By default vim will make a backup copy of the file you are about to edit, which is why your HD was on fire. You can turn that feature off with -n (or in the config. file, see man vim) ... but then recovery after a crash is impossible. As the original poster said, vim does not load the entire file into memory.

> Red Hat is really a distributor. What original products have they developed?

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions

And how is this different from SUN? Oh, wait, SUNs OS is open-source, and, because the platform is open, it is easy enough to put Linux on.

Except Solaris isn't the same as OpenSolaris, in fact one of the biggest complaints I see from the few people still running Solaris is that they still can't get access to the source ... just to see wtf is going on. And OpenSolaris only happened as a last ditch effort before Solaris died to Linux, being forced to do something before you die because you didn't is hardly "leading".

NFS, NIS, Solaris, JAVA, OpenOffice, VirtualBox, MySQL

NFS and NIS can only be classed as open source projects if you are delusional. Yes, they dumped some code to try and make a de-facto std. ... but they were never an upstream. Solaris being open source is a lie. Java only because open source because Red Hat+IBM+etc. were going to create a real open source version, if they didn't. Open Office, you can have (although again, they were pretty much forced to open source it ... and there is no real community, because Sun are clueless about open source). MySQL was bought, complete with community (and only a significant part of Sun if you take their inflated price at face value). I know nothing about Virtual box, so maybe you can have that ... for what it's worth.

Yeh, I do that with my foot too. But I'm pretty sure a lot of that is instinctual, because although I've done it to great success with class cups etc. ... I've also done it with knives and heavy metal objects (while not wearing shoes :).

*BSD runs the BSD userland instead of the GNU userland. So it is just like linux with a worse UI.

Be fair. They have a worse kernel too.

Welcome to reality. The amount of electricity to your house is not limited

Not true, even ignoring the physical problems there's a main breaker (which you can't play with without the electric companies approval) which has a limit. But I've also never seen the electric company advertise "unlimited" electricity.

And I think network usage has to go the same way. The reason that's scary to a lot of people is because most "per-megabyte" rates are way, way too high.

That is a worry ... but the biggest problem is still "we sold you unlimited, but have now realized we can't give it to you".

The thing is the only thing overseas sub-contracting has to offer are lower costs. So it makes sense that the overseas companies will "optimize" everything for cost, this implies the cheapest labour you can get. This probably works "acceptably" for a level 1 call centre, not so much for knowledge workers.

By the same token, I've never seen a small .us contracting company primarily optimize for cost (they may exist, and I just haven't worked with/for them).

As someone who makes his living selling content through the Internet, I want people to think several times before building a tool like AdBlock.

You are speaking to the wrong people, IMO. NoScript/AdBlock/etc. are there because users want them. So you are saying "please don't do what users want, because it'll make me more money". Well, sucks to be you then.

If you really want to make a difference and see Ads be viable on the web. N years from now ... you need to speak to "most" of the large content providers. For instance my wife is pretty clueful and had happily not been using NoScript/etc. ... until recently when she hit usatoday and a giant popup came up and refused to go away (so she couldn't read the content). Now she has NoScript installed and only approved sites can run any JS.

It's the same with TV, 5 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes (33%) is just way too much and their real customers fought back ... so now they get 0% ads from a growing percentage of people. Yeh, that implies bad things for the future of TV, but then in many ways nothing really is better than what was there before.

They recently stopped buying third party maps, and are now reportedly paying mobile providers to put their google maps app. on the phones (which they can only do because they aren't locked into the map provider duopoly). Which speaks to, a least, a significant amount of forward planning on their side.

But, yeh, brilliance is hard to measure. Some of the DNS tricks they just released, and more, I've wanted some Linux DNS software to do for at least 10 years ... so it's not "genius". But the number of useful things they've actual got out implies they are way above average (as a company), IMO.

However, even the most jaded, cynical atheist cannot deny that organized religions have also done some amazing things for the societies in which they existed.

Yeh, I'm sure Scientology has done some good. So what? Are you suggesting we try and keep some kind of score card, we can put "imprison children and malke them slaves" on one side and "feed homeless" on the other? Not sure what we do when they "convert" a follower with those "selfless acts" though.

Of course Atheists never do any charitable works on their own, so as long as the nutjobs "help" roughly as many as they screw over, it's all good.

is every bit as ignorant and superficial as claiming that someone cannot drive because their plumbing is different than mine ...

That's right, I forgot that most "organised" religions fought so hard for equal rights and civil rights, oh wait...

And for anyone else who is not an economist "negative income elasticity" means "prefer cheaper, lower quality, goods".

Depends, I don't see many people using wordpad/gedit instead of MS-word/OO-writer. Features always matter, and they often matter more than speed/security/usability (all of which have their fans who ask "why can't all apps. consider X, and stop being bloated") ... but sometimes, if you do _really_ well on one of those three and you are "close enough" feature wise, then people can live without the features you don't have. But it's a big gamble, much bigger than just adding features as fast as possible.

leaving you with a junk file

That's why the minimum recommendation for updates like that is to "write to tempfile, close, check that close is happy and then rename". Unless you can deal with someone pulling the power at any point as you update.

According to that page on that site, _minimum_ pay for a pilot is 67k (which I would put a lot of money on being BS). Of course a different page (http://www.avjobs.com/salaries-wages-pay/historical-aviation-wages.asp) says 16k-60k or 23k-250k (depending on if you are "regional" or "national"). And I assume for "average" they are using mean and not median which, from all I've heard of the industry, will make the numbers higher.

People want free, anytime they can get it. Not a good business model.

I think the PS3 "video rental" is a good counter example, I'm a happy netflix subscriber ... and would be happy to give money to sony instead, for a comparable product. But the product is significantly worse and a lot more expensive. I assume they think the fact I can have it "instantly" should make up for that, but it doesn't.

If you then look at "buying" instead of renting, the product is a little cheaper but a lot worse -- and there are even weirdos with the price (like their "sales" which are much more arbitrary than any real shop could get away with). Plus the "instant download" feature isn't as big a hook.

I use the Amazon mp3 store all the time, I hear iTunes is doing great ... I'll likely never use the PS3 store again though. So just saying "people want free" is outright ignoring reality.