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Comment Re:Curious economics of private spaceflight (Score 1) 60

Flynn, an ardent libertarian,

Ardent libertarian is the term used in polite society for "emotionally immature and intellectually unsophisticated". A libertarian society replicates the current status quo in terms or taxes and tariffs but with the difference that now you have no power over the revenue collector, which is as private corporation.

In a libertarian society I can simply refuse you to drive on my highway because I don't like your face.

Comment Re:IBM no longer a tech company? (Score 2) 283

It is easy to post growing sales if your profits are zero. The hard part is to have a growing business that actually makes money on each sales. Every time they seem to have gained traction on a market (like books) they seem to negate it by offering incentives such as Amazon prime. T

hey have yet to prove that they can sell products at operating costs+3% on an ongoing basis.

Comment Re:Wow (Score 1) 283

Microsofts success was BUYING DOS for $50k.

Minor quibble: Microsoft licensed DOS for $50K, while Patterson held back some rights. Later on after various payments and negotiations it is estimated that the final cost was more like $500K. By then DOS was already a screaming success, so they got off easy.

Comment Re:Wow (Score 2) 283

Many other people were introduced to IBM including Gary Kildall from Digital Research, yet he didn't become a billionaire.

And by the time he was introduced personally to IBM he was already well known for shipping the dominant basic interpreter for all personal computers, IBM compatible or not.

Comment Re:Remember when WSJ had a modicrum of decency? (Score 0) 720

moment you view data through a lens of politics is the moment you stop noticing opportunities.

Or as Krugman likes to point out, how are the right wing inflationistas doing? Yet their rants are still welcome at the WSJ in spite of the fact that their views have meant losses in the tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars for WSJ readers.

Comment Re:Being different was a boat anchor. (Score 1) 296

The main advantage of the PPC was supposed to be higher clock rate, and looking at press releases there were supposedly higher clock rates chips available for PPC over x86.

Yet at one point I took the time to track down the actual "shipping now" announcements for the main PC manufacturers and for Apple and almost invariably by the time computers came out the door speeds were comparable.

The fact that PPC wouldn't commit to a mobile low power version was the final straw.

Comment Re:Actually... (Score 1) 58

If you are going to count Leif Ericson as a "discoverer" then you must count the Mongols who populated America across the Bering Straight as earlier discoverers.

If on the other hand we use "discoverer" in the standard sense or person who first widely disseminated a fact then there is no doubt Columbus deserves the moniker.

Comment Re:I never ever commented on the SCO issue in any (Score 1) 187

We knew what was going on when you ran your anti-IBM campaign, sometimes even positioning yourself as arguing on behalf of our community. It was a way to lend credence to IBM and MS arguments during the SCO issue. To state otherwise is deceptive, perhaps even self-deceptive.

Florian, you would not be devoting all of this text to explaining yourself if you didn't feel the need to paint your actions in a positive light. That comes from guilt, whether you admit it to yourself or not.

Go write your app, and if you actually get to make any money with it you can give thanks, because it will happen despite what you worked for previously. Keep a low profile otherwise because your credibility is well and truly blown and you can only make things worse. And maybe someday you can really move past this part of your life. But I am not holding out much hope.

Comment Re:Maybe it's time... (Score 1) 331

Then why is it in places where guns are banned or severely restricted, like London, that the violent crime and murder rate is obscenely high?

Because they don't? London's murder rate is lower than that of any US state including generally considered safe states like New Hampshire. If you now compare with metropolitan areas London blows most cities right out of the water with its lower murder rate.

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