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unless you needed the VNC functionality anyway, http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ is definitly easier to install on windows, (up2date, or yum it for redhat/fedora)
and seams like it should be much easier on the bandwith.

> I'm even considering getting a 3rd screen,

I have dual screens, and synergy mouse/keyboard sharing that makes my laptop behave like the 3rd screen, highly recomended, even gives that extra processing power of a second computer. Also add a tray to stand the laptop up.

"Many of you are geeks .. For all of you folk, browsers like FF are great"

Fud injection: only dyed in the wool geeks can use Firefox.

- What exactly can the non-geek not do using Firefox to browse the Web. Give us some specifics.

"Now consider everyone else in the world .. You have IE7 .. offers tabs and good security, and works without a hitch."

"six of today's updates apply to fully patched Windows XP systems, and two of the flaws are actually present in Windows Vista."

"It is integrated into the OS so it opens faster and does not introduce any problems"

It is precicely because it is integrated into the OS that it is so insecure. It start faster because all its bits are loaded at boot time. The same effect can be achieved by using the Firefox Preloader.

"I have used IE6 for years and never once got a virus or spyware because of it"

"Secunia is reporting on three vulnerabilities in IE6 running on XP SP2.", Nov 2005

"remote code execution vulnerability exists in Windows Shell .. This vulnerability could potentially allow remote code execution if a user visited a specially crafted Web site", Oct 10 2006

was Still using IE and don't intend to change

Interesting... I see almost the exact same browser ratios for a site I maintain.

It's VirtuaWin http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/. It's provides virtual desktops for Windows. I wasn't extremely surprised as it is a power user type app, but I was happy to see Firefox hitting close to 60%.

EP

What, like reStructuredText? Examples here

What, like reStructuredText? Examples here

If you're looking for old games take a look at The Home of the Underdogs
They have just about all of the information on old games you could want, and are also useful when you have a dead disk. While 5.25" disks hold up ok, I have had more than one original disk die.
And while I'm pushing ideas DOSBox is invaluable for nostolgic gaming.

What needs to happen is that the OS' windowing system itself needs to implement tabbing, instead of leaving it to each application to do differently. Think of the neat stuff you could do -- any window could become a tab in any other window, maybe by just dragging one window's title bar into another.

Anybody still beleive that Americans don't need anonymous internet options like Freenet? (Assuming, that is, that they EVER get the thing to work).

I'm sure I remember a freebie printer driver on Windows that creates PDFs as well.

a file format proprietary to Adobe Systems for representing two-dimensional documents in a device independent and resolution independent fixed-layout document format.

That is quite possible. The brother of the SquashFS developer was arrested on very serious charges in California a few years back which could have meant 25 years in jail. Turned out the evidence had been fabricated by police and the personel department of the company he worked for.

• 90% of installers use drag-and-drop installation. Installations for things like drivers, system updates, or third-party system utilities, which put things into ~/Library or /Library come in packages(.pkg) which use Apple's installer program, /Applications/Utilities/Installer.app. It would be possible(easy, actually) to write your own installer, but I've been using OS X since the day OS X came out, and I can't remember running into one.
  
  

• there is no dependency management on the Mac: you can't tell what packages you need to download, and when you upgrade something, things that depend on it may break, or it may break because its dependencies aren't updated

  I'm not sure what you're saying here, but it doesn't seem even close to the way things work.
  
  In OS X, applications are actually folders, but don't appear that way to the user. You can't tell they're folders unless you right-click on an application and choose "Show package contents", which shows you what's inside the folder: the actual executable and that application's dependencies.
  
  Removing one application won't cause another application to break because those other applications' dependencies are inside their respective applications/folders. And you don't need to look up what dependencies a program will need when you are installing, because applications come with their dependencies inside of the application/folder or Installer package. That's why you can drag-and-drop install and uninstall.
  
  I'm not sure if you might be referring to X11 or command-line apps, but there are programs like Fink and DarwinPorts to take care of dependency management and package installation for those.
  
