Guys, I have used FreeBSD for a decade on multiple machines, some running CURRENT, and thus have had the privilege of not only listening to PHK's reasoned discussions, but also engaging in such discussions with him. I also supported his paid development project a few years ago, so you can be sure that I am *not* an unbiased contributor to this article.

That said, I am pretty sure that PHK didn't just decide over coffee or beer to sue Lenovo without giving the matter serious thought, research and consideration. Certainly, what MS charges OEMs and distributors for licenses is far less than the retail price you or I would pay, so I don't personally think that money is the issue at all. I haven't asked him personally so can't say with authority, but I would imagine that this is more about OS choice (or none) during the configure/customize process when shopping online and opting out of a MS OS up-front rather than any monetary settlement. It's the principle of the issue, not the money. At least that's how I see it and how I would like to see the outcome. Give consumers a choice to opt out of a forced MS OS, even if there is no financial benefit.

*SIGH*

This saying was born from an era when government work was head-and-shoulders above par, exceeding even the most stringent of standards. Only in the modern lexicon has it taken a derogatory connotation, mostly due to lazy-ass government workers who can't be disciplined or fired for shoddy work.

Yup. In fact, back in the day, the IPv6 support in FreeBSD was the determining factor in my choice to run FreeBSD rather than any then-current distribution of GNU/Linux. Being focused on networking, I didn't have a dog in the OS race, I just needed IPv6 support, and FreeBSD won hands-down. I have enjoyed the blessings of FreeBSD ever since. Even so many years later, IPv6 support on my DD-WRT (Linux) access point is quite non-intuitive and hackish.

Big shout-out to the fine KAME team, especially the late Itojun.

# managing multiple history files in bash
#
for each in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f; do ln -s .bash_history .bash_history.dev.ttyp${each}; done
#
# then add the following to the .bash_profile
#
SHELLID=$(tty | sed 's!/!.!g')
HISTFILE=${HISTFILE}${SHELLID}

That works for my FreeBSD servers very well, allowing all open shells to read from and write to a common history file. Unless you are on a really busy box where you are sharing with hundreds of users, this may be useful to you. It certainly has been to me.

You know, I love capitalism and letting the market do it's thing, but in those few cases where you have a great company that does all the right things and takes the profits from their admittedly expensive product and invests it in neat tech like Mindstorms, or my beloved Ferrari F1 cars, this makes me sad. All this will really do is take the R&D money out of Lego's pockets and send it to the lowest bidder. I, and I hope many others, will stick with the Lego brand if for no other reason than the superior products and devotion to expanding minds instead of pockets.

I have seen their manufacturing plants on TV (can't remember if it was How Do They Do It? or one of the other shows like it) and the tolerances, rate of part rejection, etc. are just astounding. Also, the white rooms where the creative minds sit and play with Lego pieces all day, dreaming up new toys... it is simply wonderful.

Quality before quantity, please.