Isn't it amazing how everyone on the net has been using it since Arpanet.
I was using it on 110 baud ASR33 teletypes and 300 baud modems on HP 2640 series video terminals back in 1977. I had accounts on the MIT AI and MC machines. In 1980, I started programming professionally.
So, little boy, when did you start using computers?
Ah, the old you-are-like-Hitler troll. It's a classic. It stirs up emotion and yet requires only the most flimsy connection to be drawn. You took down my "warez" web site so you are like Hitler.... You don't want crack whores to breed so you are just like Hitler... You won't let me use your web site to slander someone so you're like Hitler... Nice try, but I've been using the Internet since it was called Arpanet and don't fall for that troll so easily.
So you think that mentally defective people whose lives can be dominated and ruined by computer games are fit to be parents? You believe that their children will grow up to be normal, happy, productive members of society? If genetics doesn't do the children in, their upbringing will. Face it, the kind of people that get addicted to computer games are broken. They aren't fit to be parents. Yeah, that would be a great upbringing, wouldn't it? Dad losing his job -- again -- because he called in sick 17 times in two months to play Diablo VII. Being evicted from your home because Dad spent the rent money on imaginary armor and weapons that he bought on ebay. Mom missing your performance in the school play because she too engrossed in EverQuest IV to go. Did you even read the article? How about this quote?:
The game was also implicated in the death last year of a Tampa, Fla., infant, whose father allegedly was so devoted to the game he fatally neglected the child.
Yeah, I'm the bad guy for saying people like that should not have children.
What a game addict needs is someone who regularly kicks the sh*t out of them if they spend more than a few hours a week playing a game. They need someone who will walk up to their computer, push them away from it, kill their imaginary character, give away all of the imaginary crap that they've amassed in the game, and unplug their Internet connection.
I read some of this stuff and it astounds me. People losing their jobs, spouses, and homes over computer games? That's not addiction. That's fucking stupidity and an inability to reason.
If you ever got "addicted" to a computer game to the point that it cost you friends, jobs, etc., do us all a favor: get sterilized or, at the least, always use birth control.
Do we know each other? Or rather, did you know that my father is a professor of English at Rutgers University? Or is it a total coincidence?
Unfortunately, we do not know one another. I say "unfortunately" because you seem like a an intelligent person that I'd enjoy knowing. That my qouted source was from Rutgers was just one of those rare coincidences in life.
Actually, [sic] is used to show that a quoted error is the fault not of the writer citing it, but of its original writer.
Normally, when quoting, one fixes the typos rather than using [sic]. That is why the 'letters to the editor' sections of newspapers and magazines are not rife with typos -- with '[sic]' appended to each one. Surely you did not think that each letter that appeared in those columns had arrived error-free.
I wasn't going to use the word "unaldulterated" in a post without some kind of explanation.
Considering that this is an interactive medium and that anyone can see the quoted message in its entirety, typos like that hardly seem to require explanation. Further, you could have simply corrected the typo if you were concerned that it would be attributed to you. Hitting [delete] once is surely easier than typing "[sic]."
The following quote from Jack Lynch, Assistant Professor in the English department of Rutgers University sums this up nicely:
"Don't use sic to show off with gotchas. Too many writers sic sics on the authors they quote just to show they spotted a trivial error. If your audience is unlikely to be confused, don't draw attention to minor booboos."
The *possibility* of perfect governance is always there--the *liklihood* is that the regulation will be a dog's breakfast of loopholes, bad wording, or plain-old idiocy.
By that argument, we should dismantle the EPA, OSHA, the FDA, and the EPA since they are unlikely to be perfect. I'd rather not abandon attempts to regulate things that need regulation just because we have an imperfect government.
Skip the [sic] stuff for typos. It's used for showing that someone is lacking basic writing skills, not that they made a typo. I've been paid for articles published in national magazines, so get off of your high horse.
The main thrust of the rant to which you linked was that the government passed legislation which affected the health care industry. For example, the HMO Act simply made it financially advantageous for companies to offer HMOs for employee health care. As to the whining about Medicare, I just write that off to more Libertarian I-don't-want-to-pay-taxes crap.
The government invariably makes things worse.
Yeah. Things were so great for coal miners, railroad workers, immigrants working in sweatshops, and asbestos workers before our horrible government stepped in and messed up everything.
