libman, I just don't see the problem with the GPL license. The BSD license permits people to take free source code and lock it way and not share back, the big example here is Apple, and Microsoft's TCP/IP stack from 90's. The way I see it, GPL is an immunization for the user community against the jerks who want to take source code and not share back their changes.

I understand that some people don't see why it's important to immunize the community against for want of a better analogy I call antisocials. Certainly I understand why corporations like Apple and Microsoft don't want the community to be protected from people who take without giving back, but you haven't given me a good explanation yet for why you believe GPL is restrictive.

Yes, in terms of antisocial exploitation of software I suppose you could say it's restrictive. In terms of being able to make use of the software and modify it at will, I think it's awesomely free. The issue I personally have with the BSD license is not the terms of the license, but that it makes no provision to stop exploitation by corporations like Apple and Microsoft who do not have a history of share and share alike, but instead, a history of aggressively attempting to exterminate any competition.

Personally, I'm looking for a software license that makes the world a better place, not some Darwinian winner-exterminates-all-other-competitors where the only survivors are the companies with lots of $$$ whose priority #1 is to make more $$$ by any means necessary such as suing competitors with BS patents.

It's a policy issue. Here's the solution to the Gordian knot: The city sets the policy that all government documents received externally or written internally must be written using the ISO/IEC 26300:2006 standard format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument) or pdf format. That way the Microsoft people can use their Microsoft office, and everybody else who doesn't want to be forced to use Microsoft products can use OpenOffice/Libre Office/Google docs/whatever. After all, that's the point of open standards -- everybody can use their own software to implement the standard. See? One big happy family and no bitterness. Now after having solved their painful and expensive problem, when do I get my consultant fee of 50000 euros for solving their problem so quickly?

It's like the guy selling the best buggy whips in the era of the car. Or the crazy homeless guy spewing crap about Soviet communism will triumph over capitalism any day now. It's only been 20+ years since the Berlin wall fell. Why does IE anything even matter? It's not going to be on your Android phone, or iphone. Who cares?

It doesn't matter whether or not they "controlled for caloric intake". The biochemical process by which fructose is processed by the liver converts the fructose directly into fat. A person who consumes 2000 calories daily of protein/fiber/low carbohydrates (with no sugars) is not going to have the same problems as a person who consumes 2000 calories daily of primarily sugar/fructose as the latter goes straight to fat and depresses the metabolism of the individual while the former does not. Please take some time to watch Dr. Lustig's presentation or the 10 minutes abbreviated version to understand what the metabolic issues are with fructose. Not all calories are the same.

The correlation is simple: BPA correlates to cans of soda consumed which correlates to high fructose corn syrup ingested which correlates to obesity. It's not that BPA causes obesity, it's that it's in the same delivery system as the cause of obesity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

For me thinking becomes defective in several ways. The first way thinking can be defective is when thinking about evaluating a boolean statement and incorrectly applying the rules of logic to evaluate the statement. Here's an example:

1. pancreatic cancer if left untreated leads to death.
2. Sooner or later everyone dies.
3. ?!?!
4. Therefore if someone dies it must have been from pancreatic cancer.

The first 2 statements are true statements about the human condition. The third is a fallacious deduction made by incorrect application of logic. The most you could say logically without additional data is that "if someone dies it may have been from pancreatic cancer."

Another way that thinking can become defective is situations involving the reality of the universe in which an individual rejects valid observational data that contradicts their assumptions about the universe. To give you an example of defective thinking consider individuals whose religious beliefs require them to believe that the universe is no older than a few thousand years old, that the world was created in 7 days, that every word in the bible is both divinely inspired, literal, and infallible. When such individuals are presented with fossils of species that no longer exist, that can be dated by various techniques involving radioactive decay rates to be thousands, or even millions older than the supposed creation of the earth, or when the individuals are presented with an explanation of the General theory of relativity, the gravitational red shift and its implications for how far away some objects truly are in both time and space such as billions of years light years away and billions of years ago, such individuals reject the observational data as obviously incorrect or misunderstood, because the data contradicts their religious beliefs. That ability to hold onto assumptions about the universe in spite of the fact that valid data that contradicts those assumption is what constitutes defective thinking.

