That one burned down, fell over, and THEN sank into the swamp...

Okay. I take it all back. I waited 15 minutes to post my little rant. I've just never seen a torrent start so slowly for me. Now it is up and fully saturated with peers. Let's just pretend I never posted anything, mmm'kay?

I guess I should learn patience. I have four peers. I'll be leaving this up a long time, I think! ;) (It is pretty rare for my joining to be a 20% increase!)

I am currently attempting to download the .iso from bittorrent. Aparrently no one (not one!) is seeding. I am downloading from 0 of 0 connected peers. Lest anyone think my network is down, I am also donwloading open solaris 10 from 64 peers...

In which case it would have to be called "social engineering."

A little of both, actually...

I agree. IBM has been delivering superior support and Java tools for quite a while. Eclipse is the best IDE I have used, apart, perhaps, from the old Borland text-based IDE for Turbo C++.

And yes, I have used Netbeans and Visual Studio. And Kdevelop and Monodevelop and vim, vi, and emacs. And "brief" back when MS-DOS was the way to go.

And ed and Turbo Pascal back on CP/M. How many of you young punks used CP/M? Huh? Now get the hell off my lawn!

IBM is a stodgy old enterprise player, but they are solid and professional. They have been much friendlier to open source in general and Linux in particular than Sun has. I for one welcome our new Big Blue overlords...

Agreed.

I'm still primarily a Lintel platform user, but I just bought my wife a Macbook and the quality of design is quite high, both in hardware and software. The only Apple product I own and use is a iPhone. I used to carry a Linux-geek-worthy Nokia 770 tethered to a simple Sony-Ericsson phone via Bluetooth, but the Nokia had very poor PDA functions, so I still carried a Palm Tungsten. (Aside: Yes, Palm is dying, but from a usability perspective, it is still the best PDA IMHO. But I wouldn't buy a new one).

Basically, I got tired of carrying three devices and while the iPhone wasn't the best at any of these, it was pretty good at all of them AND was an iPod (albeit a limited one).

But that's just anecdote. I think Microsoft now faces real competition for the first time. Apple is a big part of it. The mass public now perceives Apple machines as capable in the business arena, more usable as a "personal computer," and less prone to the serious security problems that are now widely recognized by non-techies.

Beyond that, IBM's 7 billion dollar bid for Sun (which I, for one, hope is successful) positions IBM/Sun to stop cold Microsoft's inroads in the "serious" server space. (I look at all this from a pretty Linux-centered perspective -- you can't fully sum up two entities like IBM and Sun in a couple of paragraphs.)

Consider the combined portfolio: IBM brings their development, hardware, support and training infrastructure and software. IBM has been the real cheerleader (and tech leader) for Java for years now. IBM has embraced Linux and was in no small part responsible for American businesses taking it seriously. Eclipse, AIX, DB2, etc. Not to mention all the mainframe stuff

Sun brings recent acquisitions like MySQL and VirtualBox, official Java, OpenOffice, hardware and engineering...

An IBM/Sun combo can deliver the whole package to any sized business. From a single Linux-hosted server for a small business, up to mainframe hosted VMs for the largest entities. And as someone who has recently experienced many frustrations with the scalability of Windows Server 2003-hosted solutions (is it just me, or is SQL Server incredibly stupidly configured out of the box?)

And Linux-based netbooks. Cheap low power laptops run better with Linux.

So, from the smallest (embedded and netbooks), to the largest, Microsoft faces strong competition from Apple, IBM, Sun, and Linux. Real competition.

They can no longer hide behind their monopoly on systems software (and their other monopoly, Office, is only starting to be challenged by OpenOffice -- IBM has more clout to push that solution, another reason I like the idea of a merger) and claim to innovate. They will really have to innovate to compete. Vista showed how badly they can do it. It will be interesting to see what they learn (if they learn) from that.

Bullpellets. The First Amendment constrains ONLY THE GOVERNMENT. There is no "free speech right" in private places. A property owner may silence or remove anyone from his/her property for any reason, including not liking what you have to say. This is so fundamental and yet I am amazed how often people think private parties are constrained by the constitution! They ARE NOT.

That Bill of Rights thing limits only the government. You have no Constitutional Right to free speech at work, or within the bounds of a private contract.

NONE. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Bupkis.

And yet I want the President (any President) to be hampered by Congress. The "unitary executive" theory is pernicious no matter what person or party has the role.

Cleaning up Congress is the responsibility of the people, because, ultimately our votes DO count and DO decide. I'm a lifelong Minnesotan and I think we are proving that right now.

I too hold a generally dim view of the present Congress because of the way elections are funded at present. But this can change. And the most effective way to change it is for individuals to engage in the process with money, time, and their vote. If individuals contribute (which has become easier than ever) in large numbers, the influence of special interests is diluted. Congress people will be freer to vote in the public interest because they know their support will not dry up.

Keep contributing to candidates you believe in. As much as you can afford or is legal (whichever is less! ;)