I wonder how long it'll take the otherwise intelligent geeks at /. to finally figure out that Apple is just as dangerous as Microsoft.

That happened long, long ago. But the Apple folks have also crowded on here in the last handful of years. Hell, there's a whole apple.slashdot.com domain now for them. When Slashdot first started, Macintosh was a joke, not anything people here took seriously. When Apple was taken over by NeXT and they facelifted NeXTStep OS it's face lift (after spending hundreds of millions of dollars proving that the programmers at Apple weren't capable of producing a robust worthwhile OS on their own- there are two major failed attempts and who knows how many others) a number of people jumped over to 'Mac' because it seemed 'cool' and the GUI layer Apple was capable of slapping on top seemed pretty nice.

Apple has ALWAYS been as dangerous, or more dangerous, than Microsoft. The whole Windows Monopoly is the fault of Apple. Back in the early years of the Graphical User Interface, there was the Mac, and there were a handful of competitors, most of them running on 'PC Compatible' hardware.

Apple SUED THEM ALL and drove most of them out of business. They killed GeoWorks. They killed the GEM desktop.

They couldn't kill Microsoft. In effect, Apple did Microsoft's work for them, running all their competitors out of the marketplace, preparing the way for the Windows Dominance we now have.

Yes. Apple's practice of SUING ALL COMPETITORS is what drove the market to Windows. The Windows dominance is Apple's fault.

Then again, all that Apple ever wanted was to be an elite boutique platform, so it suits them just fine to have created Windows For The Rest Of Us

When are we going to see the above title used more often?

There is this attitude that Big is Good, and that we can't ever, never, nope, never ever break up a big monolithic giant.

Bankruptcy is a process of correction, not an end point. GM and Chrysler should have gone through the housecleaning process of bankruptcy. Instead politicians kicked that can down the road and we'll have to deal with it later, in a bigger collapse.

Not quite sure just what is made in Detroit anymore short of shitmobiles.

I think they make UAW placards in Detroit.

Honestly, won't MOST users who care about running Linux on a PS3 have a multitude of devices available which run other OSes far better than the PS3??

I run NetBSD on my Pentium D system. But I also enjoy running it on my SparcStation 5's, and even my Macintosh SE/30. I haven't tackled it yet, but I have full plans to run NetBSD on my MicroVAX 3100 (and eventually some flavor of vintage UNIX on it)

Enuff with the anarcho-libbertardian platitudes. Did you have anything to add to the discussion?

Lovelock is talking about a new Scientific Dictatorship, based in Science.

You know. Like the scientific Eugenicists and Socialists espoused in the first half of the 20th century. It worked out well then, should work as well today.

They KNOW what needs to happen. We just need to obey.

Your threats are risible. You'll do as you're told, just like everyone else.

Get off your fucking pedestal.

(I tried, couldn't figure out a better way to put it)

If you want to understand how the standard of living is maintained in the wealthier and developed countries, just visit some places in China. South America. Africa.

Our standard of living is propped up by the filth and misery that these areas of the world deal with on a daily basis.

The connection between those sentences is tenuous at best. Perhaps places like China need to fricking learn to manage their environment the way the 'First World' already has. Perhaps they shouldn't be exempt from the standards that these Global Environmental Orders seek to impose on us.

Perhaps then it wouldn't seem like what it is, a scheme to 'Socialize' the whole world under a supposedly benign dictatorship.

A 12-year sysadmin sounds a lot like a long-term member of the Janitor's union to me.

I know somebody like that. They claimed to be a 'top tier software developer.' They were shocked when I mentioned I was still using Windows 2000 on some of my machines. They didn't seem to have ever heard of MySQL....

Larry Ellison has never been about 'making friends.' He makes acquaintance with co-conspirators.

Oracle makes Microsoft look like a troop of Eagle Scouts by comparison.

and permanently damaging the trust that people have in a connected society.

This part of it might be a good thing. People could use a wake-up call. The Internet was designed to be robust and decentralized. It's supposed to be able to recover quickly from centralized efforts to interrupt it.

There are lots of us who remember when there really wasn't any Internet at all, and we got by. Perhaps as an exercise the Internet should be interrupted for 24 hours every year or so.

Hardly the example we wish to set for our president to befall.

Definitely not. I want Obama to witness the unraveling and repair of all the damage he has done to our country in person. He can rattle around the globe for decades causing minor trouble like Jimmah has after he's tossed out of office. The important thing is for him to be shoved to the curb, and fast.

It does. Just making large numbers of copies of something that already exists isn't really 'creativity.' Especially if all you're doing is making large numbers of copies of recordings someone else being 'creative.'

Why would the NSA bother building some complex tech hack when two guys with guns and hand cuffs 'just plain work'?

Probably because of the camera crews thronging the President within 24 hours for an explanation.