to make a significant enough shift that the major players (MS, Dell) sit up and take notice. But whatever....I have linux and tequilla, so all is well....
Damn. That's pretty sweet compared to my connection. I'm so far out in the boonies that I have to rely upon Ye-Old-Tin-Can-Onna-String DSL for service. The squirrels keep jumping on the lines, and that holds me back to about 400kbps down and about half that up. To put that into terms we all can work with, it took me about 6 hrs to download the 800mb update that was Dapper Drake.
The good news is that it beats my mom's 31kbps dialup connection....that must be why it costs 5x as much...humm....doing the math, I think I'm getting a deal here!
Actually, in the coming years you can thank NCLB for killing science dead, no matter when it started. This federal law requires that we test primarily Math and English. Science gets about 1/3 the coverage as these two subjects, and doesn't even get tested for another year or two.
The school I'm currently working in failed the writing part of our NCLB test two years ago. To fix this problem, this past year they pushed "writing throughout the curriculum" where all classes (Science, Math, etc.) were REQUIRED to have students write structured, five paragraph essays multiple times throughout the school year. Other forms of writing didn't count, because structured essays were the magical way to improve student writing. This meant that while Science could write Science essays, they still had to spend time teaching and working with students on how to write a structured five paragraph essay. That's neither critical thinking nor fun and engaging.
Additionally, for "budget reasons", even though every budget in the last seven years passed with a good margin, they let go a science position. This killed 2 upper level AP courses, and increased the class size for most of the other science classes as we had to assimilate that student load. This didn't matter, as we passed the Writing part of the NCLB test last year. Of course, we failed the Reading Comprehension part, which meant we spent this year doing structured reading activities in our classes.
While reading and writing are very, very valuable skills, it's much harder to teach engaging, fun, and interesting science topics when forced to integrate rigidly structred english content into the Science curriculum. Yet with the NCLB testing regs, it's far more important that we pass the all-critical Reading and Writing tests than ANY other subject.
And on top of the political devaluation of Science, we have a pretty strong economical devaluation of science as well. It's far cheeper to hire scientists in India than in the US. While there are still jobs to be had in the US, it's becomming more and more common to outsource science jobs to other countries, much like we do in IT.
The future for science education in the US does not look particularly bright.
Actually, while the mat-sci is a good chunk of the hard part, what nobody seems to be worrying about is how we get this thing up there. If anyone is more caffinated than I am right now, and wants to do the math, calculate the mass and volume of a, say 5 square cm carbon nanotube bundle that stretches up to GSO. Then compare that to our current lift technologies. I did this 6 months ago, and seem to remember us needing something on the order of 1000 launches of our biggest rockets to get the elevator up into the sky.
Of course, while that's a pretty big investment right there (at what? US$10-20k per pound or more for GSO? I know LEO is much less expensive.) that is still ignoring our need for a massive counterweight, which far exceeds the mass of the climber and cargo. Hell, between getting the initial small cable into GSO attached to a suitable counterweight and getting that counterweight installed, making the nanotubes might actually be the easy part.
They are concentrating on political bribes...why do you think they are busting copyright infringers instead of focusing on organized crime and drug/human trafficing?
Miller has plenty of flavor - a nice, rich, "Beer that's already beem used" flavor. In fact, they've gone as far as to color their beer this way too. And typing this reminds me that it's Friday, and I've been hoarding a bottle of Rogue's Shakespeare Stout....
Actually, I think you need to be from Alberta to say that. If you don't know the group, see if you can find "I am Canadian", "The Toronto Song", and/or "The War of 1812". If you're like most people here, the "System Administrator Song" and "Behind The Scenes @ Microsoft" might interest you as well.
Worse than that, it shouldn't be too hard to display the "that was just a test" message on a more and more frequent basis. As the screeners are already familiar with this notice, they'll probably start to become desensitized to it. Then it becomes pretty easy to slip stuff past them.
