[Coco] OT: Vista and MS patent application, Linux

[Dan Olson]

> I think that's (the donate button) a very good idea, unforch there are
> those of us who have read the paypal TOS and despite frequent gargles
> with more better tasting stuff, just can't seem to get that one down.
>
> No one but me and my bank has any rights to my routing numbers so they can
> reach in and grab a few bucks, according to the TOS, anytime.

I agree, but what I ended up doing to make this a little easier to swallow 
is to set up a new savings account, with the $5 minimum ballance.  Paypal 
can go ahead an grab that if they wish, before setting this up I had $79 
sitting in Paypal for ages that other people had sent me, before I 
realized that I couldn't spend it without being verified (ie turning over 
my bank account info).

> Yup, that one was picky about hardware, but today, in linux, there are
> more good hardware drivers than winderz can claim by a large margin.  The
> only real - sign is in wireless drivers because most of those chips can
> be programmed to output far more power than the friendly candy company
> allows.  But we're getting better in that dept too. by 100% clean room
> reverse engineering.  The broadcom 802-11g chipset in my lappy is now
> working well for instance.  And I'm NOT using windows drivers snarfed
> from the windows code pile.

That's the biggest problem I see, the "windows only" hardware.  If you use 
trailing edge hardware like me the chances are good of it being supported!

> I've had over a year here a couple of times with my old rh7.3 firewall
> box.  And those reboots were to reload to a newer kernel, no crashes,
> ever.  And TBT, a year is about as long as these machines get to go
> before they are shut down, and wheeled out on the front deck for their
> annual blow job along with pull the cpu coolers & clean & regrease them
> with artic silver.  Routine PM in other words.

I had an old dual Pentium that was given to me in '99 I think, and ran 
24/7 with no real attention until it was retired last year.  It did get 
reboots every now and then (usually minor stuff or power outages, etc) but 
ran many months with not reboot.

 	Dan