I respectfully disagree that Windows is the best. It's always been my experience that Windows is nothing more than a trap to lock people into Microsoft products, products designed as much as possible to not be compatible with open standards. I don't know what your experience with Linux has been, but my experience has been that configuring and installing "Office" products is trivially easy with any Debian based distro, or even RedHat. If you've seen people attempting to replicate Microsoft products using "home brew 'free' solutions that are undocumented, unreliable and impossible for another employee to figure out what is going on" then I would have to guess those people are new to linux and don't realize that almost every Linux distro comes with a package manager, a package manager that can install free and open standard office automation software that's been available for years. I would encourage you to tell your friends to read up on Ubuntu or Linux Mint and give either either one a shot and especially practice using their package managers to see how easy it is to install software. It's really amazing how much software comes prepackaged in Debian based Linux distros.

> "Force" people to use computers that were a vast improvement over what they had before

You mean like CP/M? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

> He gave us Windows

He didn't give us Windows, he forced windows on us by having an exclusive contract with the PC vendors.

You know who Billy is really more like? He's like the rich guy in that Jodie Foster movie, "Contact" who fesses up before he dies that he didn't receive so generously from people, but instead took so generously from the people. Except, in the movie the bastard admits it. In real life BillyG hasn't. I suspect that if he's going to admit it (which no one should hold their breath waiting) he'll do it on his death bed so he can't be chewed out for the damage he's wreaked on the computing sector.

Can we please stop the shilling for BillyG now?

There's a reason as stated in Lustig's presentation about why eating fruits as a source of sugar is NOT bad -- it's because the fruits don't just contain fructose, they also contain fiber, a substance which among other things inhibits the absorption of fructose through the intestines, unlike the sugar/fructose that's put into candy, salad dressings, junk food in general and soda which have NO FIBER. That's something you would have picked up *HAD YOU WATCHED EITHER VIDEO*. If it makes you feel any better, *I* appreciate you letting me know what kind of diet you are eating and the results you're getting. Based on Lustig's presentation and the South Beach diet I've managed to lose 50lbs. since September 1st just by ditching the junk food + sodas + any foods high in sugars (but with no fiber) or carbs such as potatos (which if you're not familiar are processed into sugars by the human body). I'm going to try switching to a higher fruit diet to see if I can get results similar to yours.

It's not meant to be a point of criticism, but it's not meat that's making so many American's fat -- it's fructose in the diet from table sugar and just as bad high corn fructose syrup. Here's a link to a fascinating video by Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist specializing in childhood obesity, entitled "The Bitter Truth About Sugar" that covers among other topics the biochemical process that connects fructose to creation of fat cells: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM. Checkout the history between the size of soda cans/bottles and the correlation to obesity rates in America. If you just want the highlights from the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMjKEncojQ In my own personal research it's mind blowing the amount of fructose in soda vs. other food products. The amount of sugar in a low sugar whole wheat slice of bread: 1g. The amount of sugar in a 24 oz. Dr. Pepper bottle: 80g! Unholy bat guano! It's a miracle that people's pancreas don't explode from the amount of sugar consumed on a daily basis.

This is not the first time I've heard something like it, and I still don't understand it. How can all hackers and malware programmers "generally love" Linux so much that they don't attack Linux sites? Can this really be true? I don't see how, but for the sake of argument, assuming that statement is true, WHY would hackers and malware programmer loooovvvvvvvee Linux so much and not Microsoft that they protect Linux and attack Microsoft? Why?

• From the Halloween documents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents), specifically document 1 (http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween1.html) and document 3 (http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween3.html) ESR's analysis of how Microsoft perceives interacting with others:

  To put it even more bluntly: "commodity" services and protocols are good things for customers; they promote competition and choice. Therefore, for Microsoft to win, the customer must lose.

