I think it's mostly been modded down because the link in the sig is fairly solidly abusive, offensive, and misleading. You can't easily ignore something that someone is actively trying to obfuscate, and that link is a good example of such obfuscation. The post includes the sig, and as such the sig affects the post. It's perfectly reasonable to claim the post as a whole is a troll if the sig is egregious enough.
I've never carried blasting caps through security, but I've had a few cases where a thorough check of my carry-on before leaving home exposed some ammo that I forgot to remove (usually single rounds -- I've never actually forgotten to remove a whole box of ammo). Whoops. It's mostly because I have so many laptop bags that I typically use them to transport stuff to the range (it's a little less obvious than the "STEAL ME! I'M A GUN" cases you get at gun stores).
Mitnick's not a hacker. We keep bitching about people who use 'hacker' when they mean 'cracker' and yet we ourselves don't use the right term?
Mitnick's a cracker, pure and simple. If he didn't make his living back then off of crime, he sure as hell is did it later by writing a book about it.
I don't see much of a difference between this book and "send me your stories of how you robbed some people in an alley and I'll give you $500." Except, of ocurse, that a bunch of immature of hypocritical punks will now scream how clearly, cracking is nothing like a real crime. I mean, information wants to be free! And, umm, we're doing these companies a favor!
I did look. You were unclear. In the cellphone world, '3G' means third generation. I challenge you to find standard texts that actually use '1G' to mean 'First Generation.' My God, I understand that we all hate to type, but come on!
Owner of a x iPod.
^
| This means what I want it to mean and nothing else. If you misunderstand it, clearly you've not read what I wrote.
You almost touched on one of the biggest problems I see we're going to have in offshoring: Entry point.
Lets assume, as you do, there'll be a lot of jobs for senior-level engineers. Lets assume there are far less than now for entry-level positions. Now, *I'm* a senior-level engineer (13 years in IT). I wasn't senior-level when I entered the field, though -- I entered the field by doing data entry on registration cards for a software company and becoming known as The Guy Who Could Fix Macs. I know I'm not the only one.
Skilled industries (everything from programming to carpentry to electrical work) have traditionally depended on mentoring, apprenticeship, and a growth path that starts with you being at the bottom. If we're sending all our bottom-feeder jobs to India, where will our next senior people come from? They're not going to burst fully formed from the foreheads of the current generation.
I'd say that I think of MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd as being at the top of that game. CalTech gets the close association with NASA going for it. MIT is at the top not because it's better, necessarily (though I'm not saying it's not), but because of name recognition.
This is not "some company outsourced a project to India." This is "MIT outsourced a project to India." MIT is different from "" both because of their presumed easy access to relatively inexpensive but highly technically-competent labor and because for many of the people in the core audience of Slashdot (geeks), MIT stands as something of the Shining City On the Hill. It's an overstatement to compare MIT->geeks to Mecca->Muslims, but there's definitely an element of reverence and respect we have for the institution and its students.
So having MIT decide to outsource a project like this to India (ignoring for the moment the Microsoft component) is significant and newsworthy to many of us.
What sort of IT group decides to run their Exchange environment unprotected on the internet?
I'm working for a company that's deeply in MS's back pocket -- we use Windows *everything*, including Exchange. Our SMTP gateway? Postfix on Linux. Sure, I'd rather it was OpenBSD, but whatever -- it's still not Exchange.
The bloatier the app, the harder it is to ensure it's secure. These are probably the same sort of people who run SQL Server on an unfirewalled system and are then shocked someone managed to hack into it.
You know, it seems like we could just have a standard slashdot meta-tag whose meaning is "well, I could do it more cheaply." We sure hear that refrain a whole bunch.
By your logic, Nude in a Black Armchair (Picasso) is clearly not worth $45M because it only took 50 cents of materials and 2-3 hours of labor to make it.
Yup, free as in beer. But overwhelmingly, my interest is in downloading reasonably priced music. "Reasonably priced" as in beer (or at least "reasonably priced beer.")
Sort of depends on what you're trying to do and what your priorities are, right?
