My point exactly. There are too many sensibilities that can be triggered amongst various people that in most cases will end badly for the "insulter" based on the "insultee's" reaction.

Well don't accuse people for working for the NSA. Especially a Finnish man who writes software that's supposed to trump "the man" so-to-speak. It's all how you see it right?

If being accused of ignorance is the worst they endured, they didn't endure enough!

Oh John Kerry you really botched that one didn't you LOL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUJTarxfZ6M

Not to make it a dick measuring competition on Tovalds behalf but you look at the guy on the other side of the fence who made staggeringly more.

Besides, we wont mention that this person in question has since then retired and is still making literally 100x more per year than Tovalds. I get your point but relatively speaking, If Tovalds chose to sell out how much more could [of] he made/make?

I've been using Linux since 1993. I can't even begin to tell you how wrong you are :) Oh the memories ... 14.4 modems, 386 DX!! (yes, none of those pussy SX processors), Hercules monitors and MFM harddisks!

You're missing the point. It's not treated as a religious movement It's kind of more like being a 60s child in the modern day if that makes sense.

Google wrapped a business model around Linux. It's called Android and it's doing just fine.

I'm with you on that. It seems like his sense of humour and his calling "a spade a spade" philosophy earns him a lot of criticism. I always argue that Linus is your typical purest. He's not there to please or appease. He's there to focus on getting things done right, in his own way, but as correct as he sees it.

I argue that because he's giving Linux freely to the world and with limited monetary gain that we can't chastise him too much about it either. What he's missing is something which I've learned through my own errors when dealing with people in the past. And that is, to deal with "the public" one must always do so with the softest possible touch. That's only if you're wanting to earn the minds of the masses mind you.

So I say. People who bag him with the whole "his attitude is appalling" type statements. Well, it sucks to be you because I think that you're just too much of a sook and you need to harden/lighten up a little. The people who condone the attitude I say "meh, you're probably a purest as well" because they wish to understand truth and wish to see what goes on in the Linus' mind just as I do.

As me for me. Truth be told. The day Linus actually starts acting like the rest of the PR sheep out there is the day I'd start to worry about crypto that NSA may of sneaked in to the Linux kernel. Until then. It's good to see him throwing out comments like "Deep throat Microsoft" and "You're ignorant". This kind of talk is indicative of when the internet wasn't populated by commercially driven cock suckers like Mark Zuckerberg abusing the word "hacker" and trying to pass himself off as "one of us".

So at the end of the day, who's really lost touch here?

You pick on poor Tony which is "centre" right-wing. Australia fairs okay because it's usually a centre left or centre right Govt.

This time round we have Palmer, Katter, and the Liberal Democrats in the senate which combined together with the Coalition trump any possibility of left-wing decisions being made. Mate, Tony isn't right-wing enough to keep all the Rednecks happy! :) And Yippee for them!

But I'll tell you this. We had to do something to keep those Greens in check. Rudd was doing a shit awful job and if we let him have another belt at Govt he'd nosedive us in debt so badly that your grandchildren's grandchildren would be paying for YOUR fuck ups. All the meantime they'd be raised in this spoiled view of "the world owes me" socialist crack pot society which nutters like you would of left for them.

Seriously. you're a know nothing do gooder without a care for the concept of reality. You want to hide from truths and blindly look at issues seeking the easy way out instead of trying to uncover things for what they really are.

My advice, while you still can, go off and have a cry in your Govt subsided Wingy Support Group for Wankers before the Libs come in and shut you down for wasting all our hard earned Tax payer dollars!

Why not? FaceBook reporting nothing profits causes the company to be worth close to $100bn. A lot of what the market reflects is flavours of the month, FaceBook's potential is realised to be possible even if by a small margin so every man and their dog pours their superannuation into a company that has a fraction of the asset base of say Google but expects it to be bigger within 5 years.

Microsoft stating that Balmer is going to leave will drive profits even further. Depending on how the news will spin it. Don't forget MSFT lost about 11% last quarter so some of that can just be reclaimed losses after the Surface "brainfart" that took place.

You're not factoring the levels of inflation here. The USD is roughly worth 2 - 4 cents what it was during it's inception. Factor in how badly the USD has inflated your 10T pales in comparison to the true ills of the US. As soon as people start disliking the USD, paying back the debt is where it all comes undone. It's not the amount, rather the rate of spending vs its rate of being paid back.

I think doing it this way is purely strategic. Not only can they play the "plausible deniability" game as the Govt does. "Oh, it was an accidental public key release" but you also ensure the data is successfully transmitted to the masses.

The alternative being what happened last time with the cables release and that is the Govt aggressively shutting down servers and replacing them with nasty place holders and installing honeypots, etc.

We certainly are living in interesting times and considering that you're 200,000 UIDs older than me, you have to consider what Slashdot was like years ago.

I remember when people started taking shots at Slashdot for the type of articles it posted, flamed it for being too mainstream, Apple-centric, or because it's become a popular wannabe geek pissing ground. Though all these things may be true or not, it doesn't really matter.

What's important to know is that Slashdot is about IT/Geek news and if you look at the IT segment alone it has become massively political. The shit fights between Netscape and Microsoft pale in comparison to the crap we're subjected too today. The Obama administration is now getting involved in the Smartphone wars for example ... who would'a thought? The EU slapping Microsoft over antitrust, so what? The US is now posturing against Russia because of leaked data that has been spilled out on the internet. We're talking about "news for geeks" hosting stories about stuff that wars are made from!

You say hardball? you say interesting times? I say how much more interesting is it gonna get?