Putting it on other terms
If you could go back to 1960 with a dozen humble 386's, loaded with the OS, compiler, and full of manuals, you'd be absurdly rich selling it to the powers of that age. Or you'd be instakilled. Either way, the mortgage would no longer be a problem to you.

May I add that as a Brazilian I am deeply disgusted with you, the Americans, having stop exporting jobs for us and had instead sent all of them to China. Actually, not only the jobs, but the technology, the services, the whole fucking thing.

We never had nukes pointed at you. China had/has.

IMHO, you deserve what you have now by your poor choice of partners.

Read GP's entire post before running over his/her dead body with your SUV. He clearly mentioned that money is not a good way to measure the fittest. And of course, your example is a bit extreme and doesn't invalidate the former argument. Remember, nature indeed play dices, we are talking about probabilities, marginal issues and trends here, not black and white things. Don't accuse me! I am not mother nature.

Ouch. My bad. I am really fucking sorry.

Of course. You're posting on slashdot. Otherwise you wouldn't have a clue of what it is, unless they wrote "pussy";.

Hi Tom Cruise. Didn't know you surfed Slashdot.
Did you got rid of your xenus? I think, those auditing sessions must be a bitch. But of course, it's way better than having to deal with ignorant psychiatrics, isn't it?
Btw, Nicole still looks hot, doesn't her?

No. She didn't. despite what the voices told ya, she didn't try to kill you.

You're assuming computing platforms are a commoditty. Here in Brasil, some government branches have the opposite policy. And I think it's fair. It's a strategical decision of buyers if they will stick to Open Source, Closed Source or if they will always consider both alternatives.

Open Source is as commercial as Closed Source. You have real money involved in it, it's just a different product offering.

It's funny that people insist on always bidding, when "smallest price" is some of the reasons most software consultancies have so shoddy practices as hiring the cheapest clowns on town and allocating them as programmers, which, by the way, leads to bad results, which in turn created the lucrative and useless industry of certifications, maturity models and so on.

Windows has it's problems, but it has it's strengths also, just like windows or Mac OS X. A large part of Linux development is funded by companies who are competing with microsoft or that perceived Microsoft overwhelming power on the Desktop Operating Systems and their entries on the server market as threat to some part of her business.

For the bad or the worse, Microsoft had some genuine innovations, being XMLHttpRequest one of the most recents. For the bad or the worse, Microsoft consolidated the market of PC computers enough to make them serious blow on IBM, which was a even worse dominant power.

And for the programmers here over 30 years old, well, I am pretty sure a healthy lot of them got their first jobs on programming on the them relatively cheap Wintel programming, which was cheap enough so small business could afford have their custom systems.

NT, although plagued by bad drivers and it's sheer complexity for programmers, has some good ideas on its kernel and the services provided by the OS. COM was a component model that spawned lots of childs (even bastard ones like EJB), being one of the mostable examples of it XPCOM on mozilla. Eliminating Microsoft all-together would be a loss for the market. Not that we should give'em free reign. But we should not put customers on judicial chains either. Linux doesn't need it to succeed. And I am not even sure if we really want a Linux only world, as much as I don't think a Windows only world.

I am for having checks on the power of powerful companies like Microsoft. But I think that we also want to put checks on Apple, IBM, Oracle and any other company powerful enough to impose themselves as the only alternative on some markets.

I find it utterly funny when people whose jobs depend on the content their companies serve over the internet feel happy with the virtual monopoly google has over search. I feel it funny, because google already has power enough to get money over the content YOU produce, just because they are the only viable way to customers get to YOUR site. I am all for having some kind of ongoing perpetual cold war between google, because while there is competition on that space, content providers will be able to get better deals with online advertising. If all your trafic comes from google, you're bond to accept whatever are their prices for running their adds. If your traffic comes from Google, Bing and whatever else in different proportions, you're in a way better position on negoating with them when it comes to how to share the pie.

People should stop seeing the world in terms of black and white and start seeing that corporations do what is best for their bottom line. Currently IBM supports Open Source, but because it leverages their services offering and offload the costs of having to do their own development of operating systems for all their machines, and it keeps them independent from Microsoft. It's all about business.

