So even when somebody admits they've maximally misbehaved, this judge is saying there's basically nothing that can be done.
No, he's saying there's plenty that can be done. The plaintiff can press a lawsuit via the courts. What can't be done, in his opinion, is the plaintiff can't put the defendant out of business before the case is decided. If the defendant admits that he infringed copyright in the past, he also has stated for the record that he no longer does so and there is zero infringing code in his product. What else are you looking for?
Most people out there know someone that worked at or works for Walmart.
If this is really true, I encourage you all to come live in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's expensive, sure; but not only do I not know anybody who has ever worked at a Wal-Mart, I honestly have never shopped at one. They have one in Emeryville, I think, and one in East Palo Alto, but none near anywhere I go with any regularity. Who knows? If they existed, I might shop there -- but they don't. In all honesty, I'd be ecstatic if a Target opened up downtown.
I read a PR spam that was going around about this very case. It seems interesting and worth watching, but the folks involved definitely want to trump this up to more than it is. The decision that will allegedly impact the entire open source industry is really just a ruling that the plaintiffs (the open source guys) can't get a preliminary injunction against the defendant. If you're a small business owner I would think you would see this as a good thing. If everybody who filed a lawsuit against a small business could get a preliminary injunction that forces the company to completely cease operations before the trial has even started, small software developers would cease to exist.
Right, so how does "the economy is becoming a more level playing field" equal "the world is flat"? It doesn't. The statement "the world is flat" is totally meaningless, and this is just one of the clever catchphrases and platitudes with which Friedman litters his writing. He's a smart guy, but he really beat this one to death.
Me again. In all seriousness, a great book i would recommend to everyone to read is Thomas L. Friedman's "The World is Flat."
Meh. I read it, and as an avid reader I'll give credit for a very insightful and compelling essay, worthy of further consideration. I question, however, whether it was really worth the 400+ pages of consideration he gives it in the book, which seems to be adding still more pages as each new edition comes out.
Seriously, The World is Flat is grossly, grossly overrated.
P.S. Bonus points if anyone can tell me what Friedman actually means when he says "the world is flat" and can explain how that is an appropriate metaphor for what he's saying, by any stretch of the imagination...
Really? Please name a specific town where the only place to shop or work is Wal-Mart.
I can't remember any specific names but I was specifically thinking of some towns I passed through while on a Greyhound bus in Wyoming. Somebody else on the bus knew someone who lived there and that was pretty much her life.
This phenomenon has been studied and discussed pretty thoroughly, though. Here's a report by an Iowa State University professor from 1997 where they found that small towns lose up to 47 percent of their retail trade once Wal-Mart moves in. (It's a PDF.)
Unless you live in one of the areas -- quite common in mid-America -- where Wal-Mart is pretty much the only retailer for everything. Don't believe me? There are communities in the U.S. where not only does everybody shop at Wal-Mart, but most of the people in the community work there, too. Wal-Mart undercutting everybody else's pricing on everyday goods particularly affects smaller retailers in these parts of the country, where people don't have as much disposable income as they do on the coasts and are more keenly interested in "bargain shopping." Indie record stores haven't a hope of surviving where A.) a comparatively small number of people are interested in indie music; and B.) Wal-Mart is going to put all the new mainstream releases on sale for $9.99 the week the come out.
It's hopeless to make talented students go to schools where even the most violent and the most stupid can not be denied admission.
It would be wrong to deny anyone admission to a public school. If you've got violent people, the surest way to wean them away from a life of violence would be to educate them. Can you think of anything else that might dissuade them, in the long run? If you've got stupid people, I only know of one way to even try to remove the stupidity. Public schools are -- and should forever remain -- for everybody.
The problem isn't admission. The problem is the fact that once you're in, you're in for life. In today's world there is practically nothing that will get you expelled from school. Repeat: practically nothing.
A friend of mine was a substitute teacher in the Oakland, CA school district (think rough neighborhood) and he would have students actually shoulder-check him as they entered the classroom. Then they would sit in their desk but never even take their backpacks off, let alone open a book. Then, at some point, they would start disrupting the class. My friend would send them to the principal's office. Fifteen minutes later, they would be back. And soon enough, they would start up again.