This is very, very similiar to the "click ok to continue" problem which plagues Windows, and is really the root cause of many spyware installs. If warnings are too frequent, users treat them as irritations that they need to get around rather than important info that they need to read, understand, and pass judgement on. In this case, all that needs to be done is to up the frequency, something that shouldn't be too hard to do.
But one of the things you did was to educate yourself before diving in too deeply. While I'm not excusing the massive amount of linux snobbery, one of the huge problems with linux is that it's HARD. You actually need to learn shit to use linux. What a lot of people get irritated with is the "linux is hard, someone do this for me" attitude of a lot of new users.
As I gradually learned linux, I didn't get a lot of crap from the linux elite because I asked "Where would be a good place for me to learn how to X", rather than "omg linux doesn't see my sound card someone help me now!" I also did as you did, and I read stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Stuff from boards, man pages, info about other distros, etc.
Linux is different than Windows - you have to learn why and how to do something, not just where to find a checkbox. And you have to understand this, be willing to learn these things, and spend your own personal time learning. At the very minimum, you need to learn enough that you have a vague idea about which distro most closely fits your needs, and start in the right place.
However, to its credit, linux is getting easier and easier every month that passes. The live CDs that most distros have are fantastic, and allow new users to poke around in linux risk-free, without having to even learn how to install an OS. And on the install front, Ubuntu is pretty amazing on standard hardware - hands down the fastest and easiest install I have ever done with any OS.
Linux has come a long, long way in the last 4-5 years I've been playing around with it, and while the learning curve is still steep, distros like Ubuntu are flattening it out rapidly. The snobs are still there, but they are gradually being diluted by the ever-increasing amount of new users. I regularly stumble across people on forums who are new to a distro in the last 6 months/year who have already solved issues I'm currently having. As the learning curve for linux continues to become more gradual, these users will be more and more common. We're fixing the snobbery on two fronts now, and that can only help.
Well, if they actually managed to get Gentoo working on it, it should indeed be "trivial to get other distros working as well." Hell, if they just finished compiling Gentoo, OS/2 was probably still in development when they started....
Well, for an additional fee you'll be able to get a "Webaroo Subscription", which will allow you to connect to the internet and download additional content. I'm sure that this, combined with an optional subscription for real-time content-updates will make this product a smashing success.
Slashdot Mirror
Get a copy of "Settlers of Catan" and introduce your family to it, by telling them that it's "a little like monopoly but a lot more fun". It's a "gateway game", and once you hook them on it, you can sucker them into other games. It's worked wonders on many of my non-gaming family and friends. To date, I've taken more than a half-dozen non-gamers and turned them into rabid fans. Once you get them into that, try Flux and Gloom next. I've had good luck with both of those as well. At the moment, I can get about 1/2 of my former non-gaming friends and family into a game of Munchkin, and I'm working on the rest.
What rubbish. Next you'll be spouting off some nonsense about how the open water in the arctic circle will drastically increase the rainfall in northern Canada and Russia, thus further promoting the growth of plants once the permafrost melts. I just hope you don't try to relate this to the massive amount of methane currently trapped in the permafrost, created from some organic material or other left over from the last time it was above freezing there.
Balance my ass...I put my /home, /media and /games directories on a separate partition. I just had a major upgrade go horribly wrong after I failed to completely RTFM as I am prone to do with alcohol in my system late at night. Rather than muddle through fixing a non-booting system, I just reinstalled the OS. When I booted to the desktop, everything worked. All my settings were there, bookmarks, IM stuff, documents, all the games worked, etc. All I had to do was reinstall my media codecs and video drivers, and I had a full, working system, configured just as I had left off.
Last I knew, on windows, there is no easy way to keep user configs and programs on partitions separate from the OS. Oh, and in addition, when I last wiped and reinstalled the OS on this computer, I just copiedLess moving parts, one would imagine. :)
And I have a feeling that this is also use-related. There are a lot more things which demand processor power than GPU power. I bet there are tons more spare cycles on a GPU than on a CPU. I mean really - what maxes out a GPU? I'm guessing just a handful of games, while many other things rely on the CPU quite heavily.
