I believe that is the point -- people are choosing to use other forms of messaging and finding that they're as good, if not better, among their contacts compared to SMS. As such, they are saving themselves the unlimited texting fees.

An unlimited texting plan on AT&T is $20/mo, and on Verizon, the $5/mo tier only gets you 250 messages. The $10/mo plan gets you mostly unlimited texting. So, people are deciding "hey, everyone I text is on FB, and I can ping them on their phone the same way. Plus I can ping people who don't even have phones and are sitting at home."

So, it's more flexible, and it's cheaper. People then drop their unlimited data plans (which are add-ons and not part of the contract structure), which eats into the planned revenue for the carriers. What's worse, the carriers have no plan to recoup this fee once it's gone. They'll need to make up the shortfall by increasing data plan costs.

I'm not going to give you a yes or no, because I don't have to. This is Slashdot, not a grand jury. And, because the answer is more nuanced.

Although Steve is gone, Apple is continuing everything that both Richard and I didn't like about their business. So, Steve's malign influence on people's computing continues unabated.

Like I said, I could have written it better than Richard, because Richard has problems with empathy. Had I written it, it would have been more graceful.

Steve also had no shortage of head problems. What an idiot for not retiring when he was first diagnosed - but I guess the public Steve Jobs was the only Steve Jobs there was, and he couldn't stop. Besides his foolish continuance of work, an eating disorder contributed to his demise. He did end up becoming the richest guy in the graveyard.

I was also offended by the New Yorker cover, and I think Richard was too.

Nobody should be surprised that there was much that is negative about Steve. I do oppose Apple's way of business, which is high on DRM and control of the user. Were I writing the same piece, I think I could have said it better than Richard.

I think the saddest part is that Dennis Ritchie, who really invented the stuff of our modern world, died around the same time and in comparison to Steve, was unlamented.

Yes, I know, the saying that U of C is "Where the squirrels are more aggressive (and better looking) than the women!" and all of the other T-Shirts, but I've not been to a more fun campus since.

Where else can you walk out across the quads at 4:00 a.m. on a major university campus after a night of hard research work and stumble into the middle of a medieval melee with swords and armor being carried out in a language that you don't understand, complete with torches? (Old English? High German? Didn't know, didn't speak it.)

Where else can you spend a weekend with fellow students driving around America like maniacs (driver's seat) while doing research through piles of travel guides and almanacs to find the random stuff on the scav list (passenger seats)?

Where else can you expect the barista at the campus coffee shop to know more about Sartre, Gadamer, and Hegel than the philosophy Ph.D. candidates and more about applied linear dynamics and combinatorics than the math majors?

Where else can you get drunk with the major authors of major monographs at a bar *under the campus* with an on-the-wagon bartender serving over a hundred beers and ridiculous prices ($2.00 a bottle for things that cost $12.00 a bottle int the store when I was there), and ultimately take them home crying on your shoulder after you've argued about the finer points of their research for several hours?

On the other hand, at its worst it's also a stuffy, pompous, judgmental, hyper-competitive place.

But I can say that if you thought it was boring or unfun, you just weren't trying. I had a blast at U of C, and that was as a stuffy old graduate student!

as a graduate student at U of C. It was madness. We hit 10+ states in a borrowed truck. There were drunkenness, nudity, minor violations of the law, vandalism to competing ivy-league campuses, elaborate ruses to move large crowds, a statue of elvis, and and any number of other things involved over (IIRC) just the course of a wild, no-sleep-possible weekend, and all in pursuit of items on the list (i.e. it wasn't just random debauchery, though the nature of the list started to make it feel that way).

It was one of the better (and more exhausting, and more risky) moments in my life. The sort of thing bound to make parents and administrators talk about the need for a ban, and the sort of thing that alums are likely to use to encourage their friends and family to attend U of C if they get the chance.

Of course I worked with Steve for 12 years, and despite his reputation he was always nice to me - even the time I put him on the spot about something in front of the entire Pixar staff.

So, I was offended by those comments, too.

I don't think adultery is directly illegal anywhere.

See Article 134 of the United States Military Code of Justice. Military officers are still tried and prosecuted for adultery - there have been cases in the last few years.

Whether you agree with him or not, I think that everyone can acknowledge that RMS has devoted his entire life to something that has done many people very much good.

So, (and this is not the first time) it never ceases to amaze me that the response of some contingent of the Slashdot audience is to dig through his blog and use the worst two comments you can find to smear dirt upon him. He's a libertarian, and yes, if you take Libertarainism to its logical extreme, you might indeed believe that anything that doesn't hurt someone else should be legal. Nobody is accusing him of performing these acts, only of believing that freedom really means all possible freedom.

Like RMS, I'm getting old, and travel a lot to do talks. If I fall ill or get hit by a car, I hope you turkeys never find out.

and much more often than was the case 10 years ago, it just plain doesn't work in one way or another—social, technical, legal, or otherwise—usually in non-predictable ways and instances.

Windows, for all its non-workiness, remains more predictable in the ways that it won't work, meaning that it's more realistic for production desktop use.

Mac OS is more predictable still, and has a smaller, simpler ecosystem.

I used Linux for 16 years and wrote six Linux books. Then I got tired of feeling as though my operating system was one of the focuses of my life. But if it wasn't a focus of my life, it didn't continue to work. So I switched to Mac OS, which is infinitely more boring and forgettable. And that, for me, turned out to be great, now that I am not just an adult but edging toward early codgerhood.

I want to do stuff with my computer. Not do stuff to my computer.

There seems to be a duty on "luxury" items or something. An inflatable camping mattress that would have been less than USD$30 was AUD$130, and other prices in the camping store were similarly crazy. If you're outfitting as a camper there, you can probably save by flying to the U.S. to buy your stuff.