But... but... corporations are people my friend. So are you extending it to "corporations are generally good" too?

This is what Brain said when it secured the funding, "ya know what Pinky? My project go funding finally! It is trivial, less than a buck a neuron. But, still, it is something. Ya know what we gonna do?"

Pinky went, "er... I dunno... what? world dumb..i..ca..tion?"

Brain went, "World Dominiation you idiot!. World Domination!!"

Most of these CFD problems are time marching problems, governed by hyperbolic differential equations. Basically the state of fluid at some point X, at time t, is influenced only by the state of the fluid prior to that time. So when they are marching from t to t+delta(t), only the solution at the previous time step matters. Even in space, only a small region at T-Delta(t) affects any give point at T. Such problems are inherently parallel in data dependency. Such problems lend themselves for parallelism. This is not to minimize what they have achieved. If it was that easy, they would have done it long time ago. Physics governed by elliptical (and to some extent parabolic) equations are not that lucky.

For years we have been fed the myth of limited government, a notion that the Government is the biggest threat to our liberty. The shills were blatant, they openly longed for the government small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. But the moment the government becomes weaker than a strong person, he will promptly drown the government. Don't forget, companies are people my friend. At that point the greatest threat to our liberty would be those ungovernable companies. They are too big to jail. They can do anything they want and you can't do anything about it.

Free markets moderated by Democracy. B 4th July 1776. D Oct 2008. RIP.

The quality and reliability specs for FAA far exceeds space craft specs. For FAA passenger safety is the highest factor. For space craft weight is the highest factor. Spacecraft necessarily trade off safety for weight. At least NASA does not have as much cost constraints as private spacecraft consortia. So it would spend what it takes to get high safety at low weight. It would not go about jury-rigging automobile batteries, which themselves were jury-rigged laptop batteries into space craft. To me it looks like a blatant publicity ploy by the SapceX consortium.

ah, the assumption that every one must do one thing or every one must do the other thing!

Everyone does not have to use Open Source software with fanatical following. Depending on the circumstances each user would/should do whatever is best for them. But even for people who never use Open Source, it would serve as an insurance policy against their own vendors locking them in too tightly or jacking up the prices too much. Having a viable competitor is the best way to keep the prices down. So even if you use only commercial software, throwing a few cents towards Open Source projects is actually a good idea.

I won't fault individual users. But big corporations that spend so much of money on procuring commercial software, they can allocate a small percentage or a fraction of a percentage to support Open Source competitor to their vendors. Just to keep them in check. And hobbyists, anyone who knows enough to jump through the hoops to get Win 3.1 binaries to work through emulators in Android platform, could at least look at an Open Source alternative.

For the folks who have always believed in Trilateral Commission, who had seen UN insignia wearing officers in Oklahoma city bombing scene and among the wreckage inspectors of WTC, who had seen Chinese character instructions at the back of highway signs, the government + UN conspiracy to subdue the local population after disarming them, especially for the people who believed in black helicopters, Christmas came a little late. Enjoy the gifts folks.

But none of the patiently waiting fellas will chip in a little cash to provide a purse for someone to find the time and spend the energy. But will pay whatever the comerical software company asks. And it will ask (your_switching_costs - epsilon), epsilon tending to zero. But don't let that stop from ranting on slashdot.

Any one using any Google product, picasa, gmail, youtune, google apps, anything, are being roped in as google+ users.

Does Gimp suck so much that people are willing to go and beg Adobe for a 17 year old version, while they would not take the source code and compile Gimp in whatever platform they are working on?

Most likely people have simply given up taking the source code and building it themselves. If a prebuilt binary is not available they will simply give up.

That is why I have told all my acquaintances to always hibernate their computers instead of shutting down. Glad science is finally catching up to my powers of casual observations and inferences.

wait, it is not about the computer memory, is it? Darn it.

Hey, You, a student of Dr Swaminathan too? He too would give a D for any lab sheet turned in without calculating the estimate of experimental error, or if the reported result had too many significant digits. But he was doing freshman Physics at IIT-M, not chemistry.

yeah, I know, I know. I felt a twinge of regret when I hit the submit button. I was being grossly unfair. Sorry about that.

Long time ago, in a country fair, I saw a kid playing Whack-a-mole. That boy took the large cushioned mallet and bopped the head of the first mole that popped up. Then immediately he dropped the mallet started yelling an running around "I won! I won!! I whacked the mole!!!". It is nice to hear that boy did well, is all growned up now, becoming chief lawyer for some on line retailer. Good boy! Now go whack another mole.

Now that the cost of reproduction and distribution has fallen next to nothing, niche markets can be very effectively served by talent scounts/editorial services/play list makers etc. People who spend their time unearthing talent should be paid/rewarded. If there is a reward, if there is a way to monetize it, free market will find a way. It always does.

Proximity distorts perspective. We are too close to these events and they loom large in our field of vision. Over the long run things will change. Who would have thunk back in 2000, WinTel monopoly would be broken and Internet Explorer would be reduced to a third level bit player? Look back to 1900. There was this AMMA, American Motor Manufacturer's Association that claimed to have patented the automobile. It held a stranglehold on American manufacturing. There were about 4000 or so car makers all straining under the yoke of this completely unreasonable claim of patent rights to a car. Doesn't the situation look similar to present day where millions of content makers are struggling under the yoke of unreasonable patents by $your_favorite_monster_company ? Let us chill out,. Things will work out fine.