Some of these nabbed from funny2, and some from the book Absolute Zero Gravity. Also recommend this site, it has a great geeky interface, and a nice large database.
How many consulting engineers does it take to change a light bulb? One, that'll be $50 please.
How many nuclear physicists does it take to change a light bulb? One, he raises it into place and the world revolves around him.
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Can't be done. It's a hardware problem.
How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb? Approximately 1.000000000000000000000.
How many Pentium owners does it take to change a light bulb? 0.99987, but that's close enough for most applications.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? It burned out? You must be using a non-standard socket.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they merely change the standard to darkness and then they upgrade the customers.
How many Apple employees does it take to screw in a light bulb? Seven, one to screw it in and six to design the T-shirts.
How many AOL users does it take to change a light bulb? Two, one to screw in the light bulb, and one to watch him to make sure he doesn't say 'nipple'.
How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One always leaves in the middle of the project.
How many beta testers does it take to change a light bulb? None. They just find the problems, they don't fix them.
How many science fiction writers does it take to change a light bulb? Two, but it's actually the same person doing it. He went back in time and met himself in the doorway and then the first one sat on the other one's shoulder so that they were able to reach it. Then a major time paradox occurred and the entire room, light bulb, changer and all was blown out of existence.
I wouldn't buy fruit or veggies without touching them. I check apples for firmness, smell carrots, sueeze and smell peppers, taste the end of celery, wiggle the stems of artichokes, etc. That's just how a smart consumer/cook buys produce.
That's disturbing. Now not only do I know that my food has been sniffed and squeezed (or licked apparently in the case of celery), but that description in general was horrifying reminiscent of foreplay.
'Instant utopia' sounds a little terrifying to me. Besides, it'll be ages before molecular assemblers are accessible to anyone who can't already buy 16 ferraris to use as golf carts. So 'molecular manufacturing'(Drexler's new term) will be available and active for a long time before it's really available to the masses. They'll have a while to put together strategies for coping with licensing/copying issues. For a long time, molecular assemblers will be available only to the very brilliant and the very rich.
And, of course, the rich and criminal.
Incidentally, Drexler really sounds like he's got a ferrari up his arse.
Smalley however, makes some excellent points. Enzymes and ribosomes can only work in water, and therefore cannot build anything that is chemically unstable in water. Halfway though building your ferrari molecule, it would not be stable, and it would probably just decide to grab some molecules off of all this convenient water....do you really think it is possible to do enzymelike chemistry of arbitrary complexity with only dry surfaces and a vacuum?
So the main idea that Drexler is putting forward (although I'm sure he has many others) is using enzymes and ribosomes, which don't seem to be the best idea, because they only function in water, and I think we all understand why molecular assembly would need to be done in a vaccuum.
If it[the nanobot] is a non-water-based life-form, then there is a vast area of chemistry that has eluded us for centuries.
And then Drexler again (man, he's hateful)I'm glad you found my early work stimulating, and applaud your goal of debunking nonsense in nanotechnology. I hope that our exchange will result in broader discussion within the community, and in better understanding of molecular manufacturing as a strategic objective. blah blah blah my book etc etc...
As far as I can tell, Drexler's comeback has to do with using stable molecules around the 'construction site' if you will. As molecules come together and react, their atoms (being "sticky") stay bonded to neighbors, and thus need no separate fingers to hold them. I'm not really buying it myself. Any Biotech people want to give some input?
So it looks like our ferraris are far in the future. Smalley: Much like you can't make a boy and a girl fall in love with each other simply by pushing them together, you cannot make precise chemistry occur as desired between two molecular objects with simple mechanical motion along a few degrees of freedom in the assembler-fixed frame of reference.
Sadly I agree with him. I haven't gotten the impression from this series that we're really all that close to having functional molecular assemblers. Does anyone know of a good article with a nice 'state of affairs' overview? This is what we can do, this is what we can't?
I switched to Verizon, and actually the coverage was pretty impressive. I've used that phone in New York, but not your area, ao I couldn't tell you much about the coverage there. You can probably switch through Verizon themselves. They have satellite stores and all, and you can always do it over the net, but I'd just recommend finding a nice comfortable little cell store in your area.