  
• Many applications do check for updates over the internet. Most applicationss which can update this way have "Check for updates" in the application menu, but a few, like Firefox, which aren't very good at using the correct Mac menus, put "Check for updates" in the Help menu.
  
  While I do like the simplicity of a apt, the update-on-launch way of keeping up-to-date works just fine. If an application is allowed to check for updates on its launch, that will make sure that any applications which you actually use do get updated to the current version. It also makes it easy to stay with an older version of a program if you don't want to update.
  
  
• The spell-checker is system-wide, and is available to every application whose developer chooses to use it. Only developers who are too lazy to learn how to do things correctly use their own spell-checker. Off the top of my head, I know of two applications that use their own spell-checker: Appleworks, which hasn't received a major update since OS X came out, and Firefox, whose developers have failed to make Firefox a proper Mac application even after three-and-a-half years in development.*
  
  *Firefox is my main browser.

...Yahoo is well within their rights to block anything they want to from going through their IM service...

True. But then again, so is Google.

In response to this, I invite people to visit my Sourceforge RaidIM project, which sends every message through multiple IM systems, and does error correction in messages based on the combination of the resulting messages.

Now in beta...

Well, the article certainly has a lot of hemming and hawing over "Game Design". Just about every book ever published on the subject is included. Unfortunately, this is just a fluff piece. Reading these books won't suddenly force you to understand how to design games, they will merely provide useful tips that may or may not prove to be helpful. (Some of the tips may even be bad ideas!)

Let me ask you, the Slashdot readers. Can anyone explain to you how to be the next DaVinci or Picasso? Can anyone tell you how to write the next great Symphony? Can anyone tell you how to make the next blockbuster movie?

The answer in all cases should be an emphatic "No". These are the areas of artistry that reflect their creators' desire to express themselves. You can't tell someone how to do these things, you can only offer suggestions on how to polish and commercialize them.

It's the same with video games. A *good* video game reflects the complexity and intensity of its author. It expresses things in an interactive media that can't be expressed in other ways. People wonder why Mario was such a good side scroller while something like The Rocketeer was considered bland. What made Half-Life so special when there was a market full of First Person Shooters? Why Wing Commander succeeded where so many other shooters failed.

If you analyse these questions, the answer becomes obvious. The amatuer game designer merely plays with game mechanics with no rhyme or reason behind his changes. He may combine things that are popular, or try to cram in every cool thing he's ever seen done in a game. (With apologies to the author, 2Hard4U is an excellent example of this.) The end result, however, feels like game mechanics squished together rather than a cohesive system.

The master game designer has a vision in his mind of what a game should be. He only adds mechanics as required by his vision. He then tweaks and polishes and tweaks again until every last mechanic finds a balance with all the other game mechanics. The final work represents his vision for what a game should be, rather than merely a hope that combining concepts will be fun.

I saw an interesting interview with Shigeru Miyamoto at one point. Apparently, Mr. Miyamoto had created games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and Zelda based on imaginings he had while walking through the nearby woods. He imagined things like trap doors in the sky, or meeting interesting creatures at the lake. He formed these concepts into little stories which he then sought to tell using the limited canvas of the electronic games platform. The result was all the little intracasies that made these games great. Mario was able to become a giant. He could climb through the sky on a beanstalk. He could smash bricks. Link grew into a man after starting from nothing. He met interesting creatures, and had to defend against enemies. So on and so forth.

So if you want to be a game designer, you have to learn that it's about more than just the technology. You have to have a vision for what your game should be about. Once you have that vision, following it through to its logical conclusion is the only way to make a great game.

"your computer ACPI is broken"... which is stupid as "the ohter" operating system can hybernate and suspend without problems.

Your ACPI probably is broken. Many laptop vendors compile their ACPI information using the Microsoft ACPI tools, which are not standards compliant. You do not have an ACPI laptop - you have a MSFT-ACPI laptop. You can try checking the DSDT list to see if someone has provided a "corrected" ACPI. Ubuntu probably has instructions for using this.

Guess you have 1GB or less of RAM, otherwise Win XP has problems hibernating reliably.

