My theory of the apparently "random" DDoS attacks we've seen in the past years is that they are tests of new attack strategies, and possibly demonstrations for potential clients / black-mail victims, etc.
If you can bring down Akamai, you can bring down anyone.
A replacement for the expensive, complex, and unreliable bluetooth and infrared protocols used for wireless keyboards...
The AudioWiFi keyboard (or HiFi, maybe): no cables, no batteries, no line of sight. Just a microphone on the PC that listens to your keystrokes and learns what they mean.
With 80% accuracy it wudls br possublr ti typr entirr dicunents witg onlu a feq ertors.
Doing all the paperwork yourself (and you must be a patent lawyer), budget $1000 per patent.
Paying a patent lawyer, for searching and filing, budget $10,000 per patent.
Defending a patent against violation and/or contestation, budget $100,000 per patent.
These are minimal figures. You can go much higher.
Now add the fact that your patent portfolio is like a hand of cards. Even if you invest in (say) 20 excellent patents, you are unable to compete against a company that has 200 patents, of which you may be infringing 50.
Software patents are a game where you can not really compete unless you are a large player.
This was going to be the second part of my comment but I truncated it.
Yes, US patent law does not cover the globe. Large parts of the world operate free from it. But this is not a guarantee of anything.
At the best, US/EU businesses will find it increasingly hard to compete and will lobby for patent reform. At worst, US/EU business will become more and more dependent on exploiting a captive market rather than innovating to create new markets.
The US will try to export its standards and regulations world wide. The need for its global partners to play the game or risk trade sanctions means that it's quite likely that patent laws will confirm world-wide except for countries beyond the pale.
IT will be split into "legal" and "illegal", where use/import of software that is developed outside a government-sponsored framework will be criminal.
Let me give you a concrete example. A team in India develops a new computer and starts to sell this. A US company claims that it infringes some (US) patents. The Indian company says, "yes, but we're only selling it in India". US government now places this technology on the "banned" list. A cheaper and better product is kept from the US market. Now the Indian government complains that this is acting as an illegal trade barrier. US government says, "fine, we'll allow your technology imports but you must accept our patent laws (and patents!)". You can replay this scenario world wide.
Honestly, I can't see any mechanism that will stop this from happening. It is a "tragedy of the commons": the more you take now, the richer you will be in the future. Those who do not grab patents, whatever the excuse, will be out of business in 10 years time.
Software patents are fast becoming the 21st century equivalent of a land grab, in which those with the muscle are laying claim to a resource that has up to now been firmly in common ownership.
There is only one possible outcome, I believe. This is that every corner of IT knowledge finishes as "property", whatever its origins. This would spell the end of independent software development and (rapidly thereafter) the end of innovation. We are clearly within sight of the day when writing _any_ software without legal backing in the form of a dossier of defensive patents becomes a dangerous sport.
Oil reserves appear to be running out (looking at the recent problems Shell had with its overstated reserves, and seeing how some of the other large oil companies make even larger estimates than Shell's old ones). The future of energy production is going to be nuclear, wind, and solar. So it's very timely news.
Personally I think the collapse of the oil supply within the next 15-20 years will be the most traumatic event in recent human history.
Solar cells will help a lot in some ways but they won't be enough to stitch together a modern society built on the motor car and cheap fuel.
Any strategy contains the seeds of its own failure. In this case, bribing criminals to hand-over their own is a classic but short-term solution.
Firstly, it sets the stage for blackmail. If one isolated hacker is worth $5m, how much is an unreleased worm worth? Probably much, much more. I'd not be surprised if MS regularly get asked for money upfront before worms are released. Paying out will only make this worse.
Secondly, it is a Darwinian filter. Yes, you can pay to get hold of an isolated criminal. No, you cannot use this tactic against criminal gangs. $5m is not a lot when compared to the value of a large botnet. Setting bounties will eliminate the free-lancers and leave the stage open for more organized criminals who will probably be more agressive in using zombied PCs for criminal acts (child porn, DDoS, etc.)
Thirdly, it is prejudicial and likely to lead to the arrest of innocent people. Given that any zombied PC can be used to launch a worm attack, how can any evidence be trusted? Confessions, too, are unreliable. Bounties are rapidly turned into lynchings.
