A lot of _comments_ on social networking sites could be replaced with email, however social networking sites have become something of a venue to demonstrate how popular you are - a CV of your social life of sorts. As for private messages on sites like Facebook, I presume that they're so popular because a lot of young people are more in the habit of checking their favourite sites than their emails (I know that I'm more likely to get a response to a message if I send it via bebo or facebook than by email).
Maybe it's that peoples' inboxes contain mostly confirmations and other detritus that's driving people to places where they're only going to receive correspondence from real people. Or maybe it's the "OMG Ponies!!!" effect of being able to customise something to reflect the façade you'd like to exhibit.
I disagree, certainly in terms of marketing it is more well known in "non-Linux" circles, however that is not its only appeal. When I first install a distro certain things strike me, mainly in Ubuntu's case, I'm comforted by the graphical installer and on the whole pretty friendly looking GUI. Also things such as it fitting onto one CD makes it attractive because I can download it reasonably quickly and I don't have to worry about switching over x CDs.
Over the past few years, it must be coming up towards 3 years now, I've been periodically trying Linux partly out of general curiosity, partly because of the cost benefit and partly because I've always seen that (especially for something that is free) it has massive potential. However until around last November (Nov '06), I've never continuously used it or if I've tried then I've ended up installing Windows XP over the top of it after a couple of days. Then I tried either Dapper or Edgy, I can't remember which, probably Dapper and I was much more pleasantly surprised than I was with any other try. Previously I'd tried Fedora Core 2 (though I was pleased with it, it didn't really work all that well out of the box and I never got onto the internet with it - something that kills an OS for me), Mandrake 2005 - which just generally got on my nerves because it just confused the hell out of me and still didn't work properly out of the box (for my needs). I'd also tried some other ones but they'd generally not even installed properly or scared me as I tried to install them.
Over those 3 years though my skills have changed, now I proficiently program in Python and PHP, have used Cygwin on windows and a remote Linux shell. So through the aforementioned skills/experiences, I've certainly got more used to not using a GUI and my overall understanding has greatly increased. However I do think that although that has helped me transition to Ubuntu, Ubuntu has features that make it more appealing than other distributions. It just seems to work (especially in Feisty with things like the Restricted Drivers Manager). I love the packaging in Ubuntu it (again) just seems to work and be relatively trivial, but please note that my experience with other package managers (other than apt + dpkg) and other repositories is extremely limited. The community around Ubuntu seems to be more... accessible. In a lot of case Ubuntu is better than Windows XP (in my opinion), however there are still a couple of things that still stop me from using Ubuntu totally exclusively:
-No iTMS or similar service
-I need to use certain programs like Circuit Wizard for school and Nokia PC Suite to backup my phone (WinXP only, doesn't work OTB/maybe at all in WINE)
-Occasionally using hardware that doesn't work under Ubuntu.
Scientists have revealed that it has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago... so the next is overdue.
Just consider this for a moment, if it's overdue by 40 000 years ago, then what stopped it erupting when it was 20 000 years overdue? If anything this doesn't make it more likely to happen this century than the 400 others it's missed. That's a crap proof, don't use it again!
I can certainly see where you're coming from. I expect that putting advertising on the English Wikipedia would probably come close to covering the funding for all the Wikipedias, and if not add adverts to the other top 5 Wikipedias (German, French, Polish and Japanese), if they still want more money then just extend it to the other major languages. The server costs for the minority languages would be minimal and I tihnk could easily be carried through on advertising revenue from the other Wikipedias and/or donations. Remember if you don't like it then you can always fork it.
Slashdot ran a story on how the Chinese Wikipedia because so popular so quickly, now maybe I'm stating what some people must believe to be obvious, but maybe the Chinese gov't saw it as a treat to their power. If you think about it something so community based and free (as in speech not beer) could if it took off in a big way might give the Chinese a taste for unrestricted information, then if the Chinese gov't chose to censor it again then there might be protests etcetera and generally it might reduce their dominative power.
