"Having to go to Lenovo"?

What exactly do you think those tower System x boxes are, anyways?

You last checked about a decade ago, then.

Here's how it works now (and has worked for a while now): Qt is Free. Not "free", but Free. It's under the LGPL. And the GPL.

"But it's owned by a commercial company, and they can just close off the source."

Nope. Still stays open. Back a few years ago, the KDE group got a special concession from Nokia. They set up the KDE Free Qt Foundation; if the commercial owners of Qt (Digia) stop releasing Qt under the LGPL and GPL3, KDE has the right to make the whole thing BSD. Irrevocably. And the agreement stays, even if Digia is sold, bought, etc. Read the link if you'd like to know more.

Basically, Qt is Free. If the owners ever stop releasing it for Free, KDE gets to release it under an even more Free license.

Qt has been Free for a while. Qt is still Free. It will remain Free

And if it cost that much, it would be!

If, on the other hand, the numbers that your referencing came from... say... a couple journalists incorrect understanding of the total bid cost (based on both delivery and subsequent modifications and years of projected upkeep) and not instead from the actual cost to get what we currently have... ... well then in that case, it might not be such a sound strategy of attack.

The ACA didn't need to do anything -- that's the status quo. There's been literally nothing preventing something like that from being set up since the invention of the web.

But hey, since we know that the free market always comes up with the best solution, clearly the lack of such exchanges means that people didn't want something like this, right?

They're not.

The "Tea Party", on the other hand, is -- as well they should be.

It started as a populist movement with some people advocating the things that you stated. And that was a noble goal. But like many "grassroots" movements, it was co-opted by powerful (read: rich) influences, and has been steered instead towards their current position: a rabid, economically-ignorant (yet politically-involved) group for which the merits of an idea are trumped by whether or not their "team" endorsed it (Democrat: bad, "Republican": good.)

I have no love for either mainstream US party, and initially I thought that the Tea Party idea might end up developing into a viable third party platform with values closer to those of classic liberal philosophy. (Note: "liberal" here is used in its original form, not as a synonym for Democrat). Sadly, they turned out nothing like that -- and the folks who currently wear the label are worthy of the scorn they get.

Not to be that guy, but the "Chinese-based" ThinkPad headquarters are located in Morrisville, North Carolina. USA.

Are you actually asking, or just trying to get in a good old "government bad!" rant?

If you're actually asking, the answer is Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, the passage which reads:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Now you could argue that "welfare" shouldn't be interpreted for something like this -- and I wouldn't necessarily disagree -- but historically this clause has been interpreted as giving Congress the power to impose taxes for basically whatever they identify as a "common good".

Well... at least you were modded "Interesting" instead of "Informative".

Both of those were examples of hyper-*inflation*, not *deflation*

That's part of the problem yes.

The other part of the problem is that people such as yourself see "not able to make money" as part of the "problem" with the pre-hyper-commercialized web.

Not everything needs to be squeezed until it makes a buck, but as long as people keep seeing everything in the world with fucking dollar signs in their eyes the problem will continue.

Was part of the "problem" with gas handle pumps that they didn't have space for another ad? 'cause we solved that problem.

How about airliner tray tables? They couldn't make money, but we sure addressed that one.

And long stretches of road with greenery and shit visible? The issue there was it just wasn't making money! But don't worry, we fixed it.

Advertising is societal corrosion. It eats away at our experiences, it reshapes our thoughts, it homogenizes and neuters our culture, and it's all because people such as yourself see "not making any money" as an inherent problem with all sorts of aspects of our lives.

As opposed to actual Model Ms which are still made. With the same switch design. By many of the same workers. On the same machines.

http://www.unicomp.com/

Why bother "emulating" the buckling spring feel when you can get a brand new keyboard with real buckling springs. Oh, and it's made in the USA too!

(Also, they have keyboard layouts that offer the Ctrl key in the correct location. 'cause it's about damn time...)

> If it is legal to edit the source of a web page on the fly, why is it illegal for media boxes to skip advertisements on television programmes?

Because it's not illegal to do that.

Most of those, actually, in both code and cash (and some in both). Which you'd know if you actually followed BSD development.

And you base this on....

What exactly?

No, really. I mean, with a traditional currency you have a variety of financial sources you can draw stats from, but with Bitcoin? Given the nature of Bitcoin, there's only one place you could have pulled that figure...

Yeah, well... I still use the US dollar despite that.

Kidding aside, I have to wonder why people such as yourself like to sling mud at the idea? If I didn't know better I'd suspect jealousy.

Or just nix it, use ANI, and make sure that ANI data's sent for all calls.

Yes, much better that we remain isolationist. After all, market distortions only improve the longer you leave them in place!

Kidding aside, the silver lining here -- and it is a substantial one -- is that the follow-up story should be (and is): "Aging IT Workers Returning as Higher-Paid Consultants to Fix Fuck-Ups of H-1B Visa Workers".