I think you're misunderstanding my argument. Non-compete clauses are part of a contract; nothing to do with regulation, except insofar as the government enforces contracts in general. The only thing stopping non-compete clauses is specific regulation (in CA and other places). GPP said that regulation is bad and non-competes are bad. I was trying to get him to explain this contradiction.
Non-competes are not "implemented in a state"; they are frequently regulated against in particular states, though. By default, with no more government except that minimum required to enforce contracts and property law and defend against foreign invaders (which some people espouse as a libertarian ideal), non-compete clauses would be the rule of the day. Only regulation declaring them null-and-void preserves a free market.
I'm almost always in favor of more open markets over regulation and control, so, IMHO, non-competes are stupid and a restraint of fair trade.
Sounds a little self-contradictory there. The non-compete was not part of "regulation and control"; it was part of a contract negotiated supposedly in good faith by both parties in an open employment market. If you think non-compete's are a restraint of fair trade, then I suppose your head asplode, because it's the regulations that forbid them and nothing else. Only government regulation is supporting fair trade here, not the open market.
Of course, those of us who aren't ideological fanatics and who realize that governments of the people are the only thing standing between us and outright slavery by corporate/military/religious/political overlords aren't a bit surprised. Governments that are too big or too small both lead to slavery, and finding a reasonable balance in between is almost impossible, which is why the phrase 'Situation Normal, All F***ed Up' was coined.:)
Actually the early 80s. You see, before MSFT started the clone market by selling Compaq MS DOS and thus creating the IBM PC compatible market, things were VERY different. It was 'welcome to proprietary land" where my VIC wouldn't talk to your TRS80 [...]
Actually, it was Digital Research's CP/M (and AT&T's UNIX) that were leading the charge against "proprietary land". Bill Gates just got lucky when DR's Gary Kildall was out the day IBM came calling, and managed to steal DR's thunder with a hastily-purchased CP/M clone and IBM's marketing power. BG doesn't deserve credit for anything except dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time. The market was already headed in the direction of platform-independent OSes as fast as it could go.
"Irony" is also a form of sarcasm, but reserved for observation of unfortunate associations.
Goodness, where do people come up with this stuff?
irony [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-] -noun, plural -nies. 1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, "How nice!" when I said I had to work all weekend. 2. Literature. a. a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated. b. (esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion. 3. Socratic irony. 4. dramatic irony. 5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected. 6. the incongruity of this. 7. an objectively sardonic style of speech or writing. 8. an objectively or humorously sardonic utterance, disposition, quality, etc.
Your definition seems to meet #5, but Colbert makes heavy use of definition #1 (and to a lesser extent, #7), which means the use of the term "irony" is quite justified. Alanis is another story, of course, but that's been discussed before.:)
Technically, "Nethack at full res" would be the GL ports Falcon's Eye and its successor Vulture's Eye. Despite the oddball names and fancy 3d graphics, these are Nethack. And it probably is possible to find a card that would struggle to run these versions of Nethack (though you might have to go to the used market).
So...your question wasn't actually quite as dumb as you probably intended it to be. Still dumb enough that I won't waste your time or mine by actually answering it, though.:)
I want all portable media devices to work on other platforms. I may have no interest in buying an ipod or zune, but that doesn't mean that someone like my cousin, who was given was as a present, should have to suffer.
Actually, it sounds like he does, since most of what you said agreed with what he said (as well as the facts).
Most of the source code for Java has been released under the GPL.
Most is not all. Java 6 is not open source, even if "most" of it is. Sun seems to get upset if you package up less-than-all of Java so "most" doesn't seem good enough.
The latest version of OpenJDK 6 is available for installation on Ubuntu and Fedora
The latest version of Java 6 is in the "non-free" repository on Debian and the "multiverse" (equivalent to non-free) on Ubuntu. Which you have to enable separately. GP may have exaggerated the difficulty of installing somewhat, but it's hardly automatic. And yes, there's OpenJDK, but we've already established that that's not the full system.
The only parts of the proprietary Java 6 that are missing from OpenJDK 6 are:
The parts that make it non-free? Look, we all know it's mostly there, inches from the finish line, but until the job is done, don't stand there in a flight suit proclaiming "mission accomplished", thank you very much. And don't sit around bashing those who point out that the job isn't done, 'cause they're right. You can say (and I would have agreed with you) that it's close enough for a lot of purposes, and it's easy to exaggerate the amount of work that remains, and making a big deal out of the amount that remains is silly, and all that, yes, but the job still isn't done!