What's funny is that these are the only two distributions that I use. I have Ubuntu on my older machines that I don't boot often, because when I do and want to update them, I don't want to have to let them compile overnight. On my main machine that I use all the time, I have Gentoo because it's fast and stable, and it's on often enough that I can keep it up to date even with moderately long build times. I have yet to find a need for something in between these extremes. Yet I have somewhat of a need for both of them.
I don't know that it even has to be expensive...in the rural NE of America, we have a combination of both the "Canada, count each one by hand" and the "USA, computers will do all our work". We mark paper ballots with a black pen by filling in large squares. Then these are run through a scanner, and deposited into a box. The scanner counts the votes. If there's a problem, the paper ballots can either be re-run through the scanner, or counted by hand.
Every time there's a story like this, I really wonder wtf the problem is. If you have too much shit on your ballot, either have more than one election, or put it on different ballots, using a different color paper for each one. How hard is it really?
In fact, this might be a silver lining - if all major sites need to be machine-readable, they will have to all conform to some unified way of coding web pages....like, I don't know, maybe a standard? If this forces major sites to produce valid, standardized CSS/HTML code, fantastic. It might even mean that the major browser in the world will have to start adhering to standards too. And if this also requires all major sites to offer a fully functional "non-flash" version of their site, even better!
Desiging for accessibility shouldn't be very hard, since there is already a framework to do it. And I agree, a few high-profile cases might turn the tide and make the web better for everyone.
Don't send a card - point them to the System Administrator Song instead. They'll like it better, I promise.
I have to agree whole-heartedly. However, the old adage remains - you get what you pay for. I've dropped 8 hour stretches playing Settlers before, while my attention span for Monolopy is around a third of that. While you're 100% right in the cost scaring casual or non-gamers off, I've watched this game transform those very same people into rabid players. The catch is just getting them to play the first few times.
So for everyone who plays Settlers - bring your copy over and teach someone new how to play. I've got a bunch of people now who request that I come over specifically to play. Most have gone out and gotten their own copies, so they can teach family and friends. As a constructive table-top game accessible to most age ranges, Settlers has far more to offer than most other board games. And I haven't found too many people who feel that the price isn't worth it. Although the German version has nicer pieces...still debating if I want to shell out the extra cash for that. Sometime, perhaps...
Let me second (or third or whatever) Settlers of Catan. I've introduced it to around ten non-gamers (I.E. the occasional board game, no computer/RPG/etc games) and all of them loved it. For real gamers, it's just as fun - while the basic game is not too complex, the expansions add more depth and complexity, so you can customize your game for whoever's playing.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, my recommendation would be to pick up the basic game and play it with everyone you can find. Once you're completely addicted, try the Seafarer's expansion, then step up to Cities and Knights. And while the 5-6 player expansions cost a chunk more, they are completely worth it if you have that many people. I don't generally buy board games, but Settlers has sucked a fairly substantial amount of money out of my pocket in the last 9 months...It's that good....my sisters and my mom go through withdrawal when we don't get together and play often enough.
I have my (unpaid) electric bill here in front of me. I actually live in VT. Over the last year, my peak electric use was last July, when it was smoking hot (a good chunk of the month was above 90) and I was in the middle of writing two 50 page research papers. I spent a good chunk of that month sitting in front of my AC, drinking cold beverages, and using my computer with a 400W power supply. My usage: 575KWh.
I'm in a 2 bedroom apt with a couple of computers and a not-so-efficient bunch of appliances. Even so, I've dumped compact fluorecent bulbs in all the lights I can, and I don't run my computers when I don't need them on. While this is modest usage, cow-power would still cost me (@ an extra 4 cents/KWh) an extra $23 a month.
