"I don't think he has the right to be looking at me"
This is where I think you've gone too far.
The current standard used to judge this sort of thing usually is "how much of an intrusion is this upon the innocent?"
If something is considered to not be an intrusion, it's acceptable. If it is one, than it's usually not.
A cop LOOKING AT YOU is not an intrusion. You don't even realize it's happening. And the idea that you group your license plate number in the same category as your DNA and Fingerprints tells me that you're in the fringe here. Driving is a privilege. If you don't want to drive around with a personally identifiable number plainly visible for all to see, then you can always walk, ride a bicycle, take a taxi or use public transportation. But if you're going to drive, you just have to accept the fact that you will be given a tracking cookie that is publicly readable.
However, I do think that the license-plate-reading device is not necessarily kosher. It can be misused. Let's say it scans all plates for drivers with a DUI history or just a penchant for speeding, and the cop uses that info to follow you waiting for that twitchy foot to push you above the magic number. This is profiling, and this is wrong. It is an intrusion to be followed by a cop because of your past choices. All the usual "intrusion" arguments apply here, including the fact that it might be a wife/girlfriend/etc borrowing your car.
But if it scans the plates and throws up a "This car is stolen!," or a "This guy has a warrant!" alarm, that's a different issue. There is no intrusion. People not currently enaged in breaking--or wanted by--the law are filtered thru, never making it to the officers screen, and the ones that are get tagged.
The BlitzMail system at Dartmouth is also being replaced. There is a real sense of loss when these things get replaced, at least for geeks like me. I probably spent as much time blitzing people as I did with any of my classes. These systems--and on campus Blitz is basically your number 1 conduit to other students--are really serving the role of a "3rd Place" that coffee shops and bars and such try to fill. It will be like the day that MySpace goes offline: People spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with it. It's an important character in the history of your life.
Will the day ever come that we treat works of great software engineering with the same reverence that we treat 'traditional' forms of engineering? If someone unearthed an Abacus they would giddily rush it to their local museum. If they unearthed pristine copies of VisiCalc floppies they would probably be pissed off that somebody buried trash in their back yard.
"computers can nowadays compare fingerprints with ease"
Yes, but since it has to display the photo of the person in order to properly do the print match, won't we get to a point where we can't go any faster? I mean, the human eye is only so fast. The whole notion of finger-print matching just wouldn't feel right if you don't see 10,000 faces stream across the screen before finally finding the match.
While your idea seems very well thought out, it still wouldn't gaurantee it couldn't be a dummy terminal that's designed to collect swipe data and pin codes.
My thoughts are that after you swipe your card, the terminal should give YOU a PIN number that should match a PIN that the bank sends you with your card. At this point, once you verify that it is indeed legit, you provide your counterpart PIN.
And since it doesn't have to be entered, it could be a word, or with LCDs, even an image.
Hell, for that matter, even an image of YOU would work (in fact, this would also have a good usage to prevent fraud in cases of CREDIT transaction (as opposed to the debit transactions that we're talking about)
The majority of the time, when used as a verb, Affect is right, and when used as a noun, Effect is right. The fact that the guy is trying to effect change in this matter is a good thing.
So remember, 95% of the time, A is for action, E is for everything else.
Because having to re-learn a car can be a safety issue. It takes years to develop the muscle memory that can save you from a life threatening accident.
Having to relearn software is just an inconvenience.
Interesting. So you think that Microsoft will abandon traditional OS segments like "pro" and "home" and instead organize their product line based on whether or not the robot will be sleeping with you?
See, I woulda thought those things would be run in the user space.
Yes, from what I understand. It is very nice. Every HD title I have (all 7 of them so far) the movie plays instantly.
It's funny, I first heard about this feature when watching a regular DVD a few months ago. The dvd plays, and a preview starts for HD-DVD. One of the big things they featured is that the movie starts playing immediately. So basically they were saying "Upgrade to HD-DVD and you won't see any of this crap."
However, I think that previews can/might/will still be added to the movie. But I think that you'll always be able to skip them, none of this "the disk will not let you press this button" crap that you get with DVDs.
That inability to ff/skip thru some of that crap is probably the biggest example of VHS superiority over DVD. There's not much. In fact, the only 2 things I can think of is the can't-skip-stuff thing and the fact that a dvd with a scratch in the wrong part can make the entire movie worthless. This also affects rentals. VHS wear out after lots of use, but the very first person to rent a DVD can destory it without much effort for everyone else that comes after. Doing the same to a VHS is a lot more tricky.
