That's probably true if you refer only to command line ssh.

For GUI SSH, however, spending a bit of coin can be very much worth it.

I have to use Windows on my work desktop, from which I help manage hundreds of remote Linux boxen. It would be madness to do that that with PuTTY, with its horrible UI, or with ssh in a Cygwin window, where session management is entirely missing, unless you count ~/.ssh/config. The commercial GUI SSH client we use[*] lets us organize all those sessions, save login info, and sync all that among the handful of computers used by the people who I help with those remote servers. A user name, password, or IP changes about once a week, somewhere. Managing that with just command line tools would be less efficient. Further, we get features like a tabbed UI, integrated file transfer, scripting, etc. We pay back our hundred bucks a seat in efficiency pretty quickly.

[*] no point naming it, I'm not here to sell anyone anything

"Very timidly"? Nonsense. You want an example of open source timidity, look at Microsoft: how many substantial open-source programs do they provide? By comparison, Sun was profligate. Oracle is a clear regression back along the continuum toward the Microsoft end.

The question in my mind is, does Oracle actually intend to regress like this, or are we just seeing the fallout of standard merger problems? Is this all just stemming from mismanagement, resource allocation battles, and general confusion, or is there a mandate from the top to regress?

If you're lost in the mountains, simply knowing which tower received the SMS message would probably help the SAR team a lot.

Besides, this would allow SAR to hold a slow IM-like conversation with the lost person. They could describe their surroundings, coordinate movements, give status updates, etc.

It would be nice if the FCC would also raise the cap on radio strength when sending messages to 911. It should be able to temporarily jump to, say, 5 W to burst the SMS out. Even if this is only one-way, it'd probably save a lot of lives.

If the 35S I bought a few months ago is any indication, they're back on the right path. They're not the same as the 1990's and earlier generation HPs I have, but they suck a lot less.

I hear the 50G is part of this return to high build quality standards, but I haven't tried one myself.