If they released it under the GPLv3, it still couldn't be cannibalized for Linux (which perversely insisted on staying with v2, which they'll now be stuck with forever), and could immediately become the FSF's OS of choice. Which would be pretty cool, IMO. GNU/Solaris would be a much better system, I think, than anything else out there currently including both GNU/Linux and Solaris. (GNU coreutils, among other things, kick ass on anything else out there.) Heck, I think it would probably edge out the still-unreleased-but-nearly-finished GNU/BSD, and that's been as close to my dream system as anyone's come up with for quite some time.
The flip side argument, though, is: who cares if it's "cannibalized" for something else, e.g. Linux. It's still there, right? Just like the BSDers point out that proprietary derivatives of their software don't affect them at all, since the free versions are still there, unchanged. Anyway, porting kernel code between Solaris and Linux, like porting between BSD and Linux, isn't going to be that easy in the first place; license incompatibility will mostly mean that the final 10% of whatever component you might have in mind (ZFS is probably a good example) will have to be rewritten, and not just the first 90%.:)
It does not meet the legal definition of theft, but it plainly meets the much broader common English definition of stealing (as do a number of other activities, many of them completely legal, such as plagiarizing public domain material). GP's argument, however you want to quibble about the wording, seems to be that many (probably most) of the defendants are guilty (of whatever), but they still deserve all their constitutional protections. I find it hard to argue with either point.
I could be wrong, but I don't think the US has clapped all of its workers in physical chains and forced them to work for no wages for their decadent overlords, so the US isn't a capitalist country in the sense that ol' Joe Stalin was using the word.
Trendy? I'm pretty sure that it dates back to the days of IBM vs. Amdahl et. al, i.e. before Microsoft was even a gleam in BG's eye. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it was coined circa 1975 by Gene Amdahl (shortly after he left IBM for the second and final time) to refer to IBM at the height of their power and influence. I think that 30+ years of currency takes it a little beyond the "trendy" category--at least in this industry.
But you're right, it seems to fit all-too-well here, even if you consider it overused.
Any content that is distributed under any of the Creative Commons NC licenses (e.g. cc-sa-nc cannot legally used for advertising purposes. The very similar license under which the Grateful Dead allow redistribution of their old concert recordings explicitly lists advertising and "exploiting databases compiled from their traffic" as forbidden.
About the bird itself, Darwin's notes commented that the flesh was "most delicately white" when cooked. They just don't make Naturalists like that any more!:)
Granted, the MS "support" may be more polite. Aside from that, I don't see much benefit.
(As a side note, you might want to check out Ubuntu support rather than Gentoo!):)
The motivation simply isn't there for the developers and project maintainers, because Linux won't feed your kid or put fuel in your Honda.
Except, of course, for the many many many many MANY people for whom it does.
Actually, while I'm picking on some of the more egregious parts of your post, you do raise some valid issues. Support really isn't there for a lot of people yet (although the same can be said for MS). But just like MS, Linux can develop more of its own homegrown support infrastructure--the reason MS isn't a total disaster isn't an 800- phone number that directs to India. The reason is the number of people who more-or-less understand it and help each other. Linux hasn't grown to that point yet, but it's silly to think that it can't or won't. It is, in fact, getting there.
what Texans call hot is really just approaching medium
Let me guess--you've only been to the white guys' neighborhoods.:)
You can get really good, really hot food anywhere along the south edge of the US between Louisiana and California inclusive, (also in Florida) but you may have to leave the regions of the fancy suits and power ties to get it. Words like "barrio" (or, sometimes, "chinatown") may help you find what you're looking for. Just be careful, because the areas with the best foods are frequently not the safest.
Those Suns never took a break, never died and were solid, despite being located in a colo facility that alternated between being 100 degrees, and being 40 degrees. (Don't ask).
Occasionally reached the boiling point of water, and never went below the melting point of Rubidium? Sorry, but I think I'm forced to ask!:)
- God (in his Flying Spaghetti Monster incarnation) will appear and prove Its existence once and for all
Y'know, that's a tricky one. Given Clarke's third law, I don't see any way that Yaweh or FSM or Zeus or whatever can prove anything other that the fact that He (She/It/Them/Whatever) is a sufficiently advanced alien. I'm certainly not qualified to judge the difference, and I don't believe anyone who claims that they are.
