srbecker

I'm not a linux hacker and haven't tried all the flavors of linux. However, I do research on a cluster running debian linux and have installed redhat and debian on my own machines. You ask why is linux preferred? Of course, it's not always preferred, and can cost time and money if you must retrain people to use it. But it has many advantages. For ME, the advantages are:1) First, for a user, it is really easy to use the KDE and Gnome desktops. They run just like windows. Browsing the web, writing email, writing documents and such is as simple as in Windows and you get great free programs that are often included in the installation package. Being a system administrator is a different story, however.2) For data management, the unix and shell interfaces are great. They're also great for remote access to other machines. You can run an ssh session with x-windows immediately after installing, while you can not do this on windows without buying a program.As for open source, this has two implications. You can tweak the programs yourself, which is often touted as an advantage. However, if you don't know what you're doing, this is useless. But, the second advantage is that other people already tweaked the programs, and you can download their versions. For someone like me, a good linux user but not qualified to be a system admin, linux is pretty easy. But I find myself wasting time whenever I try to act as a system admin.For versions, debian is very popular because of its package system. If you want a program like firefox, you download the firefox package and debian will automatically download/update other packages that firefox depends upon. Redhat's RPM system won't do this. I would suggest starting with popular flavors of linux because you will find more support for them; i.e. try Redhat. You said you're willing to spend time learning the system, so don't be scared away by a flavor like Debian just because it's not quite as user-friendly as Redhat or other flavors.Of course, I'm writing this from my windows partition because I can't get my linux partition to load my video driver and hence the resolution is stuck at 800x600 or lower. That's because I am my own system administrator, which is a bad, bad idea.Oh, for "newbie" distros that hide things: I see that as an advantage, since you can chose to use the graphical interfaces OR the command line tools. It's not as if they take the command line tools away from you. And I believe that your local book store will have books on Redhat, but probably not on Gentoo. Internet documentation won't teach you the fundamentals.

If you're getting a desktop, then don't bother with the wireless card unless you want to add a hassle.I worked for a while supervising a college computer lab (that had both macs and PCs) and my superviser forced all employees to use macs because he found that we were adept at answering PC-related questions but not good with the macs. After a while at an eMac, I didn't mind it at all and the X11 package is great if you need X windows and ssh (which you can't get both at once for free on a PC). Recently we upgraded some macs to the new tower G5s, and while I was impressed with how quickly they booted, I was not pleased with how often they crashed (much more often than with previous macs or PCs).Enjoy your mac.

The original version didn't let you edit (but it was free), but the new version of ACDSee is pretty awesome. I have photoshop and normally use it to edit my pictures, but it is slow to load and slow to learn. ACDSee loads very quickly and it let's you crop pictures to specified ratios (e.g. 4x6, 10x14) which is something I could never figure out how to do in photoshop. And they have a red-eye removing tool that shocked me by how quickly and easily it worked. But, I think you have to pay for the program now, or use the trial version. Give it a try.

We all live with some level of risk, even Americans - look at Los Angeles and the San Andreas fault. The cost of relocating is very high for many reasons: you need a new place to live, you lose business connections, you lose networks of friends and family, you lose your job, etc. In the past, people have always been reluctant to move, even in the face of stern warnings, and this trend will continue in the future. If the Italian government is serious about increasing safety, they need to provide a reasonable plan for the residents of Pompeii to relocate permantenty, and do this over a few years. If they issue a quick one-time "evacuate" warning and it turns out to be a false alarm, they will lose all credibility. Unfortunately, citizens rarely thank the government for looking out for their safety and instead criticize the government for creating inconveniences.

He was right initially: a calorie is the energy required to heat one gram of water by one degree celsius. This is what the textbooks say, and is "roughly" correct. The first assumption is that 1 ml water = 1 gram water, which is true when the density of water is 1 gm/ml. The density of water varies with temperature and pressure, so this is only true sometimes. And the energy required to heat a gram of water by one degree is not actually a constant, since the specific heat of water also varies with temperature and pressure. Most measurements on water are assumed to take place at 1 atmosphere of pressure (i.e. sea level) and at 4 degrees celsius, which is the temperature where water is the most dense (if pressure is constant). It is actually very interesting and very rare for a substance to have a temperature of maximum density.