when you navigate with a GPS, you turn right on particular coordinates, and the actual road you take can be pretty much anything

That's certainly the case, but it's not what's happening in this particular situation. iOS Maps has placed the "city" in the wrong spot. It's not that the GPS part of the app is causing problems (although I'm sure it does) it's that the map is intentionally guiding you to the wrong place.

If you were following a paper map that had the same mistake (i.e. had marked Mildura as being in the middle of the National Park) then you'd ended up in exactly the same life-threatening situation.

they think a free product should have free telephone support as well

The problem is that you've let them get the idea that this is a "free" (no-cost) product. In one of your comments you mention that the people calling up often aren't the people that installed it, so I asume that they don't think it's no-cost because they downloaded and installed it themselves. They have an idea in their heads that this product is "no-cost", and that is probably because you're branding/marketing it that way. And that's how they can go around and tarnish your reputation after the fact, saying "it's not really no-cost - it's a scam".

So, if your product provides value to your customer, why are you positioning it as a no-cost solution? I think you need to work on your branding. By all means continue to make it open source, and continue to provide your users with all sorts of software freedoms, but stop sending the message that those things mean "free".

It sounds like your produce should be viewed as commercial software (that is also proud to be open source), so say that. Have the splash screen (or about page, or whatever) say something along the lines of: This software package is a commercial product. Annual support and maintenance plans are available for purchase at {our website}. No support agreement has been purchased for this installation. Source code is provided to customers under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

So far the NBN has been pretty hideous cost wise as the increased speed for many is simply not worth the significant increase in cost

You mean like how internode's 25/5 NBN entry level plan (30Gb quota) is $5 cheaper than their equivalent Naked ADSL plan and their 300Gb quota plan is $15 cheaper than Naked ADSL.

And iiNet's 100Gb (Peak) + 100Gb (Off Peak) 25/5 plan is $5 cheaper than their 100Gb (any time) Naked ADSL plan, for more quota, and 500Gb+500Gb 25/5 NBN is cheaper than 400Gb Naked ADSL.

iPrimus's NBN plans aren't particularly competitive - their 25/2 plans are $10 more expensive than their equivalent naked ADSL plans (unless you "bundle" with an expensive VOIP phone service) and around $5 more expensive than the Internode & iiNet NBN plans, but their 12/1 plans are the same price as their Naked ADSL, so you can switch to NBN with no change in cost (but potentially slower speeds, depending on the length&quality of your current copper)

So what's this "hideous" cost you speak of?

Java programmers need to understand JVM tuning, and here it is given a whole chapter

which is a poor choice of words from the reviewer.

Programmers don't need to understand JVM tuning. Administrators do. A lot of the time 1 person will perform both roles, but they are still different roles.

Of course, I'm not sure how that poor choice of words on the reviewers behalf justifies Lunix Nutcase's rants.

Nothing (*) in the Java Language Environment (which is what the linked document covers) requires the programmer to do explicit memory management.
Optimally tuning your system requires additional knowledge beyond the language environment. That's true in every system.

CGI removed the need for developers to understand the implementation details of HTTP and TCP/IP, but if you want to tune your web-server, then you're going to need to understand those.
"Everything is a file" is all well and good for a C/Unix developer, but the system administrator needs to know the difference between the kernel parameters for TCP/IP and for Disk I/O.
SQL developers care about tables and indexes and queries and don't need to worry about physical storage or the number of execution engines, or the size of the procedure cache, but DBAs need to care about all those things.

If you somehow believed that because "Java technology completely removes the memory management load from the programmer", then no one was ever going to need to think about how much memory was used by a system built in Java, and somehow system administrators could run large Java applications without even thinking about how to tune them, then I don't know what I can say to help you.

Yes, for good or bad, Java removes memory management load from programmers - but it does not remove it from administrators, and I'm not aware of any documentation that claimed it would.

(*) Direct memory buffers (which were added long after that document was written), allow the programmer to do some memory management if so desired, but they are still not required

On 2010-12-05 VMWare voted Yes with no comment.

If they're not happy, then too bad. They made their own bed.

The "immaculate conception" refers to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the sinlessness of Mary, and has nothing to do with virgin births.

The fact that you didn't know about that is probably a validation of the complaints about the UI.

Disclaimer: I don't have any vested interests in Atlassian, but one of the founders is a friend-of-a-friend

• Hiring freelancers through DeviantArt is cheaper than going out to a "professional" artist and gets better results
• Ask them to set their own price for the work you 're requesting
• Pay a fixed price, rather than a % of sales.
• Pay on completion of the work, not upfront.
• Once the deal's done, and you've paid them the agreed price, it's none of their business how much you are/aren't making from the game.

I think the way he expressed himself leaves a lot to be desired, and it's might well be the case that he's out to screw people. But the actual process he recommends seems to be fairly standard for freelance artwork.

There are plenty of movies that are worth renting on DVD for a few dollars, that are absolutely not worth watching a second time (because you know the ending). Do they automatically suck?

Every game has some limits to how many times you want to replay it. For some games that's high. For others it's lower. That doesn't mean every game sucks.
WoG provided you with 3 hours of entertainment. Is that worth $20? Perhaps not. Is it worth $3? I would assume so. (Surely you value entertainment at at least $1 per hour)

Oh, and the other part of your thesis is also false - WoG has an OCD goal, where you try and complete each level within a set of defined limits (like number of moves, % saved, etc). I very much doubt anyone has hit all the OCD goals in 3 hours of playing. If you aren't interested in doing that, then that's your choice, but there certainly is replay value for people who enjoyed the game.

Ras is right - you claimed to disagree with him (or her?), and then proceeded to restate his point.
"stuff your below the line vote up" is colloquial for your vote being ruled informal.