Now, CVPS is currently looking for a 6.15% rate increase. Granted, they haven't increased rates for five years, but that translates into about a half-cent/KWh increase. If they can hold "cow power" rates steady, or drop them, it could quite possibly become much more economically viable as energy costs continue to increase. That is, if there are any farmers left in VT to provide the cows. Low milk prices combined with high energy costs are driving them out of business...
Well, as someone who's fucking hammered, (introduced to a new tequila today) I have to say, I don't really care. I've been a windows user since 3.1, and a fairly steady gamer since Wolf 3d came out. But for the last 2 years, I've been linux only. Because it works, and I can learn what it's doing and why.
Now, as a slashdotter, that makes me the standard linux fanboy - but wait - my mom had the chance to take an internet course at work, and she chose an intro to linux - why? Because she's sick of how much a pain it is to make MS work. She's sick of dealing with AV and spyware suites. She doesn't understand why she has to reboot after installing digital camera software, and she wants to know why it seems so trouble free and fast when she uses my systems.
When I tell her it's free and available for everyone to work on/dig into/modify, she's amazed. There are at least a few end-users in the world who really are getting tired of the standard MS way of doing business, and who don't care. Hell, my mom doesn't understand why my grandparents went with XP, when Win2k seems to do 95% of the same stuff. She actually complained that their new Dell seems slower and less useful than her Win2k system.
The problem is is that I don't know how many disillusioned people it will take to make a significant enough shift that the major players (MS, Dell) sit up and take notice. But whatever....I have linux and tequilla, so all is well....
Actually, I thought it was bacause they were OOTS readers, due to the content of the most recent comic.....
t ?SK=325
http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscrip
Damn. That's pretty sweet compared to my connection. I'm so far out in the boonies that I have to rely upon Ye-Old-Tin-Can-Onna-String DSL for service. The squirrels keep jumping on the lines, and that holds me back to about 400kbps down and about half that up. To put that into terms we all can work with, it took me about 6 hrs to download the 800mb update that was Dapper Drake.
The good news is that it beats my mom's 31kbps dialup connection....that must be why it costs 5x as much...humm....doing the math, I think I'm getting a deal here!
Well, they'd have to include a small pan to collect all the bits that fall out when you do that. Otherwise, I think it's a great idea.
Actually, in the coming years you can thank NCLB for killing science dead, no matter when it started. This federal law requires that we test primarily Math and English. Science gets about 1/3 the coverage as these two subjects, and doesn't even get tested for another year or two.
The school I'm currently working in failed the writing part of our NCLB test two years ago. To fix this problem, this past year they pushed "writing throughout the curriculum" where all classes (Science, Math, etc.) were REQUIRED to have students write structured, five paragraph essays multiple times throughout the school year. Other forms of writing didn't count, because structured essays were the magical way to improve student writing. This meant that while Science could write Science essays, they still had to spend time teaching and working with students on how to write a structured five paragraph essay. That's neither critical thinking nor fun and engaging.
Additionally, for "budget reasons", even though every budget in the last seven years passed with a good margin, they let go a science position. This killed 2 upper level AP courses, and increased the class size for most of the other science classes as we had to assimilate that student load. This didn't matter, as we passed the Writing part of the NCLB test last year. Of course, we failed the Reading Comprehension part, which meant we spent this year doing structured reading activities in our classes.
While reading and writing are very, very valuable skills, it's much harder to teach engaging, fun, and interesting science topics when forced to integrate rigidly structred english content into the Science curriculum. Yet with the NCLB testing regs, it's far more important that we pass the all-critical Reading and Writing tests than ANY other subject.
And on top of the political devaluation of Science, we have a pretty strong economical devaluation of science as well. It's far cheeper to hire scientists in India than in the US. While there are still jobs to be had in the US, it's becomming more and more common to outsource science jobs to other countries, much like we do in IT.
The future for science education in the US does not look particularly bright.
