The S-corp is a newbie way... Really you need to fully incorporate in a state that doesn't have state or personal income tax (Wyoming, Nevada -- do Delaware if you want to IPO and get big) (yes you'll never get away from the fed..) Standard corporations can take a TON more exemptions than you can personally so any "pass-thru" is just false savings and you're leaving money on the table. Any decent corp is paying exactly $0 federal tax most of the time so there is no reason to take the S election and lose money. Mostly how much you can charge is how you can "come off" there are businesses willing to pay any unreasonable rate. Just remember if you ask for $300/hr you are expected to pick up lunch, dinner, and buy the drinks -- it just goes with the territory.

Due to mono and wine I am able to view any content via streaming. This just means it'll be even simpler since I won't need the sluggish mono/silverlight layer.

COBOL is one of the few languages that is completely standardized. IO, formatting, everything works the same EVERYWHERE. Certainly, the column nature of coding in the language is annoying, but not much more than BASIC was with it's numbering scheme. As far as the programs that chug through industrial-sized databases go few touch as many records as COBOL does.

I used to work at Bank of America and NSA had a black door closet in our office that I couldn't get into. Now mind you I had a security key card that could open any door in the establishment due to me being in the network security team. I could get in any VIP office, the trade floor, any secured area and any BofA server room on the premises but no one in our company could open that one door. So it's not just Internet dotcoms it's all your financial transactions and anything else as well. They are snarfing everything.

Half the players of these games are non-internet connected teenagers at least in terms of their bedrooms. They can't buy $70+ games either as a rule. Microsoft just hasn't had enough strikeouts yet eh? Well they'll learn the hard way. All the next gen PlayStation has to do is be less draconian because the hardware is absolutely the fucking same.

Actually the .Net philosophy to me seems the polar opposite of Java. .Net releases seem further apart but seem to work better and have more integrated functionality. Personally... after using both for a long time C# + .net wins.... The portability comment isn't even an issue anymore really... Mono is working well in most cases (the gap is mostly in the latest incarnations of asp.net and MVC) and is fast enough to run games so it is fast enough for any business use at least in my mind. Personally, I dislike Microsoft and Oracle but I dislike Oracle way more.

Moreover, you win nothing but a higher cost with that middleman. The further you are removed from the supply chain the more something is marked up. Understand that most items in the USA that you can buy are marked up on each phase of the distribution. The manufacturer sells to a distributor who doubles it, and that guy goes to someone who represents a retailer or a group of them and they do the same thing. So something that costs $5 to make (with profit mind you) ends up being $20-30. Cars are no different -- the manufacturer price is much less than the 'invoice' cost which is just a number these dealers cook up but they are marked up less than other items due to the smaller supply chain -- usually being manufacturer to dealer vs there being another couple of parties -- if you add importers and such into the pile you can see why foreign cars with dealerships cannot compete with Tesla. Tesla can sell a car for the exact same price as these guys and make way more money doing it. Bravo -- you are winning at business!

Microsoft - One big version number. One little one. .Net Framework 2.0, 3.5, etc... easy to know where you are. Security patches don't alter the name unless they're a service pack. Then it would be .Net 3.5 sp 1 whatever. You at least know that as long as you have the update service running you are fully patched up and manually running it will make sure. 7u45 is freaking Chinese - it sounds like something that should be on the side of a submarine. Imagine trying to say one of these numbers on a phone to someone you're trying to help through a problem. You can't overload CPU either; too damn confusing even for me. I won't know whether you will talking about your computer or the software. Especially if it is like 2am and something broken. Java is becoming more and more aggravating the longer Oracle has anything to do with it.

Honestly, Microsoft is placing the product for the people like me who won't buy a tablet because I already have a laptop and the iPad keyboard is complete shit for anything I want to do. For typing a complete keyboard (not some crappy slow screen thing) is necessary and I type a lot, and I type fast... I can't stand the interface. Thus, it is a more hybrid device close to what I want that will do a little more than iPad but much much lighter and more portable than said laptop. They made a product for a market that isn't being addressed, and honestly.. I think it was the best place to put it out -- right between androids & iPads, and laptops. If you can give me a full blown laptop with the portability of an iPad I no longer care about iPad.