- Mankind will achieve true enlightenment (as every nuclear weapon on the planet goes off simiultaneously)
Oh, well, in that case, I suppose it will no longer matter whether the "proof" is valid or not. Never mind.:)
then how on earth can you possibly say that "the closest language to English is French" if they a) come from different language families [one is romanic, the other is germanic]
Actually, English is more of a hybrid, very nearly a creole language, and one of its major influences is Norman-French, which is presumably why GPP said what he did. However, while it could be considered a "Romano-Germanic" tongue, its core is still very Germanic, so I think you're probably more right than he is.
It's my understanding that if you quote an insignificant piece, that's simply a quote. If you quote the whole work, then it's infringement.
IANAL, but I don't believe your understanding is correct. The important factor is not what percentage you quote, but your intent and purpose in doing so. Larger sections (up to and including all) are harder to justify, but quoting a whole work could be justified in an academic context.
Under the merger doctrine, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the idea underlying the work can be expressed only in one way, lest there be a monopoly on the underlying idea...
Under the related doctrine of scenes a faire, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the expression embodied in the work necessarily flows from a commonplace idea...
This is all going to be particularly relevant in the case of something like Twitter. As the court observed in the famous Apple vs. Microsoft "look and feel" suits, "[w]hen the range of protectable expression is narrow, the appropriate standard for illicit copying is virtual identity." So "insignificant piece", as you suggested, is not going to be the limiting factor here.
Probably.
Of course, if the person whose twitter posts you're quoting is particularly litigious, it may be expensive to prove you're in the right, even when you are.
A girl, 14, did the deed with her boyfriend, 13. Due to the state's laws...
This is the significant part. Some states have exceptions for minors who are close in age, some don't. And frankly, I wouldn't want to live (or more precisely, wouldn't want to raise my kids or have my grandkids raised) in a state that didn't have such an exception.
I still have scars from some of Utah's state laws--when I was a kid, whenever we traveled through Utah, my parents would make a point of stopping a motel and breaking some laws, doing things that were perfectly legal at home. And even though I was in another room--motel walls are awfully thin.:/
No. Being profitable still only means that income > expenses. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with market dominance, which is what's used to determine monopoly. I can sell a single Linux desktop system, make a profit, and not affect any monopolies that may exist in the desktop market whatsoever. Apple's been earning profits in the desktop market all along, and that hasn't affected the reality of the 800-pound monopolist in the desktop market.
Furthermore, Shuttleworth has enough money (and Ubuntu is cheap enough to produce) that he could probably take over the market, drive any existing monopolists out of business, and establish himself as the new monopoly, without ever once showing a profit. It would take a seriously implausible series of events for that to happen, but it's theoretically possible, and emphasizes my point that monopoly and profits are two completely unrelated, orthogonal concepts.
For a normal company, it would mean that it would become easier to pay their employees. For Ubuntu, it would mean that Mark Shuttleworth will have to find some other sink for his billions.:)
Most likely means that at least one major monopoly has been broken
Nope, doesn't mean that at all. There are already Linux companies making a profit. Making a profit simply means that you take in more money than you spend. It doesn't say anything about the size of your market share (although a large market share means you can take advantage of economies of scale, which can help make a profit). It is at least theoretically possible for a Linux company to make a profit with an installed base of only a few dozen. Which would hardly be a threat to anyone's monopoly. Now Ubuntu's business model means that they're going to have to have a much higher installed base than that before they are in any danger of making a profit, but they could still quite possibly make a profit without making a dent in any existing monopolies.
Anyone know of a remote desktop solution for Ubuntu that can connect to a Windows 2k or newer box?
Yes. Ubuntu. RDP works out of the box--I use it nearly daily. Applications->Internet->Terminal Server Client. There's also an panel applet front end if you'd prefer that--very handy if you have several Winboxes you need to connect to on a regular basis.
And yet, somehow, you were able to use the word "editors" without sarcasm dripping from your tongue. Congrats. I haven't been able to do that on this site for many years!:)
(And thanks for the clarification. I was a little puzzled why they would have been pulled. Now that I know they were never actually posted, things make a lot more sense.)
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I think you're misunderstanding my argument. Non-compete clauses are part of a contract; nothing to do with regulation, except insofar as the government enforces contracts in general. The only thing stopping non-compete clauses is specific regulation (in CA and other places). GPP said that regulation is bad and non-competes are bad. I was trying to get him to explain this contradiction.
