In other words pretty much exactly what some tried to say when Google first launched Chrome, except for OSS zealots who were blinded by their Mozilla support and "do no evil" slogan.

For Google open source is not a goal, it's a tool. Google funded Mozilla to run a browser war by proxy, as an open source and non-profit organization Mozilla could get massive support from organizations and volunteers that Google never could and a much higher tolerance of bugs and broken functionality. And I mean that both with respect to internal bugs as well as broken web sites due to MSIE-only code. As a means to an end to push a standards compliant web for Google to profit from it was a success.

With Android Google again used open source as a battering ram against an entrenched monopoly, this time against Apple in smart phones. Once again a host of unlikely allies - pretty much everyone except Apple and Nokia, really - jumped on board along with the open source rah-rah and low cost clone manufacturers looking to get a free ride. That you could have things like CyanogenMod and get root on your phone was new - even though some manufacturers blocked that it was a step up from the all-closed platforms.

I'm not saying those are bad things, but those mutually beneficial interests come to an end. Once we've been released from the old stranglehold, Google wants to make a new one with themselves in control. I don't think I can make a catchy acronym for it like embrace-extend-extinguish but it goes something like commodify-bundle-obsolete:

1. Commodify the functionality through open source
2. Bundle it with Google APIs/services
3. Let the open source version toil in obsolescence

Search results are still a major driver of Google's revenue. The default search engine is defined by your browser, the default browser is defined by the platform so from their perspective pushing Android and Chrome both makes very much sense - if you're using a Google product you'll never be pointed anywhere but a Google service. Chrome is also a vital part of that "all-or-nothing" bundle Google is selling to make companies use Google Play which is now their second cash cow.

Firefox is no longer a partner against MSIE, they're a threat against the OHA bundle. If you can take AOSP and install Firefox with no further strings attached that's one of the many pieces you need to replace filled. The less alternatives you have, the more power Google has over the Android ecosystem. If you're still stuck in the mindset where MSIE had 95% market share you'll fail to see that your one-time ally is no longer on your team. They're on their own team, as every for-profit company eventually end up being.

Let's assume God does not exist. Therefore heaven does not exist. Therefore things like morals don't matter because you don't go to heaven or hell or are not judged regardless of what acts you commit.

For those who have ever wondered what a non-sequitur is, this is a prime example.

Again, how does that justify limiting the number of cabs? That's what licensing does.

No, it doesn't.

As implemented, thanks to crony capitalism and lobbying, the number of taxis is limited. However, this artificial limitation is in no way an inherent feature of an accreditation system.

Native speakers, yes. But whether you're in China or India or Spain the most popular second language is English. Functionally you're much better off because at almost any tourist destination you'll find somebody speaking English, while Mandarin is great if you go to China and pretty much useless everywhere else. English got presence in Europe (UK + EU really), North America (USA), Asia (India), Oceania (Australia) and Africa (several former colonies). I'm not going to argue the moral side of colonialism, just say that practically it's the only language with global reach.

The quality of the English version is what it is. The quality of the non-English version is what it is plus all that was lost in translation, it's certainly not going to be better. The worst is when they move around on standard shortcuts, for example in MS Office all English versions has Ctrl-F as Find and Ctrl-B as Bold. In Norwegian Ctrl-F = Bold (Fet) and Ctrl-B is Find (Finn) and I absolutely hate it every time. And yet in the interest of sanity they do keep other English shortcuts like Ctrl-S = Save (Lagre), even though that makes no sense in Norwegian. Never mind that when you're working with code or databases there is no Norwegian C# nor SQL, so it all ends up rather Norwenglish when you try.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of my language when it comes to identity and culture. But when it comes to communication having global terminology and one way of doing it makes everything so much simpler. Yes, there's a whole lot of "English" speakers out there but any resemblance of a common tongue beats trying to use translators. It's something of a first world issue though as 16% of the world is still illiterate in their first language but I hope that in 100 years you could talk to at least half the world's population in one language.

No higher authority should be able to make it illegal for consenting adults to interact with one another.

Indeed. That's why laws dealing with fraud, workplace safety and food standards are just Government oppression.