If I understand the licensing agreement correctly then you can't distribute them. From the License page:
You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, software, products or services obtained from the Services.
This kind of thing gets on my nerves. If certain children and teens actually thought about what they put on their profiles then this wouldn't be necessary, however because parents generally don't understand the internet because they don't use it enough (especially the "social sites"). Schools should educate on the dangers of internet grooming, if then people thought about it then that would greatly reduce problems. The govt. should be aiming at the root cause of the problem paedophiles for one need to be come down on harder and rather than spending billions on plunging Iraq into virtual civil war they could spend the money on hiring people to monitor places like Myspace and chat rooms and reduce grooming. Another "cause" of the problem as I said is lack of education , if parents even tried to talk to their kids about it then that would help. One large part of the problem is lack of common sense, if you put your address on the internet then people will know your address (duh), likewise if you put your phone number on the net then people will undoubtedly call you (which happened to someone in my school - they got called at 4 in the morning by some Japanese guy).
I am 14 and I use the internet all of the time, chat rooms forums, not Myspace (spits) and I blog etc.. The difference is that unlike some idiots I don't give out enough of my personal details. I actually think as if I was a so called predator when I put details on the net, I think about how much of my life someone can work out by them, I try to think like one for that moment as a safety precaution.
This I feel is another reason why net neutrality is important, while US is only imposing it on schools and libraries they have the potential to enforce or at least pressure net-wide regulations. Also most politicians don't actually know what they are blocking first hand not to mention only do it to win votes, if they do something that would threaten them getting in next election they wont (like if they banned 4x4 SUVs to benefit the environment then it would benefit the planet but the 4x4 drivers wouldn't vote them in next time and so no government is prepared to take drastic action even to benefit the people.)
I am 14 and from the UK and I do program a bit, I know PHP and some Python, not to mention HTML, CSS and Javascript. Mainly though this was because I was interested in being able to make the things that I used, I think that when you are young and I mean really young, you want to know how everything works, unfortunately this seems to get drummed out of people as they get older at the moment. The thing that really got me into programming wasthe apparent ease you could make a very simple program, I learnt some basic from a book but at the time I didn't have a computer that would natively support it (easily). This brief brush with basic left me with a taste in my mouth, then it lied dormant for some years where I only learnt HTML, then as I changed schools I met someone who was pretty good at programming and a *NIX geek, he introduced my to what some other languages were and he supported me setting everything up and learning. Then it was really a sense of competition that drove me on from there on.
Also schools don't make it easy to learn to program, for example the ICT GCSE that I just finished the coursework for was heavily weighted to the suggested M$ products, it was harder in terms of getting the mark by programming in comparison to using Excel etc, even if both the solutions gave the same result, and in fact the programmed one was more user friendly. On top of this our school teaches people who don't know HTML the pre-standards HTML, it is horrible and messy, no css, non-compliant and in some cases completely wrong. We can only take Computing at A level not at gcse and I think that some people would go for it if it was GCSE because most people have at least a slight desire to program. Unfortunately they only teach us Visual Basic at A level computing.
I was also thinking that even if we are going to have this contact info space (all the better like you suggest) then we need a unified standard in which to put it in that can be read by all browsers, bots, mail clients, etc; this could be something standardised like an XML based solution like this:......
Yes I think them building this in is a good thing, there is an extra (but slim) chance you can get an update even if your computer is being raped by viruses (not viri!!!), it hardly gives them an advantage for example I didn't even know about the hosts file until 5 minutes ago so would it have effected me? No. They should also built in the addresses of certain common anti virus programs and other general anti malware update sites.
In the Arabic world has Microsoft got the same dominance with standard computer users, for example in England (at least the South) almost everyone (who uses the internet) uses MSN Messenger to chat, not much Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, IRC etc? Not just MSN Messenger, Office and IE etc.
you could get broadband but pay as you go, or for how much you download. That would really bring in alot of the people who think it is too expensive and wouldn't use enough, old people in general don't use the internet that much, but they would seriously benefit while downloading thier image ladden emails from relatives. OT: But why do old people tend not to scale down images they send if they are on dial up?
