Thanks for the explanation of the BitTorrent Header (etc.). That 1-second
download never gave me any interaction to let me know what it was. It could
have been the missing segment of the Nixon tapes as far as I know. As per your
good judgment, I will stick to downloading from the official Ubuntu site.

Well, I'm not quite as far along as I thought I might be. I downloaded Ubuntu
onto the laptop last week but the download is not perfect. Some of the bit
checks do not add up, according to the CD burner software.

For such a long download, I am severely tempted to hibernate until the Ubuntu CD
to arrives. Also, my CD burner software does not recognize the ISO image file
format. I have four other burner programs (Sony, PowerDVD, Nero, and TDK CD
Blender). One of those should support unwrapping the ISO image.

The good news is my wife works at a charter school (http://www.whea.info) where
the computer geek is knowledgeable of Linux. I should make some time to meet
with him and get started. In a town of 30,000 on a rock in the middle of the
Pacific, I'm lucky to find a Linux-savvy person.

This weekend I'll be busy running my boat (http://www.captaindean.org) as an
officials boat for a ocean 6-man canoe race (http://www.keauhoucanoeclub.com).
Next weekend I'll be taking my boss (http://www.astonhotels.com) and his wife
and daughter our for whale watching and snorkeling.

By the time all that is done, the official Ubuntu CD should be nearby and maybe
I can get really serious.