I am using linux since the times of the early red hat versions. As Linux gets more complicated and has more features, it also gets its share of problems. Every complex system will do, unless we devise a significant different way of programming, where we are able to prove our programs to be correct, instead of merely resorting to wishful thinking and the tests we can dream of for a system (not that tests are not good, they are. But they are only as good as for the extent of the imagination of the test writers for thinking where problems could arise)

I second Linus Torvalds: Let's stop the microsoft hatred. It's inane, infantile and stupid. They did anti-competitive practices in the past. Yes, they did, and any other company in their position would do the same, given the lack of a proper regulation and proactive government control (which is still left as good question for whether it is a good idea on its essence). Linux need no stinking special treatment to compete, it's merits are widely known already. Stop wasting energy on the court and got back to programming. Build *more* superb code, build *more* outstanding features and people will come. Coexist with windows, embrace it if needed, but stop this bad marketing of being the protectionist guys.

There's no such a thing as a benevolent company out there that exists only to help the humanity. All of them are there for their own interests. Live with that, stop believing it's a battle of the good against the evil and do your best with the best of each existing platform. And while we are it...

• Well, IBM could open Z/VM to other companies. I would be more believing of then and their pure intentions if they did something to run Windows Server virtualized on z/Series.

• Ask Apple to sell MAC OS X for other machine manufacturers. As Apple hardware became nothing more than commodity intel hardware with nice cases, it is clear that they are leveraging their operating system to get a hold in the Hardware market and put a premium on the price tag for everyone who wants to use MAC OS X.

My 0,02 USD (U$ is probably a trademark of the department of treasury, USD is probably a trademark of ISO, if they sue me, please contribute with my legal fund, and testify that I tried to give credit)

And sharp nails.

In my experience, most people who disable automatic on windows updates are people using bootleg copies of windows, because of WGA. You see: the guy has a patched WGA, and them decides to disable Automatic Updates for fear of having a new and improved WGA which will get him. Of course, nobody actually forces you to use windows unless you've bought a machine where it was bundled an paid as part of the price, so bootleg user well deserve it, as there are plenty of high quality open source and free-as-in-beer-and-as-in-thomas-jefferson--and-thoureau-tocqueville Operating Systems out there. I use windows 7 and Linux daily, but at least I have a technet subscription bought specifically so I could have access to MS operating systems and servers for the purpose of development and experimentation.

Specially when you consider that this data is central to testing hypothesis that are of uttermost public interest.

People talk all the time about the interest of traditional energy companies. Know what? they are very well positioned in market and capital terms to use alternative energy forms. They have the customers, the distribution channels, years of expertise selling energy. It wouldn't be too implausible to think on Exxon thriving on an hidrogen or biofuels economy, or german's E-on generating most of their power from winds. They are not that attached to oil, they are rather interested in profits, come where they come from.

On the other side, you have derivative traders, eager to leverage yet another commodity (carbon credits) on their portfolios, you know, they would trade options on a nuclear war happening if they could. Short of that, carbon credits is just another huge opportunity to trade.

I am not telling that climate change is incorrect. I am just remembering that a theory is only correct while it's not rebutted or superseded by another theory that explains facts better. Not showing the data that support the models only serves to feed doubt in a theory that appears to be correct.

Open firefox with a blank window on windows 7, open process explorer. about 35MB.

Now, open gmail

100 MB....
do nothing, javascript garbage collector kicks in.... 70MB

Let gmail or any other ajax app who has a loop continuosly checking against a server running for hours.

Chat with integrated gtalk, open some google documents.....

Most javascript implementations have some memory leaks. With time those leaks add up.

Now, try writing the javascript engine with a managed, garbage collected language. Ping me if you survive the experience.

iDie actually is an reimplementation in Lisp of the popular OS package iKill. It looks like the project owner had a little conceptual misunderstanding of macros and recursion.
As nobody yet has found the bug, because everyone who tried to debug it has died misteriously, Sourceforge decided to clone the project and call it iDie.

Doing QA with this thing is going to require a lot of patience of the testers.

Sir,

Your attempt on comedy was not humourous but, rather, flatulent. Maybe you should try something less serious than humour as a career: have you ever considered running for the Senate?

Cordially,