Why do they get away with it? Because here's what happens: A kid beats another kid so badly that he needs facial reconstructive surgery. The offender gets sent home, and after a meeting of the school board, he is expelled. One week later the parents appear in the principal's office. With them is a lawyer. The lawyer has paperwork with him, outlining his case against the school district. Apparently by denying his client's child an education, the school is not only causing undue suffering and distress to the family, not to mention specific monetary damages that will result from the child's inability to find future work, but the school is also violating the family's civil rights. The lawyer explains that it should be clear to anyone that the reason the school is doing all this is because the clients are African-Americans. The racist policies of the school, the lawyer explains, will be held accountable to the public on tomorrow night's evening news unless the school immediately agrees to a cash settlement AND to re-instate the client's child in school.
And the school complies. Because as financially strapped as most districts are, they simply cannot afford to allow a case like that to go to court.
The result is a completely toothless system that basically lets anarchy rule the day. My friend -- a substitute teacher -- got a lot of work because the teachers would regularly phone him up and ask him to come in, not because they were sick, but they "just couldn't take it anymore" and "they need a break."
The real tragedy, from my friend's point of view, was that in every class he taught there would always be at least 2-3 students -- usually girls -- who were obviously highly intelligent, capable, and were there to learn. They would come to school having completed their homework, they would bring their books, they would have all their papers organized neatly into folders, and the whole bit. But they couldn't learn. They weren't really getting anything out of the class because my friend was forced to teach at an extremely slow rate and could barely complete a lesson because of the constant disruptions. The five troublemakers in every class would ruin it for the other 30 kids.
Nowhere in the article does it say Sun is thinking of dropping out of the server market. Rather, it mentions that Sun is tied with Dell for the #3 spot. You'd have to be an idiot to think Sun was even considering walking away now.
Even if a reader initially had no interest in developing their own extensions to Joomla, this book could easily spark their interest, given that the book shows just how powerful those extensions can be
Oh, completely. I started writing i18n add-ons for Zope and Plone the same way. I was on the BART train, heading to Oakland to catch an A's game, and I wanted something to read, so I looked under the seat and the Zope book was there. I had absolutely no interest in Python-based content management systems -- seriously, I didn't even have a Web site -- but I scraped the gum off the front cover and started reading anyway, and after a few stops I was hooked. I ended up taking the book into the Coliseum with me and had my first ZPT code written before the 4th inning.
That said Adobe has been in this game for a long time now. Companies don't usually last that long being stupid so I'll be very interested to see if and how they respond to this.
Actually, if you want to get technical, Macromedia has been in this game for a long time now. Adobe's fairly new at it, unless you count their (relative) success pushing PDF as a de facto standard. Adobe does not have a perfect track record for developing great software, so I'd say the jury is still out as to how Flash will fare under their stewardship. I wouldn't underestimate Adobe's potential stupidity. Didn't I hear rumors about them wanting to tie Flash and PDF together in some way, and make them downloadable as a single (presumably gigantic) plug-in?
Anyway, integers are fixed-precision. They just go up in ones because that's convenient for people. If you want to have fractions to two places (e.g. if you're working with money), just multiply everything by 100 (and then think of it as pence as opposed to pounds). And be creative how you print it:)
Well, I guess that's true... I never really thought of it as a kid. Applesoft BASIC defaulted to floats for everything, and a lot of programmers didn't even know how to force a variable to be an int, but you could do it. Most people who are working with money to two-decimal precision want to round up, though, which adds the step of checking the modulus... and then there's not really an easy way to pretty-print strings once you cast them from ints... but, oh hell, you're coding in BASIC. Presumably there was always a teapot somewhere that needed putting on.:-)
P.S. Wait, what am I talking about? Be thankful you weren't trying to write the same app in 6502 assembly language, which would necessitate writing your own division subroutine.;-)
I moderated a panel at a conference about a year ago where one of the participants was Jack Lo, VMware's senior director of R&D, and I made the comment that I had understood that VMware ESX Server was based on a modified Linux kernel. He interrupted me and said that this was a common misconception, but that it was not the case. We didn't get into more details.
If I remember right, Apple Integer BASIC (the version, written by Woz, that shipped in ROM on the original Apple II) would let you to GOTO A (where A was a variable). The Apple ][+ and later used Applesoft BASIC (based on Microsoft code), which removed the capability. But that's just a fleeting memory... I could be totally wrong.
The decimal line numbering IS totally classic, though. Integer BASIC on the Apple had one main disadvantage when compared to Applesoft BASIC, and that was that all numbers were integers (as you might assume). Applesoft introduced floating-point numbers. There were no intermediate steps -- no fixed-precision decimal numbers, for instance. If that was a typical BASIC design, can I assume that the Lynx would allow line numbers in the form 2.5E4, also??
