Some of the science is dated, but the stories are short (18 in all) & they're all quite good.

Competition sucks, but it's the best we have. Even Socialists recognized the need for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_competition

Why would you think (since you seem to be agreeing with the poster) that FOSS enables the market?

No developer wants to deal with an unstable (as in constantly changing & fragmenting) ecosystem, and the GPL-branch of FOSS movement does just that.

Perhaps it's ironic that the most popular Linux distro, Android, creates a working ecosystem because its market is closed-source. What would happen if Google made the market open-source from day 1? How would anyone benefit by having N number of competing Android markets to deal with from the get-go?

Can you imagine if carries like Verizon and ATT decided to create their own markets?

What are the artificial barriers to entry?

I don't see where anyone has given serious thought to the harmful effects of open source software. In the free market, one of the assumptions is that I will be compensated based purely based on supply and demand of my commercial software product.

And (or "but", depending on your perspective) to encourage innovation, I'm also are granted the right to a short-term monopoly in the form of patents and copyrights. This keeps competitors from gaining a foothold and allows me to grow my work into something that's extremely useful and keeps people employed.

What's left unsaid is this: Any significant piece of machinery requires a significant effort in reverse engineering; at least if somebody hopes to produce a competing version. Why should software be any different? The efforts involved keeps half-hearted attempts from gaining any sort of foothold. This effort in turn keeps the market spared from having dozens of spectacularly inferior products.

And what is a commercial "software product"? Until we make bugfree software on platforms that never change, it's not just the compiled product but also the services involved (bug fixes, feature requests, upgrade paths, etc.). By making software OSS, you've unnecessarily made the barrier of entry unnaturally easy since you're only relying on legal protection to keep the competition at bay.

I definitely think Farhad Manjoo is wrong. If Facebook were to make a phone, I'm sure they wouldn't make it ad-heavy. In fact, I think the phone itself would (or should) be close to ad-free and very inexpensive to make it very compelling to use. After all, the more targeted and precise the data the more valuable it becomes. One they put a phone in you're hand, they could get info like: - Who you really are (confirmed ID). - Some of your habits (e.g., where you tend to eat). - The people you tend to socialize with on a regular basis. - The people you (probably) live with.. - If the phone will support a "wallet", your spending habits and probably/baseline income. - If the agreement includes mining all communication (voice, at least, would probably be illegal), somebody is about to get married, go on vacation, thinking about lunch, etc. i.e., when they're primed for some solicitations I *think* this is what they're shooting for. But I think Facebook will run into a couple of hurdles when they have to deal with: 1. Wireless service providers. Unless Facebook and Google collaborate and create network of their own (do they have the cash?), or unless they throw the service providers a bone. 2. Regional privacy laws (both Federal and state, for the U.S.). Disclaimer: I also think Google flipped to creepy & evil a while ago; and also think they're priming to mine some (or all) of this information via Android.

Awkward phrasing. But he said "genetically less apt to LIKE..." (emphasis mine), which I think the jury is still out on.

Hmm, didn't realize I posted as AC but... Nope. Those girls were at the top of the class and I was definitely in the top 4-5. Didn't think I'd have to spell it out in this topic, but I guess somebody (read, you) had to prove the well-belabored point: Guys assume the worst about women with regards to the STEM fields. My experience tells me otherwise, especially since I've found women (brilliant or not) tend not to toot their own horns in public. In fact, there are rumors that the NSA has a large number of women mathematicians: I think their hook is offering cutting edge work while being family-friendly. The downside? Never getting published/acknowledged in journals for any brilliant accomplishments; something most capable men probably can't stomache.

I doubt Canonical audits everything in their store. The major and default packages? Sure. But if something bad filters through, what does Canonical really have to lose? They didn't write the malware. In fact, the android market suffers from this problem but it's hardly keeping users away from android smart-phones; even though Google has the means (unlike Canonical) to do a better job and the Java/Dalvik platform makes it easier to weed out the bad apples. Security is far from the minds of workstation users when compared to software support--will it run XYZ--and how frustrating/helpful an OS is to productivity. And given Windows 7 (no comment on Win 8) has made inroads on all of this PLUS security, Linux is a hard sell.

A good blackhat hacker would know how to harden the workstation. The point is that the operator is the biggest factor.

Or is it security by being a minority (e.g., think Apple)? I'm betting even an OpenBSD workstation is prone to become compromised once it's handed over to the average "user", who'll want to download and install unvetted software (etc.). And really, what do I know about the majority of the smaller software packages in the Ubuntu Software Center?

That was amazing. Thank you.

Don't go down that road of hero worship. There are many scientists who do things out of good will; others have an explorer mindset; and then there are those who are driven by ego and a desire to leave a legacy. Read up on Kim Ung-yong, the man with the highest IQ in the world, and how NASA scientists basically exploited him between the age of 8 to 18. The poor guy left disillusioned and bitter. Scientists are human and are subject to the same base desires, flaws, and fears.

...are like? Authors distribute their work through publishers, and each publisher and each is different (see http://beckerinfo.net/scp/2008/02/11/what-to-look-for-in-publisher-copyright-agreement-forms/ to get an idea). In fact, many "highly-regarded" journals have draconian agreements: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml If you wonder why legal fees are so high, these guys are one of the two big culprits (the other being the law schools)..

There's a world of difference between massive # of regular cores--which, if harder to program for is well-understood--and the Itanium, which introduced a whole new concept with its EPIC architecture. The EPIC architecture seemed like a good idea--let the compiler take care of most of the instruction re-ordering, and get rid of branch predictions where at all possible by introducing speculative instructions in its stead. But as it turned out, writing a good compiler for this architecture is hard if not impossible...