We're looking at this differently. I'm saying that if it weren't for RedHat and all the other people working on Llinux and/or other free offerings, Microsoft and proprietary Unix would be only choices for all those servers out there. Millions of them. And I doubt Microsoft would be selling licenses at 10 for $1100 if free competion didn't exist.

Every sale RedHat and every other seller of Linux makes supports not only their paying clients, but scores of additional users who make use of the software they write without paying. I think it is quite conservative to guess that every dollar RedHat earns equates to a loss of $100 of revenue from Microsoft.

Really? I find that very hard to believe. I've hired lots of Windows guys and not yet had one that had a clue what to do at a Bash prompt. On the other hand, every Linux guy has been in front of a Windows machine at some point. You can't live in this world without coming across Windows somewhere.

No. They are not. Because that $1 Billion revenue of RedHat's represents Hundreds of Billions of dollars of lost revenue to Microsoft. Every server running Linux is a server that MIGHT have a Windows license if free offerings such as Linux weren't so capable.

Without RedHat and other tiddling (compared to Microsoft) companies improving Linux every day, Microsoft would be the highest revenue company in the world and their stock would still be increasing in value.

There have been, in fact, very few open source startups to get to $1 billion. His quote seems right on.

And before I get flamed, I and my family use Linux exclusively. I sold a mildly-successful, Linux-based business a few years ago.

Of course, if you include any business for which open-source software is critical to its operations, like Google, Facebook or Amazon, then yeah, the quote is nonsense.

I've been using Gnome 3 exclusively for nearly a year now. I love it.

All four of my daughters have been using it. They love it.

My wife uses it. She loves it.

The only tweak I made was to reinstate the minimize button because I like it for a very specific workflow situation.

I haven't tried unity, though, only Gnome shell

Huge as compared to 226 bytes.

No. In the North American game, there is no ball. Balls are spherical.

All that may be true, but the further the media companies go in the direction of locking down their formats and equipment, the more attractive the illegal alternatives become. They are spending more and more and more to deliver less and less and less to their customers at ever higher prices, while the pirates are working ever harder to deliver ever more and more and more for essentially free.

How can that work for them as an economic model?

And I can see this as someone who doesn't pirate anything. I watch tv on hulu and cbs.com (despite cbs' lousy player--C'mon CBS, just join Hulu so survivor doesn't look like a grainy slideshow!), I rent DVDs from redbox, and I take my kids to the discount theater on Tuesdays when it's a buck-a-ticket.

I realize that I don't pay, so the industry doesn't care about me at all and that's fine with me. But their prices are creating more and more people like me. $10 for a first-run theater ticket ($15 if it's 3D)? $30 for a movie in a box? $129 a month for cable television? $60 for a video game? Are they NUTS? Apparently not, because people keep paying. But eventually, there will be more and more people like me and fewer and fewer willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month for something they don't need.

I've been saying since the mid-90s that eventually our phones, computers and televisions would merge into a single appliance. What I didn't know was what that device would be called. 16 years later, I know a little more. I know that the name will start with an "i".

Exactly, only honest people have the right to expect due process and the rule of law.

People who share copyrighted works shouldn't be protected by the rule of law!

Why is that a surprise? That's exactly what MS did in the U.S. circa 1994-1996.

Didn't Plato come to the same conclusion 2500 years ago?

Don't we all come to the same conclusion every election cycle?

Yet somehow representative democracy keeps on gaining momentum.

I can't say for AC, but I've got 225k on my 1996 Ford F150 on its original engine -> 4.9L straight six. Most reliable gasoline engine ever built, IMHO. Of course, Ford stopped building it after 1996...

Good idea. That way Officer Stuart can wait to beat me up after his shift is over and then arrest me for taping the incident without his consent.

No, he was being paid not-so-secretly by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That's why they were left out of his reform bill.