My personal take on this is simple: They should care the most about accessability. Everything else is secondary. So in my opinion, it makes sense to deploy on a format that is accessible by 99% of PCs _right out of the box_ opposed to a format that is potentially accessible by 100% of PCs but only a few percent _right out of the box_.
I'm sorry that Linux users don't like this, but this underscores the reasons why Linux is not practical yet for widespread home use. When you have just a few percent of the market share you are at a disadvantage. I know it's a chicken/egg problem, but that's something that every new technology has. Look at how big of business this Blu Ray/HD-DVD race already is. Now multiply that by a hundred and you have a rough idea of market forces in the personal computer industry.
Clearly the crystal ball is a spinoff from the manned space program. Otherwise, how on earth (pun intended) would you possibly know what a space program would look like today if we had never intended or desired human flight?
The truth is that what you spend on a manned space program is pitifully small. I've said it twice in this thread already: $45 a year. That's it. Let's consider the possibility that earth will no longer be habitable by humans at some point in the future. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that people will consider your $45/yr to be a good investment in exchange for the survival of the human race.
And you complain that NASA couldn't get much return out of the small moon base that they're contemplating. As if you'd be here supporting it if they were trying to go for something (dare I say) out of this world in scope? NASA has always demonstrated a belief in the adage that you must walk before you can run.
And by the way, Teflon was created in a lab by DuPont in 1938. It had nothing to do with NASA. Neither did velcro (invented in the late 40s), or the microwave (invented in mid 40's). But that means nothing. Many advancements are, indeed, owed to NASA. And since we can only imagine what NASA would look like w/o a manned program, we have to attribute these to the NASA that we know.
What tangible effect do you think you'd feel if the 17BN nasa budget was pared to $2BN? What affect do you think that $15BN would have? Do you think it would go into your pocket? Even if it did, could you possibly notice an exta SEVENTY CENTS A WEEK?
No, nationalism doesn't really capture it. And even it that is what you want to call it, it's silly to think that because some nationalism was bad, that nationalism is bad.
And the fact that I didn't bother to research and list the many scientific advancements coming from space exploration does not in any way mean that there were none. It's like me saying "There were many wealthy roman citizens" and you saying "Really? Name them. If you can't name them..." It's a testament to my laziness, not to the veracity of the fact.
Furthermore, look around you! I have one word: Satellite. There would be no satellites if there weren't space agencies. And we have no way of knowing what the satellite / space industries would look like today if we eschewed manned space flight. I seriously doubt that we'd be this far along. We'd almost surely have satellites but I really doubt they'd be as advanced as ours are today. The human story is what has sold--and fueled--space flight to this very day. Our progress is measured in human terms.
Besides, what we spend on space is a relative pittance. And there will always be problems here on earth. If we wait to go to space until after we have terrestrial problems solved, we will never go into space.
It's like not letting yourself buy anything but food until you have all your debts paid and a retirement savings. It sounds nice and responsible, but life without those little treats is not nearly as enjoyable and fulfilling. This is exactly what the space program is. And the $45 that each citizen pays NASA each year is probably inline with what you spend on chewing gum and double-a batteries.
You want that $17BN for something else? Cut the defense budget by 7% or so.
First, many of your points can be contended with. Space exploration has fueled scientific advances in many tangential areas. Furthermore, there is a social component to massive societal events that has very real effects. They're difficult to enumerate but there's no denying they exist. I'm talking about the differences in society on September 10th opposed to September 12th, or during WWII, Pearl Harbor, and, of course, the moon landing. It's my opinion that this cohesiveness has positive effects on society.
This, combined with the incremental advances that compound like 401k interest, is in my opinion worth the $45 that every American spends every year on space exploration.
And as for Mars base, that's what the moon base is for: To give us a staging and practice area for Mars. The difference is that we can get to the moon in, what, 3 days? Mars is a year?
Now, this post is a testament to my original point: My opinion on space travel was cemented 12 years ago by my 3rd/4th grade teacher.
So he says "I'm not in a social position to be given billions to play with" and you take that to mean that there isn't enough money to be made?
Tell me: Were you just spewing gibberish to support your point, or is that actually what you think he meant? If the latter, I suggest you find the time for a remedial reading comprehension class.
