I'm pretty sure the main purpose is for porting Unix applications to MS Windows, and/or for maintaining a common build environment for the two platforms. At least that is what I use it for. I actually compile with MinGW as the application itself have very few OS dependencies, Cygwin "just" provides the pure build environment.

I also used to use Cygwin/X11 to provide a Unix like interactive programming environment, but as the MS version of GNU Emacs is quite good these days, and GNU Emacs itself provide most of the common environment I need, I don't bother with that anymore.

What is now SCO used to be called Caldera, one of the first Linux companies. The old Unix (Xenix) company SCO is now Tarantella.

Modern coal, wood and straw burning plants are all quite clean. If you see a polluting one, it is either from the 70's or before, or build with technology from that era. I guess countries with lax environmental laws will still allow such polluting power plants to be build, but Denmark's environmental laws are not lax.

The source has him as Larsen, also here is his work page.

Speed don't kill. Sudden deceleration kills.

Outlaw sudden deceleration.

I'd probably not attribute HP, but I might attribute Mathematica if I used results of computations that are non-trivial (not easily recreatable without Mathematica).

I believe it will sort itself out with Wolfram Alpha. Normally you'd try to go to the primary sources and attribute them (just like you'd do with Wikipedia and Google). And simple calculations could be done by any means, so attribution is not necessary (the presented results cannot be traced back to Wolfram Alpha).

But for some of the more specialized queries where you let Wolfram Alpha combine information from multiple sources and perform computations on them, you will want to add an attribution. The sources section of Wolfram Alpha is sufficiently vague and the computations sometimes non-transparent, that you are basically trusting Wolfram Alpha on this stuff, and your readers deserve to know this.

It also serves as an insurance if the information happens to be wrong. Wrong information presented with attribution is the fault of the source, wrong information given without attribution is your responsibility.

I presume the poster doesn't read the kernel list, or other development lists. There is no lack of constructive and informed (or otherwise) critique.

If he talks about the user experience, critique is more complicated because Linux is not that well defined when leaving the kernel. There is usually always a patch or package or distribution that does it in another way, which you will tend to be told if you just address your critique vaguely to "Linux".

It makes much more sense to critique a specific distribution, which is what is responsible for the user experience, but again, there is not really a lack of distribution specific critique either, partly due to the competition between distributions.

Emacs calc is actually based on the HP-48.

Successful free software projects focus on the needs of those likely to contribute to the projects.

This can obviously be other developers who contribute with patches, but it can also be businesses that contribute to Red Hat Linux by buying an enterprise version of Red Hat Linux, or ordinary net surfers who contribute to Mozilla by using the build-in Google search facilities.

If you want a free software project to become popular, you should try to find a way to make increased popularity turn into increased contributions, like Red Hat and Mozilla did. If not, the project will die out along with your passion for the project.

I see plenty of empirical evidence that proponents of all ideologies believe their ideology is "special", and most seem to believe there are empirical evidence that their ideology is what we are "born with".

Personally I'm a rational empiricist and a long term pragmatist, and I see plenty of evidence that children are neither empiricists, not pragmatists (in any time-frame). They have to learn the hard way that the universe does not bend to their whims (wishing doesn't make true) as part of growing up. In fact, most of them never really accept it deep down and continue to believe in invisible forces who make wishing come true, despite all evidence to the contrary.

I'm a programmer, and like just about every other profession, I don't rely on copyright laws. Someone has some programming they need done, they pay me to to do it. It is that simple. Really. This is how almost the entire workforce operates, there is no really any reason why programmers should be treated specially.

There is a small minority[*] of programmers who work on mass produced software, where copyright once played a role so share the cost among the consumers. But since there are already free alternatives to most mass produced software, copyright is no longer necessary there.

For the vast majority of programmers, it is simply a question of a minor adjustment to their business model. Get payed upfront for your work, rather than get paid later for the product of your work. It just put you in line with everybody else.

Of course a minor adjustment of the business model can often seem like an impenetrable barrier, as we are creatures of habit.

[*] Outsiders vastly overestimate the size of this minority, as the software most people actually _see_ is mass produced.

In terms Americans can understand: Norway is the Puerto Rico of the EU.

I first noticed that 20 years ago.