But, in my opinion is not a problem of the hardware manufacturers but a problem of the Linux zealotry of "give us the driver source code or give us the ball". Linux will always be catching up trying to hack togheter hardware drivers until they agree to play nicely with the hardware providrers.

Windows has drivers, and OSX has drivers because either Microsoft or Apple or the manufacturer of the hardware has written them. Windows & OSX are licensed differently from Linux (or BSD or ...) and the Driver Development Kits or OSKIT (iirc) is licensed in a way that allows binary driver distribution by the manufacturer.

Linux (the kernel) is licensed mostly under the GPL v2. It is not the sole copyright of Linus Torvalds, but of hundreds of developers around the world who own the copyright for various pieces of it. They have chosen a license that is very permissive in many ways, but restrictive in others; it has the goal of ensuring all users of the software can make changes, study how it works and have access to the source code. Hardware providers are free to write drivers, and companies such as Redhat or SUSE or Academics all contribute drivers themselves also, and fix bugs in drivers that they use. Linux already plays nice with many hardware providers, for instance Intel releases various drivers for Linux themselves. In fact, often drivers are written by the 'community' following the release of specifications only, or by reverse engineering. Windows is ahead in driver support because the hardware companies write the drivers for Windows first, as their largest target market; it is in their best economic interest.

Well, there are still bugfixes for linux kernel 2.0 being published.

Or look at FreeBSD. There are still bugfixes published for 4.x series
(the latest RELEASE is 6.1 and CURRENT is 7.0)

Do you really want mean, lean and very fast browser for windows based on mozilla?
Use kmeleon http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

So far we already have Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/Hurd, Debian GNU/NetBSD, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and maybe the beginning of Debian GNU/w32.

http://www.debian.org/ports/
http://debian-cygwin.sourceforge.net/

One could almost say that they've been "keeping tabs" on the competition.

One of my favorite aspects of Firefox 2 is the new features for developers, including storage with SQLite. This enables neat things like the new Zotero extension, which stores bibliographic data (a'la Endnote, but with automatic recognition of metadata by programs like refbase and on sites like google scholar).

I for one would love to know more about the tools they use for automated testing.

In my company, we have a build & testing server running compiler and NUnit tests for all data-layer tests (complete tests like "load all of everything" and more specific tests like "authorise user with known bad credentials - expect login-failure") alongside NUnitForms tests for the application-layer (random, frantic clicking's everywhere and specific user-journey tests).

All in all, it's quite a good system for rooting out the majority of bugs, but I'm always looking for ways of improving this side of things.

I can only imagine Microsoft must use similar techniques, but obviously a tad more intensive; can anyone shed any light?

This news is being discussed at Slashdot Japan and they say Google uses http://gonzui.sourceforge.net/ software developed in Japan.

EasyTag (requires GTK) saved me hours and hours sorting out my 35GB music collection. It has a pretty customisable 'Scan' feature, which will let you tell it exactly what pieces of information to pull from directory, sub-directory and filename. IIRC, You can also access one or two online cddb-type things to take care of tagging and filenaming known albums that are sitting in a folder still titled Track01, Track02 etc. Also, you don't have to do your entire collection at once, you can exclude folders and modify the Scan rules to accommodate them, or handle them manually after the rest is taken care of.

As for remixes, I prefer titling them as "Artist - Title (2nd Artist Remix)" or something along those lines. It saves a bunch of hassle with groups or artists that have tons of remixes and collaborations.

People have already mentioned a bunch of other stuff that occurred to me as I was going through the comments, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, StarCraft, Bubble Bobble, and so on. I make a point of replaying StarCon2 every couple years, though. The port of it, The Ur-Quan Masters, which runs on modern OSes, makes me very happy, and it's free. I spent months and months playing through the single player setting and playing multiplayer with my friends when I was younger, and it's still just as fun.

Secret of Mana might deserve an honorable mention from me. A couple friends and I got together last year to play it again with three players, which makes the game a lot of fun. Unfortunately we didn't get to finish it before one of them moved across the country. I haven't gotten to play the game all the way through with three people since high school.

