There was a similar article from Bruce Perens a few years back: http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/1633200/How-Many-Open-Source-Licenses-Do-You-Need

He describes his reasons differently, but arrives at the same conclusions. For those of you worried about the missing option of the BSD license, he does talk about this a little bit. But only a little bit -- it's quite a short article. Worth a read for an alternate take of the same point of view.

That Yahoo article was a nice summary. Thanks for the link.

I can tell you what happened, at least from the people I know in doc and training.
You mostly got it right, btw.

Documentation used to be a big investment area.
Then training came along. Training made money; Documentation cost money.
Companies started by de-investing in doc, and investing heavily in training departments.
After a while, organizations would start to ask their doc teams to intentionally include less information so that customers would be 'encouraged' to buy training.

But, there was a problem. Where did the training teams get their information from?
Documentation.

Documentation fills the role of a primary researcher for the training departments. They know what's going into the product, how it is supposed to work, and what it actually does as soon as the product is released. Training teams follow a several month lag, as they need to train what's installed on the customers site, not what's in development. Without the source material coming from Doc, it's a lot harder for trainers to pull together great content. They now have to do both the primary and secondary research, but with the added difficulty that the developers are now working on the *next* iteration, and aren't really that interested in talking about the last release.

"otherwise we'll be like europe where if you don't do well on the high school tests they give you will never go to college and never have a chance to change your life in the future"

When I first moved to France, it was the season when test results were just coming out.
A major paper ran a story about 'What do do if your kid doesn't get into a Top 10 school?'
The answer: enroll them in an IT program, or ship them to America.

Kinda took the wind outta my sails a bit to read that what I'd considered a good career choice (Ok, I went to a Canadian school but still) was the second rate choice here. After spending two more years here, I've realized that it was only partly a jab. While it's true that IT careers are not typically highly regarded over here, it's also true that in both North America, and IT worldwide, your test scores are not considered a primary qualifier for success.

Let's be open here -- these people were highly educated, yes, but where they using their education in this role?
I think not.

What they were doing was simply reading through mounds of material looking for something that could be interesting to the case. It requires some deduction, some common sense, a good grasp of the concepts of the problems they are trying to solve, etc. But, it does not require a law degree. This is grunt work. One could easily imagine a situation where several legal assistants do the same work, and report into a senior person who really does need that education.

From other job sectors, one could make this distinction between Nurses and Doctors. (Yes, i know Nurses are also skilled, but not as much so as a Doctor for most definitions of 'Nurse'). You don't need your MD to answer a slough of 'Does this rash look funny to you?' questions at a health clinic. Just a simple 'No, put this cream on it' or 'OMG, what did you do? You need to see a Doctor' will suffice. Four good nurses and one doctor is as effective as 5 doctors for most family style medicine, and a heck of a lot cheaper.

Or, closer to home, you don't need someone with a degree and 6 certifications to work Tier 1 tech support. Tier 2 or 3, perhaps. But not Tier 1.

This does make some sense, if you think about it.

Apple charges a 30% tarrif on things sold through their store. Part of this is the cost that the developer pays to have crazy amounts of customer visibility. (Think: Walmart takes a cut to cover operational costs, and their own profits, in trade, the manufacturer gets a ton of views.)

So, the last thing that Apple, as a company, will want to do is allow you, as a manufacturer, the ability to use Apple's platform to give away an app that is essentially a platform of it's own. Amazon, as an example, will give away the app on the appstore, and take 100% of the profit through their own book site. They get all of the benefits of Apple's appstore, without any of the costs.

I don't know about savings ads for a long time, but I would love a queue of the last 100 ads that I've seen pass my screen.
So many times I've clicked a link on a web page and at the last second seen some interesting looking ad out of the corner of my eye. When I hit back on the browser, the random-ad-generator hates me, and won't show what I've just been looking at.

Sounds stupid, but it would be really super useful.

Slashdot is actually one of the biggest offenders here (that, and a few of the webcomics I frequent).

Yes, I have the "Disable Advertising" option.
No, I don't use it.

That was a really great summary -- thanks for that.

Please be aware that we don't have 'Free Speech' laws in Canada like those protected by the First Amendment in the USA.

