This is about putting dedicated hardware on board to load default firmware from a flash-ROM into the Marvell WLAN chip, so you d o not need to load the firmware after every boot. There is plenty of explanation on the project page , and quite clearly it writes

But why bother reading about details when it is so much fun to just complain and whine and repeat your half understood rants on half understood topics, right?

I won't even start to tell you how many mis-statements are contained in this sentence, let alone the whole paragraph I'm not bothering to quote. Luckily /. features a Foes list that will save me from ever attempting to argue on any matter with you again.

He was "joking" (?) about *his* piece of software, Git, quite clearly claiming that people complaining about it are just idiots. Using a pretty offensive language (even if just joking), on a public mailing list. If Linus was a little bit more open-minded or tolerant or spending one second of his time thinking about the users of his software (let's better call them victims), I think he might at least acknowledge that the problem might with Git's lack of consistency, lack of documentation and general complexity (when compared to alternate DVCS). There are more Linus-quotes that reflect a (IMO) questionable attitude towards his users, enough that I take everything he boasts about with a grain of salt. But we're getting off-topic.

Yeah, now I get the point you were referring to. It might seem inconsisten, but maybe you didn't think his reasoning to the end: If a WLAN-chip required a closed firmware to operate, than the Linux kernel has to be shipped with a copy of the (binary and non-modifyable!) firmware embedded. Now suddenly your operating system isn't free any more, as it's bound not only by the Linux license, but also by the license of the firmware. What when it stated that export to Cuba was forbidden? Or specific uses were excluded? You generally don't want to teint your GPLed operating system with non-GPLed bits and pieces protected by copyright. Putting the questionable firmware in an on-board ROM at leasts frees people that deal with the Linux-OS images from having to care about the copyrights of the non-free firmware (the board's manufacturer will still have to deal with it, though).

I won't consider myself a RMS fan or a free software zealot, just by knowing some of RMS' opinions and quoting them when I think they provide a valid point on some issue. On the other hand, you seem to be a complete anti-RMS zealot. "Please don't quote RMS"? Just because some of his stuff is too extreme for your taste?

You think Torvalds is any better? Hey, I have a quote for you (source)

If I were you, I'd rather ask people to not quote Torvalds than to not quote RMS.

I am the only one who's annoyed by the poster's complete lack of critical reflection on those "IP" claims? Are the IP lawyers and lobbyists now getting their anonymous postings on slashdot, too? I'm close to deleting my /. account.

BTW I'm also annoyed by the fact that people got so used to the somewhat nonsensical oxymoron "Intelectual Property".

No, what they found is that she copied other author's text including footnotes. At other places she reformatted in-line references of the original into footnotes of her text. Whether she copied the text literally or not; if you copy references&footnotes, keeping the original order and semantics, it's pretty clear that you didn't think of your own. I don't think reformulating and reformatting skills entitle you to a PhD.

It runs the software that you write, and you don't even need any SDK for that. Out of the box it runs Lua, Python, Tcl, Octave, Scheme, gForth, Emacs-Lisp, Shell Script and who knows what else. There's even a GCC toolchain package available, if you need it. If you're satisfied with the software that vendors throw at you or allow you to obtain via their managed app-store, than maybe NanoNote is not made for you.

Did you try the Audacious audio player? It was once forked from XMMS, which was a pretty good Winamp clone (for me anyways, haven't seen any Winamp since the year 2000 :). I still have Audacious configured to start with the XMMS skin, which is pretty close to how Winamp looked in 2000. With regard to media players, there's quite a lot of stuff around. Mplayer is certainly the best-performing media player on Linux. If you prefer a nicer GUI, there's also VLC. When you need more codecs, install Ubuntu package ubuntu-restricted-extras, and/or add the medibuntu repository to your package sources.