I have an interest, but not an overwhelming interest, in downloading free music. My priorities, however, are: A) Be able to reasonably use the music I get (download to my work system, my notebook, my home desktop; burn CDs; listen on my iPod) and not feel as though I have to go "God damn this DRM!" B) Get the music I want without having it bundled with crap (requires the ability to purchase songs rather than just albums); C) Get a single song for a decent price ($.99 is reasonable; $3.49 for a CD of a single isn't); D) Be able to get the song I want; E) Be able to get the song I want easily; F) Be able to get the song I want quickly G) Reasonable sound quality (which is important, but given that my ears don't seem to have a problem with 128Kbit MP3s isn't really an issue)
Based on these priorities, FOR ME ITMS is a really, really good match. I've not yet felt hampered by its DRM (though admittedly, the first thing I do is burn a CD of my protected AACs and rip it); its prices are reasonable; downloads are wicked-fast; and one of these days I'll be able to access it from work though our password SOCKS proxy. I hope.:)
Here's an example of what I have to go through right now:
I wanted to get ATB's "Let You Go" yesterday. The first thing I tried was ITMS, but they have no tracks by him; so then I tried Kazaa, where there were three copies of the song, but all downloads were stuck at 'searching for more sources.' Finally, after a thirty minute search on the net I was able to find the MP3. Would I have paid $.99 to get this song from ITMS? In a heartbeat.
And that's why Kazaa is -- again, for me -- a backup to ITMS for any music I *really* like. I still use it for music I essentially get because it's free and wouldn't pay for, but that's less important to me. If I could get all my music from ITMS and could get only porn from Kazaa, I'd still be a happy camper (though with a few less mp3s on my hard drive).
I work at an extremely repressive Financial Services company that does extremely thorough and restrictive web filtering -- websites are white-listed, and are white-listed on a per-individual/group basis, so the vast majority of the people in the company can't even go to, say, Google.
We don't do content filtering/alteration, though, though I'm guessing our proxy can do it. If you can get to the site, you'll see what's on it. Period. Well, assuming what's on it is available on port 80/443:)
The monoculture risk is real when you're looking at the 64,000 view -- the entire population. They're not really all that much of a risk when you're dealing with, say, an enterprise's systems, and there's not that much benefit to them in that kind of environment (disregarding things like security devices for the moment).
We've used the agriculture analogy before to describe the issues around monocultures, so to continue to use it, we can say that his point is that monoculture isn't really an issue because when you're tilling a single field, it's a pain in the ass to put multiple crops on it. True, but that's not the point -- it's when you've got one crop on *ALL* the fields (all the enterprises) or at least a substantial portion of them that you get into a problem.
I think Red vs. Blue (which I love, and am a super sponsor of) and Warthog revisited (in addition to Warthog Jump) get away with this stuff primarily because: A) Halo's smart enough to understand that what they're doing is free publicity for the game -- and on a personal note, it works. I didn't particularly want an XBox+Halo, but the only thing stopping me from getting it at this point is the fact the new job is starting in a week and until then I have no money; RvB sold me on the game; B) They're not exactly looking to become rich off of this, and in fact aren't charging for downloading it (though in the case of RvB you get better quality clips if you pay a whopping $10); C) It *may* be that taking small elements out of the game may be considered "fair use" under copyright law.
It'll be interesting to see what the reaction to this failure will be.
Challenger didn't really rock the way we did Shuttle missions because the problems that led to its explosion were not core to how the Shuttles are built -- someone / some process screwed up and there was a relatively reliable way to make sure it wouldn't happen again.
Columbia, on the other hand, was destroyed because the design of the Shuttle is so fragile that once you develop an external problem, you're dead -- since they're using tiles that are individualized, there are no spares they could carry that would help them fix this sort of problem.
Hopefully, this will be a step in the right direction -- either a radical redesign of the Shuttle, or its abandonment in favor of a more robust solution.
Of course the public is confused by tech-specific lingo. It's for the same reason I get confused if I try to figure out where the Axle Seal is on my Miata, or what the hell SEC rule 17 CFR Part 270 means. Every major industry has its own lingo that has developed to make intra-industry communication as clear and precise as possible. They're labels, and we strive to make them as specialized as possible.
The problem comes when Tech companies (e.g. IBM) attempt to use these labels to communicate with non-industry people. That we have these labels is not a problem (it is, in fact, a good thing). That we persist in using them with 'outsiders' is. In the end, it may be better to tell someone they can put 1000 hours of music on an iPod (which Apple has done) than "5 Gb of MP3s encoded at 128kbit." It sure is less precise -- what happens if you use 196kbit? Does it support Ogg? But hey, the vast majority of people who Apple is targeting to purchase iPods not only don't care, they wouldn't understand these differences.