I would speculate that they are not using any type of sniffing/firewall monitoring to do this due to the volume of the traffic (it would just tank modern implementations..) so they are probably using their DNS servers + some sort of transparent proxy to do it (just so they can piece together URL). Basically, I doubt this will work if you use your own DNS server (which I do at home for this reason... generally not good for providers to see your DNS anyway...) since they would have to use selective monitoring such as this to avoid legal problems. If they never see you hit up the pirate bay then they probably aren't monitoring the rest of the communication at all.

They don't have to. They can leave the GPL code as is, add GPL w/library exemption (since it is their work) to the tack on (remember GPL prevents you from limiting rights not expanding them..), and link their code to the new interface. This is exactly what every single program that links to the standard library (GCC) is currently doing regardless of it's license. Thus, they only have to "GPL" their glue code and connect to the glue -- the glue would be GPL and the proprietary module would only interface that thus no GPL violation -- the interface can be open source since it doesn't cause a problem. If it worked as suggested by you it would be impossible to link anything in Linux without it automatically becoming GPL since technically everything 'links against' the kernel libraries by extension. GPL lets you fork and branch the code all you'd like the GPL specifically states you can modify the software you just have to distribute the code.

At least that's what I learned when the word "Microsoft" is in any of their reports. I would assume that it is that way with everything else too... They're like the Fox News of the tech industry -- it's all about who pays the most.

Nvidia doesn't need Linux or to make drivers for it at all. The top two environments are OSX and Windows and it can ignore Linux completely if it must leaving you with some shitty integrated video adapters. Between negotiating terms or heavily modifying the driver to fit the GPL taint (probably removing functionality) and whatever else it may simply ignore the new functionality since while advantageous it wouldn't effect the position of NVidia at the top of the video heap and most of the cards that would take advantage can't compete with Nvidia anyway. The bug is really in how Linux is licensed not in what NVidia is doing, but there is nothing stopping Nvidia from taking linux sources removing all of the bits it doesn't like and licensing the changes with the library exception and plugging its kernel module into that effectively creating their own branch over which GPL cronies have no say over since this is all GCC has really done by creating the standard library. As long as Nvidia plugs into these 'changed' hooks and not the originals everything still works.

I too have had this problem with contemplating licensing software or documents I create. GPL is great in concept, but why is _IT_ tainting a third party developed software? Nvidia in this case isn't the problem it is the stupid licensing terms of the kernel that are preventing linking to libraries and whatnot required to access the functionality. This concept of GPL tainting other licenses is the problem -- do we have have to bring out the book to write a file to the disk, or everytime we want to create a simple module for personal use go through the license dance? Nvidia drivers are proprietary because nothing would stop their competitors from reverse engineering their hardware via it's interfaces and this 'advantage' is what keeps them in business -- the other factor being that several of the technologies they use themselves are licensed from other companies and they do not have permission to distribute. The weakness here is that Linux is probably not using the GPL the way GCC does (aka you have a library exclusion... you can link your programs with the stdlib and things are fine...) Nvidia won't cower to linux it will just start ignoring it, so how 'bout we put out the olive branch now because having 3D acceleration is pretty nice, and AMD's drivers are always shit? Isn't anyone just happy they even have good drivers from Nvidia on linux period? By this definition no non-GPL software can use these kernel features so wouldn't that make the concept actually non-free... as in.. you no longer have a choice? I understand the problem GPL attempts to address, but it should not be venturing in this realm.

Seriously, I can't even directly compare Radeon to GeForce cards because they're functionally crippled due to the fact that game developers are ignoring them in Windows and the binary driver is completely borked in Linux so no kudos THERE either. Then there is that issue that every single time I buy one of these cards they spontaneously flame-out. Speed isn't everything and they've been stomped in the drivers and support by NVidia for years. Radeon's all fail to render graphics properly even to this day and it is especially noticeable in side-by-side comparisons. They have some nerve charging $500 for what is likely as much a piece of turd as the rest of their offerings.