It's funny how a lot of people are falling all over themselves because google introduces something new. Now they've introduced a new DNS service and say it's to make the internet experience faster. Turns out in benchmarks they are slower than peoples ISP DNS servers (not really surprising), but also significantly slower than services like OpenDNS, which does the same thing. So why are people switching to google??? It's not better than existing services, there's serious privacy and security concerns (it's a lot easier to force one company to change their DNS records than forcing thousands of companies in lots of different countries to change their records), but still everybody is suddenly declaring "I'm switching to googleDNS". The scary thing is the people are not the typical fanboys, but usually sceptical geeks. Somehow though as soon as google does something it switches the scepticism off in a geek brain.

Somehow I'm reminded about the whole Android thing. Google really seems to have the urge to only do their own thing. Same thing with android where they have thrown out the whole "Linux" userspace to reinvent the wheel (only not as good, see Harald Welte's Blog for a rant about it). Here it seems the same thing they just do their own thing without merging back and disregarding experiences others might have had.

On a side note, their problems with the Completely Fair Scheduler should be a good argument for pluggable schedulers. It shows one scheduler can't fit all use cases, but I doubt Linus will listen.
C

This statement actually smacks of a naivity that I find amazing in a Federal Court judge. "Everyone does it, rich and poor alike..." yeah right, the poor have an army of accountants working for them trying to find every loophole in the tax system. In reality the poor and middle class do not have the resources to evade taxes like the rich do. Thus the current tax system significantly favours the rich and they end up paying less to no taxes, while the middle class is carrying most of the tax burden. And unfortunately this is the case in a lot of countries not just the US.

Thanks for your reply

Cheers
C

And X is probably a prime example of software who's progress was hindered by it's choice of licence and would have done better with the GPL (read the recent article on LWN). Note, I'm not disagreeing with you otherwise.

Hey Bruce,

sorry for hijacking this thread, but could you give your opinion on the Vernor vs AutoDesk case, and the "threat" this is supposed to have on Free Software, as PJ on groklaw and more recently Nimmer have been writing. Do you believe that software being sold not licensed poses a significant threat to FOSS?

Cheers
Cyco

you're kidding right?! I suggest you pick up a history book. Look at the main people backing Mussolini and Hitler, or the ones profiting from them being in power. It was reach capitalists. Krupp, Siemens, IG Farben ... All private companies btw.

Great idea, except for the tiny fact that SWATHS actually have larger drag and maintenance costs than normal catamarans:
"The main disadvantages to the SWATH hull form are that they are more expensive than conventional catamarans, require a complex control system, have a deeper draft than catamarans and mono-hulled ships, and a higher maintenance requirement. Furthermore, SWATH vessels can use up to 80% more power than an equivalent catamaran, and are more limited in speed compared to equivalent catamaran vessels."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swath

J

Rubbish, they can just not use the articles themselves for commercial purposes, i.e. they could not take the article and put it in e.g. a book and then sell that book. They can still use the findings in the articles for whatever way they want. They findings are not under copyright.