Non-competes are not "implemented in a state"; they are frequently regulated against in particular states, though. By default, with no more government except that minimum required to enforce contracts and property law and defend against foreign invaders (which some people espouse as a libertarian ideal), non-compete clauses would be the rule of the day. Only regulation declaring them null-and-void preserves a free market.
I'm almost always in favor of more open markets over regulation and control, so, IMHO, non-competes are stupid and a restraint of fair trade.
Sounds a little self-contradictory there. The non-compete was not part of "regulation and control"; it was part of a contract negotiated supposedly in good faith by both parties in an open employment market. If you think non-compete's are a restraint of fair trade, then I suppose your head asplode, because it's the regulations that forbid them and nothing else. Only government regulation is supporting fair trade here, not the open market.
Of course, those of us who aren't ideological fanatics and who realize that governments of the people are the only thing standing between us and outright slavery by corporate/military/religious/political overlords aren't a bit surprised. Governments that are too big or too small both lead to slavery, and finding a reasonable balance in between is almost impossible, which is why the phrase 'Situation Normal, All F***ed Up' was coined. :)
Actually the early 80s. You see, before MSFT started the clone market by selling Compaq MS DOS and thus creating the IBM PC compatible market, things were VERY different. It was 'welcome to proprietary land" where my VIC wouldn't talk to your TRS80 [...]
Actually, it was Digital Research's CP/M (and AT&T's UNIX) that were leading the charge against "proprietary land". Bill Gates just got lucky when DR's Gary Kildall was out the day IBM came calling, and managed to steal DR's thunder with a hastily-purchased CP/M clone and IBM's marketing power. BG doesn't deserve credit for anything except dumb luck and being in the right place at the right time. The market was already headed in the direction of platform-independent OSes as fast as it could go.
"Irony" is also a form of sarcasm, but reserved for observation of unfortunate associations.
Goodness, where do people come up with this stuff?
irony [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
-noun, plural -nies.
1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, "How nice!" when I said I had to work all weekend.
2. Literature.
a. a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
b. (esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.
3. Socratic irony.
4. dramatic irony.
5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
6. the incongruity of this.
7. an objectively sardonic style of speech or writing.
8. an objectively or humorously sardonic utterance, disposition, quality, etc.
Your definition seems to meet #5, but Colbert makes heavy use of definition #1 (and to a lesser extent, #7), which means the use of the term "irony" is quite justified. Alanis is another story, of course, but that's been discussed before. :)
Technically, "Nethack at full res" would be the GL ports Falcon's Eye and its successor Vulture's Eye. Despite the oddball names and fancy 3d graphics, these are Nethack. And it probably is possible to find a card that would struggle to run these versions of Nethack (though you might have to go to the used market).
So...your question wasn't actually quite as dumb as you probably intended it to be. Still dumb enough that I won't waste your time or mine by actually answering it, though. :)
cheers
I want all portable media devices to work on other platforms. I may have no interest in buying an ipod or zune, but that doesn't mean that someone like my cousin, who was given was as a present, should have to suffer.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Actually, it sounds like he does, since most of what you said agreed with what he said (as well as the facts).
Most of the source code for Java has been released under the GPL.
Most is not all. Java 6 is not open source, even if "most" of it is. Sun seems to get upset if you package up less-than-all of Java so "most" doesn't seem good enough.
The latest version of OpenJDK 6 is available for installation on Ubuntu and Fedora
The latest version of Java 6 is in the "non-free" repository on Debian and the "multiverse" (equivalent to non-free) on Ubuntu. Which you have to enable separately. GP may have exaggerated the difficulty of installing somewhat, but it's hardly automatic. And yes, there's OpenJDK, but we've already established that that's not the full system.
The only parts of the proprietary Java 6 that are missing from OpenJDK 6 are:
The parts that make it non-free? Look, we all know it's mostly there, inches from the finish line, but until the job is done, don't stand there in a flight suit proclaiming "mission accomplished", thank you very much. And don't sit around bashing those who point out that the job isn't done, 'cause they're right. You can say (and I would have agreed with you) that it's close enough for a lot of purposes, and it's easy to exaggerate the amount of work that remains, and making a big deal out of the amount that remains is silly, and all that, yes, but the job still isn't done!