Technically I suppose I tend to pull out Legend of Mana more often, mostly because I really like the art style and music. Hmm. Didn't see Dr. Mario skimming through the comments, either. Screw making this into a list or a coherent post. I have to go. Submit button, I choose you!

I have had enough of the hashes and B-trees.. Any thoughts on Judy arrays http://judy.sourceforge.net/ I think it is an interesting concept.. There are some concerns about it at http://www.nothings.org/computer/judy/ . I think the concept it good.. Do you think it is a feasible solution for a highly scalable data structure?

From the article it looks a lot like an ActivMedia Pioneer with a SICK laser which you can control through Player/Stage and includes all of the mapping algrothims, still have to do work to make it work however.

This looks like a fairly standard reasearch project for undergrad student, player/stage is littered with uni students asking questions about using these type of modules

I am not suprised by the lack of accuracy in the shown map, you normally get a lot of errors due to the robot not accurately figuring out where it is everytime it turns even slightly. Onboard odometry is never that good.

If you want something slightly more cutting edge, yet still old look at the mapping out of something like Kurt3D

I don't really care if anyone switches. I'm just tired of seeing all the stupid MS crap. People claiming it's "easy to use" when they haven't seriously tried any other OSes. People saying you have to constantly do all this maintenance crap (defrags, spyware checks, registry cleaners, AV scans, etc) with your computer all the time having the attitude that these are normal things to worry about with a computer. People asking me to "fix" their broken MS installs (which usually means having to just reinstall the entire system) and it usually ends up broken again one way or another. Even installing a program is risky because MS took forever to come out with a real packaging format, so most programs are installed by running some executable, which there is no way to know what it will do to the computer. I remember Quicktime could completely bork an install. I don't have much experience with installing on XP though, because I started avoiding working with Windows before it came out.

The defrag prevention shouldn't slow down reads (I assume that is what you are talking about), in fact it should only really slow down allocation a little bit. I mean, how much processing time is it going to take? Unless you are talking about lots of small files. But even then, I'm sure it fills in the holes one way or another.

I wonder if the slowness may be something else. What about these two posibilities: Ultra DMA is off, and the fact Linux is a server OS (which makes it crappy for desktop use).

For DMA, have you played with hdparm? I think most distros don't turn on DMA by default because it is risky with some buggy motherboards. PIO mode is the default and slower for various reasons, including because it uses processing time. hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda should at least turn it on for your first hard drive.

Linux is a server OS, so everything assumes you will be running many active programs all competing for I/O and processing time, so it is generally opimized that way. Desktops usually only have 1, 2 or maybe 3 programs which are active at once, and often they won't be competing for the same resource anyway.

Version 2.6 of the kernel has a few options to at least help with this problem. The most notable is the one where (I forget the term) task switching can be set from the usual 100 times per second to 250 or 1000/sec.

Sometimes setting the nice value (man nice) to a high negative number such as -10 or -19 on what you want to run fast helps. You can also use realtime priority (I forget the command, then again maybe it isn't in the standard installs.) Use caution on realtime priority because a program not designed for it or one that is processor intensive can lock your machine. rt priority gives your program a higher priority than the kernel, so it has to voluntarily give up the processor back to the system.

Because Linux is a server OS, it is assumed admins will be tuning it. So, if you really want it to perform, you will need to play with it. /proc is another place to look I think, though I mostly just use it to tune networking. man proc, though I think there is a howto or doc in the kernel source for it too...

Since you already have a Mac I don't see why you wouldn't want to just stick with it. They designed OS X for PC users[1] from the ground up, didn't they? Using fink you should be able to get all of the programs which are available to Linux users. I'd probably switch to OS X, but after the strokes, I don't have much money and I have trouble learning new things, so I don't know how well I would do with it.

[1] Note I am using the original definition of PC (which was coined by Apple), not the MS definition where it supposedly means only a computer running a MS OS.

