Teamviewer is free for personal use. Easy to install and use. http://www.teamviewer.com/

Red Hat charges money for "support" rather than "license". As a user (I am talking lay user, not a slashdot geek), that will mean 're-labeling' of software costs. Of course they will get open source software, better software etc. but they will need to pay - someone. Make that $1 Trillion in support costs rather than license costs. Net-net no reduction. And the ones on FOSS are already not paying anything.

Sports stars make lot of money and that makes sport popular. Software guys are/were popular thanks to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs,Page, Brin and the like who make tons of money. Unless there is something in it aspirationally, no field is going to become 'popular'. And today most people aspire for lots of money which means unless there are rich scientists, science will not become popular.

Apart from touch typing, given the extreme explosion of information, speed reading will help our children. It is no longer reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. But faster reading, faster wRiting (touch typing). We have calcs and comps for faster aRithmetic.

If we have covered roads, the roof can be used to collect solar energy. It will keep snow off the roads. And can be done with current technology. Is it feasible. Is it worth it? I dont know.

Phone buyers buy the hardware. Computer buyers care more about software. On slashdot, users talk more about the phone's software but general users do not differentiate.
That is why buyers are not queuing up to buy "android" phones. Maybe Google should have a reference architecture and work with manufacturers to sell the Google Phone. It might work then and all the marketing dollars will go to build the "Gphone" brand.

Start with 7 and keep going till you hit a billion. Then leave anther six and go till two billion. If you don't like 7 start with a number you like.

A good unique identification scheme should not overload names with identifiers/location/sexualOrientation, etc. Just provide a unique identifying number and keep all data in your database. Sync the database to your pda so that you can pull information up even on the move about the machine when you get a user request.

Surprising number of comments from the general public that Rupert Murdoch the billionaire does not understand business, real world, online world, etc. Slashdotters think we know more about running businesses than billionaires! I find that funnier than Murdoch's comments.

Color codes for the three machines should be Red, Green and Blue. This will improve security against the bluepill attack. See bluepills cannot attack "blue" machines!

AV-Test uses a really large sample size for testing against real viruses. Unlike VB100 or Checkmark that focus on a sample size of around 1000 to check "in-the-wild" viruses.

To be fair, in-the-wild viruses cause about 98% of the attacks and AV organizations catching them have demonstrated their capability of catching the others.

AV companies catch viruses a few hours to few days after a virus has been released. So, even the best AV company cannot save you from getting infected by that brand new virus which has been released just a few minutes ago.

When a lay user is also the administrator on a system, they can inadvertently install/click on exe files and answer yes to threatening questions about security. For a really secure OS, the user needs to be upgraded to an administrator, preferably a NetBSD admin. But then who would do the rest of the work in the world!

Software services companies like HCL look for specific technical skills to fill needs in specific projects, especially when hiring in the US.
Grads come with generic programming skills that needs to be honed. Comp Sci grads in India are trained to program for 4 months on an average after they graduate by companies like HCL. But the training costs about $3000 dollars for 4 months including the salary of the graduate during the period.
Grads in the US can be trained in about 30-60 days but that is still expensive when compared to what it costs back in India. It would be great if HCL could give the univ a list of technology skills they are hiring next quarter and the university does the training for free. That way HCL can lower their training costs.
Of course, as a person who believes in free as in beer software, I think HCL is trying to be cheap but then, hey I am cheap too!

We are a small organization using Zoho. 3 users free and $12 per user per month. Seemed like the cheapest full fledged commercial CRM out there. Unless you want to implement SugarCRM yourself.

If each person can save between 8,000 to 12,000 USD per year with an average income of around 24,000 USD, more than 50% of income in the US is currently being spent on transportation!

The financial markets run on sentiment. But no PHB will ever be caught admitting as much. Because it basically means they will lose their million dollar bonuses. They hire mathematicians to come up with a mathematical model to explain their decisionz. Taleb talked about it in his book "fooled by randomness". You can be assured that your job in the financial district is secure because the PHB don't understand math. But they want to be seen taking logical decisions. And what better field than math to "prove" that the decision is logical. Q.E.D