Interesting idea. Especially the pragmatist idea of waiting until "next model year."
I personally have hopes that the moon base will be sufficiently interesting to stoke the public demand for a Mars mission.
I'm 24 and when I was in grade school I had a teacher for 3 & 4th grades that was an absolute space nut. We had a chapter of Young Astronauts in the school, she had a space-shuttle cockpit (made from mostly wood with a bunch of dials and toggle switches inside) in her classroom that we could sit in and she filled the class with a sense of excitement about what was going on out there.
It's also worth mentioning that at this time NASA was a bit more exciting, too. Hubble just launched. Endeavor was brand new. And IIRC the Voyager had just left the solar system.
My point is that todays adults can get todays kids interested in this. And also that the prospect of people living on the moon is new and exciting enough that it just might work.
I'm not sure which post you read, but it must not have been the one I wrote. Because the one I wrote explicitly said that the source of googles power is not as a resource to ME but as a resource to WEBSITE OWNERS.
Of course, if I don't like what Google is doing, I am free to just use another search engine. But for ANYONE that owns a website that needs traffic to pay its bills, they simply cannot ignore Google.
The idea that the only companies that "owe" consumers are the ones with government sanctioned monopolies is just wrong. There are many examples where this is not true. I can get local telephone service right now from 1/2 dozen companies, for example.
Google is too powerful. I'm confident in that. Right now, it's not yet recognized and accepted by everyone but it will be eventually.
What would stop anyone from just purchasing easement rights and running their own power lines, too? After all, it's just a matter of start-up capital, right?
The idea that any johnny-come-lately can do what you say is just fantasy. Look at Microsoft: Their trying to do it and it's costing them BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to build the necessary infrastructure.
THIS is why I group Google with the likes of 'Common Carriers.' It *obviously* doesn't meet the legal definition. In fact, pointing that out, as someone did, is silly. If it did we wouldn't be talking about this because the FCC would have put their boot in Googles face a long time ago.
Somebody said that I "contradict myself" in my GP post. Unfortunately, this person has some simple comprehension issues: My point was that it *should* include Google, it has nothing to do with whether or not it *does*.
Google has built--at the cost of many many billions of dollars--a service that is nearly impossible today to compete with. It's naive to think that 2 coders and a dream could do the same. This isn't 1998 anymore.
I think we can all agree that Google has incredible power. They mean the difference between a paycheck and an unemployment check for--i'm guessing--millions of Americans. I was a developer consulting a web retailer during the September/October 2005 "Jagger" updates. This website went from page 10 on their top phrases to the first page above the fold. Two months later they were number 1 where they still are to this very day.
The difference? Pre Jagger sales averaged $110,000/mo less $20,000 in adwords. Post Jagger sales were $140,000/mo with nothing in adwords. Six hundred thousand dollars a year from an algorithm update.
This puts Google in the league of "Common Carriers." They're not nearly as vital as, say, the electric company--If google went dark today the other search engines would absorb the traffic--but their power doesn't come to them at no charge. They are benefiting greatly from this power, as you can see in their market cap. Google isn't a 1-company bubble, it's doing well because it has a unique amount of leverage and power in markets and technologies that almost surely will be the foundation of the global economy. In exchange for this massive power, Google has a responsibility to be a responsible corporate citizen.
And let's face it--if you called AT&T 411 for the number to your local Cable Internet company and the woman wouldn't tell you without first giving you the name and number of their own internet service, people would justify complain. This is similar. We expect our "utilities" to be fair abiters in exchange for a captive audience. The time has come that we start considering Google in the same light.
"Instead of reviling the copyright holders and their licensees, how about people stop trying to get utility for free"
Exactly. People seem to forget that. Especially here.
Now, cue the cacaphony of "I believe all information should be free!" Which is the argument I usually hear when I say what you just said.
And you know what? That would even have a tinge of merit if it weren't for the break-the-GPL-and-you're-going-to-fry-in-hellfire mentality that people exhibit when talking about Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't think he has the right to be looking at me"
This is where I think you've gone too far.
The current standard used to judge this sort of thing usually is "how much of an intrusion is this upon the innocent?"
If something is considered to not be an intrusion, it's acceptable. If it is one, than it's usually not.