I'm not arguing for a dumbing down of all tech communications -- when I buy a RAID card, I want to know what RAID levels it can support -- but some products are naturally designed for outsiders and some are naturally designed for insiders. When in doubt, include both types of lingo (how would that work? I have no clue -- "3.2Ghz CPU with an 800 MHz FSB. / This processor is wicked fast and needs a really modern motherboard -- ask your kid for help!")
Re:The War Between Game Companies and Consumers
on
Random Humor
·
· Score: 1
Dear God, is that ugly. Must remember to use plain text formatting next time.
Sorry about that.
The War Between Game Companies and Consumers
on
Random Humor
·
· Score: 1
This video actually illustrates some interesting points about why game copying is increasing in popularity, rather than decreasing. Listen to the BSA lawyer talking about your rights as a gamer; listen to what the game company personnel say you get when you buy a game. These include:
A) You can make a backup copy;
B) You get (implicitly free) technical support;
C) You get real manuals;
D) You *own* a copy of the software;
E) You get warranties.
So that was ten years ago. What's the current state of gaming?
I'm not a gamer. I'm 31, and I wasted my twitch years playing with Solaris. I've gotten into some games over the last year or two, but mostly Warcraft and Starcraft, and some console games.
I was shocked, appalled, and INSULTED when I found out that I had to put the CD in the drive to play the game. I put the CDs away in a safe place and never access them again unless something bad happens -- I don't want to handle a CD every time I play a game. Not to mention I can't even make a backup CD and use it due to all the copy-protection cruft on game CDs. Thankfully, about 30 minutes of work got me to gamecopyworld.com and from there I managed to get Starcraft working w/o a CD. But the problem is that once Blizzard has forced me to resort to piracy (or the appearance thereof) to use a game I purchased in what I consider to be a legitimate way, the difference between legitimate ownership and piracy is significantly reduced.
Tech support? Come on. Some companies have good technical support, but I've honestly not found that many of them. Trying to get help from Technical Support is likely to be expensive (if only because you're dialing long-distance) and the chances, these days, of getting someone who actually knows something in the first-tier organization is... minimal. You get vastly better support on-line from a community of players.
Manuals? I'm reminded of the Dilbert strip that has the PHB say "well, we're going to release the product without a manual and count on someone coming out with a 'For Dummies' book for it." THAT'S A JOKE. But it's also reality. I ended up buying the Starcraft battle chest (or whatever it was called) so I got the SC and SC:BW strategy guides from the 3rd-party publisher with it, which is good, because without them, the game is severly lacking. I mean, come on -- the manual doesn't cover things like rate of fire and *RANGE*. How can you have a manual for a game that involved ranged attacks that doesn't explicitly address range? And don't get me started on WCIII -- where the 'Blizzard approved official strategy guide' ALSO doesn't cover things like range and attack speeds.
Owning a copy of the software? Ha. When was the last time you heard an industry rep use that language?
And don't get me started on "This game may melt down your computer and if it does, well... tough. There's no warranty on it" warranties.
I pay for Red vs. Blue. I pay for Snood. I paid for UltraEdit. I pay for software whose producers treat me decently and fairly and see me as someone to court and respect and have a relationship with, rather than as their enemy, as someone they must fear and restrict and limit because otherwise he'll cheat.
Want me to respect you? Start by respecting me.
I don't miss the old IBM keyboards, because I use one at home. It's *LOUD*, and I love typing on it.
While it's fiendishly difficult to find them anymore, we *have* been able to find a copy of them that seems about as well (and heavily) built as they are -- the Customizer, from PCKeyboard (http://www.pckeyboard.com/customizer.html). We've been using these for a while with VERY good results.
You and your lawyer are... somewhat naive with regards to the Gnu GPL (General Public, not Protective, License). It does not indicate you must release the source for any modifications you make to programs covered by the GPL, only for modifications you make to programs covered by the GPL AND THEN DISTRIBUTED. In other words, you can make any modifications you want to the source, and keep them private, as long as you don't then release the binaries resulting from compilations of your modified source.
Further, my own reading of the GPL does not indicate that simply using a GPL work such as GCC results in the software you are compiling to be ruled by the GPL; the GPL talks about "works based on the Program[controlled by the GPL]" or "a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language."
Penultimately, I think you're probably about five years or so behind the times if you think that Linux is, at this point, "only a bit player."
Lastly, I'm guessing you're just trolling, right?
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's mostly been modded down because the link in the sig is fairly solidly abusive, offensive, and misleading. You can't easily ignore something that someone is actively trying to obfuscate, and that link is a good example of such obfuscation. The post includes the sig, and as such the sig affects the post. It's perfectly reasonable to claim the post as a whole is a troll if the sig is egregious enough.
