Acer users Linux to have an OS on machines for the Asian market where people will install pirated Windows. They sell Linux laptops without a GUI, and some other manufacturers sell laptops with FreeDos, for the same reason.

OK, funny, but that isn't the issue here. Whatever the license says, the code is still legal, distribution within the terms is still legal and Darl and company are still toerags. What could happen is that a piece of legalese in the license may suddenly turn out to translate into layman as "you may print this code out, roll it up and beat baby seals to death with it," and the copyright holder may not have wanted that many baby seals on his or her conscience.

The GPL (v2) has been around long enough that I would have imagined those kinks had been spotted but, as with other licenses, the law behind them may change. What "derivative work" means today may not be the same thing it means tomorrow. Quite why they're singling out the GPLv2 for this when all licenses are subject to the same foundations of sand I'm not really sure. Maybe they think it will promote discussion - the fools!

Yet the US courts are where the majority of this issue will be argued. Even I, as a Rightpondian, can see the sense in that. Chill. Not everything is a calculated insult to your national sovereignty.

Linus is probably one of the most pragmatic members of the open source movement, along with being a self-proclaimed bastard (you say that like it's a bad thing). Linus will only think about moving from GPLv2 if Linus thinks it's necessary or beneficial, not because some pen-pusher, pundit or journo tells him to.

ROFL...and i thought i was such a geek while explaining to my wife that there were whole fleets of ships in ST. She'd only seen (and thought) there was the enterprise.

Mod parent up.

The LGPL debacle was a single instance. Many people put way too much weight on it than necessary - if you look at the entire history of the company, they have been extremely responsive and credible. My company's story shares many commonalities with the above. I have worked with extJS back when it was called yui-ext, so named because it was an set of add ons to the Yahoo User Interface libraries. Jack Slocum was a responsive, dedicated developer back then, and remains so to this day. For a long time he developed widgets in his spare time, and once demand was high enough and he wasn't getting compensated for his time enough he decided to monetize it. As with any business, there are growing pains and mistakes that get made, but to describe the licensing change as a stab in the back is hardly accurate.

Have you ever stopped to think that people like some fucking freedoms. I don't really feel like going where politicians let me, when the politicians let me, after an anal probe and piss test. Cars provide freedom and that is what America is supposed to be about.

The second we are dependent on the government(see public transport) is the second America is dead. We are getting closer every day and it's sad. You can talk about the economics of it all day and you are probably right... economically I am guessing it beats out the car/plane system by a long shot. Who cares? I want to be able to get places fast and on my schedule. We are advanced enough at this point we don't have to make everything the most efficient... we can have some freedoms and fun FFS.

Your points about industry using trains makes no sense... are you saying we should be treated like raw materials and cattle. Shipped and offloaded like a resource that the government uses to make tax revenue? You have fun, I'm going to keep driving my car, thanks.

Apple doesn't like other hardware pretending to be their own hardware. Apple doesn't guarantee (nor should they) interoperability with products they don't certify (a certified product would be an iPod, for example).

If there's a lesson in the current logjam in congress, this is it. The Rs will likely grab some seats in 2010, which gives the Ds a couple of years to scrub the incumbent twats that stand in the way of cleaning up some of this garbage because they can't get political coverage.

Apple iPod Video, according to usbdevs. What do Apple do now? Blacklist their own product or get sneaky? IMHO, Palm are doing us no favours here. What is most likely to happen next is a DRM-esque key exchange between iPods and iTunes, which will not only bugger up the Pre's sync to iTunes feature permanently, but syncing iPods to OSS applications will more than likely be the collateral damage.

If they wanted to be really nasty, they could probably brick a connected Pre in the process of updating Apple firmware to implement this key exchange. You're an iPod Video, eh? Here, have some firmware before we talk again. "Well, Your Honour, it was using our vendor and device ID. Not our fault our flash code bricked it. Pre flasher code in our update software? The very thought!"

This will not end well. I'd forget about making your device pretend to be something else, Palm. It might come back to bite you and your customers on the arse.

It's worth pointing out here that PSPGo accomplishes a few objectives for Sony, but also benefits the PSP platform as a whole by its existence. Case in point: look at how many PSP games are now available on the Playstation Store. 225. Before the Go came out that number was much lower. All of those 225 games can be downloaded and used on an original PSP. Which is great news for me, because I own a PSP 1000 and a PSP 2000, but loathe lugging around the huge and fragile UMD discs everyone is apparently so sad are no longer supported on the Go. I now have a much larger selection because of the Go's existence.

Also, developers have disliked the PSP for quite a while because retail stores don't carry a large enough selection of games. In fact it is the retailers themselves who refuse to carry a decent UMD selection that are now turning around and telling Sony they won't carry the Go because they can't sell the games for it. They said they hate UMD, and they got what they wanted. Too bad. The existence of the Go does two things for the PSP platform: it forces the big developers to put their titles up on the Store instead of just on UMD. A win for anyone who prefers to download their games. But now smaller developers can compete on a fairly level playing field, knowing that at least when it comes to PSP Go owners they aren't competing for a tiny amount of shelf space with the likes of EA and Activision.

Finally, if you can't tell that this is very much an effort to get devs on board for a future PSP 2 that is digital-download only, you're pretty stupid.

In emergencies, i can talk SMTP and POP3 using telnet, and it has actually happened :)

That was my thinking too, but TFA says that the students notified their admin on the Friday, who notified Google on the Saturday, who fixed it on the Tuesday. It's not clear - bad writing - but they may have suspended the service on the Monday.

Including Xinhua and Pravda. Sorry Murdoch. If you manage to shut down the BBC and other Western sources of free news, I'll just read those.

Get real?

I was illustrating that this is a new technology that will fix a lot of the issues that have grown around RAID, not trying to sell new s/w.

Do let me know where in my article I was giving the impression that this was a sales pitch... ...although now you've pointed that out, I've realised that Firefox is less that two years old, and I've now hit the 100+ user mark for unprotected password lists. So I guess until they fix that for default installs, I'd better not use FF for at least 18 months :-)