That's yet another example of unfounded, ill-conceived rhetoric being passed off as fact.
You do not answer my comparison between homegrown dialup ISPs and their success in an unregulated and unprotected market, where the DSL providers, in a highly regulated and protected environment broke land-speed records for going belly-up. It's a quite interesting comparison.
Well, they provided two very different services with radically different infrastructure needs. The failure of the DSL companies can be traced, in large part, to the local phone companies not releasing the lines to them. Verizon realized that it was better for them, in the long run, to hold back the lines and pay fines. The knew that the DSL providers would go belly-up as a results and they'd own the market. That's what happens when there is inadequate regulation and enforcement. The fines were too low and the enforcement too lax.
My post was 100% correct. It's yours that is way off the mark.
I don't buy into the libertarian view of the world. People pay for things that immediately benefit them. They don't invest in infrastructure. That's why the government passed the Rural Electrification Act in 1936.
The Constitutionality of taxes has been challenged over and over and, consistently, the courts have held the collection to be permissible. The combined legal minds of the Supreme Court Justices and all of the Federal judges that heard those cases simply swamps anything you, or libertarian authors with whom you agree, might have to say on the issue.
If you don't like the way taxes are collected or spent, then fight it in the courts or use your vote to elect someone who better represents your viewpoint. If neither the courts nor a democratic election result in the outcome you want, then do your duty as a citizen, pay your taxes, and stop complaining about it.
All of that aside, no tax dollars would need to be spent for the Congress to pass a law to require phone companies to provide DSL. It does not cost tax dollars to require that ISPs clearly disclose bandwidth usage limitations. There is no recurring tax associated with a requirement that ISPs not limit how you use your connection.
In case you haven't noticed, the current monopoly situation is *directly due to government interference*. This monopoly didn't arise at all naturally.
Yes it did. Cox (Media General at the time) was the first one to enter the County. They had no government-granted monopoly. Their contract simply allowed them to provide services.
But the cost for another provider to run cable and set up the rest of the infrastructure makes it unlikely that they could be profitable if they did so.
No, it's because it is a county government endorsed monopoly. Your county government said, "Sure, AOL/TW, come in here and run wires! We'll pass laws that prevent others from doing the same!"
There is no exclusive contract. There never was. They did not pass laws to prevent or discourage other providers from coming in. The county is trying to interest other broadband providers and even had Starpower seriously thinking about it before the tech slump. I've talked to my elected representatives. You, obviously, have not.
Since your whole premise is based on this mistaken notion, I don't see any point in more quotes/answers to the rest of it.
Everyone who wants and could benefit from broadband. Businesses that rely on Internet sales, the PC industry, students, scholars, people seeking entertainment, cancer victims that want to access online support groups and medical information... The list goes on and on.
Telecommunting's problems are outdated management ideas, not lack of broadband.
It's both. If broadband is not readily available, it makes telecommuting impractical for most people. If you think that broadband availability does not promote telecommuting, you're just kidding yourself.
First, the reason we have telco and cable monopolies is because of legislation. You are advocating fixing the problem by calling the same people who screwed it up.
We have a cable monopoly in my county because no other provider can foresee a feasible way to come in, run lines, and provide a service profitably. That's why you have cable monopolies in most areas. It's also why you have water monopolies, sewage monopolies, etc.
And you seem to feel that the way that the monopoly came into existence is important. I do not. They exist and now we need to do something to protect the consumer.
so a motivated guy put together an alternative.
The fact that such stories are so rare, and that he's still facing technological hurdles, shows just how absurd it is to rely on that to solve the problem for the population as a whole.
The free market IS solving the problem (see the article that spawned this thread) when it is permited to do so.
No, a few people with a lot of time, money, and technical expertise were able to get broadband. This "solution" does not work for the average consumer.
Yes, the government will fix it. The government has a wonderful track record of "fixing" all sorts of industries.
Do you have problems getting water, electricity, mail, or telephone service? The government regulates all of those. How about safe food? The government regulates almost all aspects of food safety.
Your example of health care just proves my point. It is not regulated by the government and you can see what an unaldulterated mess it is. When the Democrats try to regulate it, big business pressures the Republicans into killing the legislation.
Your argument is even funnier when you consider that it is taking place over the Internet -- something initially developed by the government.
My county did not give them a monopoly. They have one because of the tremendous cost for a competitor to come in and set up an alternative cable system.
