Stories by: Mark Gibbs

Why don’t I migrate to Linux? Let me count the ways,” began reader Tom Staight’s response when I asked, “Why aren’t you migrating to Linux?”. Of all the topics I’ve disem­boweled in the last year, the question of moving to Linux is the hottest. It seems almost all of you have a leaning toward Linux.

A well-adjusted person using a functional keyboard can hit the Delete key much faster than he can walk to his mailbox and back carrying an armload of dead trees and nonbiodegradable inks and plastics, which he will use to infect the environment by tossing them out with the trash. As we all know, spam is 100 per cent biodegradable. It never hurt a tree and can be recycled with a keystroke. Yet virtually none of us go to the trouble to phone Reader's Digest and demand they stop sending bulk mail, nor write nasty letters to their upstream demanding they be put out of business immediately.

At 10:30 Wednesday night in election week, we still didn't know who had won. Amazing! One thing this election has clearly shown is that the whole method of voting in the US needs to be overhauled. If you don't believe me, take a look at a fine article titled "May the best man lose" from Discover magazine that you can find at www.discover. com.

Examples of how to use the most widely available cross-platform language

"While I'm willing to admit that the program has a prurient appeal, the attraction wears thin quickly. The 'guests' are more like bad actors than real people, making The Jerry Springer Show seem like the WWF of talk shows." - James Berardinelli, film critic Like Berardinelli, I must confess finding a certain creepy, prurient appeal in The Jerry Springer Show. After all, where else would you find a drunken monopede dwarf confessing his love for lederhosen or be able to watch a rejected striptease artiste begging her ex-boyfriend, a cross-dressing truck driver, to take her back?

Predicting the next 10 years