Incidentally, they have an obnoxious feature on their website where you can punch in someone's name/number and their cell phone number, and their home address. Click more info and you can see a map of where their home is. I know we've been over this before on slash though so I won't go on a big paranoid rant. I'm sure there's a way to remove your name from the database (yeah right).
Note to slash readers:
Mod this down, it's completely immature. I'm letting him bait me.
Yes, I have camped alone in the forest. I lived in the Santa Cruz mountains for 10 years.
The whole point of having one's brain jacked into the net is that it's a fantasy. It's an ideal that gives us something to stretch for. It gives us access to human contact when it would otherwise be impossible. Like in the tables article, where you're connected, however abstractly, to someone living far away.
Granted, all the problems you bring up are worthy of attention, but the whole point is that they're the problems of today, and having my brain jacked in won't be happening any bloody time soon. It's a dream and it's a scifi dream at that. The whole point of scifi is taking the state of things today and projecting it out into the future, but in that we assume that all the problems of today will have evolved as well.
No kidding simstim could never replace reality. But how much time does anyone really spend in reality these days? It looks like you spend as much time or more than I do on slash (it's a low blow I know, but I'm trying to make a point here) and this is not reality. This is a form of technology that allows people to discuss reality or rather other things that have grown out of reality.
Gets a little complicated doesn't it? My point is that when we define 'reality' as only those things that sprouted directly from nature or that involve genuine human contact. Personally, if there's going to be more and more technology, I want it to be like this. I want it more personal, and I want it a little artistic, that's not too much to ask, right? And it's not completely irrational. Every experience you have is unique to you.
I think this thing is not only ridiculously cool, but very artistic. I read too much sci-fi, especially Gibson, so I'm all about having ridiculously complicated technology all around me that is all very subtle in the actual affect it has on my life.
It's like the little computer-companion in Mona Lisa Overdrive, or the amplified sensory perception chips from Neuromancer.
I'd love to be soaked in so much tech that communication by technological means becomes second nature, or to have my brain jacked to the net (c'mon I know you all get off on that idea) like in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and have all my perceptions of people be that much more textured.
I think this thing is ridiculously exciting and I want one now.
Granted it would take some effort to not perform the obvious lewd possibilities afforded by a flat surface transmitting the images set on it.
You have no publicly posted email, comments disabled in your journal, and no contact info on your site. No one can reach you, Joshua! Hey, by the by, spellcheck your blog. Nothing personal, it's just polite to the world.
I'm not trying to be offensive or flamebait, but I'd hate to see us waste a nice long comment thread on talking about how annoying it is to re-purchase our DVD collections when that's completely unnecessary as the new players will still be backwards compatible.
Complain about Blu-ray all you want though. They're going to hell.
Incidentally, stating in the article summary that we'd 'better get to work rebuying your entire video collection, again,' is pretty misleading. I'm sure we don't need to squawk at Michael for not doing his homework, but it is annoying. Now there will be at least 30 people who will read the summary, not read the article or all the comments, and just post to bitch about replacing their DVD collection.
You are correct. He also doesn't seem to have provided any kind of list as to how many different games they tested. Is the the top ten or did they test ten?
Also, this formula should really include variables for different people. I know monopoly with my grandfather is a blast, because he's old and cheap and sits on all his money and kicks butt at the end, but monopoly with my youngest cousins can be hellish, because they cry when anyone plays rough.
This should really be more of a function, where you supply 5 or 10 bits of information, and the top 10 list is customized to you.
"It's part of the broad companywide effort to make sure that if a market emerges for software in unusual places, that Microsoft is there, so that when the revolution comes, we'll have enough footholds to launch a coup," said Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff.
Mangled quote: "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines Microsoft as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes... Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined Microsoft as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came'."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy"
I once met this girl that was a med student, and was ridiculously gorgeous. Although actually I guess managing to get nude pictures of her to put on my website doesn't really count as hitting on her, huh.
Ok, well there was this other girl a few weeks ago that I asked out to coffee and then couldn't talk to...
