There's always someone willing to pay more. Companies that pay gobs of money at the expense of other factors have high turnover.

Ethics are absolute. Laws are relative. There's no such thing as personal ethics.

I am guessing 100% of Android users are ignorant jackasses?

What a lovely little world you live in. It's one in which people who don't agree with you don't "want a good product".

I use an iPhone and continue to use it because it is a better product for my needs than the Android. I'm not being a doofus like you and claiming that the iPhone is a better phone for your needs.

It would seem that the only honest conclusion is that, of the survey population, more iPhone users than Android users believe that the iPhone best meets their needs and will continue to meet their needs.

Country A has a population of x.

Country B has a population of x*4.

Which country will have a larger pool of job applicants with an IQ above 140?

Any time you sell your company, you know that you are giving control of the future of your IP over to someone else, including the ability to kill the product should the business need arise.

Monty cashed in.

So what?

When he sold to Sun, he made his cash and gave up any rights to say what happened to the software. From that point on, it could have been purchased by the devil himself and Monty should still shut the fuck up.

He's wanting it both ways. He wants to have his cash and influence the direction of MySQL. The fact is, Oracle bought MySQL fairly. Monty needs to stop whining.

If he gave a shit about what happened to MySQL, he would not have sold it.

Instead, he made gobs of money and no longer has a say in what happens to the property except insofar as he is free to fork it.

Being able to "make up 500 words of bullshit" is an important skill that's incredibly lacking out there. As an engineer, you need to know how to write.

The "duct tape programmer" is just as dangerous as the "astronaut architect".

What distinguishes good architects from these fools is this:

A good architect is someone with the experience to know when to cut corners and when to enforce rigid discipline.

It has nothing to do with scanning books.

Google gets sued and comes up with a settlement agreement to pay off those suing.

Little company X does the same thing and gets sued, but can't fight the suit and can't afford to pay off a settlement.

Because the grounds for suing are completely bogus, Google is essentially buying a monopoly with their settlement. They are now establishing that anyone who wants to do what they are doing will have to pay hush money to avoid a lawsuit.

Big expensive hush money for fair use.

The settlement is for a bogus lawsuit.

The problem is this: Google has the ability to pay their way out of this nuisance lawsuit. Others do not. Thus Google ends up with a defacto monopoly.

From the author's perspective, however, there is no ability to pursue a bogus lawsuit to a conclusion more favorable than free money they shouldn't be getting in the first place.

Of course William Morris is against it. The settlement is bad for them and bad for our society. It's bad for authors, even. But the only thing worse for authors is opting out of the settlement.