Sam Levine

"> What if I want to use my webcam? They might make a Linux port of gtalk. I haven't looked at how google gears works, but enabling access to a webcam via gears would be sweet. > Or communicate with a Bluetooth device? I don't think you're going to have a web app need access to a device via bluetooth. However, given that Linux already has tons of support for this already Google doesn't need to reinvent too much of the wheel should they want to enable a netbook running their OS to sync with a cell phone (for example). However (in this example), the phone should be syncing to the cloud, at least in Google's mind. > Or copy files between USB drives? Sneakernet is very 80s. Store your files in the cloud and back them up in one or more locations you control. > Or interact with some other piece of extremely common hardware What hardware do you need access to from a web app that you don't already?" - Sam Levine

"You do realize that you're using a web browser to argue that using a web browser to do things is limited, right?" - Sam Levine

"> Will the Mono project allow any .Net app to run on Linux within a mono equivalent of a JVM? "The Mono API today is somewhere in between .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5" http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Ge... More good info referenced here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... > If not, then what is the point of Mono's existence? It allows for cross platform development, and porting existing managed code from one platform to another. Mono will likely always be playing catchup with Microsoft's state of the art, as will Wine or any other effort to reimplement their technology. If this is a problem for you then using another cross platform language (Python, for example) might be a better choice for you." - Sam Levine

"> \+ the userbase (so you can follow your actual friends because they're already on that). Wait, so you're saying the reason why I think twitter is silly is because I have no friends? Suddenly everything makes so much more sense now." - Sam Levine

"Open source projects frequently use a "release early, release often" model. This means that although a software project may not yet be "done", it is still usable for many people initially. Without making the software be useful to people from the get go, it is incredibly hard to get people to test or contribute code to your project, making completing it nearly impossible for any problem of significant size. 1.0 in this sense is reserved for meeting the original goal of the project, or becoming fully featured enough to compare well with other programs in the same niche, which can take months or years depending on the problem being solved. In the case of VLC, if they had used the numbering schemes that commercial software projects do their 1.0 release might be a 3.0 or 4.0 release. You can read more about how open source software development works in [The Cathedral and the Bazaar](http://catb.org/esr...)." - Sam Levine

getting syntax highlighting to work with .module and .install files. - Sam Levine

"Did you try using Winetricks? I've found this to be helpful in running some Windows software on Linux." - Sam Levine

"How is Mono more likely to violate patents than DotGNU? As I understand it both are cleanroom implementations of the CLI (Common Language Infrastructure)." - Sam Levine

"When I was 14 (this was 1996) I was trading mp3s with people on a 14.4 modem. Songs took about a half an hour to transfer (this made lan parties very handy). Today I buy about 2-3 CDs a year, because I have a job. I'd buy more music if there was more that didn't suck. This may be an anecdote, but obsessing over "lost sales" among people that "cannot afford to buy your product" seems to be a "waste of time" to me." - Sam Levine