A cop LOOKING AT YOU is not an intrusion. You don't even realize it's happening. And the idea that you group your license plate number in the same category as your DNA and Fingerprints tells me that you're in the fringe here. Driving is a privilege. If you don't want to drive around with a personally identifiable number plainly visible for all to see, then you can always walk, ride a bicycle, take a taxi or use public transportation. But if you're going to drive, you just have to accept the fact that you will be given a tracking cookie that is publicly readable.
However, I do think that the license-plate-reading device is not necessarily kosher. It can be misused. Let's say it scans all plates for drivers with a DUI history or just a penchant for speeding, and the cop uses that info to follow you waiting for that twitchy foot to push you above the magic number. This is profiling, and this is wrong. It is an intrusion to be followed by a cop because of your past choices. All the usual "intrusion" arguments apply here, including the fact that it might be a wife/girlfriend/etc borrowing your car.
But if it scans the plates and throws up a "This car is stolen!," or a "This guy has a warrant!" alarm, that's a different issue. There is no intrusion. People not currently enaged in breaking--or wanted by--the law are filtered thru, never making it to the officers screen, and the ones that are get tagged.
The BlitzMail system at Dartmouth is also being replaced. There is a real sense of loss when these things get replaced, at least for geeks like me. I probably spent as much time blitzing people as I did with any of my classes. These systems--and on campus Blitz is basically your number 1 conduit to other students--are really serving the role of a "3rd Place" that coffee shops and bars and such try to fill. It will be like the day that MySpace goes offline: People spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with it. It's an important character in the history of your life.
Will the day ever come that we treat works of great software engineering with the same reverence that we treat 'traditional' forms of engineering? If someone unearthed an Abacus they would giddily rush it to their local museum. If they unearthed pristine copies of VisiCalc floppies they would probably be pissed off that somebody buried trash in their back yard.
"computers can nowadays compare fingerprints with ease"
Yes, but since it has to display the photo of the person in order to properly do the print match, won't we get to a point where we can't go any faster? I mean, the human eye is only so fast. The whole notion of finger-print matching just wouldn't feel right if you don't see 10,000 faces stream across the screen before finally finding the match.
While your idea seems very well thought out, it still wouldn't gaurantee it couldn't be a dummy terminal that's designed to collect swipe data and pin codes.
My thoughts are that after you swipe your card, the terminal should give YOU a PIN number that should match a PIN that the bank sends you with your card. At this point, once you verify that it is indeed legit, you provide your counterpart PIN.
And since it doesn't have to be entered, it could be a word, or with LCDs, even an image.
Hell, for that matter, even an image of YOU would work (in fact, this would also have a good usage to prevent fraud in cases of CREDIT transaction (as opposed to the debit transactions that we're talking about)
Misquote indeed. Especially considering Franklin wasn't actually the source of that nugget of wisdom.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
The majority of the time, when used as a verb, Affect is right, and when used as a noun, Effect is right. The fact that the guy is trying to effect change in this matter is a good thing.
So remember, 95% of the time, A is for action, E is for everything else.
Because having to re-learn a car can be a safety issue. It takes years to develop the muscle memory that can save you from a life threatening accident.
Having to relearn software is just an inconvenience.
"Embedded Robot Edition"
Interesting. So you think that Microsoft will abandon traditional OS segments like "pro" and "home" and instead organize their product line based on whether or not the robot will be sleeping with you?
See, I woulda thought those things would be run in the user space.
Yes, from what I understand. It is very nice. Every HD title I have (all 7 of them so far) the movie plays instantly.
It's funny, I first heard about this feature when watching a regular DVD a few months ago. The dvd plays, and a preview starts for HD-DVD. One of the big things they featured is that the movie starts playing immediately. So basically they were saying "Upgrade to HD-DVD and you won't see any of this crap."
However, I think that previews can/might/will still be added to the movie. But I think that you'll always be able to skip them, none of this "the disk will not let you press this button" crap that you get with DVDs.
That inability to ff/skip thru some of that crap is probably the biggest example of VHS superiority over DVD. There's not much. In fact, the only 2 things I can think of is the can't-skip-stuff thing and the fact that a dvd with a scratch in the wrong part can make the entire movie worthless. This also affects rentals. VHS wear out after lots of use, but the very first person to rent a DVD can destory it without much effort for everyone else that comes after. Doing the same to a VHS is a lot more tricky.