Actually, while the mat-sci is a good chunk of the hard part, what nobody seems to be worrying about is how we get this thing up there. If anyone is more caffinated than I am right now, and wants to do the math, calculate the mass and volume of a, say 5 square cm carbon nanotube bundle that stretches up to GSO. Then compare that to our current lift technologies. I did this 6 months ago, and seem to remember us needing something on the order of 1000 launches of our biggest rockets to get the elevator up into the sky.
Of course, while that's a pretty big investment right there (at what? US$10-20k per pound or more for GSO? I know LEO is much less expensive.) that is still ignoring our need for a massive counterweight, which far exceeds the mass of the climber and cargo. Hell, between getting the initial small cable into GSO attached to a suitable counterweight and getting that counterweight installed, making the nanotubes might actually be the easy part.
They are concentrating on political bribes...why do you think they are busting copyright infringers instead of focusing on organized crime and drug/human trafficing?
Miller has plenty of flavor - a nice, rich, "Beer that's already beem used" flavor. In fact, they've gone as far as to color their beer this way too. And typing this reminds me that it's Friday, and I've been hoarding a bottle of Rogue's Shakespeare Stout....
Actually, I think you need to be from Alberta to say that. If you don't know the group, see if you can find "I am Canadian", "The Toronto Song", and/or "The War of 1812". If you're like most people here, the "System Administrator Song" and "Behind The Scenes @ Microsoft" might interest you as well.
Worse than that, it shouldn't be too hard to display the "that was just a test" message on a more and more frequent basis. As the screeners are already familiar with this notice, they'll probably start to become desensitized to it. Then it becomes pretty easy to slip stuff past them.
This is very, very similiar to the "click ok to continue" problem which plagues Windows, and is really the root cause of many spyware installs. If warnings are too frequent, users treat them as irritations that they need to get around rather than important info that they need to read, understand, and pass judgement on. In this case, all that needs to be done is to up the frequency, something that shouldn't be too hard to do.
But one of the things you did was to educate yourself before diving in too deeply. While I'm not excusing the massive amount of linux snobbery, one of the huge problems with linux is that it's HARD. You actually need to learn shit to use linux. What a lot of people get irritated with is the "linux is hard, someone do this for me" attitude of a lot of new users.
As I gradually learned linux, I didn't get a lot of crap from the linux elite because I asked "Where would be a good place for me to learn how to X", rather than "omg linux doesn't see my sound card someone help me now!" I also did as you did, and I read stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Stuff from boards, man pages, info about other distros, etc.
Linux is different than Windows - you have to learn why and how to do something, not just where to find a checkbox. And you have to understand this, be willing to learn these things, and spend your own personal time learning. At the very minimum, you need to learn enough that you have a vague idea about which distro most closely fits your needs, and start in the right place.
However, to its credit, linux is getting easier and easier every month that passes. The live CDs that most distros have are fantastic, and allow new users to poke around in linux risk-free, without having to even learn how to install an OS. And on the install front, Ubuntu is pretty amazing on standard hardware - hands down the fastest and easiest install I have ever done with any OS.
Linux has come a long, long way in the last 4-5 years I've been playing around with it, and while the learning curve is still steep, distros like Ubuntu are flattening it out rapidly. The snobs are still there, but they are gradually being diluted by the ever-increasing amount of new users. I regularly stumble across people on forums who are new to a distro in the last 6 months/year who have already solved issues I'm currently having. As the learning curve for linux continues to become more gradual, these users will be more and more common. We're fixing the snobbery on two fronts now, and that can only help.
Well, if they actually managed to get Gentoo working on it, it should indeed be "trivial to get other distros working as well." Hell, if they just finished compiling Gentoo, OS/2 was probably still in development when they started....
Well, for an additional fee you'll be able to get a "Webaroo Subscription", which will allow you to connect to the internet and download additional content. I'm sure that this, combined with an optional subscription for real-time content-updates will make this product a smashing success.