Apparently the range from the base is only 4-6 feet. So we're not talking portable phone quality or anything (although my POS phone only really does about 10 feet from the base without cutting out anyway).
Read the whole article thoroughly. They did point ount the distinction as to why this particularly screws indie films.
"Awards and accolades beget more awards and accolades, which culminate for the awards season with the Academy Awards," the lawsuit said.
The way the smaller filmmakers reason it, they need those small awards groups to get the attention of larger ones. The ban no longer restricts distribution of screeners to all awards groups, it was partially repealed:
Last month, the Hollywood studios partially reversed the ban, agreeing to send copies to about 5,600 Academy Awards voters but not to the far larger pool that votes on lesser honors.
So now they've effectively done what large bureaucratic groups so often do, they've screwed the little guy and failed to fulfill their primary purpose.
1. Big guy makes rule to make more money.
2. Rule annoys other big guys who also want to make more money.
3. Rule is changed so it no longer applies to other big guys.
Here's the part where the rule loses it's effectiveness (The lawsuit said the ban was too restrictive and treated all movies the same, "in spite of the fact that it is clearly the big blockbuster movies that are most at risk of being pirated.") and screws the little guy in the meantime, who can't make all that much noise, because he's too busy being sat on.
Pardon my hot-blooded commie liberal speech, but it's pretty true.
At the risk of following a well-trodden groove, isn't there some nice third-party group I can root for?
I've always been a big proponent of accessibility. We try to write clean html code so blind people's programs can read it (right guys?) we use moderation systems, we let everybody in and we let the good stuff float to the top. You know, like that whole free market theory.
But then, like that whole free market theory, we can think the internet is free and unfettered all we want, but dig down deep enough into anything big and there's always someone with money.
So I guess I don't want it to be ICANN because they're blatantly anglo-centric, and they're "...a quasi-autonomous arm of the US government, a private Californian company of technical and business experts created in November 1998. Its remit was to oversee the increasingly global Internet with a view to becoming autonomous in a few years. " Quasi-autonomous arm of the US government? Yeah, that sounds reassuring.
But then I don't really want ITU either. The ITU...is the body that has been responsible for the roll-out of virtually every form of modern communication. It was started 140 years ago by countries across the world to standardize the telegram and has been at the forefront of every international telecommunication effort since.
Logic would appear to dictate that the ITU be in charge of the Internet. And it would be so except for the extraordinary history of the Internet.
I definitely think that the 'governance' of the Internet (I love how they capitalize it, like a country) shouldn't just follow the norm. I think it needs a new model.
Re:Where's my Heart of Gold?
on
Son of Concorde
·
· Score: 1
Eh, I can settle. Maybe a prostitute with a heart of gold and erogenous zones that stretch 4 miles from her physical body?
Where's my Heart of Gold?
on
Son of Concorde
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
I'm not too impressed. But then again, I won't be impressed until they're delivering the Heart of Gold to my doorstep.
Somehow reading too much scifi makes it harder to enjoy new technology.
Re:Ultimate ad secret
on
Recycling TV Ads
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I'm seeing this as a brilliant opportunity for more tongue in cheek ads. There are some ads I definitly wouldn't mind seeing recycled over and over again with different companies. Plus there's the added humor value of seeing a commercial that you know for sure used to be a weight-loss commercial and hey now it's a beer commercial!
It's also beautiful in a philosophical sense, it just really shows how far our ads have drifted from the actual point of an ad, which I suppose is to say something about the product.
I think it's all going to depend on this:
"The key is how many clients are small enough and isolated enough and sophisticated enough to know they are isolated and still be willing to do this?"
And also their media partners. They listed Comcast, Collegiate Images and Index stock on the home page. If they've got enough cash behind them, it's likely that the legal issues will be negotiable.
Incidentally, can anyone find a clip of that beer commercial where they're making fun of the fact that they can't actually drink beer on television?
Wired (note that they haven't released this article on the ent yet, and won't till Dec 1) had some decent gifts on theirs, including a ridiculously exciting child's DNA set wherein you can whip up and draw out the DNA of just about anything. It comes with dried peas or something, but I'm sure we could all be a bit more creative than that.