What we have instead is a freedom of expression (Section 2b of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms). The Freedom of Expression is very similar, but not quite as wide reaching as those rights protected by the 1st Amendment in the US Constitution.

One of the subtle differences is that you are free to express anything you like, as long as neither the message, nor the means of conveying that message, is considered illegal under another law. There aren't many cases where another law infringes on the freedom of expression, but one notable example is the Canadian Hate Crimes laws, which prohibit the proliferation of hate material based on ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, etc.

Back in 2006: Hawking Says Humans Must Go Into Space
And again in 2000: Hawking on Earth's Lifespan

The comment about the 'Top 10 brands' in the post is very misleading.

"...the sites of 10 out of 10 leading worldwide brands don't display on the iPad..."

What is actually demonstrated is that "...the sites of 10 out of 10 leading [LUXURY] brands don't display on the iPad..."

The top 10 brands (listed here: http://www.interbrand.com/best_global_brands.aspx) are:
Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Nokia, McDonalds, Google, Toyota, Intel, Disney

The top 10 luxury brands reviewed in the article are:
Prada, Fendi, Moet, Cartier, Hennessy, Rolex, Channel, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton

Could we get a summary correction to specify that it's actually the Luxury brands that are looked at, not 'normal' brands? I think it's a pretty important distinction, as the luxury brands likely have much less traffic, and have traditionally not been designed for content consumption but are more advertising platforms.

OK, for the record, I agree with you.
The entire premise of a for-profit health insurance system makes no sense to me. Based upon the vitriolic response, I guess I didn't make that clear enough in the previous post -- sorry about that. *waves socialist peace flag*

What I'm wondering about, is how the American system will function. As a non-American (Canadian living in France), I really don't have any idea.

In only one of my examples (the drunk driver) do I place any blame on the insured. In all other cases, I'm trying to represent how the insurer - someone that is trying to maximize their own profit (again, something I disagree with) - would view the situation.

They need to mitigate their own financial risk somehow if they are to make a profit, presumably this will take the form of charging low risk clients (young healthy people) less than high risk clients (old, sick, or old sick people).

There is a really common complaint that I've seen a lot about the new provisions. And that is that it is financially a better choice to remain uninsured and pay the financial penalty until such time that you are sick. When you become really sick, then you should apply for insurance. This whole argument is based on the idea that taking out insurance only when you will use it will cost you the same as if you took out insurance years before.

I have to believe that this is not the way it works, but I don't honestly know. This is why I'm asking.

As for your question "Should you really pay less because you've been lucky enough to enjoy good health?"
I don't think so, and that's why I support socialized, state-run medical coverage for all. But, if you were a for-profit, publicly traded health insurance company, then you'd financially foolish to think otherwise. Or, at least, I don't understand the economics behind any other decision.

I've seen a lot of people talking about the clause that says that insurance companies cannot deny you insurance for pre-existing conditions.

One thing that's never clear to me is whether they are allowed to charge you a premium for pre-existing conditions. I assume yes: can anyone enlighten me?

For example, lets say two people apply for health insurance. One is a smoker that has had cancer that is in remission, and the other has had a clean bill of health their whole life.
In theory, under the previous rules, the insurance companies were able to either turn away the one with cancer, or charge him outrageous premiums to cover their risk.

Now, the insurance companies cannot turn him away. But, they can still charge higher premiums, right?
It would make no sense to me if each of these guys was paying the same price, but this seems that most comments about the issue are suggesting that they would be the same price.

For reference, I've been comparing it to car insurance.
If I have a perfect drivers record (clean bill of health) I should be able to buy cheap insurance.
If I have gotten a few tickets, or into a no-fault accident (pre-existing condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a little more.
If I have a sports car and live in a bad neighborhood (chronic condition), I should be able to buy insurance, but would expect to pay a lot more.
If I got drunk and crashed into a pizza hut (pre-existing condition that could be controlled: smoking, obesity due to lifestyle, heavy drug user), I should be able to buy insurance, but either with heavily reduced coverage or dramatically higher premiums.

Is this how it works with medical insurance under the new rules?