  Microsoft truly behaves as though it corporately believes that there's only a fixed pool of key ideas, most already discovered, which software designers must squabble over in zero-sum competition until the end of time. In that game, the only definition of `winning' is cornering enough goodies to guarantee you a monopoly lock.

• Micorosoft is a software company (even if it's run by a marketing execs); they make money selling software.
• Microsoft is an OS company; they make money selling an operating system.
• Microsoft is a for profit company that sells software for their operating system. They're not in the business of supporting other operating systems (example: the recent H264 plugin for Chrome is for Windows only Chrome. Some choice!)
• Microsoft encourages developers,developers,developers,developers, only so long as it improves their market share of operating systems. Any developer who competes with Microsoft software or whose product is deemed useful to Microsoft is either eliminated or assimilated (preferrably after running them into bankruptcy first -- see Spyglass and Internet Explorer -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Internet_Explorer)
• From wikipedia's entry on conflict resolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_resolution) there are 5 strategies of resolving conflict: accommodation,avoidance,collaboration,compromise,and competition. Here's the definition of competition:

  assert one's viewpoint at the potential expense of another. It can be useful when achieving one's objectives outweighs one's concern for the relationship.

  Here's the definition of accommodation:

  surrender one's own needs and wishes to accommodate the other party.

  • In any negotiations with Microsoft one might assume that because Microsoft is a corporation composed of many individuals that negotiations will involved either collaboration or compromise. However, you need to keep in mind that Microsoft believes in zero sum --- in order for them to win, you have to lose. Which means that in the process of negotiations with Microsoft you'll be going through the following stages of negotiation:
    1. Assume collaboration. You'll explain your requirements and assume they will explain theirs and you'll assume you'll find a way to satisfy both. However, this won't happen as Microsoft want to win by making you lose, so they won't accede to your suggestions.
    2. Since you don't get everything you want you'll assume the strategy has switched to compromise, clearly you're giving some to Microsoft, and you expect them to give some concessions in return to you as a way of compromising. But, Microsoft believes in zero sum, and its strategy is competitive. Microsoft gives no concessions, only face saving rationalizations so you can convince yourself that you're getting something from them.
    3. Whether you realize it or not, your strategy has now become accommodation. To save face, you delude yourself into believing you're an equal partner with Microsoft until it's too late.

    Let's analyze the Nokia-Microsoft "deal". What has Microsoft gained?

    • Nokia is using Microsoft's operating system. (No Linux need apply. Die symbian, die!)
    • Nokia is using Microsoft's api instead of another. (No qt is allowed)
    • Microsoft is getting a large slice of the cell phone market exclusively. (Don't have to compete with Android for Nokia)
    • Microsoft has exclusive control of the software. (Talk about a wet dream for Microsoft!)

    What has Nokia "gained"?

    • Loss of their own operating systems.
    • Loss of the direction of the software for their cellphones. (That's Microsoft's purview now.)
    • Loss of their Symbian, Qt, and Meego developers (what do they need them for now? They're nonprofitable baggage now.)

    In summary it looks to me like the bargaining resolution was a (competition, accommodation) pairing with Microsoft in the drivers' seat. If I was on Nokia's board or a shareholder I would probably demand an investigation into fraud and at the very least fire Elop.

Why do people allow chairmen to make ignorant remarks like that? Friends don't let friends make asinine remarks about security without at least understanding the issues: Kerckhoff's Principle.

It was a well written, respectful, explanation excusing Mr. Gates' behavior by rationalizing that everybody's money in some way or another funds "bad" things in life. I, however, don't agree nor do I accept any attempt to excuse his behavior. The bottom line is that MOST people don't have BILLIONS of dollars invested DIRECTLY into corporations with unethical behavior. Does Gates foundation fund charities? Well, maybe they do. The questions I have for everyone who thinks that Mr. Gates is doing good is this: Are there any restrictions on the donations,i.e., does the charity have to use ONLY Microsoft products? If the answer is yes, they do have to use ONLY Microsoft products, then do you still believe that is he's doing good charity or good marketing? They are not the same, and they are exclusive.