I do agree pjbgravely, Google does give back to the community (monetarily and code contributions) and anyway look at all of the webhosts that use Apache and Linux that don't give back. However there is very little point of Google pointing this to Linux rather than say develop one for Windows because generally the average Linux user is pretty tech savvy and can do it in two flicks on the gimp. I feel that because of this it is part of a larger move to cause a mass migration from Windows, for example rumours have been about Google OS being based on Ubuntu if it ever comes out so it will look pretty bad if Google's own programs won't work on thier own/sponsered OS. This also links back to a comment I read somewhere that said something like "OpenOffice.org will become a major opponent in the office suite markey if companies like Google and IBM think it is the cheapest way to kill Microsoft", I think this is relevant here, the chances that Linux will ever really seriously stop being a hobbiest or techie system then it will be because a large company will back it because it is the best way to eat into Microsoft's market.
I was just thinking that del.icio.us could be used to extend this service with the tagging and all. Social traffic policing. Where democracy meets dangerous drivers.
To be honest whatever super features (and plain features) it gives IE 7 it still cannot out do Firefox. This is because Mozilla has a thriving developer community and is not bound by only adding features in major releases. For example if they add say photo rss (an example, a pretty crap exaqmple but it will do) then a user would make an extension almost certainly more secure and flashy for firefox. Then on top of that it is likely to be incorporated into the next "semi-major" version of Firefox or distributed as standard if a load of people use it espically those who do not install extensions because they don't know how or whatever.
This is why we need to act now. Even if we don't do much and we only reduce the our CO2 emissions by an extra 1% (for illustrative purposes not actual figure) by doing easy things like turning our TVs off at the wall rather than putting them on standby, walking to places near our houses, not leaving our computers on all day while we are not at home etc. Then at least we will be giving our selves more of a chance to sort out this mess.
I am angry that countries like America, Austraila and China will not sign up to the Kyoto treaty as they are some of the largest contributers to CO2 emissions, and the other parts of the world that are doing thier bit to reduce emissions are then getting short changed because the good that they are doing is being made almost pointless because places like America are still polluting lots and the whole world will suffer not just America. The world is a "team game" we need to work together on this one. America (and the others) should stop thinking about thier oil centric economies and think about the future of our planet.
I am also irritated and scared that the American electorate keeps voting Bush in, he really is a moron, how can the American people trust such an idiot to run thier country. It would be much better to bring Clinton back in my view.
Maybe all of these companies should be a little more careful about jumping on the wifi bandwagon. Although wifi is now quite mature what would happen to all these wifi solutions if say it was found to cause cancer, loss of hair or whatever, well the answers to that would be there would be a mad rush to go back to wires for the well informed and then it would slowly start a rewiring revolution. I'm not saying that will happen but if it did it would be devastating.
Also may it be worth companies investing phones that no replace our landlines rather than mobiles, to be honest mobiles are generally used for business of for calls that have to be made. Whereas landlines I find are more for calling relatives and friends in the evening at home. Business landlines I believe have the same kind of usage as mobiles. The other benefit to making a land line replacement is that they tend to left on always as they are connected to the mains, so if you coupled that with and answering machine, and a small LCD screen for quickly texting or sending email then they would probably sell like hotcakes.
I beg to differ as far as my history lessons have taught me Slovenia is in the Baltics, Slovenia is near Serbia, Boznia, Montenegro and some others. Correct me if I am wrong.
