It happened a while ago, you missed it... http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/05/millipede.html

If you want to securely control your HVAC systems in your data centre, don't connect it to the Internet: Hire a person to operate it.

Social engineering.

I'm a sysadmin with a background in security.

I don't want over the air firmware updates for my car. Scratch that, I don't want to drive a car with OTA updates. Actually, I don't want to be ANYWHERE near any car with OTA updates.

I update complex software for a living. Trust me, you don't want your car, any car to do that.

They do the same shit for server remote admin cards. The hardware's in there, but you can't use it until you shell out the $. Premium plus deluxe HP resellers often have a tendency to forget about those, and you find out the hard way when you have to troubleshoot a server on a saturday and nobody's available with the god damn license key.

SuperMicro doesn't have platinum support contracts, but for the price difference, you can buy a lot of spares in case shit breaks down. Plus they don't charge you an arm for disk trays: if you buy a server with room for 24 host swap disks, you get 24 empty disk trays you can fill with whatever you want!

Additionally they have the cleanest remote management interface. No annoying pop ups, no artificial browser requirements, no frames, no mandatory Java applets.

OP may have written "open source" but I got the impression they really meant "zero cost".

No.

I grew up with Gerry Anderson's shows from the early 1960s - I always wanted to be Joe 90 and get things downloaded into my brain (still do) and also think UFO is the best GA show. Dark themes with a cool look (the theme music is great too).

Now back to the point... In the UFO books, yes, there are books, you learn that the purple wigs are in fact anti-static devices! No idea about the miniskirts and knee-high boots though.

when you navigate with a GPS, you turn right on particular coordinates, and the actual road you take can be pretty much anything

That's certainly the case, but it's not what's happening in this particular situation. iOS Maps has placed the "city" in the wrong spot. It's not that the GPS part of the app is causing problems (although I'm sure it does) it's that the map is intentionally guiding you to the wrong place.

If you were following a paper map that had the same mistake (i.e. had marked Mildura as being in the middle of the National Park) then you'd ended up in exactly the same life-threatening situation.

Disclaimer: As others have said it's really hard to answer this well without more information, so this is best guess from the little you've given us

they think a free product should have free telephone support as well

The problem is that you've let them get the idea that this is a "free" (no-cost) product. In one of your comments you mention that the people calling up often aren't the people that installed it, so I asume that they don't think it's no-cost because they downloaded and installed it themselves. They have an idea in their heads that this product is "no-cost", and that is probably because you're branding/marketing it that way. And that's how they can go around and tarnish your reputation after the fact, saying "it's not really no-cost - it's a scam".

So, if your product provides value to your customer, why are you positioning it as a no-cost solution? I think you need to work on your branding. By all means continue to make it open source, and continue to provide your users with all sorts of software freedoms, but stop sending the message that those things mean "free".

It sounds like your produce should be viewed as commercial software (that is also proud to be open source), so say that. Have the splash screen (or about page, or whatever) say something along the lines of: This software package is a commercial product. Annual support and maintenance plans are available for purchase at {our website}. No support agreement has been purchased for this installation. Source code is provided to customers under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

So far the NBN has been pretty hideous cost wise as the increased speed for many is simply not worth the significant increase in cost

You mean like how internode's 25/5 NBN entry level plan (30Gb quota) is $5 cheaper than their equivalent Naked ADSL plan and their 300Gb quota plan is $15 cheaper than Naked ADSL.

And iiNet's 100Gb (Peak) + 100Gb (Off Peak) 25/5 plan is $5 cheaper than their 100Gb (any time) Naked ADSL plan, for more quota, and 500Gb+500Gb 25/5 NBN is cheaper than 400Gb Naked ADSL.

iPrimus's NBN plans aren't particularly competitive - their 25/2 plans are $10 more expensive than their equivalent naked ADSL plans (unless you "bundle" with an expensive VOIP phone service) and around $5 more expensive than the Internode & iiNet NBN plans, but their 12/1 plans are the same price as their Naked ADSL, so you can switch to NBN with no change in cost (but potentially slower speeds, depending on the length&quality of your current copper)

So what's this "hideous" cost you speak of?

Release energy, lose mass.

Burning gas increases entropy. Burning coal decreases mass, very slightly. And it doesn't mean what you're appear to be thinking because earth is not a closed system.

Saying that mining and enriching nuclear fuel produces greenhouse gases is a really pointless thing to focus on, considering that other fossil fuels also require mining and processing. Even if a given quantity of nuclear fuel required 100x the processing of oil, you'd still be ahead by several orders of magnitude because it contains so much more usable energy.