I freely admit that ClearChannel and the four-company record label oligopoly have both been bad things for the music industry. But isn't the RIAA proof enough that the music industry isn't something that any of us should mourn? If ClearChannel is helping to kill it -- if ClearChannel is standing right in front of us, plunging a butcher knife into the music industry over and over -- then I say all we need to do is point and laugh.
The death of the music industry doesn't seem to be doing anything to slow musicians down. Not the real ones, anyway. Maybe I just live on the fringes, but more and more I'm hearing about how the major labels are struggling, cursing, and biting their nails, while at the same time independent labels are experiencing a boom time. It's certainly been true of punk and metal for a long time that the really important new artists are all going to be on indies. Some of the best rock bands of recent years -- bands that 20 years ago might have been deemed "radio rock" -- have emerged from the indie scene. And lately, more and more hip-hop artists have been releasing so-called mix tapes (many of which violate copyrights, bringing hip-hop proudly back to its roots) and putting out records through independent labels (and I don't mean "bespoke 'independent' subsidiary of Interscope created as a vanity imprint for a particular artist," I mean real indie labels).
Meanwhile, other people sign to major labels and what do they get? In effect, they get to go into debt via a whopping big bank loan that someone else gets to spend to record, release, and market an album and a tour package. And then every penny of that loan has to be paid back by the artist before the artist sees a dime. Why do these musicians put up with it? Because they are not really musicians... they are wage earners who made up their minds to go and work in the music industry. They don't see anything wrong with being the equivalent of a character from Office Space, working 9 to 5 in an industry than churns out factory-manufactured pap like Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, 50 Cent, Limp Bizkit, Avril Lavigne... made-to-order music cobbled together in a studio by cynical marketers who don't differentiate music from any other disposable consumer good. The so-call artists don't care because they get to buy pretty clothes and date pretty girls, and that's it. So who needs 'em? If that's the music industry we're talking about, let's let it die.
The real damage done by the recording industry cartel, unfortunately, has been to the independent retailer. Very few mom n' pop record stores can survive selling CDs that Best Buy and Wal*Mart are going to discount 30 percent. MP3s are also doing damage to indie retailers' sales, for sure... but MP3s are surely only another nail in the coffin. The damage has been done by the industry itself, which is more reason to say "good riddance."
MP3 (or pick your format) as a channel for legitimate music distribution is still only in its infancy. Who among you is going to tell me that digital downloads aren't going to continue to play a bigger and bigger part in music distribution of all types, though? It's a shame that this might effectively pull the rug out of the customer-friendly, independent retailer scene before it really puts the screws on ClearChannel et al, but nobody is better positioned to take advantage of the changes than the people who aren't paying off their student loans on their MBAs by getting piggy-back rides from other people's music.
If Rove cheated on his wife with Jeff Gannon, or anyone else, it is the epitome of hypocrisy to proclaim he's leaving the administration to be with his family.
What if he didn't cheat? It seems more likely that Rove's wife knows all about it, and in fact likes the idea of being married to one of the most powerful men in America while at the same time being free to sleep with whomever she wants.
Better to talk, instead, about the hypocrisy of Republicans time and again working against equality for gays and lesbians, while simultaneously covering up for the "good gays" that work alongside them.
It's not even human nature, it's common freaking sense. If you have a student who averages C- and gets a B on a test you praise them for their achievement.
Somewhat OT -- OK, maybe you have an opinion on this one, which has bugged me since high school. When I was in high school, some of the underachieving kids had parents who would reward them with cash money whenever report cards came out. $20 for an A, $15 for a B, and on down. I, on the other hand, was a smart kid and I was pretty much expected to be a smart kid by my parents. When I got an A on a report card I got jack squat, not even a pat on the head. When I got a C, I got cussed out. Is that "common freaking sense," or might there be a better way to handle it?
He's most definately a nerd. He's so much of a nerd, even the geeks beat up on him in high school.
Good Lord, you're not implying that we should feel sorry for Karl Rove, are you? That all that abuse is what made him such a twisted, stunted, and evil man?
Also, you seem to have totally misunderstood the point of what you quoted. Utterly. Which isn't surprising, given that you think that anyone who has any kind of affiliation with any part of government must be a propaganda mouthpiece. Brilliant.
Kudos for including your real contact information and details about yourself on your Web page. I can respect that. But I don't think the GP was saying that "anyone" with that kind of affiliation was a propaganda mouthpiece. I think he was just implying that, based on your brief but notable posting history, you are a paid propaganda mouthpiece.
