The Western world is in the grip of a consumption binge that is unique in human history. We aspire to the lifestyles of the rich and famous at the cost of family, friends and personal fulfilment. Rates of stress, depression and obesity are up as we wrestle with the emptiness and endless disappointments of the consumer life.
OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt says his crack 60-person team of programmers, working in a tightly focused fashion and starting with a core of tried-and-true Unix, puts out better code than the slapdash Linux movement.
hooch
Big hardware makers like Hewlett-Packard and IBM have turned Linux hackers into an unpaid workforce. "These companies used to have to pay to develop Unix. They had in-house engineers who wrote new features when customers wanted them. Now they just allow the user community to do their own little hacks and features, trying to get to the same functionality level, and they're just putting pennies into it," De Raadt says.
hooch
De Raadt says BSD could have become the world's most popular open source operating system, except that a lawsuit over BSD scared away developers, who went off to work on Linux and stayed there even after BSD was deemed legal. "It's really very sad," he says. "It is taking a long time for the Linux code base to get where BSD was ten years ago."
hooch
Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further.
Basra declared itself open to foreign visitors this week but instructed them to be vigilant, dress like locals and hire armed escorts. "Then there is a 70% to 80% chance you will be OK," beamed Abdul Razuqi, the head of the tourism office in Iraq's second city.
hooch
Since the invasion religiously conservative Shias have turned what had been an open, liberal society into something closer to Iran, with alcohol banned and women strongly encouraged to wear the veil. Only men can sunbathe.