It takes a special license in order to inspect your vehicle?

No.

You are required to have your vehicle inspected to hold the special license.

Are there really taxi unions? Around here taxi drivers are lucky to make minimum wage.

Taxi *owner* "unions". Though I doubt they're "unions" in the traditional sense. More likely "associations" like doctors or lawyers.

What moral authority does the state have to stop consenting adults from forming their own contracts and doing business with each other?

Should people be able to sell themselves into slavery ?

What does "... for profit" mean? If you consume $6 in gas and you friend gives you $5, paying $2 more than their share, is that "for profit"?

If you have someone over for dinner and they pay more than their share or the groceries that go into the meal, are you running a restaurant for profit?

No.

Next question ?

Well since you asked so nicely.

The government of the autonomous region of Valencia (Spain) earlier this month made available the next version of Lliurex, a customisation of the Edubuntu Linux distribution. The distro is used on over 110,000 PCs in schools in the Valencia region, saving some 36 million euro over the past nine years, the government says.

Try not stealing one since the US government doesn't own them and I think you'll find yourself in jail. Any takers who'd like to bet otherwise? I think in practice this is resolved already, what you bring back to Earth is yours. The fun parts would be that nobody has mining rights, if you find a big gold vein there's nothing stopping another country/company dropping a mining rig right next to yours.

This must be the most clueless post about the 1000/1024 divide so far. It never had anything to do with the computer's performance, it's that when you build a digital computer a lot of things will be sizes of two because what you can address with n bytes will be 2^n. Physical memory, memory pages, caches, buffers, floppy and hard drive sectors all the "microunits" in the computer are powers of two. Hint: No actual hard drive gives you 1MB = 1000000 bytes because it's not divisible with 512, in reality they give you 1954*512 = 1000448 so they don't underdeliver. Actually make that divisible by 4096 for modern HDD drives with 4K (no, not 1000) sectors.

There is a single reason why computer scientists usurped the prefix kilo and that is because they needed to describe "one thousand and twenty four bytes" - or multiples of that - very, very often. They needed a shorter name, they never needed the unit "1000 bytes" and so "one kilobyte" became their shorthand for 1024 bytes. And unless you're really good at doing math in your head, tell me how much is seven kilobytes exactly? (And if you answer 7000 I'll slap you). We still say 512GB of RAM. Nobody wants to say 549.755813888 GB of RAM, because multiply that with a billion and you have how many bytes that is. It's not some nice, round number.

Either way you're going to run into some f*cked up conversions if you mix GiB and GB, which I'll use now for clarity. If you have 512GiB of RAM (hey, servers do) and load 512GB from disk, how much of your RAM have you used up? Now while you're calculating that, this other person who uses a GiB system says so that was like ~477 GiB so like ~35 GiB free? Or you have to say you have 549.8 (rounded) GB RAM and use exactly 512 GB. Of course in reality file sizes are probably a rather random size so you'll have two long floating point numbers. At least with base 2 you just have one, because you have exactly 512 GiB RAM.

And when you do have base 2 numbers then multiplication/division gives other nice base 2 numbers like 10 MiB / 2 KiB = 5 KiB. 10.485760 MB / 2.048 KB = how much? It's a lot uglier if you numbers are 2^n values, which again they will be a lot of the time. At least far more often than base 10 as long as you're working with the computer itself and not business data or whatever. If you for example want to make something fit in L3 cache to optimize and algorithm, the numbers will be in base 2. You can't "bugfix" your way out of that.

The link that supposedly refutes the argument that people are paying for things they wouldn't otherwise pay for doesn't actually refute anything. Rather, it characterizes the current situation as "socialism"; "Cable TV is socialism that works."

I do not want to contribute to ESPN. Nor the myrid "shopping" channels. Or the "Christian" networks. Or any of the other dreck that pollutes this world. Even if that means the things I do want aren't as well subsidized for the lack of fuhtbawl knuckle-heads.

Whatever.... I can't remember how long ago it was that I last paid a cable bill. My vote has been cast. Join me and cut these bloodsuckers off. You won't miss it.