I stand behind my software, and can because I'm self employed so I don't have some monkey who gets paid for my labor telling me that I can't.

I keep spare computer parts on hand because driving to buy a part costs me at least half a day and a hundred-plus miles each way -- if the thing that I need is even available in the nearest burg of <60k souls. If it's (as usual) not available there, driving to the that thing is four and a half hours each way. Either way, I'm risking mountain two-lanes for the first forty miles, dodging around livestock, big game (antelope, deer, elk, moose), Frackwater Jack the burned out diesel dummy, flatlanders who think that they're road racers, and for about half of the year, possible snow and ice. Somehow I'm ahead of the plow about 90% of the time. :D

When some random cheap part (PSU, fan, RAM module, coolant pump, etc.) dies, I install one from my office closet and order up a new spare. If it's a CPU or motherboard I'll be forced to hijack my wife's workstation for a bit, but once my garbage is on there I'm not in a rush for parts any more. It costs more than making Bezos richer, but it's cheap enough insurance to keep the billable hours rolling.

Just so it's said: I'm not bashing you or anyone else who patronizes monopolists. Ain't my money, ain't my life, ain't my thing to think about. I'm just spewing an idea at the internet.

Most of the Bill of Rights was set aside (constitutionally) by the Patriot Act, et al. in this century.

If they can kick the City of London across the channel. ;-) :D

The Declaration of Independence was undone in 1787 and freedom hasn't been known in the USA since.

I read "...in which oxygen is exited by the solar wind..." and thought uh oh, Venus here we come. TFA cleared that up for me.

For a while, anyway. Make some tungsten carbide jacks and they'll last longer.

... it's the elastic sound of gravity pulling their flying junk out of the sky.

Of course I already knew about closed shops -- my father worked in one. Thus the guys asking "Hey, can you get me into the union?" of my father, who was a steward. I never heard anyone complain about closed shops. When I heard complaints about the union they were from members who were mad that they got less out of a contract negotiation than their initial demands, or that the union couldn't prevent them from being fired for cause, things like that.

My wife's stepfather bitched about unions every now and then because he saw the world from the management perspective, but unlike today's knuckleheaded anti-union workers, he actually was management and very highly compensated. My mother in law's monthly household budget was just shy of 1000x the federal minimum wage. I remember my great uncle bitching about unions, too, but he refused to buy an 80+ foot motor yacht because "I'm not going to pay a crew of drunks to live on a boat that I'm going to use less than once a month" so I had trouble appreciating his arguments.

Or, more concisely, it means that their model is incompatible with symmetry. :-)

Thanks for making a point too easily lost in our world that is ever more clever than smart.

Thanks for saying it. This kind of flawed logic seems to be gaining respectability somehow and it scares the hell out of me.

If you've learned by it that the topic of the thread that I started is not the topic that you're addressing, you are correct. If not, all you're doing is impotently screaming into the internet. HAND.

I am honored to be addressed by such a great debater, who is...

Friend, I've visited your slashdork page, and most of what you post seems to me to convey unfocused rage expressed as barely veiled ad hominem attacks. If you have something of relevance to offer to the discussion, I'll forget that I know this and hear you out. Maybe the corporate apologists have a point that I've not considered. Otherwise, please, smoke two joints.

I remember that, in the 1960s when we couldn't afford to buy anything. I was always glad to find the protein of a bug in my bowl of grass and leaves.

When my father the Teamster owned a nice home in the burbs with an in-ground pool in the back yard, a motor home, two boats, and four cars in the driveway, another boat and four dirt bikes in the garage, etc. those things that he had were made by other people working in, egad, union jobs.

I hope I don't disappoint by agreeing. Of course it's politics, and of course FSF has an agenda -- just as mickeystupid has. I'm morally aligned with FSF, but that's not even relevant here. I'm curious about and concerned by what seems to be a sudden population explosion of baby giraffes (who are as large as grown men, never miss an opportunity to suck up, and rarely stick their necks out for any other reason).