My personal take on this is simple: They should care the most about accessability. Everything else is secondary. So in my opinion, it makes sense to deploy on a format that is accessible by 99% of PCs _right out of the box_ opposed to a format that is potentially accessible by 100% of PCs but only a few percent _right out of the box_.
I'm sorry that Linux users don't like this, but this underscores the reasons why Linux is not practical yet for widespread home use. When you have just a few percent of the market share you are at a disadvantage. I know it's a chicken/egg problem, but that's something that every new technology has. Look at how big of business this Blu Ray/HD-DVD race already is. Now multiply that by a hundred and you have a rough idea of market forces in the personal computer industry.
Actually, FWIW, an HD-DVD starts playing the movie immediately. You can then, if you wish, access the menu features.
I've never seen a ford without windows!
Just a Guess.. but maybe there is.. uh... green land under Greenlands ice caps?
Is that too easy?
Clearly the crystal ball is a spinoff from the manned space program. Otherwise, how on earth (pun intended) would you possibly know what a space program would look like today if we had never intended or desired human flight?
The truth is that what you spend on a manned space program is pitifully small. I've said it twice in this thread already: $45 a year. That's it. Let's consider the possibility that earth will no longer be habitable by humans at some point in the future. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that people will consider your $45/yr to be a good investment in exchange for the survival of the human race.
And you complain that NASA couldn't get much return out of the small moon base that they're contemplating. As if you'd be here supporting it if they were trying to go for something (dare I say) out of this world in scope? NASA has always demonstrated a belief in the adage that you must walk before you can run.
And by the way, Teflon was created in a lab by DuPont in 1938. It had nothing to do with NASA. Neither did velcro (invented in the late 40s), or the microwave (invented in mid 40's). But that means nothing. Many advancements are, indeed, owed to NASA. And since we can only imagine what NASA would look like w/o a manned program, we have to attribute these to the NASA that we know.
What tangible effect do you think you'd feel if the 17BN nasa budget was pared to $2BN? What affect do you think that $15BN would have? Do you think it would go into your pocket? Even if it did, could you possibly notice an exta SEVENTY CENTS A WEEK?
No, nationalism doesn't really capture it. And even it that is what you want to call it, it's silly to think that because some nationalism was bad, that nationalism is bad.
And the fact that I didn't bother to research and list the many scientific advancements coming from space exploration does not in any way mean that there were none. It's like me saying "There were many wealthy roman citizens" and you saying "Really? Name them. If you can't name them..." It's a testament to my laziness, not to the veracity of the fact.
Furthermore, look around you! I have one word: Satellite. There would be no satellites if there weren't space agencies. And we have no way of knowing what the satellite / space industries would look like today if we eschewed manned space flight. I seriously doubt that we'd be this far along. We'd almost surely have satellites but I really doubt they'd be as advanced as ours are today. The human story is what has sold--and fueled--space flight to this very day. Our progress is measured in human terms.
Besides, what we spend on space is a relative pittance. And there will always be problems here on earth. If we wait to go to space until after we have terrestrial problems solved, we will never go into space.
It's like not letting yourself buy anything but food until you have all your debts paid and a retirement savings. It sounds nice and responsible, but life without those little treats is not nearly as enjoyable and fulfilling. This is exactly what the space program is. And the $45 that each citizen pays NASA each year is probably inline with what you spend on chewing gum and double-a batteries.
You want that $17BN for something else? Cut the defense budget by 7% or so.
Conneticut is a city in Rhode Island.
Seriously. You're one of those people who talk about the CONTINENT of Australia, too, aren't you? What's next, the continent of the United States?
First, many of your points can be contended with. Space exploration has fueled scientific advances in many tangential areas. Furthermore, there is a social component to massive societal events that has very real effects. They're difficult to enumerate but there's no denying they exist. I'm talking about the differences in society on September 10th opposed to September 12th, or during WWII, Pearl Harbor, and, of course, the moon landing. It's my opinion that this cohesiveness has positive effects on society.
This, combined with the incremental advances that compound like 401k interest, is in my opinion worth the $45 that every American spends every year on space exploration.
And as for Mars base, that's what the moon base is for: To give us a staging and practice area for Mars. The difference is that we can get to the moon in, what, 3 days? Mars is a year?
Now, this post is a testament to my original point: My opinion on space travel was cemented 12 years ago by my 3rd/4th grade teacher.
So he says "I'm not in a social position to be given billions to play with" and you take that to mean that there isn't enough money to be made?