Last I heard, Red Hat was about as "corporate" as Linux got. (Before we start murmuring about Novell, why don't we check the size of Novell's customer list vs. that of Red Hat?) And, last I heard, Red Hat flat-out rejected a deal with Microsoft the likes of the one Novell signed. On the other hand, is Red Hat "working with Microsoft"? I don't have examples off the top of my head, but considering that it would be in the best interests of Red Hat's entire installed base, I would say that it is more than likely. I guess that's why they call it a line in the sand and not a line in the concrete.
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No, he's saying there's plenty that can be done. The plaintiff can press a lawsuit via the courts. What can't be done, in his opinion, is the plaintiff can't put the defendant out of business before the case is decided. If the defendant admits that he infringed copyright in the past, he also has stated for the record that he no longer does so and there is zero infringing code in his product. What else are you looking for?
If this is really true, I encourage you all to come live in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's expensive, sure; but not only do I not know anybody who has ever worked at a Wal-Mart, I honestly have never shopped at one. They have one in Emeryville, I think, and one in East Palo Alto, but none near anywhere I go with any regularity. Who knows? If they existed, I might shop there -- but they don't. In all honesty, I'd be ecstatic if a Target opened up downtown.
I read a PR spam that was going around about this very case. It seems interesting and worth watching, but the folks involved definitely want to trump this up to more than it is. The decision that will allegedly impact the entire open source industry is really just a ruling that the plaintiffs (the open source guys) can't get a preliminary injunction against the defendant. If you're a small business owner I would think you would see this as a good thing. If everybody who filed a lawsuit against a small business could get a preliminary injunction that forces the company to completely cease operations before the trial has even started, small software developers would cease to exist.
Right, so how does "the economy is becoming a more level playing field" equal "the world is flat"? It doesn't. The statement "the world is flat" is totally meaningless, and this is just one of the clever catchphrases and platitudes with which Friedman litters his writing. He's a smart guy, but he really beat this one to death.
Meh. I read it, and as an avid reader I'll give credit for a very insightful and compelling essay, worthy of further consideration. I question, however, whether it was really worth the 400+ pages of consideration he gives it in the book, which seems to be adding still more pages as each new edition comes out.
Seriously, The World is Flat is grossly, grossly overrated.
P.S. Bonus points if anyone can tell me what Friedman actually means when he says "the world is flat" and can explain how that is an appropriate metaphor for what he's saying, by any stretch of the imagination...
I can't remember any specific names but I was specifically thinking of some towns I passed through while on a Greyhound bus in Wyoming. Somebody else on the bus knew someone who lived there and that was pretty much her life.
This phenomenon has been studied and discussed pretty thoroughly, though. Here's a report by an Iowa State University professor from 1997 where they found that small towns lose up to 47 percent of their retail trade once Wal-Mart moves in. (It's a PDF.)
Unless you live in one of the areas -- quite common in mid-America -- where Wal-Mart is pretty much the only retailer for everything. Don't believe me? There are communities in the U.S. where not only does everybody shop at Wal-Mart, but most of the people in the community work there, too. Wal-Mart undercutting everybody else's pricing on everyday goods particularly affects smaller retailers in these parts of the country, where people don't have as much disposable income as they do on the coasts and are more keenly interested in "bargain shopping." Indie record stores haven't a hope of surviving where A.) a comparatively small number of people are interested in indie music; and B.) Wal-Mart is going to put all the new mainstream releases on sale for $9.99 the week the come out.
It would be wrong to deny anyone admission to a public school. If you've got violent people, the surest way to wean them away from a life of violence would be to educate them. Can you think of anything else that might dissuade them, in the long run? If you've got stupid people, I only know of one way to even try to remove the stupidity. Public schools are -- and should forever remain -- for everybody.
The problem isn't admission. The problem is the fact that once you're in, you're in for life. In today's world there is practically nothing that will get you expelled from school. Repeat: practically nothing.
A friend of mine was a substitute teacher in the Oakland, CA school district (think rough neighborhood) and he would have students actually shoulder-check him as they entered the classroom. Then they would sit in their desk but never even take their backpacks off, let alone open a book. Then, at some point, they would start disrupting the class. My friend would send them to the principal's office. Fifteen minutes later, they would be back. And soon enough, they would start up again.