I've never carried blasting caps through security, but I've had a few cases where a thorough check of my carry-on before leaving home exposed some ammo that I forgot to remove (usually single rounds -- I've never actually forgotten to remove a whole box of ammo). Whoops. It's mostly because I have so many laptop bags that I typically use them to transport stuff to the range (it's a little less obvious than the "STEAL ME! I'M A GUN" cases you get at gun stores).
Mitnick's not a hacker. We keep bitching about people who use 'hacker' when they mean 'cracker' and yet we ourselves don't use the right term?
Mitnick's a cracker, pure and simple. If he didn't make his living back then off of crime, he sure as hell is did it later by writing a book about it.
I don't see much of a difference between this book and "send me your stories of how you robbed some people in an alley and I'll give you $500." Except, of ocurse, that a bunch of immature of hypocritical punks will now scream how clearly, cracking is nothing like a real crime. I mean, information wants to be free! And, umm, we're doing these companies a favor!
I did look. You were unclear. In the cellphone world, '3G' means third generation. I challenge you to find standard texts that actually use '1G' to mean 'First Generation.' My God, I understand that we all hate to type, but come on!
Owner of a x iPod.
^
| This means what I want it to mean and nothing else. If you misunderstand it, clearly you've not read what I wrote.
Frankly, I think you're lying.
There is no such thing as a 1Gb iPod.
You almost touched on one of the biggest problems I see we're going to have in offshoring: Entry point.
Lets assume, as you do, there'll be a lot of jobs for senior-level engineers. Lets assume there are far less than now for entry-level positions. Now, *I'm* a senior-level engineer (13 years in IT). I wasn't senior-level when I entered the field, though -- I entered the field by doing data entry on registration cards for a software company and becoming known as The Guy Who Could Fix Macs. I know I'm not the only one.
Skilled industries (everything from programming to carpentry to electrical work) have traditionally depended on mentoring, apprenticeship, and a growth path that starts with you being at the bottom. If we're sending all our bottom-feeder jobs to India, where will our next senior people come from? They're not going to burst fully formed from the foreheads of the current generation.
I wonder if this will spur Sunto finally make the default password encryption algorithm on Solaris something other than crypt...
I'd say that I think of MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd as being at the top of that game. CalTech gets the close association with NASA going for it. MIT is at the top not because it's better, necessarily (though I'm not saying it's not), but because of name recognition.
This is not "some company outsourced a project to India." This is "MIT outsourced a project to India." MIT is different from "" both because of their presumed easy access to relatively inexpensive but highly technically-competent labor and because for many of the people in the core audience of Slashdot (geeks), MIT stands as something of the Shining City On the Hill. It's an overstatement to compare MIT->geeks to Mecca->Muslims, but there's definitely an element of reverence and respect we have for the institution and its students.
So having MIT decide to outsource a project like this to India (ignoring for the moment the Microsoft component) is significant and newsworthy to many of us.
What sort of IT group decides to run their Exchange environment unprotected on the internet?
I'm working for a company that's deeply in MS's back pocket -- we use Windows *everything*, including Exchange. Our SMTP gateway? Postfix on Linux. Sure, I'd rather it was OpenBSD, but whatever -- it's still not Exchange.
The bloatier the app, the harder it is to ensure it's secure. These are probably the same sort of people who run SQL Server on an unfirewalled system and are then shocked someone managed to hack into it.
You know, it seems like we could just have a standard slashdot meta-tag whose meaning is "well, I could do it more cheaply." We sure hear that refrain a whole bunch.
By your logic, Nude in a Black Armchair (Picasso) is clearly not worth $45M because it only took 50 cents of materials and 2-3 hours of labor to make it.
It's ART. Deal with it.
Yup, free as in beer. But overwhelmingly, my interest is in downloading reasonably priced music. "Reasonably priced" as in beer (or at least "reasonably priced beer.")
Sort of depends on what you're trying to do and what your priorities are, right?
:)
I have an interest, but not an overwhelming interest, in downloading free music. My priorities, however, are:
A) Be able to reasonably use the music I get (download to my work system, my notebook, my home desktop; burn CDs; listen on my iPod) and not feel as though I have to go "God damn this DRM!"