My friend is a bit of a linux fanatic and every now and then I get tempted by linux, so I try it, normally i don't keep it for more than a few weeks because I either don't use it enough and/or (and sometimes as a knock on effect against me keeping linux) it doesn't support a pretty crucial bit of my hardware. I don't like MS that much but in my circumstances I have to use it because I use programs that linux can not run and I need to use things on windows. I am very exited about Ubuntu as I think that will be quite good for me. Last time I tried ubuntu it wrecked my boot loader amoungst other stuffs. Like you I am hoping that by the time I need to upgrade from XP and or to another computer there will be a linux distribution which can sort out my needs. I use alot of open source programs which I hope will make my transition to linux easier but I still need windows and I wont settle for anything less that what I have now. With software and hardware (etc) i'm not one of these people who uses certain software over others because of who makes it. For example if MS makes a revolutionary program (very unlikely) im not going to be one of these people who say no, its not open, if there are no other F/OSS alternatives then I will buy it if i have the money, however if there is an alternative that can satisfy my needs and is free or cheap then I will get that instead.
Like with anything, chemical pest control has its limits. I am currently reading a book about permaculture. Basically permaculture is a way of life, a way of life that premotes working with and/or in harmony with nature to create a sustainable life style that does not damage the planet or its inhabbitants. One of the things it suggests is that crop growers incorporate echosystems into thier cultivation scemes so for example plant root vegetables with flowers and fungi and then plant fruit tree in between. Doing that would increase in lots of insects and bacteria (etc) which help each other by making the leaves dropped by the trees into good soil for the root vegetables and so on, thus giving each other the benefit of what they "consider" as "waste". It also encourages in natural predators like ladybirds against aphids. By encouraging say ladybirds you no longer need to use up so much pesticide and through that the pest is less likely to gain an immunity again that particular defense against it. Also it takes organisms longer to adapt against natural predators than chemical, not to mention that predators also adapt to keep the prey within thier grasp.
I noticed something with opera about privacy. Actually two things. First of all it caches favicons even when you tell it not to cache anythign and delete everything when you exit the browser. The other is that again even if you tell it not to cache anything, store addresses, whatever, it still keeps the link which you can see because links show as visited on google and other sites that don't explicitly specify the colour of the hyperlink.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of _comments_ on social networking sites could be replaced with email, however social networking sites have become something of a venue to demonstrate how popular you are - a CV of your social life of sorts. As for private messages on sites like Facebook, I presume that they're so popular because a lot of young people are more in the habit of checking their favourite sites than their emails (I know that I'm more likely to get a response to a message if I send it via bebo or facebook than by email). Maybe it's that peoples' inboxes contain mostly confirmations and other detritus that's driving people to places where they're only going to receive correspondence from real people. Or maybe it's the "OMG Ponies!!!" effect of being able to customise something to reflect the façade you'd like to exhibit.
I disagree, certainly in terms of marketing it is more well known in "non-Linux" circles, however that is not its only appeal. When I first install a distro certain things strike me, mainly in Ubuntu's case, I'm comforted by the graphical installer and on the whole pretty friendly looking GUI. Also things such as it fitting onto one CD makes it attractive because I can download it reasonably quickly and I don't have to worry about switching over x CDs. Over the past few years, it must be coming up towards 3 years now, I've been periodically trying Linux partly out of general curiosity, partly because of the cost benefit and partly because I've always seen that (especially for something that is free) it has massive potential. However until around last November (Nov '06), I've never continuously used it or if I've tried then I've ended up installing Windows XP over the top of it after a couple of days. Then I tried either Dapper or Edgy, I can't remember which, probably Dapper and I was much more pleasantly surprised than I was with any other try. Previously I'd tried Fedora Core 2 (though I was pleased with it, it didn't really work all that well out of the box and I never got onto the internet with it - something that kills an OS for me), Mandrake 2005 - which just generally got on my nerves because it just confused the hell out of me and still didn't work properly out of the box (for my needs). I'd also tried some other ones but they'd generally not even installed properly or scared me as I tried to install them. Over those 3 years though my skills have changed, now I proficiently program in Python and PHP, have used Cygwin on windows and a remote Linux shell. So through the aforementioned skills/experiences, I've certainly got more used to not using a GUI and my overall understanding has greatly increased. However I do think that although that has helped me transition to Ubuntu, Ubuntu has features that make it more appealing than other distributions. It just seems to work (especially in Feisty with things like the Restricted Drivers Manager). I love the packaging in Ubuntu it (again) just seems to work and be relatively trivial, but please note that my experience with other package managers (other than apt + dpkg) and other repositories is extremely limited. The community around Ubuntu seems to be more ... accessible. In a lot of case Ubuntu is better than Windows XP (in my opinion), however there are still a couple of things that still stop me from using Ubuntu totally exclusively:
-No iTMS or similar service
-I need to use certain programs like Circuit Wizard for school and Nokia PC Suite to backup my phone (WinXP only, doesn't work OTB/maybe at all in WINE)
-Occasionally using hardware that doesn't work under Ubuntu.
