People with little or no property do not care about property rights. And then groups of opportunists come along and tell them that they should take from those that have instead of working for it themselves. The scheme is as old as civilization, use the masses to do our biding by inciting them to take from those that have, pass it to us, and we will distribute equitably with a little extra for ourselves for their trouble since some pigs are more equal than others.

We have speed limits for aircraft in crowded airspace sectors, speed limits on cars on highways. Even though these machines can can travel much faster, we limit their speed for public safety. Our society sets all kinds of limitations in terms of speed, capacity, volume etc.; why? because human beings are involved at some level or point and human beings make errors and higher speeds/capacities/volumes magnify the effect of those errors. Even if automation is involved, that automation was developed and built by human beings and human beings must be able to monitor the behavior of such automation just as we would monitor other human beings. The NYSE and other world exchanges should set some kind of trading volume/frequency limits. They should work to make such limits global.

Mr. McAllister seems to think that software developers pick programming languages like they pick video games. I and all of the developers I know, when we have the authority to choose which language to use on a project do so based on the merits of the technology, not based on how cool we think it is. Maybe if you are a tech writer in SF and know what little you know based on conversations with programmers in the local Star Bucks, then coolness matters. Just look at the facts, number of jobs available for Java developers, versus C# (.NET), versus Ruby, etc. And if you want to judge where software is going based on Linux development trends I think you will miss the mark more often than not. As for Mono and Linux trends McAllister quotes Mr. Worthington, yet another tech writer whose bio states that he got his "BBA from the Fox School of Business at Temple University, majoring in marketing. Aside from studying business, he took a concentration in computer science, studying C, COBOL and SQL." What the .. why is Slashdot even covering the dribble from these guys?

I need to correct 2nd sentence in this submission. Should read "SOA has been heralded as a panacea." not "SOA has be heralded as a panacea."

If money is to be made in open source software then it is in integrating that software with a customers systems or customizing it to meet their needs,and only then can "some" money be made in supporting the integration as well as the actual open source software. Beyond that, most organizations want some kind of liability coverage from the provider, someone to hold financially accountable, like when I hire a plumber to fix something that I "might" be able to fix myself, just so I can have someone to hold financially responsible for errors besides myself.