Open and configurable has nothing to do with this. A sufficiently intelligent malware could have made things as bad as a virus on Windows. Think of a malware that infects your libc to catch certain system function calls (such as those done by the "remove instructions") and redirects them to innocuous behavior. Even on a system that provides SHA1 checksum verification of all libraries and binaries installed through the package manager, you are still susceptible to a ill-behaving fopen/fread. The only way around something like that would be to boot from a clean boot disk with a known-good libc, which is pretty similar to the only way to be sure to clean a virus off Windows.

The fact of the matter is if you have root access and you run programs without knowing what they do, you are exposed to nasty things irrespective of what OS you are running.

Yes, you are entitled to protection against unreasonable searches or seizures in a rented hotel room. Stoner v. California set that precedent.

It is all about making things free that didn't used to be. Devalues everything over time - creators get the message that they might as well make it free when they have a choice before someone takes that choice away from them.

Or, creators get the message that they might as well not make anything at all.

Whoosh ...

Try L4d before you give up on Steam. Seriously, its an amazing game.

Yes, that "Long name ... amazing results" crap is apparently a franchise or branch operation. When I was in college, the local job search using that tag was "Spokane Area Help Wanted dot com" or something similar. Long name indeed.

Now that I'm all grown up, the local job search using that same phrase is "Fargo Jobs dot com". "Fargo Jobs dot com: Long name ... amazing results!" Are you friggin' kidding me? 9 letters. Microsoft.com is just as long of a name as that.

I hesitate to think what the owners of Fargo Jobs dot com would consider a short name ... FJ.com? F.com? Just .com?

(This post is in no way an endorsement of "Fargo Jobs dot com" or its ilk ...)

you let the tom bombadil chapter stop you? sheesh...

honestly, its one of the most confusing chapters in the book, and quie frankly is quite out of place. you wouldnt be missing anything if you skipped it.

Who is Tom Bombadil?

Real nerds use HPs!

Come on now. Obvious flaw in your logic.

If all Artificial things are in the set of Man-made things, and all Artificial things are in the set of Imitation things, then all Man-made things are in the set of Imitation things? Thats a classic fallacy, and one which I had assumed most people were done with.

all A in M
all A in I
Does NOT imply all M in I!