But if you really want to use Linux and actually like the MS Windows' way of doing things, try Ubuntu and if you don't want to download a big iso, they send

It's called AROS and it's mature (9 yrs) and actively developed, look at the screenshots to have a glimpse of the available software. Note that this is not an emulator: while the hosted version can run at lightning speed under Linux in a X window, there is a native x86 version too which will boot off a CD.

Somebody please explain to me exactly what kind of software bug can be found by automatic scanning that isn't found by standard debugging and compile-time checks. If a computer can ascertain exactly what the programmer intended to do, why do we need programmers?

Decimal one = 1;
Decimal two = 2;

one.add(two);

System.out.printline(one);

Guess whats printed? Similar errors are made if you use methods on java.lang.String like replace(pattern, replacement, pos).

The simple answer to this is that they can't.
Thats a very uninformed oppion! Tools like http://pmd.sourceforge.net/ have a data base of over 100 "bug patterns" to check your code againt. That does not mean all found points are truely positive, but thy definitely are bad coding practice and my end in a bug later if the code gets changed. There are lots of simialr tools, check IBMs alaphaworks and developerworks e.g.

angel'o'sphere

Seriously dude, take a look at all the great apps on OSX, plus the top-notch and free development tools.

Picked more or less at random off my machine: HOC, Objective-C binding for Haskell
and the fantasticDelicious Library. There is nothing as good as this on a PC. Full stop.
I could go on and on and on. Please don't talk crap.

any thoughts on Judy arrays http://judy.sourceforge.net/

I think it is an interesting concept.. There are some concerns about it at http://www.nothings.org/computer/judy/

I think the concept is good.. Do you think it is a feasible solution for a highly scalable data structure?

Open Source Mathematica/Maple: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
Open Source MATLAB: http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

They work great and are free.

I am working to be analytical about animations using quaternions. The brain SUCKS at remembering visual stuff. Instead, the brain is great at shop & compare. That is why artists use easels by the way - it's not just to hold up the canvas, but because visual memory is so bad, but comparison is so good, so the artist's work can quickly be compared to "the real thing".

an example animation - http://www.theworld.com/~sweetser/quaternions/qema tion/Dynamic_graphs/1276.html
the project - http://quaternions.sourceforge.net/

If you want to do it for real, take a look at the MLT project: http://mlt.sourceforge.net/
That has support for for example the Bluefish444 SDI cards, and do playout of real broadcast formats, such as DVCPRO, but also regular MPEG formats.

It also provides ShotCut, a really competent Non-linear editor, that can send edited clips directly to playout.

I know it is in use in one of Indias largest broadcasters, and they transmit to millions of viewers. So it would definitely be good enough for a small station like the one you are talking about.

Well, I should bloody well hope so!

(Though I haven't really hacked on the code for awhile, my Venice is still powering Electric Minds to this day...)

I have been wondering the same thing. I was expecting to be a little more elaborate, and generating the content in realtime. OTherwise, I would think that things like geekradio might be modified to fit commercials, show snippets, station announcement, etc.

The real question in doing a TV station, is how to get a license for the LPTV station? THe FCC website talks about having to check the website for when the application window is active, and they only allow license applications when they think it is convenient for them.

Also, you need a place to put the antenna, nevermind the equipment costs. Can I stick an antenna on my house? Can I use this old dead tree? I haven't been able to find out that sort of thing just yet. FCC and the City of Pittsburgh obfuscate their rules and regulations, it is a bit hard to figure out some of these things.

http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/

The goal for this project is to provide an Add-in to Microsoft Word 2007 to allow opening and saving OpenDocument format (ODF) files.

But they're not going to back-port, so you'll need Vista to do it.

So your average joe is forced to buy Vista and get used to the new interfaces, Aero, ribbons, etc, etc, as opposed to loading a COMPLETELY FREE software and relearn a few bits and pieces where the menus have changed.

Do you really want your own government shelling out MILLIONS for Vista or retraining and converting to free ODF-compatible software that means you can get Freedom-of-information requests fulfilled without requiring a MS contract ?