B) Get the music I want without having it bundled with crap (requires the ability to purchase songs rather than just albums);
C) Get a single song for a decent price ($.99 is reasonable; $3.49 for a CD of a single isn't);
D) Be able to get the song I want;
E) Be able to get the song I want easily;
F) Be able to get the song I want quickly
G) Reasonable sound quality (which is important, but given that my ears don't seem to have a problem with 128Kbit MP3s isn't really an issue)
Based on these priorities, FOR ME ITMS is a really, really good match. I've not yet felt hampered by its DRM (though admittedly, the first thing I do is burn a CD of my protected AACs and rip it); its prices are reasonable; downloads are wicked-fast; and one of these days I'll be able to access it from work though our password SOCKS proxy. I hope.
Here's an example of what I have to go through right now:
I wanted to get ATB's "Let You Go" yesterday. The first thing I tried was ITMS, but they have no tracks by him; so then I tried Kazaa, where there were three copies of the song, but all downloads were stuck at 'searching for more sources.' Finally, after a thirty minute search on the net I was able to find the MP3. Would I have paid $.99 to get this song from ITMS? In a heartbeat.
And that's why Kazaa is -- again, for me -- a backup to ITMS for any music I *really* like. I still use it for music I essentially get because it's free and wouldn't pay for, but that's less important to me. If I could get all my music from ITMS and could get only porn from Kazaa, I'd still be a happy camper (though with a few less mp3s on my hard drive).
Of course, given that Gator would take action against Slashdot, the risk is rather minimal and anyway "other people's problem."
Anyway, I thought Gator's primary purpose was pushing ads?
Why bother? I'm in IT -- I can surf anywhere.
I work at an extremely repressive Financial Services company that does extremely thorough and restrictive web filtering -- websites are white-listed, and are white-listed on a per-individual/group basis, so the vast majority of the people in the company can't even go to, say, Google.
:)
We don't do content filtering/alteration, though, though I'm guessing our proxy can do it. If you can get to the site, you'll see what's on it. Period. Well, assuming what's on it is available on port 80/443
Efficeon?
That's because he's got the wrong focus.
The monoculture risk is real when you're looking at the 64,000 view -- the entire population. They're not really all that much of a risk when you're dealing with, say, an enterprise's systems, and there's not that much benefit to them in that kind of environment (disregarding things like security devices for the moment).
We've used the agriculture analogy before to describe the issues around monocultures, so to continue to use it, we can say that his point is that monoculture isn't really an issue because when you're tilling a single field, it's a pain in the ass to put multiple crops on it. True, but that's not the point -- it's when you've got one crop on *ALL* the fields (all the enterprises) or at least a substantial portion of them that you get into a problem.
I think Red vs. Blue (which I love, and am a super sponsor of) and Warthog revisited (in addition to Warthog Jump) get away with this stuff primarily because:
A) Halo's smart enough to understand that what they're doing is free publicity for the game -- and on a personal note, it works. I didn't particularly want an XBox+Halo, but the only thing stopping me from getting it at this point is the fact the new job is starting in a week and until then I have no money; RvB sold me on the game;
B) They're not exactly looking to become rich off of this, and in fact aren't charging for downloading it (though in the case of RvB you get better quality clips if you pay a whopping $10);
C) It *may* be that taking small elements out of the game may be considered "fair use" under copyright law.
-roy
It'll be interesting to see what the reaction to this failure will be.
Challenger didn't really rock the way we did Shuttle missions because the problems that led to its explosion were not core to how the Shuttles are built -- someone / some process screwed up and there was a relatively reliable way to make sure it wouldn't happen again.
Columbia, on the other hand, was destroyed because the design of the Shuttle is so fragile that once you develop an external problem, you're dead -- since they're using tiles that are individualized, there are no spares they could carry that would help them fix this sort of problem.
Hopefully, this will be a step in the right direction -- either a radical redesign of the Shuttle, or its abandonment in favor of a more robust solution.
Of course the public is confused by tech-specific lingo. It's for the same reason I get confused if I try to figure out where the Axle Seal is on my Miata, or what the hell SEC rule 17 CFR Part 270 means. Every major industry has its own lingo that has developed to make intra-industry communication as clear and precise as possible. They're labels, and we strive to make them as specialized as possible.
The problem comes when Tech companies (e.g. IBM) attempt to use these labels to communicate with non-industry people. That we have these labels is not a problem (it is, in fact, a good thing). That we persist in using them with 'outsiders' is.
