diJenerate

I personally think it's wrong of me to vote for the team that will be competing with my home team.

If you have ever used a Nokia Mobile phone (symbian OS) or MacOS X, you have used a user friendly linux. My issue with MacOS is that apple has lost sight of the purpose of linux and has just used the linux community to help make their product stronger. The Symbian OS on a nokia phone is Linux based and they are several other things that are based on linux that you probably don't realize but use on a daily basis. Linux is just the kernel, everything else added on (like the GUI, window manager application software utilities etc) make it a distribution. On the topic of userfriendly distros, try Mandriva or Ubuntu and on the topic of compatibility, there are ways to get every windows program to run in linux, it just takes reading, not geek skills . Did you know that you can get Windows DirectX games to run in linux and in some cases they run more smoothly and are much more stable on weaker hardware? As for hardware, it's really the rare generic stuff that gives you trouble these days. Try it again, most of the distros have really come of age. Everything you need to know is on the net, just read. After all knowledge is power and you can never know too much.

You have all forgotten one vital fact... The objective of the exercise is to make money.The mobile phone industry reached its pinnacle in 2001 when the manufacturers realized there was nothing more to be done to innovate Cellular Technology. The smallest phone (a tooth implant) had been made, the smallest power plant for a phone had been made and the smallest phone could be powered indefinately from the users' central nervous system. Now these multibillion dollar giants had to find some new source of income. With 3G and 4G networks too far off for them to release that tech, they turned to their marketing departments to keep them afloat. They decided that phones would be sold by gimmick eg. hardware gimmicks such as cameras, audio players, web access tools etc. and software gimmicks like wallpaper and ringtones offered by service providers. Far from keeping the industry afloat, the manufacturers would have succeeded in making more cellphones available by 2010 than there are people on the planet. Good money for them! They ensure this by developing a concept phone, and then releasing the said phone 5~10 times in 18 months as an improved version each time touting some smart new feature. In reality, before the phone was released, the prototype carried all of these 'new' features, it just won't make as much money if released with them the first time. I call it creating your market, then milking that synthetic market.The other issue is this. The iPod is the world's most popular MP3 player. It is however far from the first hardware MP3 player and furthermore definately not the first HDD based MP3 player. That title belongs to Creative. Yes the company that seems to be competing with apple and some consumers even go as far as saying '...that new company from Korea...' (I overheard this in a Best Buy store) is the original manufacturer of the HDD based MP3 player. The Creative Nomad Jukebox was released in June of 1999 and contained a 6GB HDD long before Apple decided to cash in.So the convergence of the media to one device is only logical and we were capable of making this all-in-one device years ago. However, businesses need to make money and some want to make more than others so the industry places these artificial delays in to maximize the earnings that can be made from the consumer product at the expense of progress... this is the nature of our capitalist world.

The world's best O.S. is still the best free thing that is also available on the internet. That's right Linux (and I do not include the Warez versions of that commercial money making venture from Apple Computer Corp, Darwin Distro.) and the real Linux distros such as Fedora etc. The free OS, the non-commercial OS, the OS made by the people for the people and with one goal in mind - to provide an OS that works not to make some greedy businessman rich. There is nothing MS Windows can do that Linux can't but there is plenty Linux can that MS Windows isn't even aware can be done. Then of course there is the tonne of freeware that works on it. Anywayz enough promo, check out DistroWatch for current info, and if nothing more, consider this, the most sincere form of flattery is imitation - Windows Vista contains Monad, a Bash clone (or an attempt to make one)

Why spend so much time playing games with pirates if you really need to secure your network. In my opinion the best way to deter pirates is to use MAC address filtering. Sure you can clone a MAC address, but there are more people who know how to crack Wi-fi encryption than there are who know how to obtain valid addresses and clone them.MAC filtering makes your network invisible to some clients and to others, well uses will spend forever trying figure out if it's signal strength or interference that's preventing them from establishing a connection. The best security is through psychology.

I'm all for the WI. Sure they have had their share of problems and lack of moral etc, but if you don't root for your home team, what kinda of person are you? Notice from KuBi: Please refrain from signing of in posts. Warning issued.