Why do they get away with it? Because here's what happens: A kid beats another kid so badly that he needs facial reconstructive surgery. The offender gets sent home, and after a meeting of the school board, he is expelled. One week later the parents appear in the principal's office. With them is a lawyer. The lawyer has paperwork with him, outlining his case against the school district. Apparently by denying his client's child an education, the school is not only causing undue suffering and distress to the family, not to mention specific monetary damages that will result from the child's inability to find future work, but the school is also violating the family's civil rights. The lawyer explains that it should be clear to anyone that the reason the school is doing all this is because the clients are African-Americans. The racist policies of the school, the lawyer explains, will be held accountable to the public on tomorrow night's evening news unless the school immediately agrees to a cash settlement AND to re-instate the client's child in school.
And the school complies. Because as financially strapped as most districts are, they simply cannot afford to allow a case like that to go to court.
The result is a completely toothless system that basically lets anarchy rule the day. My friend -- a substitute teacher -- got a lot of work because the teachers would regularly phone him up and ask him to come in, not because they were sick, but they "just couldn't take it anymore" and "they need a break."
The real tragedy, from my friend's point of view, was that in every class he taught there would always be at least 2-3 students -- usually girls -- who were obviously highly intelligent, capable, and were there to learn. They would come to school having completed their homework, they would bring their books, they would have all their papers organized neatly into folders, and the whole bit. But they couldn't learn. They weren't really getting anything out of the class because my friend was forced to teach at an extremely slow rate and could barely complete a lesson because of the constant disruptions. The five troublemakers in every class would ruin it for the other 30 kids.
Haha! Well, nice going, genius.
Nowhere in the article does it say Sun is thinking of dropping out of the server market. Rather, it mentions that Sun is tied with Dell for the #3 spot. You'd have to be an idiot to think Sun was even considering walking away now.
Oh, completely. I started writing i18n add-ons for Zope and Plone the same way. I was on the BART train, heading to Oakland to catch an A's game, and I wanted something to read, so I looked under the seat and the Zope book was there. I had absolutely no interest in Python-based content management systems -- seriously, I didn't even have a Web site -- but I scraped the gum off the front cover and started reading anyway, and after a few stops I was hooked. I ended up taking the book into the Coliseum with me and had my first ZPT code written before the 4th inning.
Actually, if you want to get technical, Macromedia has been in this game for a long time now. Adobe's fairly new at it, unless you count their (relative) success pushing PDF as a de facto standard. Adobe does not have a perfect track record for developing great software, so I'd say the jury is still out as to how Flash will fare under their stewardship. I wouldn't underestimate Adobe's potential stupidity. Didn't I hear rumors about them wanting to tie Flash and PDF together in some way, and make them downloadable as a single (presumably gigantic) plug-in?
Well, I guess that's true ... I never really thought of it as a kid. Applesoft BASIC defaulted to floats for everything, and a lot of programmers didn't even know how to force a variable to be an int, but you could do it. Most people who are working with money to two-decimal precision want to round up, though, which adds the step of checking the modulus ... and then there's not really an easy way to pretty-print strings once you cast them from ints ... but, oh hell, you're coding in BASIC. Presumably there was always a teapot somewhere that needed putting on. :-)
P.S. Wait, what am I talking about? Be thankful you weren't trying to write the same app in 6502 assembly language, which would necessitate writing your own division subroutine. ;-)
I moderated a panel at a conference about a year ago where one of the participants was Jack Lo, VMware's senior director of R&D, and I made the comment that I had understood that VMware ESX Server was based on a modified Linux kernel. He interrupted me and said that this was a common misconception, but that it was not the case. We didn't get into more details.
If I remember right, Apple Integer BASIC (the version, written by Woz, that shipped in ROM on the original Apple II) would let you to GOTO A (where A was a variable). The Apple ][+ and later used Applesoft BASIC (based on Microsoft code), which removed the capability. But that's just a fleeting memory... I could be totally wrong.
The decimal line numbering IS totally classic, though. Integer BASIC on the Apple had one main disadvantage when compared to Applesoft BASIC, and that was that all numbers were integers (as you might assume). Applesoft introduced floating-point numbers. There were no intermediate steps -- no fixed-precision decimal numbers, for instance. If that was a typical BASIC design, can I assume that the Lynx would allow line numbers in the form 2.5E4, also??
TUBES?! Hogwash. When I was a kid we didn't have nuthin but a capacitor, a germanium diode, and a coil of wire. And we liked it!
I freely admit that ClearChannel and the four-company record label oligopoly have both been bad things for the music industry. But isn't the RIAA proof enough that the music industry isn't something that any of us should mourn? If ClearChannel is helping to kill it -- if ClearChannel is standing right in front of us, plunging a butcher knife into the music industry over and over -- then I say all we need to do is point and laugh.