Looks like them "surrender monkeys" are no longer going to surrender their sovereignty to MS, unlike the beknighted citizens in the "land of the free" ... how ironic.

No wireless USB ethernet cards work out of the box.

I just checked, and my kernel includes a driver for USB wifi cards with a "ZD1201" chipset.

I am sorry inserting my two cents, but probably:

1. Ubuntu has none of support. Slackware or Debian either. SLES is cheaper than RHEL, BTW.
2. GTK+ has none of support. Big guys at big companies needs a paper, hands down. :(
3. Slashdot has none of Structured Text in replies available, forcing people write annoying HTML tags, neither WYSIWYG editor, damn! :(

such as? as someone who just spent a lot of "quality" time with VDMsound trying to get some old games to work i might be able to help.

Spiritual event or window manager? One of them has a familiar symbol...

But, hey, every story needs an icon, right?

Am I the only one who was a little confused by seeing the Enlightenment logo up there?

There's a few factors which have made myspace a cesspool spawning marketing and advertising demons left and right.

The first is that the system is centralized. Therefore, any spammers, spimmers, or whatever they're called on social networking sites, who decide to set up shop have only to contend with a sign up process, and maybe a captcha. Other than that, the burden is put on myspace.com itself. The spammers get a free ride.

The answer to this is to create a more decentralized social networking system. Like I've said before, I'm working on an open source project like that called Appleseed, but some of the ways I can foresee stopping spammers from setting up fake profiles and all that is to a) use a sender-stores system for messaging, so that the burden of storing and maintaining messages is put on the spammer. Want to send out a million messages? Sure. But be sure to be willing to host those messages indefinitely until their recipients decide to pick them up. Oh, and as far as accountability goes, it'll be a lot easier to find you. Also, b) By distributing social networking into specialized nodes, you now have a lot large pool of people willing to get rid of spammers. Each node will have a dedicated admin, so knocking off one or two fake profiles every so often isn't so hard. But MySpace has 50,000,000 people on one site. Sometimes it seems like they don't care about spammers, but honestly, it's probably just that they're incapable of removing all of them as fast as they're created. "Never attribute to malice" and all that...

The other important factor? Men are idiots. I see these fake profiles that scream "no fucking way I'm real", and it'll have hundreds of knucklehead friends. It seems creating a profile that says,

"Hi, I'm Emily! I'm 19 years old, bisexual, and I just moved to Detroit from Cali! I like to party, have fun, dance, and have naughty sex! Come over and see me on my webcam over here..."

is all you need to do to create the requisite blood flow displacement which makes most dudes take a few steps back on the evolutionary ladder. Just like spam, you can take a technical approach, and that can go a far way to defeating it, but as long as there are dudes out there with barbed wire bicep tattoos, backwards hats, throwing up fake gang signs in their bedroom in front of a Sublime poster willing to be duped by the simplest of scams, there's not much we can do. Possibly a well educated, self-confident, and sexually liberation female population who absolutely refused to have sex with these cro-magnons until they opened a book might help. But like a sender-stores system, some of them might get through anyways.

There's a few factors which have made myspace a cesspool spawning marketing and advertising demons left and right.

The first is that the system is centralized. Therefore, any spammers, spimmers, or whatever they're called on social networking sites, who decide to set up shop have only to contend with a sign up process, and maybe a captcha. Other than that, the burden is put on myspace.com itself. The spammers get a free ride.

The answer to this is to create a more decentralized social networking system. Like I've said before, I'm working on an open source project like that called Appleseed, but some of the ways I can foresee stopping spammers from setting up fake profiles and all that is to a) use a sender-stores system for messaging, so that the burden of storing and maintaining messages is put on the spammer. Want to send out a million messages? Sure. But be sure to be willing to host those messages indefinitely until their recipients decide to pick them up. Oh, and as far as accountability goes, it'll be a lot easier to find you. Also, b) By distributing social networking into specialized nodes, you now have a lot large pool of people willing to get rid of spammers. Each node will have a dedicated admin, so knocking off one or two fake profiles every so often isn't so hard. But MySpace has 50,000,000 people on one site. Sometimes it seems like they don't care about spammers, but honestly, it's probably just that they're incapable of removing all of them as fast as they're created. "Never attribute to malice" and all that...

