Agreed. This poll is CLEARLY a nod do the people who've been agitating for more logarithmic polls lately. And I happen to agree with them; if we break it down to a regular interval, we'll just make the problem of accurate figuring out which category you belong to much harder, and make the poll as a whole less informative.

Those folks trapped behind

are almost certainly the ones the Chrome frame is targeted at, though. Only tech-savvy users will actually seek out this plugin, and tech-savvy users who still use IE almost always use it because they're ordered to.

This article is straight-up Microsoft FUD, the same bull they've been feeding us for twenty years now.

I am a student and tech support coordinator at an Ivy League university, and my school, for one, is very Linux friendly. Campus services are mostly platform-agnostic (currently, there's some talk of using Silverlight for some class video supplements, but I had a conversation with the administrator running that and he's promised that if they go with it, they'll also have quicktime and flash options available). The campus network is based on EHA/MAC address whitelisting, and is thus platform-neutral. Getting some site-licensed software is a pain on Linux (MATLAB requires several more hoops to download on Linux than Windows, but it's doable), but any and all required class programs are available in computer clusters (which have Windows and Mac machines, and a couple of specialized clusters have Linux). Our tech support group (the largest in the nation, at ~130 student employees and 3 full-time staff) doesn't totally support Linux machines, but we support it as we can; we keep a group of designated Linux specialists who offer limited tech support to Linux users with computer problems (we don't fully support just because of the difficulty of doing so, especially with a staff that's only 5-15% Linux users).

We have some non-savvy professors who will occasionally require closed solutions, but the average Linux user is smart enough to work around those restrictions, rather than suffer under them. Overall, we're very FOSS-friendly. It's a great place to use Linux.

Shocking! The charge that sticks is the only one related to what he actually did wrong! I know the "City of San Francisco" is royally pissed, but even if they're throwing the book at him they have an obligation to stay within the bounds of fact.

I hope he's let off the hook, personally. The damage he's done to his career (who'll hire a DBA who would hijack the whole network?) is probably enough punishment even by itself. And the details of the offense (hostage-taking to avoid a pink slip) are sufficient to keep him from being hired in any field, technical or not.

The usual OEM Vista price is currently $53.50. So Microsoft probably didn't take nearly as much of a hit as the Sitepoint article suggests. I'm sure it hurt, but not nearly as badly as the author thinks.

His other conclusions are interesting, though.

No, but there was a famous sampling case in which the judge ruled explicitly "Get a license or do not sample." The issue of sampling hasn't seen any Supreme Court action, but at the moment this is the highest ruling on the matter, and it explicitly outlaws any and all digital sampling.

Here's the actual opinion, it's actually pretty readable.

Except insofar as the contract is for use of copyrighted material. So yes, if the copyright had expired at any point since the signing of the contract, the contract would promptly become void. Nothing to sell.

You do know that life + 70 (the current term in the US, as of the 1998 Sonny Bono Act) only applies to the life of the original creator, right? It has no relevance to the lifetime of a corporation; even if the rights are transferred to a corporation, copyright still expires 70 years after the death of the original author.

For works that are created by corporations (i.e. works-for-hire), copyright lasts for 95 years after publication.

Not that I don't agree with you; copyright extension is awful, and I personally wish it were possible to revert copyright to 28+28 or even the original (1790 Copyright Act) term of 14 years + a 14 year renewal. But you should check your facts.

Because there's just not enough ammunition to get rid of 'em all.

Could it be that EA's actually listening to their customers? This isn't a cheap publicity stunt like Ubisoft pulled with Prince of Persia; this is (arguably) EA's flagship product.

No, to be anonymous, you just need to not have any friends.

Can we ban self-service stations here in the Northeast, too? I'd love 25 cents a gallon...