Seriously, this is just sliding into some cyberpunk fantasy where the corporations own and run everything. IBM has a special school; these kids will be exploited as little codemonsters until they grow up and decide whether to move on or accept their predetermined lot in life. New grads are cheap, but you usually have to teach them how to acceptably code and work with your tools. Well, now IBM has that angle covered. Instant productivity!

I don't like it, but if that's your bag, I won't hold it against you. Another evolution of the big business model. I bet that it will do pretty well for them until all of the other big corporations jump on board.

Brings a whole new concept to feeling the good vibes down there.

I've always thought that it is an effective way to increase the size of his fan base... assuming the new ones get indoctrinated.

I've run a MythTV media center solution for the past 5 years and recently rebuilt it. I found that the backend was great, but all of my issues were with the frontend and getting that to work to my satisfaction.

My rebuild is based on Gentoo again, but this time with XBMC as the frontend, and it is fantastic - full HiDef (1080p), surround sound setup. Installation was a snap and I had a fully working frontend solution including remote (on Gentoo!) within a day. I'm going to install a MythTV backend on the same box for recording over the air signals, but I'm not in a hurry to do so. My media center is now more focused on DVD viewing/storage and less TV these days. I'm done with cable. ...now if only Linux could easily read BluRay...

Some of us call that creativity, or "art".

Great job!

Sure, they can obtain my phone number. But can they obtain all the numbers (and thus people) that I've called? THAT is what this is analogous to.

I'd be fine with it if all they wanted was my IP without being able to grab logs from any website that I could visit to compare them.

Linking your IP to your browsing habits is akin to recording who you called on the phone. It provides even more detail because they can derive what you were calling about based on the site's content. It is just one step from sniffing all your traffic once they link this data together.