It's the same reason that there is only one supplier of water in most areas. The costs, permits, etc. to run a duplicate delivery system are just too great.
The fact that people are forced to do things like this to get broadband access is why we need government intervention.
Because of their monopoly on broadband service in my area, I am a Cox Road Runner subscriber in Fairfax County, VA. The service has been so bad that the County has levied numerous fines against Cox. We have had multi-day outages, packet loss over 50% for days at a time, latency measured at 1/2 second or more, etc. Throughout this, they have said "wait until we get the fiber optic upgrade done." Well, it's just about done and our reward looks like it will be Terms of Service that prohibit VPNs, telecommuting more than one day per week, all servers regardless of the amount of traffic moved (even password-protected ones used only by the subscriber). And we get a $5 to $10 per month increase in service rates.
They don't care because they have a monopoly. DSL coverage is, at best, spotty. The phone company has installed multiplexers everywhere to avoid running more copper, which kills DSL for everyone on the multiplexers.
The Congress needs to issue mandates to the phone companies requiring that they make DSL available to all customers. They need to pass legislation preventing broadband providers from placing limitations on the mechanisms used by the customers to move data (e.g., no limitations on servers, P2P, VPN, etc). If the broadband providers have limits on bandwidth usage, they should be legally required to publish those limits in a clear, easy to read form.
The lack of broadband is beginning to have a real effect on the economy, quality of life, education, and even traffic and pollution (since telecommuting is often impractical with a dial-up line). To all of you anti-government people, I say "get a clue!" The current system is not working and the free market is, by and large, not solving the problem.
WTF difference does it make how well they're educated or what income they have
Intelligent, successful people normally don't want to spend their lives with uneducated, unsuccessful people. Maybe that's not an issue for you.
or what age they'll die at.
If that's all the more you care about the people you date, why don't you just hire prostitutes?
You must be a swell guy at parties.
Better than you. You've already ruled out dating 75% of the women likely to be there because they aren't foul-smelling, yellow-toothed, gravel-voiced smokers.
Personally, I hate dating non-smokers since I smoke. An ex of mine used to be the same way, so I'm not too worried about it.
That's fine if you are willing to settle for:
1. writing off as "non-dating material" over 75% of the people in the country.
2. a dating dating pool primarily made up of the less-educated. The overall prevalence of smoking declines with increasing years of education. In 1998, the age-adjusted prevalence of cigarette smoking ranged from 10.9 percent among college graduates to 34.4 percent among those with less than a high school education.
3. dating people that, on average, have a much lower income than non-smokers -- and then spend much of that on cigarettes.
4. dating, and possibly marrying, someone who is far more likely to have poor health and die at a young age.
As a 23 yr old smoker myself, that scares the shit out of me.
It should. Being under 40 does not make you immune to cancer. Nor does it prevent cigarettes from making you smell bad or from turning your teeth yellow. Add to that the fact that smoking is less common among well-educated people and you are doing a lot to hurt your body, social life, and career.
If that's not enough to make you quit, think about this: There are many attractive, intelligent women that won't even consider dating a smoker.
No, but I find your comments offensive. I am part of that subculture.
You've successfully confused me. You apparently aren't adverse to paying for software, so you were not in the group about I was talking about, so why were you offended?
Ignoring the childish insult, you seem to think that Lineo is some kind of odd phenomenon in the Linux marketplace. They are not. Every failed Linux-centric company had 'value added' proprietary software that they sold -- either with or without the OS. Stormix (now bankrupt) did. Mandrake does and they've had to start begging for money to keep them afloat. Sure, Lineo did more than just try to sell Embedix -- they also tried to sell tools for a free OS, but the simple fact is that the Linux marketplace has seen one company after another go belly-up.
And the reason is simple: Linux is viewed as "free software." And by "Linux", I mean the OS, the tools, everything. There is an entire subculture that finds the notion of paying for software offensive (though many of them want to get paid for writing it at their jobs). You'd have better luck getting the average vegetarian to eat a cheeseburger than you would getting the average Linux afficionado to buy expensive development tools.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't it amazing how everyone on the net has been using it since Arpanet.
I was using it on 110 baud ASR33 teletypes and 300 baud modems on HP 2640 series video terminals back in 1977. I had accounts on the MIT AI and MC machines. In 1980, I started programming professionally.
