For a long time, I really wanted to get into Linux. I wanted it to be my operating system of choice and I wanted to support the ideals that open source software stood for. But frankly, at the time every major distribution didn't make it practical enough for me to do. It seemed like spread out between all of them were the necessary features for any useful PC user, and despite so many of them working toward the same thing, all of them lacked some basic things expected from any viable desktop OS.

Microsoft has recently released its newest operating system, Windows Vista. This has caused what seems like quite a ruckus in some places. The United States Department of Transportation has gone as far as banning its employees from upgrading to it or IE7 (on their work computers). The reasoning behind the mandate was quite simple: there's no reason to.

What is wrong with our country?

Undoubtedly this question has a myriad of answers, not the least of which would be our (read: our president's) penchant for war and unnecessary spending. I don't have the exact figures for how much we've spent on war under the Bush adminstration, but I'm fairly certain it's in the billions somewhere.