To maintain and support an entire OS takes a lot of work. We aren't talking about just development here, but checking to make sure things run properly and making the changes needed to ensure stuff is supporter. The point I would start looking at rolling your own distribution and supporting it is the day you decide to start selling your distribution.

For internal use, sure you might have to have a team to do internal work to modify certain sections in order to make the OS work for you, but they are relatively minor compared to ensuring an entire distribution works as needed. Let another company do the heavy lifting and just have your company modify it and submit changes back through the system as desired. Feedback works as well.

To run an entire distribution and all the subsystems takes billions, look at IBM donating to Linux as a whole they give value back to the community rather than trying to extend and embrace for their own purposes. Redhat does the same and they do distribution and sales. Other companies are the same. I guess you can make the decision on your own but personally I suppose the time to switch is when you have support fees in excess of what it would cost to maintain an entire distribution. I'd assume someone around a thousand people focused on the project would be about right. A thousand people's salaries would buy a lot of support. A better idea might be to hire developers for the subsections of the OS that you need and have them work with the community.

Challenge accepted.

Yes and from what I remember of the steam box that is one of the features. You are supposed to be able to have your massive gaming machine in one part of the house but be able to play on any television throughout the house. The big machine handles the heavy lifting and transmits the data to wherever you want to play at. Since this is the designed function there isn't even an issue of plugging and unplugging wires etc to wherever you are at.

I haven't read the literature in a while, but that was my understanding of how it was supposed to work. Granted that is pre-release information before they got the specs set for the steambox and the functionality may have been removed.

Isn't this supposed to be what steam big picture is for. Playing games on your television in another room from you computer?

If the literature is correct, that would just make this ask slashdot just another slashavedisment .

In my opinion we need to start holding politicians accountable for their actions. Currently it seems the legalization of bribes and free speech of corporations while the rest of the country has their right to speak publicly only in free speech zones and the removal of their assets without any proof of wrongdoing just doesn't sit well with me.

Sure I suppose it's good enough for a single user, but I think it'll be a bit more expensive to add these in rather than run a set of fiber cables down the road.

Yep, easy peasy. Just let your credit score go to hell, then move out and live on the streets since most places require a credit check before they'll let you rent. We've already eliminated owning your own home since you can't get a mortgage, so I guess you're living in a one bedroom efficiency hotel for 300 a week.

Sounds like a good way to get yourself fixed up.

What happened to Staples plan to put out 3d printers in it's locations?

And lets not forget you, since you have to been smart enough and knowledgable enough to evaluated all the work that these people do. You obviously are the best qualified to make that decision. And you have. And by pointing out that Linus is obviously not within even the remotest inkling of talent of these "REAL" smart people and is being an asshat, doesn't that just make you an asshat for calling him an asshat.

Screw off. I like my kernel worked on, Linus gets the job done, I'm willing to put up with him being an asshat at times.

My questions though, is what have you done for me lately?

These numbers don't seem to make much sense to be. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but if the revenue isn't coming from operations, where is it coming from? Do you have a link to where these numbers are coming from?

Sorry, but no it doesn't have to be a rental disc. Rental discs were an industry con with earlier releases, higher quality, etc tapes that cost 80-120 a pop compared to 20 dollars or like blockbuster set up profit sharing with the studios in exchange for some exclusive features/releases.

The way I understand it is first sale doctrine enables you to resell anything that you purchase to another. Which is how the rental agreement gets structured if the studios try to restrict use. The rental company contends that they are selling the video to the customer and later buying the video back at a discounted rate. Studios have challenged this and lost. So when studios refused to sell to Redbox a couple of years ago, all redbox did was go into walmart and purchase copies and put those discs into their vending machines.

I mean they sue people that don't have the resources to fight back in court therefore effectively winning.

Shrug, I just don't deal with them. Others can continue to do so, but I've no wish to deal with a company that sues their own users.

What? Price of a T1 hasn't changed? Funny, my personal T1 line back in the late 90s ran 1500 a month, now that same service is offered for 450 a month or less.

Has deflation hit the economy to such and extent that 450 is now equivalent to 1500 back in the day?

What do you mean "new" precedent? This is standard operations mode for Blizzard, they sue period and they win because they have deep pockets. The cases don't settle until they have won.

I'm happy to say that I haven't bought a blizzard game or played any that I didn't own since the bnet incident.

In 1983, I was using a modem to log into tymnet to get to compu-serve to play games, chat, etc. There were multiple bbs system around etc The Apple and commodore had already been out for years. And this was all consumer stuff. I remember playing star trek games on the mainframe terminals as far back as '76. To think that there weren't plenty of ways to remotely access a system at this time is clearly someone that didn't play with the stuff at that time. By the time the IBM PC was introduced in 1981 there were already loads of people running bbs's for fun. IBM was rather late to the show personally.