Serkes is formerly of the AAPS, which alone should ring alarm bells. AAPS is a right-wing pseudo medical association, with Andrew Schlafly (of Conservapedia infamy) as legal counsel. The AAPS is pushing quackery and a lunatic tightening agenda. Schlafly himself is no stranger to statistical mendacity, or perhaps he's just making the kinds of mistakes that'd shame a high schooler. Curiously enough, he also asserts expertise in medicine and pretty much everything, and with each pronouncement he demonstrates dishonesty and ignorance. The thing is, we don't even need to know this in order to reject the findings of the survey. As Bauman said, the survey is deeply flawed. The analysis is either utterly incompetent, or dishonest. Given Serkes' record, I believe the latter to be the case. This survey would be just as flawed and worthy of rejection if it came from the AMA, signed by me.

Yeah, all those SAP and Oracle users. Maybe it has wider usage than I'm aware of, but the vast majority of use I see is enterprise. Of course this doesn't mean that it's not a problem. There are plenty of business users who are one step away from using Typex on their screens.

Sure, 10% savings. It's not as if there may be additional overheads, such as training and the liability from having the IT staff directly on GMs payroll. What's the secret here? Build a pig farm for every 5 IT staff, and have at least four IT guys working the goldmine?

God yeah. There are many areas I want government to stay the hell away from, such as religion (that's between my followers and myself), but where they are involved, I want accountability, transparency and fiscal responsibility.

That's interesting to know. Excel on Mac does the same odd thing when saving files, in that it effectively uses the location of the file instead of /tmp. Excel on Mac in general does very strange stuff in the file system. Specifically it appears to rely exclusively on the path to the file, meaning that if a file is moved while being used, saving will create a new file at the original location. Other applications (not sure if this is a Cocoa thing or not) use another mechanism, allowing them to keep track of the file as it's moved around. Also, it can't reliably open files when there are two mounted volumes sharing the same name or even a mounted volume with the same name as the short username of the active user.

This! It's relatively cheap. Leave access details with your solicitor, stipulating as a condition of being disclosed, that spend a night in the old Johnson place. To be extra secure you could leave half of the necesary information with your family, and the other half in a sealed envelope with your solicitor. If there is no old Johnson place, go for any similarly creepy and abandoned old house. The Scooby Dooesque antics will surely lift their spirits in what must certainly be a difficult time. Lead a good life, treat people well, and don't dwell to much on dogma for dogma's sake. I'll have a nice place awaiting your arrival.

I think you're arguing with people who define innovation as being something so bizarre that in order to satisfy their fetishised view of innovation, one must first design a universe from scratch. That's what my dad did, yet I wouldn't be so blinkered as to claim that original invention is the be all and end all of innovation. Airbus A320 innovative? Bah, it's just a big Comet with a few fancy gadgets. VisiCalc innovative? Has everyone forgotten graph paper and slide rules?

Jesus Christ! That feature is amazing, and this is the first I've heard of it. I owe you a beer.

But why wouldn't they pay for it? Is it possible that they would indeed pay for x product if they couldn't get it for free? Perhaps not in all cases, but I doubt all freeloaders would entirely abandon movies/music/games if unable to grab free copies. In a world where copying is prohibitively difficult, people would go back to how we used to be before the rise of file sharing: some people picking up bootlegs, and the bulk of people having to consume according to their spending power. Atari 2600 titles were relatively difficult to pirate, so at the time I either saved up allowance to buy titles, or more commonly visited my local game renting shop.

Open source has many definitions, not all of which require modified code to be shared, let alone server-side code. Such a licence would be unworkable for many enterprise uses, as customization or even just configuration could be an unacceptable disclosure of internal data.

I'm guessing price and access to a lot of existing assets. Last I checked Autodesk canned the free learning edition of Maya.

No, because he gives the impression of having a clue what he's taking about. Comparing percentages between developed and developing nations is plain silly. Let's say this year I'll pay you one dollar to shine my shoes, and next year I increase that to two. Wow, 100% salary increase. Next year I double it again to 200%. Wow, I get nowhere near that kind of annual raise. Guess I'll soon be the one shining your shoes. Wait, in ten years time you're still only earning 512 dollars per year, compared to my considerably higher salary. Also, your business model is not one that simply continue to scale up any more than a cleaner can expect to earn senior management pay by virtue of having mopped floors for a really long time.

Your post and those that follow reminds me of why, after all these years and many accounts, I still browse Slashdot. Kudos, my son. You'll be getting a pool in your heavenly mansion and full buffet privileges.

JC

And among the more ignorant fringe of my followers, the scientific term "theory" is reimagined as being equivalent to scientists shrugging their shoulders and saying "I guess so". If I wanted you guys ignorant I'd have left you in the garden.