Note to PKD fans: this site contains a slightly disconcerting article about the latest book to movie Paycheck, featuring Uma Thurman and Ben Affleck (or something).
Has anyone used their Python book? I'm not real fond of most the texts I've come across for it, and I just ended up mainly using a textbook for my reference.
Incidentally, maybe it's just my browser (IE, I'm at work, I don't get a choice) but there's some creepy code breakage on the new releases page.
But please, if no-one buys MS Office and d/ls openoffice instead, innovation in word processors and spreadsheets will stop.
I can't even begin to follow your logic there. As far as I'm aware, the point of open-office, indeed open source in general, is that it will improve innovation.
If our staff can't find it, someone on the internet will. If our staff is too slow to fix it, someone will have a patch up on the net within 36 hours. You've got to give them that. With open source bugs really get pounced on.
The reason I have faith in open source as a concept is that I trust several million coders a lot more than I trust cash cows. And just in terms of sheer numbers, several million people, even unpaid ones, have more innovative ideas than a finite group of people whose primary interest is not innovation, but keeping a grip on their clientele.
Slashdot Mirror
How many consulting engineers does it take to change a light bulb? One, that'll be $50 please.
How many nuclear physicists does it take to change a light bulb? One, he raises it into place and the world revolves around him.
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Can't be done. It's a hardware problem.
How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb? Approximately 1.000000000000000000000.
How many Pentium owners does it take to change a light bulb? 0.99987, but that's close enough for most applications.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? It burned out? You must be using a non-standard socket.
How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they merely change the standard to darkness and then they upgrade the customers.
How many Apple employees does it take to screw in a light bulb? Seven, one to screw it in and six to design the T-shirts.
How many AOL users does it take to change a light bulb? Two, one to screw in the light bulb, and one to watch him to make sure he doesn't say 'nipple'.
How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One always leaves in the middle of the project.
How many beta testers does it take to change a light bulb? None. They just find the problems, they don't fix them.
How many science fiction writers does it take to change a light bulb? Two, but it's actually the same person doing it. He went back in time and met himself in the doorway and then the first one sat on the other one's shoulder so that they were able to reach it. Then a major time paradox occurred and the entire room, light bulb, changer and all was blown out of existence.
That's disturbing. Now not only do I know that my food has been sniffed and squeezed (or licked apparently in the case of celery), but that description in general was horrifying reminiscent of foreplay.
'Instant utopia' sounds a little terrifying to me. Besides, it'll be ages before molecular assemblers are accessible to anyone who can't already buy 16 ferraris to use as golf carts. So 'molecular manufacturing'(Drexler's new term) will be available and active for a long time before it's really available to the masses. They'll have a while to put together strategies for coping with licensing/copying issues. For a long time, molecular assemblers will be available only to the very brilliant and the very rich.
And, of course, the rich and criminal.
Incidentally, Drexler really sounds like he's got a ferrari up his arse.
Smalley however, makes some excellent points. Enzymes and ribosomes can only work in water, and therefore cannot build anything that is chemically unstable in water. Halfway though building your ferrari molecule, it would not be stable, and it would probably just decide to grab some molecules off of all this convenient water. ...do you really think it is possible to do enzymelike chemistry of arbitrary complexity with only dry surfaces and a vacuum?
So the main idea that Drexler is putting forward (although I'm sure he has many others) is using enzymes and ribosomes, which don't seem to be the best idea, because they only function in water, and I think we all understand why molecular assembly would need to be done in a vaccuum.
If it[the nanobot] is a non-water-based life-form, then there is a vast area of chemistry that has eluded us for centuries.
And then Drexler again (man, he's hateful)I'm glad you found my early work stimulating, and applaud your goal of debunking nonsense in nanotechnology. I hope that our exchange will result in broader discussion within the community, and in better understanding of molecular manufacturing as a strategic objective. blah blah blah my book etc etc...
As far as I can tell, Drexler's comeback has to do with using stable molecules around the 'construction site' if you will. As molecules come together and react, their atoms (being "sticky") stay bonded to neighbors, and thus need no separate fingers to hold them. I'm not really buying it myself. Any Biotech people want to give some input?
