Are you referring to the "find a taxi" application as interesting, or its developers as talented, or both... 'cause last I checked using any one of 15 billion different web-sites worked pretty well for that. BTW, a little site called google works VERY well for finding taxis as well as finding other things.

And some people live to program; also controversial.

Let me address some of your points...

True, being broke does not (in and of itself) make you a socialist. I don't think I said it does, my apologies if I did. However, you could be considered a socialist (albeit an unknowing or reluctant one) if you need to participate in these co-operative organizations (like an insurance policy holder or 401k investor or job holder) because you don't profit enough from your capital to cover your costs.

This is where the distinction is important IMHO. Simply owning some small part of a company or a house or a car doesn't make you a capitalist (given the distinction). You must own enough capital where you can profit without exchanging your time and labor for money. So, I may own my house and my car and even have some money in the bank... but if I need to go to work in the morning in order to pay for my mortgage, the car loan and my meals... then I'm not a capitalist (even if I subscribe to the ideal).

Correct. By the definition I've chosen to adopt, very few people are truly capitalists. I would say you need at a bare minimum of 1/2 million dollars without having any debt in order to remotely qualify as a capitalist in my world. Relatively speaking, not many people have this kind of money. Most people need to trade their time and labor in order to pay for the things that they require to live. I.E. the interest from their investments alone is not enough to survive. Naturally, I'm not a final authority by any means so feel free to disagree.

The above is a good point, and I won't argue either way. I think it may just be a matter of how deep we want the analysis to be. My point was simply that if we choose to re-focus the blurred image we may become more enlightened.

Again, I don't remember making this claim. If anything, I wanted some people to consider the possibility that (after some critical thought) what works best for them may actually be socialism, not capitalism. By no means do I think it should become a holy war. After all, we are each entitled to our own beliefs. Invoking the critical thought process is what I believe to be truly important.

I'll check it out, thanks for the recommendation ;-)

I am a fervent capitalist

Sorry, I just have to contribute my 2 cents regarding this statement.

In the old days, capitalists were the people who owned the means of production and simply profited from this ownership. The Forbes richest people in the world are the people we're talking about. In fact, these capitalists don't even need to actually support capitalism as a great ideal.

Now-a-days every layman who supports capitalism calls himself a capitalist. We lose an important distinction here, and I really think you might be better off by understanding this. Perhaps it will give you some more insight into each system and help you further refine your values.

In a very real sense, you are probably a socialist who happens to support capitalism. For example, do you pay Geico for car insurance (socialist) or do you own Berkshire-Hathaway (capitalist)? Do you invest in a 401k (socialist) or do you own your own investment firm (capitalist)? Do you fly commercial or in a private Lear jet? Do you go to work in the morning or do workers come to your building? I think you see where I'm going.

Anyway, I think it's an important distinction... more details here:

Capital

and here:

Capitalist

...my 4.5 year old can debug a friggin' kernel.

"The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so."

Plato

should help some

The FSF is not your free legal counsel.

Instead of begging for a free lunch from the FSF, your organization *should* have contacted their own legal advisors or hired some. Presumably, this is the kind of work Bruce does.

The reason your experience was frustrating is because you guys went about things in a completely inappropriate manner... so, you won't find any sympathy here.

I'd love to see a modern-day version of the 68060.

You mean PPC? Just get yer screwdriver and head for the server room. Open the box that says "IBM zSeries". You'll find it just across the cabinet where the "IBM first prize" golf trophies for the "IBM Sales manager vs. customer cup" are on display.

Those trophies are also on display inside the Playstation 3 ;-)

But, seriously... there's no viable option other than x86; computer's simply won't work without them. Just take a look at the size of the heatsink attached to my iPhone :-P

Ah, the mythical clueless windows user, if only such a beast existed!

In my experience, these "clueless" users have an unsavory tendency to grow and learn... and given enough time... eventually use Unix ;-)

MSFT must prevent this from happening or they'll find that they have captured a lot of user mind-share but there won't be any decent developers to churn out software for the drop-outs. You can't blame them for being pro-active.

...is sending corporate security "goons" to old ladies houses to insure that their Mafia-esque agenda is pushed through legislation and THIS is what makes headlines???? Nokia wants to monitor information going in and out of it's very own system!??!?! BFD!

To quote one of my favorite movies:

In 1984 mainstream users were choosing VMS over UNIX. Ten years later they are choosing Windows over UNIX. What part of that message aren't you getting?