Have you ever done something for free just for the pleasure of doing so ? You know, there are other rewards in live than money. Try to do a PhD thesis for example. It is not really rewarding in term of money, but much more in not physical terms. I like to code just because I like to code, and I don't mind contributing my code back to the community when I can. This kind of thinking can also be applied to other form of activities, like writing, painting, finding rare coins, etc. You don't have to be paid to do stuff.

You tend to be far more forgiving when something is both free (beer) and, feels like it belongs to you instead of some distant oligarchy.

Only if what your doing is of little to no value. The Windows tax is trivial compared to what I use my Windows machines for. The genuine advantage thing used to bother me, but then I grew up and just realized that I got so much use out of the OS that the price wasn't really that bad. I'd spend more in 2 days getting drunk off my ass on the weekend when I lived in Orlando than the cost of Windows XP Pro, which I've used for everyday for the past 9 years, on most days for more than 8 hours a day.

The genuine advantage thing has only been a problem for me once, on a work PC, where the previous guy had used a stolen volume license ISO to make an image. The volume license was revoked, GA bitched about it, and I had to enter the key on the side of the machine and give MS a call. The only people this really bothers are pirates (which of course it doesn't bother much) and others who did something they shouldn't. Its really not that big of a deal and MS isn't the first to do it, its just a battle cry for those that don't have a real battle cry.

Free (as in no $$$) doesn't make me any less pissed off when it breaks. Being free doesn't do me any good when the time that it breaks is near a deadline that I'm struggling to meet in the first place, or when it breaks and I have to go to the data center with 3 hours of sleep after a long day. I am JUST as pissed off at the 'Free' software and OS as I am at the one I pay for.

You may not care, but my time is worth money and when you realize the cost of the Windows tax counts for a few hours of my time if I'm buying a new copy of Win7 ultimate, no upgrade ... well, I just have more important things to do than whine about the tax. Especially considering the lack of support (software/hardware) for the free software.

I still use the free software as my BSD web servers have uptimes going on 3 years now and I'd never get that out of Windows, but it has nothing to do with the cost of the software and everything to do with how much time I waste dealing with 'issues' with that platform.

An ad is ad, whether it's "vote for Joe" or "Joe supports child molesters" or "visit China" it's still just an ad.

Running a campaign ad isn't subverting the political process.

    The good part about the support is, we aren't dependent on you.

    Plenty of Windows folks come to me for help, and I help them. Some get the friends & family rate. Some get the full contractor rate. They should go to Microsoft with some of their problems, and Microsoft would frequently say "sorry, that's an application problem, go away."

    Linux folks come to me too. They don't always have to. For most of their problems, they can check out the forums for *any* distro and find the answer. They could even pay for the service, and still get the answer.

    For Windows folks, I usually have to start up a remote session, and point & click for 20 minutes to resolve it. For Linux folks, I can frequently send them a couple lines of code.

    It's not that the Linux folks are smarter. That's not always the case. It's just that the problems are easier to fix.

    A guy called me a few days ago. He's fluent in both Windows and Linux. He couldn't remove the partitions on a drive to install onto. The Windows installer simply refused. He tried under Linux, and it showed that it removed the partitions, but Windows insisted they still existed. Off the top of my head, I had him use dd to wipe out the beginning of the drive (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024 count=1000). That got rid of the MBR, partition table, and some of the beginning of the data space. Voila, problem solved. I have no idea why Windows didn't understand it, but it resolved his problem. And no, it wasn't some weird Linux problem. The drive had been used for WinXP before, and he was installing a fresh copy of WinXP. The old WinXP install had 4 partitions, and he only wanted 1. I don't know what had been done before. He inherited the problem. It was a lot easier to call me for the favor and quick fix, than MS support and pay for it. He'll pay me in trade eventually, so I didn't really lose anything. Favors are a wonderful thing, as long as they can be called in eventually. :)

if NOT understand logic then
   loop
      talkTo (self, "Don't program!")
      Look (@ Pretty pictures)
   endloop
endif

It's pretty normal for support personnel to have access to production systems in order to provide support.

Yes, but this is a childishly simple and unaccountable way to provide said access. Their current system (described in the article) where you hit "Switch login", you have to justify your action, and it is logged, is much better, although I hope it is restricted only to employees who have an active need to switch to other users' profiles, and approved beforehand for anyone else who needs to use it.

I was born in Argentina, but I grew up in Chile. My whole family (on my dad's side) lives there (except my sister who lives in San Francisco).

We've been friends with the Piñera Morel family since forever. I went to school with two of their kids.

The thing that is really important here is that Piñera is already filthy rich. He's not going to take bribes or engage in cronyism to improve his situation. He doesn't need it.

As the business climate over there begins to get better after a long drought of socialist administrations (things under the previous president, Michelle Bachelet, was pretty bad) I'm starting to think I want to go back. Almost 20 years! I was down there over the holidays and spent some time talking to friends and cousins about business opportunities. I don't want to end up working for my grandfather's Evil Conglomerate but I think I can do something on my own with the capital I have. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm just happy for Chile.

Happened to me too.

Don't you need to buy an app for that? :P

The employer could have been able to discriminate people for falling for the scam and thus it is illegal for my company to do such a thing.

I don't understand... are idiots protected from "discrimination" in Austria? Or is it that they entered "personal information" (their login) on the fake site and you're misusing it?

Link, please? I know a professor who's setting up a laptop "computer lab", and would be interested in this. (He'd build or buy a regular cabinet, but is worried about ventilation, since power supplies and laptops can get hot.)

If you want to include a Mac in the mix, you have to do the latter, as the former doesn't support Mac OS X as a host or guest.

Why would anyone want to include Mac OS X as a guest? Apple goes out of their way to make it not run on things that aren't Macs. Why would someone then adopt it as a virtualized guest?

US Debit cards use the credit card networks, and as such can obtain the same information as required/optional by the credit card network.

Not true. There is a separate debit/ATM network. When they ask you "debit or credit", they're asking which network you want them to run the card on. If it's "sponsored" by Visa or Mastercard, you can run it as credit, you'll sign the receipt (or touchscreen gizmo) and it'll take a few days to take the money out. (They'll authorize it immediately, which puts a hold on the amount, though.) If you run it as debit, you'll enter your PIN, and the amount will be immediately removed from your account. This works with all debit cards, not just Visa/Mastercard ones.

(source)

That's sorta bullshit. Your website advertises 3G as a way to get faster Internet access on your phone. A "normal" phone user who just calls and texts sees no indication that the phones with the little blazing "3G" icons in the store are more likely to work well in a year or two. If you are phasing out 2G, stop selling the phones!

The only reason that 1&1 is "one of the biggest hosting companies in the world" is that, for many months, they ran ads in PC Magazine (and elsewhere, presumably) giving away a year of free webhosting. This likely accumulated many customers for them, who decided to stick with them. They gained customers by offering freebies, not good service.