kprobst

I seem to remember Alec Guinness hit the jackpot on the SW franchise by demanding a % of the profit (gross?), so I assume this guy had a different contract. I suppose Guinness had a lot more pull and negotiating leverage than a dude whose primary contribution to the films was to be tall.

I love the idea of having a touchscreen instead of a touchpad. The possibilities! Just that one aspect of this box seems like highly innovative and hopefully a harbinger of things to come in the PC world.

"bediger also mentioned the possible presence of "reverse shills" being used to pollute the Linux camp."

Interestingly I've never seen this proven in any way, although I suppose it's possible. But extremists in FOSS are widespread enough that I doubt it's some evil secret plot by Microsoft (or whomever) to make the community look bad.

While I would agree (and some would make the point) that Microsoft does this to benefit mostly Microsoft, it's still GPL'ed code that is now part of the greater Linux kernel codebase, so good on them and everyone else.

Well, that's only a $545 million loss, considering Murdoch bought it for $580 million or so.

Thank you everyone for the responses and information! We'll be looking at Kickstarter for sure and I'll try to report back here with our experience, if any.

Thanks again.

Looks like this guy is looking for a job at Yahoo and decided to augment his resume with this in hopes of impressing someone over there.

Doesn't look like he's even remotely qualified to be CEO of a startup, let alone a $20B publicly traded corporation. Never mind the 'strategy' he outlines, which sounds like something out of a Starbucks brainstorming session.

ToList() usually solves most marshalling problems (not that that is your problem, but it's quite common). Nothing wrong with Linq2SQL, it's just another technology that has a learning curve.

There's more than enough information out there to solve most problems I've ever run into with Linq or EF. Whatever you're dealing with, someone out there probably already dealt with and blogged about it or asked a question and got an answer somewhere.

Ah yes, Flashblock. I didn't see the little icon on the page, so it didn't cross my mind.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Firefox 4.0.1 on Win7. No sound. Chrome works fine.

It works on Chrome but not on Firefox. Interesting.

Funny thing that, I'm holding a SecureID token in my hand right now, having just remoted into the corp network via VPN.

Thanks RSA.

> Adobe Acrobat, Skype updates and the like.

More often than not the installers and updaters decide unilaterally that a reboot is required and force the user to perform one when it's not needed.

It might be the perception thing. OWA looks more 'professional' than GMail for example, although the latter probably has more capabilities and obviously isn't tied to Exchange.

I'm guessing this version of Office will be extremely flashy, and Google Docs will look like a 90s edition of WordPerfect by comparison.

There's nothing wrong with low margin, look at Wal-Mart. The problem is getting the customers through the door (or in this case through the website).

Everyone remembers the Pets.com IPO for example, but no one remembers that it was Merrill Lynch that underwrote it and made most of the profit on the deal.

The problem is the market and VC environment that allows things like these to go down, not that there are unprofitable companies. Those have always existed. But there was a time when people didn't buy into them because they were unprofitable. The way things work now is just wrong and dangerous. But it's been 10+ years since the last dotcom bust, so I guess people will be people and start falling for it again. A fool and his money and all that.

Oh please.

The Palestinians must have objected to calling it "GNU/Linux".

Except that they provided a replacement and a migration path.

Unfortunately it's just how the system works.

AFAIK Microsoft has never said what in Linux those patents read over, except to its licensees. And those are very probably bound by NDAs anyway.

When Oracle filed their claims they put themselves at the mercy of the same legal system that allows them to file said claims. The judge in this case is simply exercising his authority. You can't have your cake and eat it. And more importantly, this might set a positive precedent for other patent cases.

The issue is not whether the monopoly is good or bad, but rather that its existence creates what is essentially a monoculture. I'd rank that as more of a concern, especially when we're talking about consumer devices.

I've always thought Stella was the beer hipsters drink now that everyone knows about Pabst.

I think you're confusing "complicated" with "complex". The former is to be avoided, while the latter is sometimes unavoidable, and in some cases (as here) desired.

This also is a basic tenet of software design as well. I don't mind complexity, if it's necessary and clearly documented. Complicated code on the other hand is the hallmark of a broken development process or a lack of developer skills.

PHP + MySQL ended up being the VB+Access of the FOSS ecosystem.

Win2K was probably one of the best versions of Windows, if not the best.

> TL;DR

But then you'd miss this:

"Non-paid blogger system"? Please. We may be whores, but we are not sluts.

Genius.

> techrights.org

rofl. You know that's boycottnovell, right? They just changed the branding.

I was expecting something much better for 40 points and the front page.