romey

What I think is most interesting about this is that 1. People continue to compare Microsoft and Apple as if they were directly competing, in spite of the fact the Apple is [primarily] a hardware company and MS is [primarily a software co. and 2. In spite of being primarily a hardware company, Apple is still able to be more profitable than Microsoft. They truly do release their hardware as if it were software, iterating and releasing a new version nearly every year. Even more surprising is that people actually buy this new hardware annually, as if it were a software upgrade

Well cheating was pretty rampant where I studied computer engineering, and I would guess that it isn't much different elsewhere. More important, though is that kids in America aren't learning any more that kids in India, albeit there are probably more students in technical degrees in India. Look here, though: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_la...

So is every single one of the application supposed to open when you start up the demo? It seems pretty responsive once you get most of those closed. Can't really tell what you'd want something like this for though, besides it just being nifty

It seems to me that the author here is drawing the conclusions that he wants from this data. While there does seem to be a correlation between intelligence and income, this correlation has nothing at all to do with whether or not these smart, wealthy people are indeed exploitative of the poor or not. It is in many cases advantageous for CEOs of large companies to use their wealth and political influence in ways that are detrimental to their workers, the environment, and/or our economy.

Second, "productivity" in this article seems to be a vague metric (this is probably because I'm not well versed in economics). As someone asked above, does productivity increase as you move up an organization's hierarchy? The CEO of Nike has likely never sewn a shoe together, yet he pays the welders on the assembly line; is he more productive? If the amount shoes created is a function of the amount of workers hired, and the amount of workers is a function of how much each worker is paid, doesn't it stand to reason that productivity for those at the top of the hierarchy correlates directly to how exploitative their wages are?

Personally, I would certainly pay taxes, even if they weren't at gunpoint. I find roads, police, etc far too convenient to give up.

I haven't read the book that you quote, but I'd be interested to know how much of the conservative donations were related to religious causes.

I agree, it is rather unsettling how they frame their argument--there really isn't an argument at all as to why these things should be released under such a license, besides a vague allusion to security concerns. I love open source stuff, but the Free Software Foundation always seemed to me like that annoying vegan friend who never leaves you alone about the evils of animal products

the tagline in the link reads like a scary movie trailer: >You may be running nonfree programs on your computer every day without realizing it--through your web browser.

I think the rub here is not that they want to be able to see the script files, it's that they want the javascript behind GMail and other big apps to be released under a Free Software License.

I agree, it seems strange that the clause in the contract, which before must have been something along the lines of "$45.00 per referral, to a daily maximum of $XX or 200 referrals..." has been changed to simply "NO LIMIT." Add to that the fact of how vague "NO LIMIT" as a statement is (perhaps he meant "NO, LIMIT"?) and the dubious authenticity of the actual purchases, and it seems strange to me that this was decided in favor of the affiliate.