Lastly, it is a distraction from the real issue: Windows' fundamental security weaknesses. Microsoft must release a secure Windows within the next 12 months or risk permanent damage to their brand. Paying bounties for worm writers fools no-one: Windows remains insecure and there remain an unlimited supply of smart criminals happy to take advantage of that.
The Military Police are meantt police the military, not civilians. MPs (my dad was one, and explained this to me many times) are trained to be even more brutal than normal soldiers.
Real police are a completely different story. It is well known that using soldiers (or worse, MPs) in place of a civilian police force is a recipe for extreme brutality against the population.
Many of the worst crimes against civilians come from instances when the army is deployed to "keep order". Think of Latin America.
The abuses in Iraq are pretty moderate compared with the standards for wars. And I must agree with the parent poster: soldiers are trained to behave like this. Wars are won by violence and terror, not good manners. It is those who send the soldiers into the wrong places - such as police operations - who are to blame when the violence and terror gets misdirected against non-combatants.
There is an analysis of this by HeironymousCoward.
Basically a 'hot' virus like Ebola destroys its hosts too quickly for it to spread.
So viruses tend to become 'cooler' over time.
The loophole for computer viruses is that a wide-spread cool virus can become a vector for a new hot virus.
So while one single virus is unlikely to do significant damage, a series of viruses could do very great damage.
And you probably will not laugh when it happens.
Some of the other serious issues Redmond is facing:
1. Worms/spyware/viruses destroying the home market
2. Lack of reasons for further upgrades to Office
3. Enterprise shift to Linux
4. Consolidating competition from IBM & Novell
In general terms, their problems stem from having cornered the market for a product that is almost out of fashion: high-cost, complex (and thus insecure) software. People need low-cost, secure software.
Their best hope is to produce an interim release of Windows 2000 that has been seriously upgraded in terms of security. But even then I don't see how they can survive the commoditization of their core market.
5 years' budget goes awfully quickly when you are used to double-figure growth.
Because there are only two companies that promote and sell OOPS languages on a large scale. 1: Microsoft. 2: Sun.
When launching patent lawsuits, it is generally best to go after smaller players first. If Sun were to accept Kodak's patents (or were to lose the court action), Kodak would have a better basis for going after Microsoft.
They're not going to sue the C++ standards committee because it won't earn them anything except hostility.
1. Use Longhorn-specific extensions
2. Develop MSIE replacement
3. Profit! (for Microsoft, who have just saved a packet on browser development)
Meanwhile resources are drained from solutions that will benefit non-Windows users and platforms.
Signs of a new strategy from Redmond?
1. On every PC we've installed it on (about 10 in our company) it just worked, with the exception of a notebook that had some CD hardware problems.
2. It installs smoothly and gives you a good set of applications without overloading the UI.
3. It has an excellent one-click GUI update manager that is based on apt and is compatible with it.
4. The Xandros File Manager really _is good_. Whatever file you have, you click and the 'right' thing happens. Want to burn some files to CD? Selected them, right click and select "Burn to CD"... Want to unpack a zip file? Right click, choose "Unpack". and so on.
5. It is stable.
Overall Xandros gives you the feeling that you are driving a luxury car. Smooth, highly polished, and incredible attention to detail.
6. It is Debian: want to add something? Find the sources, unpack, build, install.
Now the poor points:
1. Slow release cycle, annoying if you're a thrill seeker. With one release a year, Xandros gives you reliability over performance and gadgets.
2. Not free. You can't just copy it and share it. I believe Xandros is preparing a free version.
3. The Windows support is flaky and not something you should bet on. It's better just to migrate to Linux/portable applications such as OOo over time (it took me about 6 months to migrate, switching one application at a time: office, media players, browsing, streaming, agendas, and finally email.)
I've tried many different distros, but I'm not willing to spend much time installing, or learning the details. It has to work quickly and smoothly. That's what Xandros does.
We are getting to the stage where a fair chunk of PCs connected to the Internet are destined to die.
It's reasonable to assume that MS has performed a kind of triage:
- Home PCs are beyond the reach of any help. Whatever is done is already too late. Home PC users will have to migrate to Linux within 6-12 months or face working without the Internet.
- SMEs can be protected with additional work. SMEs need better firewall security and better patching methods.
- Most enterprise computing is safe as is. Many data centers will switch away from Windows for cost and reliability issues but the ones that can't will remain faithful Windows clients.
So Microsoft has to concentrate on helping the people who can still be saved, namely SMEs that have several PCs behind a shared internet connection.