Scientists have revealed that it has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago... so the next is overdue. Just consider this for a moment, if it's overdue by 40 000 years ago, then what stopped it erupting when it was 20 000 years overdue? If anything this doesn't make it more likely to happen this century than the 400 others it's missed. That's a crap proof, don't use it again!
It only applies to the Channel Islands now as far as I know, it stopped including Normandy centuries ago.
I can certainly see where you're coming from. I expect that putting advertising on the English Wikipedia would probably come close to covering the funding for all the Wikipedias, and if not add adverts to the other top 5 Wikipedias (German, French, Polish and Japanese), if they still want more money then just extend it to the other major languages. The server costs for the minority languages would be minimal and I tihnk could easily be carried through on advertising revenue from the other Wikipedias and/or donations. Remember if you don't like it then you can always fork it.
Slashdot ran a story on how the Chinese Wikipedia because so popular so quickly, now maybe I'm stating what some people must believe to be obvious, but maybe the Chinese gov't saw it as a treat to their power. If you think about it something so community based and free (as in speech not beer) could if it took off in a big way might give the Chinese a taste for unrestricted information, then if the Chinese gov't chose to censor it again then there might be protests etcetera and generally it might reduce their dominative power.
When I was using Opera 9 a little while ago, I found that it worked without too many problems if Writely thought it was Firefox.
This kind of thing gets on my nerves. If certain children and teens actually thought about what they put on their profiles then this wouldn't be necessary, however because parents generally don't understand the internet because they don't use it enough (especially the "social sites"). Schools should educate on the dangers of internet grooming, if then people thought about it then that would greatly reduce problems. The govt. should be aiming at the root cause of the problem paedophiles for one need to be come down on harder and rather than spending billions on plunging Iraq into virtual civil war they could spend the money on hiring people to monitor places like Myspace and chat rooms and reduce grooming. Another "cause" of the problem as I said is lack of education , if parents even tried to talk to their kids about it then that would help. One large part of the problem is lack of common sense, if you put your address on the internet then people will know your address (duh), likewise if you put your phone number on the net then people will undoubtedly call you (which happened to someone in my school - they got called at 4 in the morning by some Japanese guy). I am 14 and I use the internet all of the time, chat rooms forums, not Myspace (spits) and I blog etc.. The difference is that unlike some idiots I don't give out enough of my personal details. I actually think as if I was a so called predator when I put details on the net, I think about how much of my life someone can work out by them, I try to think like one for that moment as a safety precaution. This I feel is another reason why net neutrality is important, while US is only imposing it on schools and libraries they have the potential to enforce or at least pressure net-wide regulations. Also most politicians don't actually know what they are blocking first hand not to mention only do it to win votes, if they do something that would threaten them getting in next election they wont (like if they banned 4x4 SUVs to benefit the environment then it would benefit the planet but the 4x4 drivers wouldn't vote them in next time and so no government is prepared to take drastic action even to benefit the people.)