So it looks like our ferraris are far in the future. Smalley: Much like you can't make a boy and a girl fall in love with each other simply by pushing them together, you cannot make precise chemistry occur as desired between two molecular objects with simple mechanical motion along a few degrees of freedom in the assembler-fixed frame of reference.
Sadly I agree with him. I haven't gotten the impression from this series that we're really all that close to having functional molecular assemblers. Does anyone know of a good article with a nice 'state of affairs' overview? This is what we can do, this is what we can't?
Incidentally, they have an obnoxious feature on their website where you can punch in someone's name/number and their cell phone number, and their home address. Click more info and you can see a map of where their home is. I know we've been over this before on slash though so I won't go on a big paranoid rant. I'm sure there's a way to remove your name from the database (yeah right).
Yes, I have camped alone in the forest. I lived in the Santa Cruz mountains for 10 years.
The whole point of having one's brain jacked into the net is that it's a fantasy. It's an ideal that gives us something to stretch for. It gives us access to human contact when it would otherwise be impossible. Like in the tables article, where you're connected, however abstractly, to someone living far away.
Granted, all the problems you bring up are worthy of attention, but the whole point is that they're the problems of today, and having my brain jacked in won't be happening any bloody time soon. It's a dream and it's a scifi dream at that. The whole point of scifi is taking the state of things today and projecting it out into the future, but in that we assume that all the problems of today will have evolved as well.
No kidding simstim could never replace reality. But how much time does anyone really spend in reality these days? It looks like you spend as much time or more than I do on slash (it's a low blow I know, but I'm trying to make a point here) and this is not reality. This is a form of technology that allows people to discuss reality or rather other things that have grown out of reality.
Gets a little complicated doesn't it? My point is that when we define 'reality' as only those things that sprouted directly from nature or that involve genuine human contact. Personally, if there's going to be more and more technology, I want it to be like this. I want it more personal, and I want it a little artistic, that's not too much to ask, right? And it's not completely irrational. Every experience you have is unique to you.
As for simulating randomness, there's always Stephen Wolfram's cellular autonomations.
It's like the little computer-companion in Mona Lisa Overdrive, or the amplified sensory perception chips from Neuromancer.
I'd love to be soaked in so much tech that communication by technological means becomes second nature, or to have my brain jacked to the net (c'mon I know you all get off on that idea) like in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and have all my perceptions of people be that much more textured.
I think this thing is ridiculously exciting and I want one now.
Granted it would take some effort to not perform the obvious lewd possibilities afforded by a flat surface transmitting the images set on it.
You have no publicly posted email, comments disabled in your journal, and no contact info on your site. No one can reach you, Joshua! Hey, by the by, spellcheck your blog. Nothing personal, it's just polite to the world.
Complain about Blu-ray all you want though. They're going to hell.
Incidentally, stating in the article summary that we'd 'better get to work rebuying your entire video collection, again,' is pretty misleading. I'm sure we don't need to squawk at Michael for not doing his homework, but it is annoying. Now there will be at least 30 people who will read the summary, not read the article or all the comments, and just post to bitch about replacing their DVD collection.
Also, this formula should really include variables for different people. I know monopoly with my grandfather is a blast, because he's old and cheap and sits on all his money and kicks butt at the end, but monopoly with my youngest cousins can be hellish, because they cry when anyone plays rough.
This should really be more of a function, where you supply 5 or 10 bits of information, and the top 10 list is customized to you.
Mangled quote:
"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines Microsoft as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes... Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined Microsoft as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came'."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
I once met this girl that was a med student, and was ridiculously gorgeous. Although actually I guess managing to get nude pictures of her to put on my website doesn't really count as hitting on her, huh.
Ok, well there was this other girl a few weeks ago that I asked out to coffee and then couldn't talk to...
Well there was that one...
Ok fine.
I'm bi and female and I'd definitly sleep with her because she partially solved that problem.
I'd probably want her to explain it to me first too. Geek fetishes do exist. And they probably hang out on /.
However, Andrew Wiles, who solved Fermat's last theorem, spent seven years in his attic to do so.
I guess broad generalizations don't work so well, eh?