The death of the music industry doesn't seem to be doing anything to slow musicians down. Not the real ones, anyway. Maybe I just live on the fringes, but more and more I'm hearing about how the major labels are struggling, cursing, and biting their nails, while at the same time independent labels are experiencing a boom time. It's certainly been true of punk and metal for a long time that the really important new artists are all going to be on indies. Some of the best rock bands of recent years -- bands that 20 years ago might have been deemed "radio rock" -- have emerged from the indie scene. And lately, more and more hip-hop artists have been releasing so-called mix tapes (many of which violate copyrights, bringing hip-hop proudly back to its roots) and putting out records through independent labels (and I don't mean "bespoke 'independent' subsidiary of Interscope created as a vanity imprint for a particular artist," I mean real indie labels).
Meanwhile, other people sign to major labels and what do they get? In effect, they get to go into debt via a whopping big bank loan that someone else gets to spend to record, release, and market an album and a tour package. And then every penny of that loan has to be paid back by the artist before the artist sees a dime. Why do these musicians put up with it? Because they are not really musicians ... they are wage earners who made up their minds to go and work in the music industry. They don't see anything wrong with being the equivalent of a character from Office Space, working 9 to 5 in an industry than churns out factory-manufactured pap like Velvet Revolver, Audioslave, 50 Cent, Limp Bizkit, Avril Lavigne ... made-to-order music cobbled together in a studio by cynical marketers who don't differentiate music from any other disposable consumer good. The so-call artists don't care because they get to buy pretty clothes and date pretty girls, and that's it. So who needs 'em? If that's the music industry we're talking about, let's let it die.
The real damage done by the recording industry cartel, unfortunately, has been to the independent retailer. Very few mom n' pop record stores can survive selling CDs that Best Buy and Wal*Mart are going to discount 30 percent. MP3s are also doing damage to indie retailers' sales, for sure ... but MP3s are surely only another nail in the coffin. The damage has been done by the industry itself, which is more reason to say "good riddance."
MP3 (or pick your format) as a channel for legitimate music distribution is still only in its infancy. Who among you is going to tell me that digital downloads aren't going to continue to play a bigger and bigger part in music distribution of all types, though? It's a shame that this might effectively pull the rug out of the customer-friendly, independent retailer scene before it really puts the screws on ClearChannel et al, but nobody is better positioned to take advantage of the changes than the people who aren't paying off their student loans on their MBAs by getting piggy-back rides from other people's music.
What if he didn't cheat? It seems more likely that Rove's wife knows all about it, and in fact likes the idea of being married to one of the most powerful men in America while at the same time being free to sleep with whomever she wants.
Better to talk, instead, about the hypocrisy of Republicans time and again working against equality for gays and lesbians, while simultaneously covering up for the "good gays" that work alongside them.
Somewhat OT -- OK, maybe you have an opinion on this one, which has bugged me since high school. When I was in high school, some of the underachieving kids had parents who would reward them with cash money whenever report cards came out. $20 for an A, $15 for a B, and on down. I, on the other hand, was a smart kid and I was pretty much expected to be a smart kid by my parents. When I got an A on a report card I got jack squat, not even a pat on the head. When I got a C, I got cussed out. Is that "common freaking sense," or might there be a better way to handle it?
Scientists are already making plans to rename it to the "Pygmalion" family of viruses.
Errr, minor point, but Moses didn't draw the line in the sand; Bowie did. Moses ran.
Good Lord, you're not implying that we should feel sorry for Karl Rove, are you? That all that abuse is what made him such a twisted, stunted, and evil man?
Kudos for including your real contact information and details about yourself on your Web page. I can respect that. But I don't think the GP was saying that "anyone" with that kind of affiliation was a propaganda mouthpiece. I think he was just implying that, based on your brief but notable posting history, you are a paid propaganda mouthpiece.
Last I heard, Red Hat was about as "corporate" as Linux got. (Before we start murmuring about Novell, why don't we check the size of Novell's customer list vs. that of Red Hat?) And, last I heard, Red Hat flat-out rejected a deal with Microsoft the likes of the one Novell signed. On the other hand, is Red Hat "working with Microsoft"? I don't have examples off the top of my head, but considering that it would be in the best interests of Red Hat's entire installed base, I would say that it is more than likely. I guess that's why they call it a line in the sand and not a line in the concrete.