Why do we even need corporations to be involved and in control of our programming languages. Is it not time to rid ourselves as programmers from the tyranny of these greedy organizations by simply choosing to not use proprietary programming languages?

With the popularity of Android, separating the two by using GNU/Linux and Android/Linux seems to be very sensible now. GNU/Linux is truly a free operating system and tools while Android/Linux may share the free kernel, the rest of the system is closed down. For example, I would be glad if I could purchase a tablet PC that I can install GNU/Linux on. However sad as it may be, all tablets are closed down Android/Linux.

Have you tried to read on your phone for days in and days out without recharing?

As far as I have heard, tubes have a smooth cut-off curve which is idea for analog sound while the solid-states will flat out cut-off the charge which results in a click.

RMS uses a CPU he built by himself from individual transistors he put together on his prototype board. Of course the designs are completely free and liberated from the clutches of any non-free integreated circuitry.

The copying is by necessity made in an analog way. Hence the quality of the copy will detriment each time it is copied.

Indeed it is off the shelf. But what common pig on the street would expect to need to bring one and then also know how to connect it to the device that just stolen.

Base 12 system like the imperial was widely used before by merchant because it is easily divisable with 2,3,4 and 6. Which comes in handy when trading goods.

The meter is not arbitrary at all, it is based on the distance from the equator to the north pole. There are 40 000 meters around the earth.

I wonder how it come that some people become patent trolls? I can't imagine anyone's childhood dream was; "when I am big, I am going to be a lawyer, a POWERFUL! lawyer that will sue everyone I know and anyone I can find".

Probably, these people are forced to become patent troll by their financial circumstance, we should not be angry at them. They deserve our pity and help from their awful situation that has lead them to live a life of a destructive harbringer of everything good and cuddly.

Business cards are the best thing for doing business. You want that number to a person who you know can get you what you need. Simply get the business card and there you have it.

You do know that democrcy(greek etmyology) and republic(roman latin etmyology) have the same meaning, right?

Who would have known, there are several different people posting on /.

I just got the job as an advertisement designer half a year ago. I went from printing a few A4 papers per year to probably used up a few trees on my own in this half year I have been employed.

Heey, don't say that, Canonical's biggest contribution to the open source world has been to Gnome as they created a a set of icons. Accidently that is pretty much the only contribution they have made upstreams.