Tell me: Were you just spewing gibberish to support your point, or is that actually what you think he meant? If the latter, I suggest you find the time for a remedial reading comprehension class.
Interesting idea. Especially the pragmatist idea of waiting until "next model year."
I personally have hopes that the moon base will be sufficiently interesting to stoke the public demand for a Mars mission.
I'm 24 and when I was in grade school I had a teacher for 3 & 4th grades that was an absolute space nut. We had a chapter of Young Astronauts in the school, she had a space-shuttle cockpit (made from mostly wood with a bunch of dials and toggle switches inside) in her classroom that we could sit in and she filled the class with a sense of excitement about what was going on out there.
It's also worth mentioning that at this time NASA was a bit more exciting, too. Hubble just launched. Endeavor was brand new. And IIRC the Voyager had just left the solar system.
My point is that todays adults can get todays kids interested in this. And also that the prospect of people living on the moon is new and exciting enough that it just might work.
I'm not sure which post you read, but it must not have been the one I wrote. Because the one I wrote explicitly said that the source of googles power is not as a resource to ME but as a resource to WEBSITE OWNERS.
Of course, if I don't like what Google is doing, I am free to just use another search engine. But for ANYONE that owns a website that needs traffic to pay its bills, they simply cannot ignore Google.
The idea that the only companies that "owe" consumers are the ones with government sanctioned monopolies is just wrong. There are many examples where this is not true. I can get local telephone service right now from 1/2 dozen companies, for example.
Google is too powerful. I'm confident in that. Right now, it's not yet recognized and accepted by everyone but it will be eventually.
What would stop anyone from just purchasing easement rights and running their own power lines, too? After all, it's just a matter of start-up capital, right?
The idea that any johnny-come-lately can do what you say is just fantasy. Look at Microsoft: Their trying to do it and it's costing them BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to build the necessary infrastructure.
THIS is why I group Google with the likes of 'Common Carriers.' It *obviously* doesn't meet the legal definition. In fact, pointing that out, as someone did, is silly. If it did we wouldn't be talking about this because the FCC would have put their boot in Googles face a long time ago.
Somebody said that I "contradict myself" in my GP post. Unfortunately, this person has some simple comprehension issues: My point was that it *should* include Google, it has nothing to do with whether or not it *does*.
Google has built--at the cost of many many billions of dollars--a service that is nearly impossible today to compete with. It's naive to think that 2 coders and a dream could do the same. This isn't 1998 anymore.
I think we can all agree that Google has incredible power. They mean the difference between a paycheck and an unemployment check for--i'm guessing--millions of Americans. I was a developer consulting a web retailer during the September/October 2005 "Jagger" updates. This website went from page 10 on their top phrases to the first page above the fold. Two months later they were number 1 where they still are to this very day.
The difference? Pre Jagger sales averaged $110,000/mo less $20,000 in adwords. Post Jagger sales were $140,000/mo with nothing in adwords. Six hundred thousand dollars a year from an algorithm update.
This puts Google in the league of "Common Carriers." They're not nearly as vital as, say, the electric company--If google went dark today the other search engines would absorb the traffic--but their power doesn't come to them at no charge. They are benefiting greatly from this power, as you can see in their market cap. Google isn't a 1-company bubble, it's doing well because it has a unique amount of leverage and power in markets and technologies that almost surely will be the foundation of the global economy. In exchange for this massive power, Google has a responsibility to be a responsible corporate citizen.
And let's face it--if you called AT&T 411 for the number to your local Cable Internet company and the woman wouldn't tell you without first giving you the name and number of their own internet service, people would justify complain. This is similar. We expect our "utilities" to be fair abiters in exchange for a captive audience. The time has come that we start considering Google in the same light.
Here's a hint: If you don't recognize the reference, you should probably just move on.
But I don't mind. Keep wasting your mod points. Please.
"Instead of reviling the copyright holders and their licensees, how about people stop trying to get utility for free"
Exactly. People seem to forget that. Especially here.
Now, cue the cacaphony of "I believe all information should be free!" Which is the argument I usually hear when I say what you just said.
And you know what? That would even have a tinge of merit if it weren't for the break-the-GPL-and-you're-going-to-fry-in-hellfire mentality that people exhibit when talking about Linux.
It's a chance to tell somebody "I love you this many dollars worth"