Yes, I think that the Oracle sales to lost to free MySQL is tiny or none at all. What I am saying is the guy the didn't get his bonus this quarter because he was one or two sales short might have a very emotional response when he sees his company giving away a product that competes with what he is trying to sell (regardless of whether MySQL actually competes with his product). I am too fat and lazy to see how Oracle sales have been doing the last couple of years, but I suspect that a lot of the sales reps and their managers are getting a smaller bonus check recently, due to the economy, not competition from free dms.

"MySQL has pulled ahead of Oracle, by a factor of 3-to-2, as the database of choice among Eclipse developers." You can be sure there are some Oracle sales and marketing guys who are livid at this. They see every MySQL user as money out their pocket (because of reduced bonus). These guys usually have a lot of clout with the corporate execs and they are going to be lobbying to reduce the the competition from MySQL. In my company the sr execs will do some dumb stuff (e. g., things that hurt the long term, infavor of the short term) to keep the sales and marketing guys happy. I suspect there are plenty of Oracle sales guys who would like to kill MySQL today, if not sooner.

Let's forget about all the other freedoms that might potentially cause a problem, too. That pesky freedom of the press, or assembly, or speech, or right to bear arms, or due process, etc. could cause a problem sometime, too.

That is an interesting article, but it talks about trapping the algae in the foam, while TFA talks about just trapping the enzymes in the foam without algae cells. Either way, this is pretty interesting stuff. Trapping the algae in the foam means that you lose energy to the algae maintaining itself, but going the cell-free way means that you have to come up with the enzymes needed to start the process and to make up enzyme losses.

I chose GPL for my open source project because I wrote it and I wanted some control. Specifically, I didn't want anyone distributing a closed source fork of my work, without my consent. There are people using my code to make money (including me), but there isn't anyone distributing it (AFAIK) to make money. If somebody wants to sell a closed source fork, they know where to find me. I have received code contributions from about a dozen people--I suspect that some of these contributors would not sending me patches if they could distribute their own closed source version.

This may be true of casino gambling where you play against the casino and the game is designed so that the odds favor the casino. There are forms of gambling where you play against the other players and the casino only books the bets--for a fee. Those are poker, sports betting and horse racing (and possibly others that I'm not remembering). Poker and sports betting are beatable for the skilled player. I'm not sure about horse racing because the tracks (+etc) take a pretty large cut of the action as their fee.

I think that poker and sports betting are the majority of on line gambling and their fees are much smaller than real world poker rooms or sports bookies. Therefore, you actually have a better chance of winning if you do this on line(this rash statement has a lot of implicit assumptions, such as the competence of the competition is the same in both venues).

I consider myself a libertarian and from what I know of ESR, I would consider him a libertarian. (small l libertarian--not members or followers of the Libertarian party)

I think that FOSS is in agreement with libertarian principles in that I created the software and I will dispose of it in the matter I choose, as GPLed FOSS or sold as closed source. That is my freedom. (I have produced both a FOSS application that is somewhat well used in its niche and closed source, proprietary software, when appropriate.)

I don't think that there are many libertarians that agree with Stallman that software must be Free.

The money that the government used to save those "10's of thousands" of jobs didn't just magically appear. It was sucked out of the private-sector economy. Therefore, that money will not be spent on other goods and services, so other people lose their jobs. The jobs saved are easily identifiable and politically connected, while the compensating jobs lost are not. The vast majority of the jobs saved will probably be lost in a few years, so the net is a huge loss.

You are just wrong about this. First, when the poker room hires someone to play to fill tables they are called props, not shills. Anyone familiar with poker would know this. Second, props are paid a small salary from the casino and play with their own money. They keep their winnings and eat their losses. Props have to start games and have to get up when the table is full so that a customer can sit.

The use of props is controlled by the state gaming commissions. You can always ask the dealer if their is a prop at the table.

Some on line poker rooms use props. I know some of the props and can tell you they play with their own money, too.

Firefox is a competitor to Microsoft. Automatically installing extensions to your competitor's products really is an innovative idea. I wonder if Microsoft has a patent on this?

This could be misused, though.

Police labs are incredibly sloppy. You have to either have negative controls or some sort of validation or acceptance testing on your chemicals and supplies. They have all of these chain-of-custody rituals, but then they use supplies from Wal-Mart.

OK, let's say your local school district gets a bunch of money for school construction and decides to build the KiahZero memorial elementary school. When do those construction jobs appear? Certainly there will be no construction jobs in 2009. If both the feds and your local school board get busy and don't spend a lot of time arguing about minutiae, maybe they can be in the ground by mid-to-late 2010, but sometime in 2011 is a lot more likely. So if stimulus 2 years from now is the goal, start building schools. One thing I'm ignoring is that some of the school money is to go the districts that actually have shrinking enrollments (like Milwaukee). There will be some districts that are almost ready to start construction and can use stimulus money right away--that spending will not be stimulative, however, because it is just replacing money that the local district was planning on spending anyway.

If, on the other hand, there is a permanent personal tax cut and I suddenly have another $100 in my monthly check, that money will go to work immediately. I have plenty of little jobs about the place that might call for hiring a construction worker or two, for a day or two.

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If these "greedy" executives are worth their fat bonuses, they are making hiring/firing/layoff decisions based on their expectations of future sales/earnings/financial results, not the previous quarter's.