...it's just the beginnings of synergy!

Most of my professors are guilty of this. The only exceptions I've seen so far are math professors who use the chalk, and a programming professor who writes on her thinkpad x-series tablet hooked up to the projector. That's pretty neat, actually.

I have found what you say to be especially true in first-year courses... several of my professors are only here to finish their doctorate and they're just teaching this puny 200-level course because they have to / because it's some spare cash and they don't really know or care as much as they should.

I agree-- users want the program that will be better for them. My parents don't know much about computers and they're using Firefox and Thunderbird all on their own because they tried them out and thought they were better than IE and Outlook. The competition between a FOSS program and a Proprietary program is just the same as it is between Proprietary programs themselves. You've got to compete for users, and perhaps FOSS projects just aren't trying to compete. People will choose the better piece of software (even if their view of "better" is skewed by marketing)... because they care about achieving a certain end, not about the moral virtues of using FOSS. So sure, they'll take Photoshop over GIMP, just as they'll take Microsoft Word over WordPerfect, or Adobe InDesign over QuarkXPress.

What you're talking about is being compelled to produce your laptop and its contents to a court in a civil lawsuit, but what type of lawsuit are we talking about here? Sure, if you're accused of selling company secrets or something, sure they could get at your laptop through discovery, etc. But how does this connect to the op's problem? Are you saying that if the next Great American Novel you wrote was found on your laptop through a court subpoena that the court could grant ownership to the company? Perhaps if the forensics expert shows that it was written on company time?

He read it. I was one of those frustrated players. For quite a while, too, I actually started playing back in Summer 2003. This crap was one of the main reasons why I eventually stopped playing the game. Had CCP bothered to deal with this problem in any meaningful way years ago, perhaps I'd still be forking over $12 / month.

Of course you can charge for it... you put time and work into it and you deserve to get paid for it. You haven't broken the spirit of the GPL or any of that crap. Methinks this dev is simply unhappy that you are making some money off of his work, even though you put some work into it to. I guess this is where we see the divide between open source and free software.

No it isn't. These guys don't even understand what they're talking about... and we'll see if they mean business when the FBI comes a knockin'...

Thank you.

That's what my position is. I use both Linux distros and XP on my machines and I've been pretty happy playing with the Windows 7 RC. If the price is right then I'll buy a copy, otherwise I'll just go back to XP. I'm not paying $300 for a flashy new taskbar!

In Canada, maybe... most of the US I think not.

...and knowing Steve Ballmer, this is very possible. I can picture it now...

...but then you wouldn't be forced to buy their newest product next year!

I agree... when something on my Windows machine breaks, I have to either spend ages searching the Interwebs for solutions that probably aren't there, reinstall/reboot and hope it works better next time, or (gods below) call tech support.

When something on my Linux machine breaks, there's usually several relevant communities around where I can search for / post my problem and get help fixing it. Linux has been a much nicer experience for me as far as troubleshooting problems goes.

I don't think he was saying that we can't learn from the past, rather he was suggesting that the past sample provided were irrelevant.

According to Wikipedia (*ducks*)...Intel's net income is $5.3 billion out of their total revenue of $37.6 billion. Sounds to me like $1.45 billion will make a decently sized dent, no?