Really would have appreciated a NSFW tag there. I hadn't heard of that particular company (? - no idea what they are, as I closed the window as quickly as I could), and was not expecting nudity.

That's because it's always a different Link, as well as a different Zelda and a different Ganon(dorf). The series is effectively rebooted with each iteration. (Even bigger nerds, feel free to correct me on this.)

I always assumed step 2 / ???? (in the actual underpants gnomes example) was to sell the underwear on the internet to perverts. Alternately, sue the underwear-less people wearing shorts or skirts for mental anguish, due to seeing their exposed naughty bits when looking up (gnomes being short and all).

if you want to USE the communities code you have to give up your rights to the software YOU'VE been writing
for what ? linking a library ? using a header ?
using a handy string handling routine ? etc

if you don't change a thing in the GPL'd code, you're still owned by the GPL as soon as you use anything that's licenced that way.

Did you read what I said? LGPL. The LGPL allows for linking by proprietary code, as long as you give back any changes you make to the original LGPL'd code.

There are two problems I see: trojan horses and worms. We can help deter the worms, not defeat, by setting intelligent network firewalls (or buying cheap $50 NAS-firewalls like Linksys, D-link, etc.). Portscanning seems to be the big payoff for internet connected computers -even with brain-dead firewall software. We can deter the trojan horses by educating users about how to maintain a secure computer. This entails showing them how to check for updates/vulnerabilities through mailing lists, websites for their software and for their virus checker. This also entails showing the user a broad spectrum of choice, particularly in web browsers. This also entails teaching them how to understand email headers, dns and dns lookups, whois queries, and webpage loading, cookies, SSL, and javascript. Armed with this intelligence, the user can spot something fishy immediately as well as avoid falling prey to crafted web pages, IM messages and URLs, malware, spyware, and trojan-ware.

Whoever came up with this concept of "transparent" computing should be dragged into the street and shot. How is it, developers never thought of using log daemons in Win9x? How is it that hex code should be printed to the BSODs and error windows instead of REAL english in the release version of the OS? (oh, wait, that was MAC-OS 6-9... ;) How is it that Windows never came with instructions on how to use the command line? Why try to make all the system programs hard to find in the system folder while not providing any shortcuts in the Start menu? (like winipcfg, ping, nbtstat, ipconfig, netstat, route, msconfig) And the instructions for these programs were a bit lacking too. Also why in a release version of ANY windows version do the default settings SUCK? Lets see, firewalling OFF, WFP/SFP SILENT, etc.

The real problem is not stupid users (though they DO exist), the real problem is that windows has not created a Smart User Environment (SUE) for users to operate their computer. This is analagous -I believe- to the problems of the USA lacking female mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists, as opposed to other countries. The moment we realize that software and automation (though, helpful) cannot replace security-conscious users, is the moment we make a leap forward in computer security.