I am 14 and from the UK and I do program a bit, I know PHP and some Python, not to mention HTML, CSS and Javascript. Mainly though this was because I was interested in being able to make the things that I used, I think that when you are young and I mean really young, you want to know how everything works, unfortunately this seems to get drummed out of people as they get older at the moment. The thing that really got me into programming wasthe apparent ease you could make a very simple program, I learnt some basic from a book but at the time I didn't have a computer that would natively support it (easily). This brief brush with basic left me with a taste in my mouth, then it lied dormant for some years where I only learnt HTML, then as I changed schools I met someone who was pretty good at programming and a *NIX geek, he introduced my to what some other languages were and he supported me setting everything up and learning. Then it was really a sense of competition that drove me on from there on. Also schools don't make it easy to learn to program, for example the ICT GCSE that I just finished the coursework for was heavily weighted to the suggested M$ products, it was harder in terms of getting the mark by programming in comparison to using Excel etc, even if both the solutions gave the same result, and in fact the programmed one was more user friendly. On top of this our school teaches people who don't know HTML the pre-standards HTML, it is horrible and messy, no css, non-compliant and in some cases completely wrong. We can only take Computing at A level not at gcse and I think that some people would go for it if it was GCSE because most people have at least a slight desire to program. Unfortunately they only teach us Visual Basic at A level computing.
I was also thinking that even if we are going to have this contact info space (all the better like you suggest) then we need a unified standard in which to put it in that can be read by all browsers, bots, mail clients, etc; this could be something standardised like an XML based solution like this: ... ...
Yes I think them building this in is a good thing, there is an extra (but slim) chance you can get an update even if your computer is being raped by viruses (not viri!!!), it hardly gives them an advantage for example I didn't even know about the hosts file until 5 minutes ago so would it have effected me? No. They should also built in the addresses of certain common anti virus programs and other general anti malware update sites.
I know this is April Fools day but since when did fiction made up on the spot become imformative?
In the Arabic world has Microsoft got the same dominance with standard computer users, for example in England (at least the South) almost everyone (who uses the internet) uses MSN Messenger to chat, not much Yahoo, AIM, Jabber, IRC etc? Not just MSN Messenger, Office and IE etc.
you could get broadband but pay as you go, or for how much you download. That would really bring in alot of the people who think it is too expensive and wouldn't use enough, old people in general don't use the internet that much, but they would seriously benefit while downloading thier image ladden emails from relatives. OT: But why do old people tend not to scale down images they send if they are on dial up?
I do agree pjbgravely, Google does give back to the community (monetarily and code contributions) and anyway look at all of the webhosts that use Apache and Linux that don't give back. However there is very little point of Google pointing this to Linux rather than say develop one for Windows because generally the average Linux user is pretty tech savvy and can do it in two flicks on the gimp. I feel that because of this it is part of a larger move to cause a mass migration from Windows, for example rumours have been about Google OS being based on Ubuntu if it ever comes out so it will look pretty bad if Google's own programs won't work on thier own/sponsered OS. This also links back to a comment I read somewhere that said something like "OpenOffice.org will become a major opponent in the office suite markey if companies like Google and IBM think it is the cheapest way to kill Microsoft", I think this is relevant here, the chances that Linux will ever really seriously stop being a hobbiest or techie system then it will be because a large company will back it because it is the best way to eat into Microsoft's market.
I was just thinking that del.icio.us could be used to extend this service with the tagging and all. Social traffic policing. Where democracy meets dangerous drivers.
To be honest whatever super features (and plain features) it gives IE 7 it still cannot out do Firefox. This is because Mozilla has a thriving developer community and is not bound by only adding features in major releases. For example if they add say photo rss (an example, a pretty crap exaqmple but it will do) then a user would make an extension almost certainly more secure and flashy for firefox. Then on top of that it is likely to be incorporated into the next "semi-major" version of Firefox or distributed as standard if a load of people use it espically those who do not install extensions because they don't know how or whatever.
This is why we need to act now. Even if we don't do much and we only reduce the our CO2 emissions by an extra 1% (for illustrative purposes not actual figure) by doing easy things like turning our TVs off at the wall rather than putting them on standby, walking to places near our houses, not leaving our computers on all day while we are not at home etc. Then at least we will be giving our selves more of a chance to sort out this mess.
