I'm glad that there is at least some competition out there to drive innovation, but perhaps the one thing that might just be dying here is software that is given away for free? There is a new generation of programmers and developers out there that are brought into this market with the idea of actually making money for their efforts. Think 10 or 15 years ago when you appreciated getting your name (or 'nym) out there as credit for free software and not much more. No offense, but the debt-riddled entitlement generation has to be able to pay the bills.

I'm not faulting anyone for that, but just don't sit back here and act all "shocky" when someone wants to actually charge money for their efforts. Capitalism done right isn't a bad thing. It got the market where it is today. Besides, as least it's the base layer that is open source with proprietary apps on top, and not the other way around.

And please, let's drop this whole mentality of the "phone" being the platform of the future. It's not a "phone" anymore, it's damn computer that happens to have a wireless network connection built in. Stop calling it a "phone" already. It stopped being a "phone" about 5 years, three browsers, two touch screens, 512MB,400mhz, and 75,000 apps ago.

Intel and Adobe both have completely dropped the ball, but right now it's Intel that's in trouble. The only "netbook" I know that can handle fullscreen flash is the LT3013u; At 12" and $350 it hits the price point okay but misses size. Still, it's at least got a 720p display, which means it has to do more than most of the competition to even break even — it does better than that.

>who eventually sold the Lindows trademark to Microsoft for $20 million.

How horrible. 20 million!

Sigh, I love how /. is anti IP until it involves MS, then its all "WE MUST PROTECT COPYRIGHT/TRADEMAKRS/PATENTS AT ALL COSTS."

Global average temperature has fallen last three years

Uh, no, it hasn't. And even if it had, let me introduce you to a concept called "noise". Or: Why three years of data doesn't represent anywhere close to a trend.

But, keep lying in the face of facts. I'm sure it makes you feel so very much better.

I agree that pirating may/will happen... But, I tend to think that "The Open Source Community" would frown on those shenanigans.

Machine code is what you get if you take the assembly and run it through an assembler to produce code that the computer can understand. The computer can then execute it. It is not human readable unless you've memorized which opcodes correspond to which assembly keywords.

I don't know, I'm sure there's someone out there who has actually memorized it. I wrote machine code for a Z-80 Timex-Sinclair back in the early eighties, as there were no assemblers for that machine I knew of. I had to write the assembly, then translate it byte by byte, looking up the opcodes by hand, then test each small module before stitching them together.

I only did it a couple of times as it was very tedious, and only when I needed blazing speed, but I was pretty proud when I wrote a "battle tanks" game that ran fast enough on its 1 mHz processor that I had to put NOP loops init to slow it down somewhat. It was quite a challenge and a learning experience, but I'm sure someone smarter than me could breeze through it.

Of course, the Z-80 was a primitive processor that wasn't anywhere near as complex as an x86. I'm pretty sure it would be impossible for me to do with a modern processor (and I'm not nearly as patient as I used to be), but like I said, someone smarter than me could accomplish it, maybe even considering it trivial.

Me, take a handout from an advertising company? Are you silly? I make an effort to lower the amount of commercial drivel which surrounds me. Why would I allow them to give me some trinket to shower me in ads? Thanks but no thanks, if I want a 'netbook' I'll buy one myself. Without ads.

Rule of thumb:

The quality of a presentation improves in direct proportion to the amount of content you remove while not changing the meaning.

In other words, simpler is better. You even said yourself that all great things are simple, which implies that anything not simple cannot be great.

"Not enough money in the pension fund?"

What's a pension fund?

"i thought this was a news site"

Really? That's so cute!

I'm with you. GalCiv and GalCiv 2 are the games MOO3 should have been.

Combine it with a motion sensor near your door, and have it warn you to duck under your desk.