If they released it under the GPLv3, it still couldn't be cannibalized for Linux (which perversely insisted on staying with v2, which they'll now be stuck with forever), and could immediately become the FSF's OS of choice. Which would be pretty cool, IMO. GNU/Solaris would be a much better system, I think, than anything else out there currently including both GNU/Linux and Solaris. (GNU coreutils, among other things, kick ass on anything else out there.) Heck, I think it would probably edge out the still-unreleased-but-nearly-finished GNU/BSD, and that's been as close to my dream system as anyone's come up with for quite some time.
The flip side argument, though, is: who cares if it's "cannibalized" for something else, e.g. Linux. It's still there, right? Just like the BSDers point out that proprietary derivatives of their software don't affect them at all, since the free versions are still there, unchanged. Anyway, porting kernel code between Solaris and Linux, like porting between BSD and Linux, isn't going to be that easy in the first place; license incompatibility will mostly mean that the final 10% of whatever component you might have in mind (ZFS is probably a good example) will have to be rewritten, and not just the first 90%. :)
it is NOT stealing, it is infringing.
It does not meet the legal definition of theft, but it plainly meets the much broader common English definition of stealing (as do a number of other activities, many of them completely legal, such as plagiarizing public domain material). GP's argument, however you want to quibble about the wording, seems to be that many (probably most) of the defendants are guilty (of whatever), but they still deserve all their constitutional protections. I find it hard to argue with either point.
I could be wrong, but I don't think the US has clapped all of its workers in physical chains and forced them to work for no wages for their decadent overlords, so the US isn't a capitalist country in the sense that ol' Joe Stalin was using the word.
and I don't use trendy acronyms lightly.
Trendy? I'm pretty sure that it dates back to the days of IBM vs. Amdahl et. al, i.e. before Microsoft was even a gleam in BG's eye. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it was coined circa 1975 by Gene Amdahl (shortly after he left IBM for the second and final time) to refer to IBM at the height of their power and influence. I think that 30+ years of currency takes it a little beyond the "trendy" category--at least in this industry.
But you're right, it seems to fit all-too-well here, even if you consider it overused.
Any content that is distributed under any of the Creative Commons NC licenses (e.g. cc-sa-nc cannot legally used for advertising purposes. The very similar license under which the Grateful Dead allow redistribution of their old concert recordings explicitly lists advertising and "exploiting databases compiled from their traffic" as forbidden.
How about the rediscovery of Charles Darwin's egg just in time for Easter?
About the bird itself, Darwin's notes commented that the flesh was "most delicately white" when cooked. They just don't make Naturalists like that any more! :)
Linux is only free if you know how to use/maintain it.
And Windows is only $STICKER_PRICE if you know how to use/maintain it. Otherwise, it's much more expensive. So? Whatcherpoint?
the general attitude is "Well, you have the source. FIX IT YOURSELF, LUSER!".
As opposed to the oh-so-helpful Microsoft Support. :)
Granted, the MS "support" may be more polite. Aside from that, I don't see much benefit.
(As a side note, you might want to check out Ubuntu support rather than Gentoo!) :)
The motivation simply isn't there for the developers and project maintainers, because Linux won't feed your kid or put fuel in your Honda.
Except, of course, for the many many many many MANY people for whom it does.
Actually, while I'm picking on some of the more egregious parts of your post, you do raise some valid issues. Support really isn't there for a lot of people yet (although the same can be said for MS). But just like MS, Linux can develop more of its own homegrown support infrastructure--the reason MS isn't a total disaster isn't an 800- phone number that directs to India. The reason is the number of people who more-or-less understand it and help each other. Linux hasn't grown to that point yet, but it's silly to think that it can't or won't. It is, in fact, getting there.
what Texans call hot is really just approaching medium
Let me guess--you've only been to the white guys' neighborhoods. :)
You can get really good, really hot food anywhere along the south edge of the US between Louisiana and California inclusive, (also in Florida) but you may have to leave the regions of the fancy suits and power ties to get it. Words like "barrio" (or, sometimes, "chinatown") may help you find what you're looking for. Just be careful, because the areas with the best foods are frequently not the safest.
Those Suns never took a break, never died and were solid, despite being located in a colo facility that alternated between being 100 degrees, and being 40 degrees. (Don't ask).
Occasionally reached the boiling point of water, and never went below the melting point of Rubidium? Sorry, but I think I'm forced to ask! :)
- God (in his Flying Spaghetti Monster incarnation) will appear and prove Its existence once and for all
Y'know, that's a tricky one. Given Clarke's third law, I don't see any way that Yaweh or FSM or Zeus or whatever can prove anything other that the fact that He (She/It/Them/Whatever) is a sufficiently advanced alien. I'm certainly not qualified to judge the difference, and I don't believe anyone who claims that they are.