Having seen three of my friends' PCs dead today from Sasser (MSIE rebooting without end, and no way to do anything else on the system), I'm rather sceptical that home computing can be saved.
Personally, I find certain cities to be wonderful and some to be horrid. The best cities are the ones that have grown organically, over centuries, and the worst are the ones that have been centrally planned or rebuilt by "modern urban architects." Yes, the US has some of the worst cities in the world, but also some great ones.
It's been said, and I agree, that pedestrian city life closely resembles our old human hunter gatherer lifestyle, in which one has to be intimate with one's environment. It has nothing at all to do with corporations and everything to do with the humanization of our living spaces.
I've also noticed that people who live in such cities (and my own is like that) are generally happier and more social than people who live in urban areas.
Just a POV, but I totally disagree with the generalisation that "cities are bad". It all depends.
1. Downloading... very fast, as you'd expect.
2. Installation... very simple, just unpacks to one readme file and one executable.
3. Documentation... brief, note that DirectX 9.0 is required (not 8.1 as mentioned in the story).
4. Running... brief: "Instruction at 0x000000000 referenced memory at 0x000000000".
Conclusion: I can make the same functionality in an even smaller package.
The lucid dream is correct, you're just catching the wave slightly ahead of the masses.
I just came back from 2017 and they're quite amazed when I told them / will tell them that in 2004 people are still debating whether Linux "can make it". They say (and this is pretty much a direct quote) "did no-one think to ask whether Windows could make it?" And then they all say "Darwin" in unison and giggle shyly. Something to do with a terrible epidemic in 2005 that wiped out 75% of the world's computers and turned posession of Microsoft binaries or source code into a crime in 104 countries. Apparently some labs still have copies of Microsoft's code archive but it's kept strictly locked up.
Oh, yes, and in 2017 computer programs swap their DNA... it's called "sexware". The concept of "distribution" has vanished since every PC effectively has a unique combination of software, which creates good resistance against parasites. Approximately 75% of all software is parasitical and lives a semi-independent life on the net. You'll be amused to learn that sexware evolved in about 2010 from the apt package manager during the big Linux virus attacks.
Between governments and the people.
Already countries have to compete
for the best citizens. Eventually
they will realize this means making
laws people _like_ as well.
I'll postpone my departure to Canada
until the dust has settled.
Exchange performance...
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Oh yeah, forgot this gem. We were testing an email application. Send a thousand emails to a tiny free email server on Windows, it swallows and asks for more. Send a thousand emails to our Linux box, it blinks and says 'yeah, so what?' Send a thousand emails to the departmental Exchange server... it crashes and IT support screams at us for 'overloading' their box. Just cracks me up.
Yehaa! It's been ages since I saw someone try to sell Exchange on the basis of performance. Wowee, this cracks me up. Experience with other OSS products tells me this one will be stable, portable, as fast as necessary but no faster, and contain exactly as many features as I need but no more. In other words, pretty damn close to a perfect product. Or else it will vanish pretty damn fast and I won't even try it. But what will _not_ happen, guaranteed, is that some fiend of a drug-pushing middle-level marking drone will manage to sell me (or my clients, or my boss) a pile of shit that will cost an arm and a leg and more trauma than a roomful of disaster counsellers can deal with in a lifetime. You saying Exchange is a good product? Come on, make my day, I dare you.
Nice theory, shame about the real world
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 1
If only people decided things based on 'terms of technological prowess'. People make emotional decisions based exactly on things like 'them' and 'us'.
Don't attack the messenger, try thinking about what really happens. The debate between OSS and closed software is emotionally charged not because people are fools who can't stick to business. It's because people depend on emotions to decide things.
Yes, there are people who can decide things purely on technological merit, but they are extremely rare.
It's obvious that for most people Linux and OSS have more impact as a religion than a technology.
Yes, within 5 years all mice will have Bluetooth and you can surf to your mouse site and ask stuff like 'how many clicks have I done since whenever'. Using your keyboard, hopefully.
The nicest Unix front-end ever?
on
Jaguar is Over
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
1. Make pretty GUIs and lovely gadgets
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
Actually, it's a pretty damn good business plan.
Slashdot Mirror
My theory of the apparently "random" DDoS attacks we've seen in the past years is that they are tests of new attack strategies, and possibly demonstrations for potential clients / black-mail victims, etc.
