I work with Angstrom Linux. I guess that makes me a Quaker. Lots of little do-it-yourself communities.

The stepwise refinement, collaboration, and remixing we see today is the way it has always been. Everything you ever learned about "Person X invented thing Y" is wrong. Such statements are made by history books to make a good story, and have no connection to reality. Edison was a smart and hard-working guy, but he didn't invent the light bulb or the phonograph out of thin air, nor did Bell the telephone, or Marconi the radio. They all played a role, but hardly a unique one.

You'd be called an asshole. You'd probably get a lot of threats. The Police might even come question you. But when they discover you're just a harmless jerk, they'd leave, and they'd even go investigate the people who made threats against you to see which of them might actually be dangerous. If you actually provided material aid to them in some way, we might have a different story.

As one of the first Wikipedia editors, I have to agree. The current state of Wikipedia is unusable. 5 million articles is a pathetically small number: every town, every park, every building, every movie, every TV show, every book, every law, every government official of every country throughout history: all of these should be articles, and would be if it were easier to make them.

--Wikipedia user #43

Maybe this will make it illegal to read the Koran.

Couldn't agree more. Legitimizing the concept gets in the way of what should be the real goal of complete abolition. Software patents can and should be eliminated entirely, not "reformed"

As usual with coverage of complex legal decisions, the headlines and soundbites don't resemble the decision at all. The case hasn't even begun; the judge did not "allow" the webcams at all. He's just ruling on a preliminary injunction before the case begins: the plaintiff is asking for the judge to issue an order stopping Aaron's from further use of the cameras while the case is going on. The judge is saying here that the injunction is moot because the plaintiff doesn't have the laptop, and hasn't presented any evidence that anyone else is being recorded. The judge is just saying (1) he can't order Aaron's to stop doing something when there's no evidence that they're actually doing it, and (2) the case is weak because the law under which they are suing may not apply (which is true; the plaintiffs ought to be suing under more general privacy torts). Under no stretch of reality does this mean he's "allowing" the use of the webcams.

My 70-year-old mom is on stock Ubuntu with no problems. She's happy that her old laptop runs faster now, and she can do everything she needs pretty simply.

Seems "reasonable and non-discriminatory" to me.

Yeah, clearly this guy knows more about how to make money in the publishing business than Tim O'Reilly.

Just the opposite of your heat story...I was writing code in an unheated timer's shack on a ski slope in Mt, Abrams in Maine, in February, at about 4 below. Condensation on the inside of our CRTs caused problems, but our Compaqs were pretty though.