Apparently the range from the base is only 4-6 feet. So we're not talking portable phone quality or anything (although my POS phone only really does about 10 feet from the base without cutting out anyway).
"Awards and accolades beget more awards and accolades, which culminate for the awards season with the Academy Awards," the lawsuit said.
The way the smaller filmmakers reason it, they need those small awards groups to get the attention of larger ones. The ban no longer restricts distribution of screeners to all awards groups, it was partially repealed:
Last month, the Hollywood studios partially reversed the ban, agreeing to send copies to about 5,600 Academy Awards voters but not to the far larger pool that votes on lesser honors.
So now they've effectively done what large bureaucratic groups so often do, they've screwed the little guy and failed to fulfill their primary purpose.
1. Big guy makes rule to make more money.
2. Rule annoys other big guys who also want to make more money.
3. Rule is changed so it no longer applies to other big guys.
Here's the part where the rule loses it's effectiveness (The lawsuit said the ban was too restrictive and treated all movies the same, "in spite of the fact that it is clearly the big blockbuster movies that are most at risk of being pirated.") and screws the little guy in the meantime, who can't make all that much noise, because he's too busy being sat on.
Pardon my hot-blooded commie liberal speech, but it's pretty true.
I've always been a big proponent of accessibility. We try to write clean html code so blind people's programs can read it (right guys?) we use moderation systems, we let everybody in and we let the good stuff float to the top. You know, like that whole free market theory.
But then, like that whole free market theory, we can think the internet is free and unfettered all we want, but dig down deep enough into anything big and there's always someone with money.
So I guess I don't want it to be ICANN because they're blatantly anglo-centric, and they're "...a quasi-autonomous arm of the US government, a private Californian company of technical and business experts created in November 1998. Its remit was to oversee the increasingly global Internet with a view to becoming autonomous in a few years. " Quasi-autonomous arm of the US government? Yeah, that sounds reassuring.
But then I don't really want ITU either. The ITU ...is the body that has been responsible for the roll-out of virtually every form of modern communication. It was started 140 years ago by countries across the world to standardize the telegram and has been at the forefront of every international telecommunication effort since.
Logic would appear to dictate that the ITU be in charge of the Internet. And it would be so except for the extraordinary history of the Internet.
I definitely think that the 'governance' of the Internet (I love how they capitalize it, like a country) shouldn't just follow the norm. I think it needs a new model.
Eh, I can settle. Maybe a prostitute with a heart of gold and erogenous zones that stretch 4 miles from her physical body?
Somehow reading too much scifi makes it harder to enjoy new technology.
It's also beautiful in a philosophical sense, it just really shows how far our ads have drifted from the actual point of an ad, which I suppose is to say something about the product.
I think it's all going to depend on this: "The key is how many clients are small enough and isolated enough and sophisticated enough to know they are isolated and still be willing to do this?"
And also their media partners. They listed Comcast, Collegiate Images and Index stock on the home page. If they've got enough cash behind them, it's likely that the legal issues will be negotiable.
Incidentally, can anyone find a clip of that beer commercial where they're making fun of the fact that they can't actually drink beer on television?
I think we've killed them. The server's unavailable for me. Although all your posts do make it sound quite exciting.
The one called Practical Python. It's on the page that was linked from the original Slash article.
Note to PKD fans: this site contains a slightly disconcerting article about the latest book to movie Paycheck, featuring Uma Thurman and Ben Affleck (or something).
Incidentally, maybe it's just my browser (IE, I'm at work, I don't get a choice) but there's some creepy code breakage on the new releases page.
I can't even begin to follow your logic there. As far as I'm aware, the point of open-office, indeed open source in general, is that it will improve innovation.
If our staff can't find it, someone on the internet will. If our staff is too slow to fix it, someone will have a patch up on the net within 36 hours. You've got to give them that. With open source bugs really get pounced on.
The reason I have faith in open source as a concept is that I trust several million coders a lot more than I trust cash cows. And just in terms of sheer numbers, several million people, even unpaid ones, have more innovative ideas than a finite group of people whose primary interest is not innovation, but keeping a grip on their clientele.