If you can bring down Akamai, you can bring down anyone.
A replacement for the expensive, complex, and unreliable bluetooth and infrared protocols used for wireless keyboards...
The AudioWiFi keyboard (or HiFi, maybe): no cables, no batteries, no line of sight. Just a microphone on the PC that listens to your keystrokes and learns what they mean.
With 80% accuracy it wudls br possublr ti typr entirr dicunents witg onlu a feq ertors.
And keep the music down!
One small catch. You need a lot of money.
Doing all the paperwork yourself (and you must be a patent lawyer), budget $1000 per patent.
Paying a patent lawyer, for searching and filing, budget $10,000 per patent.
Defending a patent against violation and/or contestation, budget $100,000 per patent.
These are minimal figures. You can go much higher.
Now add the fact that your patent portfolio is like a hand of cards. Even if you invest in (say) 20 excellent patents, you are unable to compete against a company that has 200 patents, of which you may be infringing 50.
Software patents are a game where you can not really compete unless you are a large player.
This was going to be the second part of my comment but I truncated it.
Yes, US patent law does not cover the globe. Large parts of the world operate free from it. But this is not a guarantee of anything.
At the best, US/EU businesses will find it increasingly hard to compete and will lobby for patent reform. At worst, US/EU business will become more and more dependent on exploiting a captive market rather than innovating to create new markets.
The US will try to export its standards and regulations world wide. The need for its global partners to play the game or risk trade sanctions means that it's quite likely that patent laws will confirm world-wide except for countries beyond the pale.
IT will be split into "legal" and "illegal", where use/import of software that is developed outside a government-sponsored framework will be criminal.
Let me give you a concrete example. A team in India develops a new computer and starts to sell this. A US company claims that it infringes some (US) patents. The Indian company says, "yes, but we're only selling it in India". US government now places this technology on the "banned" list. A cheaper and better product is kept from the US market. Now the Indian government complains that this is acting as an illegal trade barrier. US government says, "fine, we'll allow your technology imports but you must accept our patent laws (and patents!)". You can replay this scenario world wide.
Honestly, I can't see any mechanism that will stop this from happening. It is a "tragedy of the commons": the more you take now, the richer you will be in the future. Those who do not grab patents, whatever the excuse, will be out of business in 10 years time.
Software patents are fast becoming the 21st century equivalent of a land grab, in which those with the muscle are laying claim to a resource that has up to now been firmly in common ownership.
There is only one possible outcome, I believe. This is that every corner of IT knowledge finishes as "property", whatever its origins. This would spell the end of independent software development and (rapidly thereafter) the end of innovation. We are clearly within sight of the day when writing _any_ software without legal backing in the form of a dossier of defensive patents becomes a dangerous sport.
Yes.
Ebay is not a retailer. It is a marketplace.
Marketplaces do not need to be perfect, they only need to be better than the alternative.
Ebay is so much better than the real-world alternatives - small ads in newspapers - that people are happy to accept its flaws.
Oil reserves appear to be running out (looking at the recent problems Shell had with its overstated reserves, and seeing how some of the other large oil companies make even larger estimates than Shell's old ones). The future of energy production is going to be nuclear, wind, and solar. So it's very timely news.
Personally I think the collapse of the oil supply within the next 15-20 years will be the most traumatic event in recent human history.
Solar cells will help a lot in some ways but they won't be enough to stitch together a modern society built on the motor car and cheap fuel.
Any strategy contains the seeds of its own failure. In this case, bribing criminals to hand-over their own is a classic but short-term solution.
Firstly, it sets the stage for blackmail. If one isolated hacker is worth $5m, how much is an unreleased worm worth? Probably much, much more. I'd not be surprised if MS regularly get asked for money upfront before worms are released. Paying out will only make this worse.
Secondly, it is a Darwinian filter. Yes, you can pay to get hold of an isolated criminal. No, you cannot use this tactic against criminal gangs. $5m is not a lot when compared to the value of a large botnet. Setting bounties will eliminate the free-lancers and leave the stage open for more organized criminals who will probably be more agressive in using zombied PCs for criminal acts (child porn, DDoS, etc.)
Thirdly, it is prejudicial and likely to lead to the arrest of innocent people. Given that any zombied PC can be used to launch a worm attack, how can any evidence be trusted? Confessions, too, are unreliable. Bounties are rapidly turned into lynchings.