The other important factor? Men are idiots. I see these fake profiles that scream "no fucking way I'm real", and it'll have hundreds of knucklehead friends. It seems creating a profile that says,

"Hi, I'm Emily! I'm 19 years old, bisexual, and I just moved to Detroit from Cali! I like to party, have fun, dance, and have naughty sex! Come over and see me on my webcam over here..."

is all you need to do to create the requisite blood flow displacement which makes most dudes take a few steps back on the evolutionary ladder. Just like spam, you can take a technical approach, and that can go a far way to defeating it, but as long as there are dudes out there with barbed wire bicep tattoos, backwards hats, throwing up fake gang signs in their bedroom in front of a Sublime poster willing to be duped by the simplest of scams, there's not much we can do. Possibly a well educated, self-confident, and sexually liberation female population who absolutely refused to have sex with these cro-magnons until they opened a book might help. But like a sender-stores system, some of them might get through anyways.

You left out non-content-creator-related corporate greed. A prime example being Verizon Wireless who cripple the functionality of their cellphones (disabling OBEX and other bluetooth profiles) so that they can try to force you to buy their ringtones, wallpaper and other related crap.

In a non-crippled bluetooth world, I'd be able to set my phone down somewhere near my computer and it would automatically update my contacts, calendar, download photos, upload ringtones, etc.., all while I'm doing something else. But then VZW wouldn't make their money every time you emailed yourself a photo, etc.. Ratbastards. There are workarounds (the open source BitPim for example), but they're not elegant solutions.

So yes, it sucks when EXISTING functionality is crippled for the sake of greed, but remember it's not all due to DRM.

OpenBSD want to distribute firmware along with the OS under an acceptable license. They are not asking for the source
code of the firmware. Intel are instractible here, so owners of Intel wireless devices needs to personally accept a license
before downloading the firmware. As an example: http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php

As for open source drivers: OpenBSD wants hardware documentation, not a Linux driver, so that they can write their own drivers.
Intel claims that they are open source friendly and gives out documentation, but the last is clearly a lie since OpenBSD had to reverse
engineer several Intel wireless chipsets.

Giving the appearance of beeing friendly to open source, while not beeing so, is the latest fad in business. Intel is an example
of this fad.

Maybe there is some other reason to choose SIP. It's openness (as in OPEN).
You can choose you favouite service provider (even more than one) and your favourite software (even more than one).
Yet, if you dare enough, you can run your own service or write your own SIP client.
Nothing of this can be done with Skype (and similar initiatives).
Some more interesting considerations about Skype can be found at here, written some time ago by Bob Cringely.
And if you find these latter things interesting, you'd give a look to this project.

Are there any linux implementation of XMPP + Jingle? Google seem to say otherwise...

You can use Tapioca on Linux. Get your Windows friends to use Google Talk instead of Skype, and you are good to go with VoIP.

Maybe there is some other reason to choose SIP. It's openness (as in OPEN).
You can choose you favouite service provider (even more than one) and your favourite software (even more than one).
Yet, if you dare enough, you can run your own service or write your own SIP client.
Nothing of this can be done with Skype (and similar initiatives).
Some more interesting considerations about Skype can be found at here, written some time ago by Bob Cringely.
And if you find these latter things interesting, you'd give a look to this project.

How many do you need?

There may not be as many IAX softphones as SIP softphones, but they are available, whether your choice is Linux, Mac or Windows. If you are looking for a good IAX softphone, I'd recommend either idefisk http://www.asteriskguru.com/idefisk/, kiax http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=131960 or iaxcomm iaxclient.sourceforge.net/iaxcomm/. I have used all three, and all of them work well, but idefisk is probably the most feature-rich, the best documented and has, IMHO, the best looking UI. Kiax isn't bad, but isn't as pretty. While iaxcomm works well too, but it's not as well documented as the other two.