Basilisk Games makes a wonderful turn-based RPG in the vein of Might & Magic and Ultima that has a Linux version and ran fine on my 3 year old Intel embedded graphics hardware. It's fun, addicting and has great replay value. http://www.basiliskgames.com/book1.html

I know that the discussion is based around the "official" app stores, but because of the Pre's open nature there's a huge homebrew app scene. And while it may not be able to support a great gaming framework (yet), I've heard of really cool projects like a Doom emulator and others. The app store for the Pre may be limited now, but already the homebrew scene is looking healthy and has a lot of great offerings.

You said it! A good friend of mine is an engineer for Vestas, and I hear constantly about their nightmares in dealing with turbine uptime. Those wind farms are producing at 20% most of the time. Those guys better take that into account in their power capacity planning!

Shhh! Don't say it too loudly! Everybody on the block is homomorphobic!

Possibly because business doesn't normally give a shit if a blind monkey with three fingers wrote the code as long as it just fucking works and they can see some cost savings or business benefit to implementing it. Us in the real business world are less concerned about "lock in" or what license something was written under and just want our shit to run and run well. MOSS enterprise search does a really kick ass job of indexing file shares and making them available in a really to use, easy to manage central location.

Software is a tool to acheive a business objective. If I've got the best tool to do the job, I don't care what political/social dynamic the license of the code falls into.

I know that I'll probably get verbally lynched for saying this here, but MOSS 2007 enterpise search is a REALLY nice way of dealing with this . Since MOSS can index your file shares, then all of your users can search for documents contextually using a simple web portal across multiple sites... I better leave before I'm hanging from the Slashdot tree.

After doing this type of work for a while, I've found that the best way to keep my sanity while keeping users happy was to implement rigorous policy regarding how and when users ask for help. It sounds like your outfit may be too small to have a dedicated "helpdesk" or front line support, but I would suggest at least setting up a helpdesk system or Sharepoint portal that is self service to allow users to send in issues.

This allows you to maintain visiblity into your workload, so you can show why something isn't getting done after the fifth time Joe User asks the status, plus is an easy sell to your management with the argument that it allows you to effectively prioritize without users in your face all day asking why such and such isn't done or that this or that is the most important thing in the world at the moment.

The best thing about a policy like this is that you can easily deflect to people that are rude or in your face. "Did you put in a ticket?" "Sorry, I'm super busy and I can't effectively prioritize this request until you submit it." "Oh, your an asshole and want to know the status every five minutes? Check the portal." Getting enforcment on this is your biggest battle. If you can't win that, then take your experience, dedication and hard work and start shopping around. There's no reason to be burnt out because of the user population if you can help it.

Just to play Devil's advocate here, I've had plenty of lockups, kernel panics, etc. due to faulty Linux modules with no "esoteric" or obscure hardware. To a normal user that would appear to be a "Linux" problem as well. Your statement appears to be contradicting itself.

Unfortunately, his only probable recourse is a lengthy and costly lawsuit. I can't imagine how much money Core IP and their customers are losing right now. All for what appears to be guesswork on the behalf of the law enforcement agency.

Laissez faire only works when you have sound money. If you have a currency that holds no real value (our Dollar and other debt-based fiat currencies) and is subject to at-whim inflation and deflation, then you NEED high levels of regulation for the system to work.

See, this is exactly the position the people in power want the American people, and eventually all of the World's population. If you're worried about how you are going to eat, then you are less interested in participating in local, federal or global democracy or resistance.

The people in control (and it's not the Presidents or political leaders that have the real power in the world) are using tools like the Federal Reserve and the IMF/World Bank to enact monetary policy that ends up bankrupting the working class of the world. Greenspan took the blame but his masters are the architects. It was all by design and it is only meant to enslave our population.

I don't know about you but I feel like I'm working more just to survive than ever.