- Mankind will achieve true enlightenment (as every nuclear weapon on the planet goes off simiultaneously)
Oh, well, in that case, I suppose it will no longer matter whether the "proof" is valid or not. Never mind. :)
It follows logically from "won't somebody think of the children", and "we had to destroy the village to save it".
then how on earth can you possibly say that "the closest language to English is French" if they a) come from different language families [one is romanic, the other is germanic]
Actually, English is more of a hybrid, very nearly a creole language, and one of its major influences is Norman-French, which is presumably why GPP said what he did. However, while it could be considered a "Romano-Germanic" tongue, its core is still very Germanic, so I think you're probably more right than he is.
It's my understanding that if you quote an insignificant piece, that's simply a quote. If you quote the whole work, then it's infringement.
IANAL, but I don't believe your understanding is correct. The important factor is not what percentage you quote, but your intent and purpose in doing so. Larger sections (up to and including all) are harder to justify, but quoting a whole work could be justified in an academic context.
There's also the issue of things like merger and scènes à faire .
Under the merger doctrine, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the idea underlying the work can be expressed only in one way, lest there be a monopoly on the underlying idea...
Under the related doctrine of scenes a faire, courts will not protect a copyrighted work from infringement if the expression embodied in the work necessarily flows from a commonplace idea...
This is all going to be particularly relevant in the case of something like Twitter. As the court observed in the famous Apple vs. Microsoft "look and feel" suits, "[w]hen the range of protectable expression is narrow, the appropriate standard for illicit copying is virtual identity." So "insignificant piece", as you suggested, is not going to be the limiting factor here.
Probably.
Of course, if the person whose twitter posts you're quoting is particularly litigious, it may be expensive to prove you're in the right, even when you are.
A girl, 14, did the deed with her boyfriend, 13. Due to the state's laws...
This is the significant part. Some states have exceptions for minors who are close in age, some don't. And frankly, I wouldn't want to live (or more precisely, wouldn't want to raise my kids or have my grandkids raised) in a state that didn't have such an exception.
I still have scars from some of Utah's state laws--when I was a kid, whenever we traveled through Utah, my parents would make a point of stopping a motel and breaking some laws, doing things that were perfectly legal at home. And even though I was in another room--motel walls are awfully thin. :/
No. Being profitable still only means that income > expenses. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with market dominance, which is what's used to determine monopoly. I can sell a single Linux desktop system, make a profit, and not affect any monopolies that may exist in the desktop market whatsoever. Apple's been earning profits in the desktop market all along, and that hasn't affected the reality of the 800-pound monopolist in the desktop market.
Furthermore, Shuttleworth has enough money (and Ubuntu is cheap enough to produce) that he could probably take over the market, drive any existing monopolists out of business, and establish himself as the new monopoly, without ever once showing a profit. It would take a seriously implausible series of events for that to happen, but it's theoretically possible, and emphasizes my point that monopoly and profits are two completely unrelated, orthogonal concepts.
what happens if *ubuntu becomes profitable?
For a normal company, it would mean that it would become easier to pay their employees. For Ubuntu, it would mean that Mark Shuttleworth will have to find some other sink for his billions. :)
Most likely means that at least one major monopoly has been broken
Nope, doesn't mean that at all. There are already Linux companies making a profit. Making a profit simply means that you take in more money than you spend. It doesn't say anything about the size of your market share (although a large market share means you can take advantage of economies of scale, which can help make a profit). It is at least theoretically possible for a Linux company to make a profit with an installed base of only a few dozen. Which would hardly be a threat to anyone's monopoly. Now Ubuntu's business model means that they're going to have to have a much higher installed base than that before they are in any danger of making a profit, but they could still quite possibly make a profit without making a dent in any existing monopolies.
Anyone know of a remote desktop solution for Ubuntu that can connect to a Windows 2k or newer box?
Yes. Ubuntu. RDP works out of the box--I use it nearly daily. Applications->Internet->Terminal Server Client. There's also an panel applet front end if you'd prefer that--very handy if you have several Winboxes you need to connect to on a regular basis.
And yet, somehow, you were able to use the word "editors" without sarcasm dripping from your tongue. Congrats. I haven't been able to do that on this site for many years! :)
(And thanks for the clarification. I was a little puzzled why they would have been pulled. Now that I know they were never actually posted, things make a lot more sense.)