I am angry that countries like America, Austraila and China will not sign up to the Kyoto treaty as they are some of the largest contributers to CO2 emissions, and the other parts of the world that are doing thier bit to reduce emissions are then getting short changed because the good that they are doing is being made almost pointless because places like America are still polluting lots and the whole world will suffer not just America. The world is a "team game" we need to work together on this one. America (and the others) should stop thinking about thier oil centric economies and think about the future of our planet.
I am also irritated and scared that the American electorate keeps voting Bush in, he really is a moron, how can the American people trust such an idiot to run thier country. It would be much better to bring Clinton back in my view.
Maybe all of these companies should be a little more careful about jumping on the wifi bandwagon. Although wifi is now quite mature what would happen to all these wifi solutions if say it was found to cause cancer, loss of hair or whatever, well the answers to that would be there would be a mad rush to go back to wires for the well informed and then it would slowly start a rewiring revolution. I'm not saying that will happen but if it did it would be devastating. Also may it be worth companies investing phones that no replace our landlines rather than mobiles, to be honest mobiles are generally used for business of for calls that have to be made. Whereas landlines I find are more for calling relatives and friends in the evening at home. Business landlines I believe have the same kind of usage as mobiles. The other benefit to making a land line replacement is that they tend to left on always as they are connected to the mains, so if you coupled that with and answering machine, and a small LCD screen for quickly texting or sending email then they would probably sell like hotcakes.
AFAIK it doesn't matter just use base 64 to convert it to ASCII then it can store it easily, like in php I think it is base64_encode().
I beg to differ as far as my history lessons have taught me Slovenia is in the Baltics, Slovenia is near Serbia, Boznia, Montenegro and some others. Correct me if I am wrong.
My friend is a bit of a linux fanatic and every now and then I get tempted by linux, so I try it, normally i don't keep it for more than a few weeks because I either don't use it enough and/or (and sometimes as a knock on effect against me keeping linux) it doesn't support a pretty crucial bit of my hardware. I don't like MS that much but in my circumstances I have to use it because I use programs that linux can not run and I need to use things on windows. I am very exited about Ubuntu as I think that will be quite good for me. Last time I tried ubuntu it wrecked my boot loader amoungst other stuffs. Like you I am hoping that by the time I need to upgrade from XP and or to another computer there will be a linux distribution which can sort out my needs. I use alot of open source programs which I hope will make my transition to linux easier but I still need windows and I wont settle for anything less that what I have now. With software and hardware (etc) i'm not one of these people who uses certain software over others because of who makes it. For example if MS makes a revolutionary program (very unlikely) im not going to be one of these people who say no, its not open, if there are no other F/OSS alternatives then I will buy it if i have the money, however if there is an alternative that can satisfy my needs and is free or cheap then I will get that instead.
Like with anything, chemical pest control has its limits. I am currently reading a book about permaculture. Basically permaculture is a way of life, a way of life that premotes working with and/or in harmony with nature to create a sustainable life style that does not damage the planet or its inhabbitants. One of the things it suggests is that crop growers incorporate echosystems into thier cultivation scemes so for example plant root vegetables with flowers and fungi and then plant fruit tree in between. Doing that would increase in lots of insects and bacteria (etc) which help each other by making the leaves dropped by the trees into good soil for the root vegetables and so on, thus giving each other the benefit of what they "consider" as "waste". It also encourages in natural predators like ladybirds against aphids. By encouraging say ladybirds you no longer need to use up so much pesticide and through that the pest is less likely to gain an immunity again that particular defense against it. Also it takes organisms longer to adapt against natural predators than chemical, not to mention that predators also adapt to keep the prey within thier grasp.
I noticed something with opera about privacy. Actually two things. First of all it caches favicons even when you tell it not to cache anythign and delete everything when you exit the browser. The other is that again even if you tell it not to cache anything, store addresses, whatever, it still keeps the link which you can see because links show as visited on google and other sites that don't explicitly specify the colour of the hyperlink.