So, little boy, when did you start using computers?
Thank you for your ideas, Adolf.
Ah, the old you-are-like-Hitler troll. It's a classic. It stirs up emotion and yet requires only the most flimsy connection to be drawn. You took down my "warez" web site so you are like Hitler.... You don't want crack whores to breed so you are just like Hitler... You won't let me use your web site to slander someone so you're like Hitler... Nice try, but I've been using the Internet since it was called Arpanet and don't fall for that troll so easily.
So you think that mentally defective people whose lives can be dominated and ruined by computer games are fit to be parents? You believe that their children will grow up to be normal, happy, productive members of society? If genetics doesn't do the children in, their upbringing will. Face it, the kind of people that get addicted to computer games are broken. They aren't fit to be parents. Yeah, that would be a great upbringing, wouldn't it? Dad losing his job -- again -- because he called in sick 17 times in two months to play Diablo VII. Being evicted from your home because Dad spent the rent money on imaginary armor and weapons that he bought on ebay. Mom missing your performance in the school play because she too engrossed in EverQuest IV to go. Did you even read the article? How about this quote?:
The game was also implicated in the death last year of a Tampa, Fla., infant, whose father allegedly was so devoted to the game he fatally neglected the child.
Yeah, I'm the bad guy for saying people like that should not have children.
What a game addict needs is someone who regularly kicks the sh*t out of them if they spend more than a few hours a week playing a game. They need someone who will walk up to their computer, push them away from it, kill their imaginary character, give away all of the imaginary crap that they've amassed in the game, and unplug their Internet connection.
I read some of this stuff and it astounds me. People losing their jobs, spouses, and homes over computer games? That's not addiction. That's fucking stupidity and an inability to reason.
If you ever got "addicted" to a computer game to the point that it cost you friends, jobs, etc., do us all a favor: get sterilized or, at the least, always use birth control.
Good comment and I'm sorry to see that you got modded "Troll."
P.S. Yes, you owe me a "[sic]" for the "a an" typo in the previous message. I've got to start being more careful...
Do we know each other? Or rather, did you know that my father is a professor of English at Rutgers University? Or is it a total coincidence?
Unfortunately, we do not know one another. I say "unfortunately" because you seem like a an intelligent person that I'd enjoy knowing. That my qouted source was from Rutgers was just one of those rare coincidences in life.
Peace.
Actually, [sic] is used to show that a quoted error is the fault not of the writer citing it, but of its original writer.
Normally, when quoting, one fixes the typos rather than using [sic]. That is why the 'letters to the editor' sections of newspapers and magazines are not rife with typos -- with '[sic]' appended to each one. Surely you did not think that each letter that appeared in those columns had arrived error-free.
I wasn't going to use the word "unaldulterated" in a post without some kind of explanation.
Considering that this is an interactive medium and that anyone can see the quoted message in its entirety, typos like that hardly seem to require explanation. Further, you could have simply corrected the typo if you were concerned that it would be attributed to you. Hitting [delete] once is surely easier than typing "[sic]."
The following quote from Jack Lynch, Assistant Professor in the English department of Rutgers University sums this up nicely:
"Don't use sic to show off with gotchas. Too many writers sic sics on the authors they quote just to show they spotted a trivial error. If your audience is unlikely to be confused, don't draw attention to minor booboos."
This is an example of the Free Market working!!!
Forty homes will be served while untold millions will not. That's your idea of the "Free Market working"?
The *possibility* of perfect governance is always there--the *liklihood* is that the regulation will be a dog's breakfast of loopholes, bad wording, or plain-old idiocy.
By that argument, we should dismantle the EPA, OSHA, the FDA, and the EPA since they are unlikely to be perfect. I'd rather not abandon attempts to regulate things that need regulation just because we have an imperfect government.
Skip the [sic] stuff for typos. It's used for showing that someone is lacking basic writing skills, not that they made a typo. I've been paid for articles published in national magazines, so get off of your high horse.
The main thrust of the rant to which you linked was that the government passed legislation which affected the health care industry. For example, the HMO Act simply made it financially advantageous for companies to offer HMOs for employee health care. As to the whining about Medicare, I just write that off to more Libertarian I-don't-want-to-pay-taxes crap.
The government invariably makes things worse.
Yeah. Things were so great for coal miners, railroad workers, immigrants working in sweatshops, and asbestos workers before our horrible government stepped in and messed up everything.