In the end, it may be better to tell someone they can put 1000 hours of music on an iPod (which Apple has done) than "5 Gb of MP3s encoded at 128kbit." It sure is less precise -- what happens if you use 196kbit? Does it support Ogg? But hey, the vast majority of people who Apple is targeting to purchase iPods not only don't care, they wouldn't understand these differences.
I'm not arguing for a dumbing down of all tech communications -- when I buy a RAID card, I want to know what RAID levels it can support -- but some products are naturally designed for outsiders and some are naturally designed for insiders. When in doubt, include both types of lingo (how would that work? I have no clue -- "3.2Ghz CPU with an 800 MHz FSB. / This processor is wicked fast and needs a really modern motherboard -- ask your kid for help!")
Dear God, is that ugly. Must remember to use plain text formatting next time.
Sorry about that.
This video actually illustrates some interesting points about why game copying is increasing in popularity, rather than decreasing. Listen to the BSA lawyer talking about your rights as a gamer; listen to what the game company personnel say you get when you buy a game. These include: A) You can make a backup copy; B) You get (implicitly free) technical support; C) You get real manuals; D) You *own* a copy of the software; E) You get warranties. So that was ten years ago. What's the current state of gaming? I'm not a gamer. I'm 31, and I wasted my twitch years playing with Solaris. I've gotten into some games over the last year or two, but mostly Warcraft and Starcraft, and some console games. I was shocked, appalled, and INSULTED when I found out that I had to put the CD in the drive to play the game. I put the CDs away in a safe place and never access them again unless something bad happens -- I don't want to handle a CD every time I play a game. Not to mention I can't even make a backup CD and use it due to all the copy-protection cruft on game CDs. Thankfully, about 30 minutes of work got me to gamecopyworld.com and from there I managed to get Starcraft working w/o a CD. But the problem is that once Blizzard has forced me to resort to piracy (or the appearance thereof) to use a game I purchased in what I consider to be a legitimate way, the difference between legitimate ownership and piracy is significantly reduced. Tech support? Come on. Some companies have good technical support, but I've honestly not found that many of them. Trying to get help from Technical Support is likely to be expensive (if only because you're dialing long-distance) and the chances, these days, of getting someone who actually knows something in the first-tier organization is ... minimal. You get vastly better support on-line from a community of players.
Manuals? I'm reminded of the Dilbert strip that has the PHB say "well, we're going to release the product without a manual and count on someone coming out with a 'For Dummies' book for it." THAT'S A JOKE. But it's also reality. I ended up buying the Starcraft battle chest (or whatever it was called) so I got the SC and SC:BW strategy guides from the 3rd-party publisher with it, which is good, because without them, the game is severly lacking. I mean, come on -- the manual doesn't cover things like rate of fire and *RANGE*. How can you have a manual for a game that involved ranged attacks that doesn't explicitly address range? And don't get me started on WCIII -- where the 'Blizzard approved official strategy guide' ALSO doesn't cover things like range and attack speeds.
Owning a copy of the software? Ha. When was the last time you heard an industry rep use that language?
And don't get me started on "This game may melt down your computer and if it does, well ... tough. There's no warranty on it" warranties.
I pay for Red vs. Blue. I pay for Snood. I paid for UltraEdit. I pay for software whose producers treat me decently and fairly and see me as someone to court and respect and have a relationship with, rather than as their enemy, as someone they must fear and restrict and limit because otherwise he'll cheat.
Want me to respect you? Start by respecting me.
I don't miss the old IBM keyboards, because I use one at home. It's *LOUD*, and I love typing on it. While it's fiendishly difficult to find them anymore, we *have* been able to find a copy of them that seems about as well (and heavily) built as they are -- the Customizer, from PCKeyboard (http://www.pckeyboard.com/customizer.html). We've been using these for a while with VERY good results.
You and your lawyer are ... somewhat naive with regards to the Gnu GPL (General Public, not Protective, License). It does not indicate you must release the source for any modifications you make to programs covered by the GPL, only for modifications you make to programs covered by the GPL AND THEN DISTRIBUTED. In other words, you can make any modifications you want to the source, and keep them private, as long as you don't then release the binaries resulting from compilations of your modified source.
Further, my own reading of the GPL does not indicate that simply using a GPL work such as GCC results in the software you are compiling to be ruled by the GPL; the GPL talks about "works based on the Program[controlled by the GPL]" or "a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language."
Penultimately, I think you're probably about five years or so behind the times if you think that Linux is, at this point, "only a bit player."
Lastly, I'm guessing you're just trolling, right?