Lastly, it is a distraction from the real issue: Windows' fundamental security weaknesses. Microsoft must release a secure Windows within the next 12 months or risk permanent damage to their brand. Paying bounties for worm writers fools no-one: Windows remains insecure and there remain an unlimited supply of smart criminals happy to take advantage of that.
The Military Police are meantt police the military, not civilians. MPs (my dad was one, and explained this to me many times) are trained to be even more brutal than normal soldiers.
Real police are a completely different story. It is well known that using soldiers (or worse, MPs) in place of a civilian police force is a recipe for extreme brutality against the population.
Many of the worst crimes against civilians come from instances when the army is deployed to "keep order". Think of Latin America.
The abuses in Iraq are pretty moderate compared with the standards for wars. And I must agree with the parent poster: soldiers are trained to behave like this. Wars are won by violence and terror, not good manners. It is those who send the soldiers into the wrong places - such as police operations - who are to blame when the violence and terror gets misdirected against non-combatants.
There is an analysis of this by HeironymousCoward. Basically a 'hot' virus like Ebola destroys its hosts too quickly for it to spread. So viruses tend to become 'cooler' over time. The loophole for computer viruses is that a wide-spread cool virus can become a vector for a new hot virus. So while one single virus is unlikely to do significant damage, a series of viruses could do very great damage. And you probably will not laugh when it happens.
Delays in Windows are only one problem.
Some of the other serious issues Redmond is facing:
1. Worms/spyware/viruses destroying the home market
2. Lack of reasons for further upgrades to Office
3. Enterprise shift to Linux
4. Consolidating competition from IBM & Novell
In general terms, their problems stem from having cornered the market for a product that is almost out of fashion: high-cost, complex (and thus insecure) software. People need low-cost, secure software.
Their best hope is to produce an interim release of Windows 2000 that has been seriously upgraded in terms of security. But even then I don't see how they can survive the commoditization of their core market.
5 years' budget goes awfully quickly when you are used to double-figure growth.
Because there are only two companies that promote and sell OOPS languages on a large scale. 1: Microsoft. 2: Sun.
When launching patent lawsuits, it is generally best to go after smaller players first. If Sun were to accept Kodak's patents (or were to lose the court action), Kodak would have a better basis for going after Microsoft.
They're not going to sue the C++ standards committee because it won't earn them anything except hostility.
1. Use Longhorn-specific extensions 2. Develop MSIE replacement 3. Profit! (for Microsoft, who have just saved a packet on browser development) Meanwhile resources are drained from solutions that will benefit non-Windows users and platforms. Signs of a new strategy from Redmond?
I can say why it's easily worth the price tag.
1. On every PC we've installed it on (about 10 in our company) it just worked, with the exception of a notebook that had some CD hardware problems.
2. It installs smoothly and gives you a good set of applications without overloading the UI.
3. It has an excellent one-click GUI update manager that is based on apt and is compatible with it.
4. The Xandros File Manager really _is good_. Whatever file you have, you click and the 'right' thing happens. Want to burn some files to CD? Selected them, right click and select "Burn to CD"... Want to unpack a zip file? Right click, choose "Unpack". and so on.
5. It is stable.
Overall Xandros gives you the feeling that you are driving a luxury car. Smooth, highly polished, and incredible attention to detail.
6. It is Debian: want to add something? Find the sources, unpack, build, install.
Now the poor points:
1. Slow release cycle, annoying if you're a thrill seeker. With one release a year, Xandros gives you reliability over performance and gadgets.
2. Not free. You can't just copy it and share it. I believe Xandros is preparing a free version.
3. The Windows support is flaky and not something you should bet on. It's better just to migrate to Linux/portable applications such as OOo over time (it took me about 6 months to migrate, switching one application at a time: office, media players, browsing, streaming, agendas, and finally email.)
I've tried many different distros, but I'm not willing to spend much time installing, or learning the details. It has to work quickly and smoothly. That's what Xandros does.
We are getting to the stage where a fair chunk of PCs connected to the Internet are destined to die. It's reasonable to assume that MS has performed a kind of triage: - Home PCs are beyond the reach of any help. Whatever is done is already too late. Home PC users will have to migrate to Linux within 6-12 months or face working without the Internet. - SMEs can be protected with additional work. SMEs need better firewall security and better patching methods. - Most enterprise computing is safe as is. Many data centers will switch away from Windows for cost and reliability issues but the ones that can't will remain faithful Windows clients. So Microsoft has to concentrate on helping the people who can still be saved, namely SMEs that have several PCs behind a shared internet connection. Having seen three of my friends' PCs dead today from Sasser (MSIE rebooting without end, and no way to do anything else on the system), I'm rather sceptical that home computing can be saved.