That's yet another example of unfounded, ill-conceived rhetoric being passed off as fact.
You do not answer my comparison between homegrown dialup ISPs and their success in an unregulated and unprotected market, where the DSL providers, in a highly regulated and protected environment broke land-speed records for going belly-up. It's a quite interesting comparison.
Well, they provided two very different services with radically different infrastructure needs. The failure of the DSL companies can be traced, in large part, to the local phone companies not releasing the lines to them. Verizon realized that it was better for them, in the long run, to hold back the lines and pay fines. The knew that the DSL providers would go belly-up as a results and they'd own the market. That's what happens when there is inadequate regulation and enforcement. The fines were too low and the enforcement too lax.
My post was 100% correct. It's yours that is way off the mark.
I don't buy into the libertarian view of the world. People pay for things that immediately benefit them. They don't invest in infrastructure. That's why the government passed the Rural Electrification Act in 1936.
The Constitutionality of taxes has been challenged over and over and, consistently, the courts have held the collection to be permissible. The combined legal minds of the Supreme Court Justices and all of the Federal judges that heard those cases simply swamps anything you, or libertarian authors with whom you agree, might have to say on the issue.
If you don't like the way taxes are collected or spent, then fight it in the courts or use your vote to elect someone who better represents your viewpoint. If neither the courts nor a democratic election result in the outcome you want, then do your duty as a citizen, pay your taxes, and stop complaining about it.
All of that aside, no tax dollars would need to be spent for the Congress to pass a law to require phone companies to provide DSL. It does not cost tax dollars to require that ISPs clearly disclose bandwidth usage limitations. There is no recurring tax associated with a requirement that ISPs not limit how you use your connection.
In case you haven't noticed, the current monopoly situation is *directly due to government interference*. This monopoly didn't arise at all naturally.
Yes it did. Cox (Media General at the time) was the first one to enter the County. They had no government-granted monopoly. Their contract simply allowed them to provide services.
But the cost for another provider to run cable and set up the rest of the infrastructure makes it unlikely that they could be profitable if they did so.
So, the monopoly did arise naturally.
No, it's because it is a county government endorsed monopoly. Your county government said, "Sure, AOL/TW, come in here and run wires! We'll pass laws that prevent others from doing the same!"
There is no exclusive contract. There never was. They did not pass laws to prevent or discourage other providers from coming in. The county is trying to interest other broadband providers and even had Starpower seriously thinking about it before the tech slump. I've talked to my elected representatives. You, obviously, have not.
Since your whole premise is based on this mistaken notion, I don't see any point in more quotes/answers to the rest of it.
Whose quality of life?
Everyone who wants and could benefit from broadband. Businesses that rely on Internet sales, the PC industry, students, scholars, people seeking entertainment, cancer victims that want to access online support groups and medical information... The list goes on and on.
Telecommunting's problems are outdated management ideas, not lack of broadband.
It's both. If broadband is not readily available, it makes telecommuting impractical for most people. If you think that broadband availability does not promote telecommuting, you're just kidding yourself.
First, the reason we have telco and cable monopolies is because of legislation. You are advocating fixing the problem by calling the same people who screwed it up.
We have a cable monopoly in my county because no other provider can foresee a feasible way to come in, run lines, and provide a service profitably. That's why you have cable monopolies in most areas. It's also why you have water monopolies, sewage monopolies, etc.
And you seem to feel that the way that the monopoly came into existence is important. I do not. They exist and now we need to do something to protect the consumer.
so a motivated guy put together an alternative.
The fact that such stories are so rare, and that he's still facing technological hurdles, shows just how absurd it is to rely on that to solve the problem for the population as a whole.
The free market IS solving the problem (see the article that spawned this thread) when it is permited to do so.
No, a few people with a lot of time, money, and technical expertise were able to get broadband. This "solution" does not work for the average consumer.
Yes, the government will fix it. The government has a wonderful track record of "fixing" all sorts of industries.
Do you have problems getting water, electricity, mail, or telephone service? The government regulates all of those. How about safe food? The government regulates almost all aspects of food safety.
Your example of health care just proves my point. It is not regulated by the government and you can see what an unaldulterated mess it is. When the Democrats try to regulate it, big business pressures the Republicans into killing the legislation.
