Linux and BSD are positively bloated compared to the first Unix systems. It first ran on a computer with only 64K after all. Unix wouldn't have survived if it had stuck to the first few versions, it would be far too limiting. What made it succeed, as opposed to its contemporaries, was that it was relatively portable and could migrate to better computers when they came along, and it was relatively open (for the time) so that others could grow and adapt it.

It's not often I'll cheer MS on, but this is awesome. I can't wait to see how Google responds.

your tirade should be pointed at apple as well then. they are closed source AND had a shitload of vulnerabilities, as well as having a record of not rolling out patches quickly. whats your excuse for them?

maybe you should take a good hard look at OSS supposed security prowess, if you really were so confident firefox is more secure then IE, you wouldn't get so defensive.

http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/tpc_c_world_record_sun

That non-competitive SPARC stuff recently trounced IBM and HP in performance/dollar, performance/watt and performance/rack. I'd hate to see what you define as competitive.

Hah, I did not think of that. Perhaps they could put them in their retail stores and sell them to the tourists as souveniers. But it sort of illustrates the problem. If you view wealth as related to something having to do with actual production, they are worthless in a modern economy. Sure they might be collectors items, maybe high priced items, but having a lot of money does not guarantee you are rich. The last banknote Weimar printed was a 100 trillion mark banknote. And if you are a gold bug, Spain was such a successful merchantilist that they had so much gold, that domestically gold was not worth much. Inflation.

Anyway, the buggy whips are on my books at what I paid for them, so my balance sheet still looks good. I figure they have a long depreciation schedule so they are not hurting my income statement. My books look so good, maybe I can get a bank loan and expand.

Even such a simple thing as why a ball falls when you drop it cannot be answered by science. A simple answer like "Gravity" describes the phenomenon, but does not truly explain why it occurs. All you have done is explain one thing in terms of another. This moves the question: Why does the ball fall? Because gravity makes it.

Why does gravity do that?

As most small children have discovered, it is great fun to simply continue asking "and why does that happen?" whenever anything scientific is being explained. Usually only a few levels of recursion are required before the answer essentially boils down to "we don't have a clue why it does that, we just know the data says it does that".

What if it takes a barrel of oil to discover and extract each barrel of oil?

Ding ding ding ding ding! We have our winner!!!

The economic reality is that peak oil is all bullshit. The MARKET says what the price will be. When supplies become truly scarce, oil prices will rise. Then all those alt-fuel schemes start to become economically feasible and POOF, peak oil is irrelevant.

Agreed. I was hoping that "Lehk228" could tell me why he thinks that would be so childish since he claimed that it was. Apparently he's a subscriber to the "when asked to substantiate, just go silent and pretend you didn't see the question" school of thought. That's a popular school of thought these days.

That there was the point as it rushed over your head.

Beck makes assumptions and oddly worded semi-accusations toward people he disagrees with, then demands they take the time to disprove them. This site is made to do exactly that.

It is satire/parody, precisely because it uses his own techniques to make him look like an idiot. Not that he needed help.

personally I don't find it exactly hilarious, but shoving his own tactics back in his face is a worthwhile endeavour.

Did you just say the energy sector runs well? Our infrastructure is decaying and dying because no one wants to pay to keep it up. Our power grid needs modernization badly but no one wants to spend for it. We've had how many scandals over cmopanies pulling dirty tricks? You sure this is an example of running well?

Seriously?

You start out with 5 GB and pay $0.05/MB over that.

So $1000 in fees plus 5 GB plan equals about 25,000 MB

So if they were watching Youtube at 300kbs (and I didn't feel like doing the math, link) so:
300kbs / 8 = 37.5KB/s
37.5KB/s * 60 = 2250KB/m
2250KB/m * 60 = 135000KB/h
135000 / 1024 = 131.8MB per hour

25,000 MB divided by 131.8 MB equals 189 hours 41 minutes of videos in one month.

Wow, really must be in the middle of nowhere.

http://www.uberphones.com/2007/05/m500_wristwatch_talks_as_well/ is pretty close to a badge, strip out the touchscreen, bluetooth, etc., and make it single number only and I bet you could put it in a bindi never mind a badge. In Star Trek you just don't see them beaming down the basestation and satellite dish to a nearby highspot ... not way out of our league IMO. We probably wouldn't manage the no-delay conversations, not sure when faster than light comms (tachyon beam modulation presumably!) are coming though.

Or what about American nudist sites? http://www.nude2000.com/Family_Pageant_Activities.htm (nudity again). Is daddy going to get arrested because he took a photo of his underage daughter or son???

To be fair, most of those "nudist sites" are pretty obviously porn sites, offering access to naked pictures of people, sometimes of very young age, for pay. I can't imagine any reason why anyone would pay to see someone else's vacation pictures, except the fact that they're naked vacation pictures. Not to mention that some of them combine nudism with outdoor activities in the snow, which simply can't be a part of any lifestyle, since you'd end up dying of pneumonia in short order.

Ah. I assumed he meant semi-informed people as opposed to the clueless. In that case, Free Software is no better a term since it is "generally taken to mean" gratis as in no-charge. Hence the creation of "Open Source" which at least brought source code into the discussion.

In any case, without regard for what people mistake it to mean, Open Source has a meaning, as does Free Software. If you can't agree on a lexicon, then it doesn't matter what you are talking about. People can reinterpret it to their hearts content.