Personally, I find certain cities to be wonderful and some to be horrid. The best cities are the ones that have grown organically, over centuries, and the worst are the ones that have been centrally planned or rebuilt by "modern urban architects." Yes, the US has some of the worst cities in the world, but also some great ones. It's been said, and I agree, that pedestrian city life closely resembles our old human hunter gatherer lifestyle, in which one has to be intimate with one's environment. It has nothing at all to do with corporations and everything to do with the humanization of our living spaces. I've also noticed that people who live in such cities (and my own is like that) are generally happier and more social than people who live in urban areas. Just a POV, but I totally disagree with the generalisation that "cities are bad". It all depends.
1. Downloading... very fast, as you'd expect. 2. Installation... very simple, just unpacks to one readme file and one executable. 3. Documentation... brief, note that DirectX 9.0 is required (not 8.1 as mentioned in the story). 4. Running... brief: "Instruction at 0x000000000 referenced memory at 0x000000000". Conclusion: I can make the same functionality in an even smaller package.
Ho-y Sh-t! T-- Hu--le s---e te--sc--pe h-s obv------y b--n h-xor-ed by a gr--p of ha--y g--ks.
The lucid dream is correct, you're just catching the wave slightly ahead of the masses. I just came back from 2017 and they're quite amazed when I told them / will tell them that in 2004 people are still debating whether Linux "can make it". They say (and this is pretty much a direct quote) "did no-one think to ask whether Windows could make it?" And then they all say "Darwin" in unison and giggle shyly. Something to do with a terrible epidemic in 2005 that wiped out 75% of the world's computers and turned posession of Microsoft binaries or source code into a crime in 104 countries. Apparently some labs still have copies of Microsoft's code archive but it's kept strictly locked up. Oh, yes, and in 2017 computer programs swap their DNA... it's called "sexware". The concept of "distribution" has vanished since every PC effectively has a unique combination of software, which creates good resistance against parasites. Approximately 75% of all software is parasitical and lives a semi-independent life on the net. You'll be amused to learn that sexware evolved in about 2010 from the apt package manager during the big Linux virus attacks.
Between governments and the people. Already countries have to compete for the best citizens. Eventually they will realize this means making laws people _like_ as well. I'll postpone my departure to Canada until the dust has settled.
Oh yeah, forgot this gem.
We were testing an email application. Send a thousand emails to a tiny free email server on Windows, it swallows and asks for more. Send a thousand emails to our Linux box, it blinks and says 'yeah, so what?' Send a thousand emails to the departmental Exchange server... it crashes and IT support screams at us for 'overloading' their box. Just cracks me up.
Yehaa! It's been ages since I saw someone try to sell Exchange on the basis of performance. Wowee, this cracks me up.
Experience with other OSS products tells me this one will be stable, portable, as fast as necessary but no faster, and contain exactly as many features as I need but no more. In other words, pretty damn close to a perfect product. Or else it will vanish pretty damn fast and I won't even try it.
But what will _not_ happen, guaranteed, is that some fiend of a drug-pushing middle-level marking drone will manage to sell me (or my clients, or my boss) a pile of shit that will cost an arm and a leg and more trauma than a roomful of disaster counsellers can deal with in a lifetime.
You saying Exchange is a good product? Come on, make my day, I dare you.
If only people decided things based on 'terms of technological prowess'. People make emotional decisions based exactly on things like 'them' and 'us'. Don't attack the messenger, try thinking about what really happens. The debate between OSS and closed software is emotionally charged not because people are fools who can't stick to business. It's because people depend on emotions to decide things. Yes, there are people who can decide things purely on technological merit, but they are extremely rare. It's obvious that for most people Linux and OSS have more impact as a religion than a technology.
Yes, within 5 years all mice will have Bluetooth and you can surf to your mouse site and ask stuff like 'how many clicks have I done since whenever'. Using your keyboard, hopefully.
1. Make pretty GUIs and lovely gadgets 2. ??? 3. Profit!!! Actually, it's a pretty damn good business plan.