Your argument is even funnier when you consider that it is taking place over the Internet -- something initially developed by the government.
My county did not give them a monopoly. They have one because of the tremendous cost for a competitor to come in and set up an alternative cable system.
It's the same reason that there is only one supplier of water in most areas. The costs, permits, etc. to run a duplicate delivery system are just too great.
The fact that people are forced to do things like this to get broadband access is why we need government intervention.
Because of their monopoly on broadband service in my area, I am a Cox Road Runner subscriber in Fairfax County, VA. The service has been so bad that the County has levied numerous fines against Cox. We have had multi-day outages, packet loss over 50% for days at a time, latency measured at 1/2 second or more, etc. Throughout this, they have said "wait until we get the fiber optic upgrade done." Well, it's just about done and our reward looks like it will be Terms of Service that prohibit VPNs, telecommuting more than one day per week, all servers regardless of the amount of traffic moved (even password-protected ones used only by the subscriber). And we get a $5 to $10 per month increase in service rates.
They don't care because they have a monopoly. DSL coverage is, at best, spotty. The phone company has installed multiplexers everywhere to avoid running more copper, which kills DSL for everyone on the multiplexers.
The Congress needs to issue mandates to the phone companies requiring that they make DSL available to all customers. They need to pass legislation preventing broadband providers from placing limitations on the mechanisms used by the customers to move data (e.g., no limitations on servers, P2P, VPN, etc). If the broadband providers have limits on bandwidth usage, they should be legally required to publish those limits in a clear, easy to read form.
The lack of broadband is beginning to have a real effect on the economy, quality of life, education, and even traffic and pollution (since telecommuting is often impractical with a dial-up line). To all of you anti-government people, I say "get a clue!" The current system is not working and the free market is, by and large, not solving the problem.
WTF difference does it make how well they're educated or what income they have
Intelligent, successful people normally don't want to spend their lives with uneducated, unsuccessful people. Maybe that's not an issue for you.
or what age they'll die at.
If that's all the more you care about the people you date, why don't you just hire prostitutes?
You must be a swell guy at parties.
Better than you. You've already ruled out dating 75% of the women likely to be there because they aren't foul-smelling, yellow-toothed, gravel-voiced smokers.
Personally, I hate dating non-smokers since I smoke. An ex of mine used to be the same way, so I'm not too worried about it.
That's fine if you are willing to settle for:
1. writing off as "non-dating material" over 75% of the people in the country.
2. a dating dating pool primarily made up of the less-educated. The overall prevalence of smoking declines with increasing years of education. In 1998, the age-adjusted prevalence of cigarette smoking ranged from 10.9 percent among college graduates to 34.4 percent among those with less than a high school education.
3. dating people that, on average, have a much lower income than non-smokers -- and then spend much of that on cigarettes.
4. dating, and possibly marrying, someone who is far more likely to have poor health and die at a young age.
Your choice.
As a 23 yr old smoker myself, that scares the shit out of me.
It should. Being under 40 does not make you immune to cancer. Nor does it prevent cigarettes from making you smell bad or from turning your teeth yellow. Add to that the fact that smoking is less common among well-educated people and you are doing a lot to hurt your body, social life, and career.
If that's not enough to make you quit, think about this: There are many attractive, intelligent women that won't even consider dating a smoker.
No, but I find your comments offensive. I am part of that subculture.
You've successfully confused me. You apparently aren't adverse to paying for software, so you were not in the group about I was talking about, so why were you offended?
Ignoring the childish insult, you seem to think that Lineo is some kind of odd phenomenon in the Linux marketplace. They are not. Every failed Linux-centric company had 'value added' proprietary software that they sold -- either with or without the OS. Stormix (now bankrupt) did. Mandrake does and they've had to start begging for money to keep them afloat. Sure, Lineo did more than just try to sell Embedix -- they also tried to sell tools for a free OS, but the simple fact is that the Linux marketplace has seen one company after another go belly-up.
And the reason is simple: Linux is viewed as "free software." And by "Linux", I mean the OS, the tools, everything. There is an entire subculture that finds the notion of paying for software offensive (though many of them want to get paid for writing it at their jobs). You'd have better luck getting the average vegetarian to eat a cheeseburger than you would getting the average Linux afficionado to buy expensive development tools.
Oh no! A negative comment about the business prospects of Linux! Quick, mod it down before anyone can see it!