The Mandelbear's Musings

02:14 pm - Steampunk in the NY Times

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - New York Times

It is also the vision of steampunk, a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines. First appearing in the late 1980s and early ’90s, steampunk has picked up momentum in recent months, making a transition from what used to be mainly a literary taste to a Web-propagated way of life.

12:29 pm - What is friendship?

One of these days there's going to be a Defining My Terms post on friendship. This isn't it -- right now I'm still in the early phases of gathering data.

But here is A Thought On The Nature Of Friendship by theferret just to get that data-gathering process out in the open. Note that I don't really agree with it. He says, "I think that, by and large, there are two types of close friends: Those who are committed to being a net bonus in your life, and those who want you to be where they're comfortable."

That's his definition of "close friendship". Or two. I've seen others recently, even more widely separated, ranging between "someone I can tell anything to" to "someone who calls me up every day to see if they can help". In my mind, the term covers such a broad range that it seems to be as much a barrier as a bridge to understanding. Like limits, it's probably something you have to negotiate up front once a relationship gets to a certain point. I've seen all sorts of havoc caused by people working from different definitions of "friendship" and "closeness". Caused some of it, too.

Something I haven't seen in anyone else's definition so far, but that's definitely part of mine and Colleen's, is the sense that the friendship itself is important to both parties. That it's something worth almost any amount of struggle, and compromise if necessary, to preserve. Worth fighting for. We work out our problems and our differences, sometimes too loudly and sometimes too long, because we're friends -- perhaps by totally different definitions -- and intend to stay that way.

06:52 am - Hmm...

I wonder whether this explains a few things...

08:13 am - TSA: Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions

Here, courtesy of cpap.com's mailing list, is the TSA's official web page on Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions.

[...] TSA has established a program for screening of persons with disabilities and their associated equipment, mobility aids, and devices. Our program covers all categories of disabilities (mobility, hearing, visual, and hidden). As part of that program, we established a coalition of over 70 disability-related groups and organizations to help us understand the concerns of persons with disabilities and medical conditions. These groups have assisted TSA with integrating the unique needs of persons with disabilities into our airport operations.

Includes pages about CPAP machines, wheelchairs, Assistive Devices and Mobility Aids, and quite a lot more. Think they've taken a bit of flak over this stuff? Take advantage of it if you need to.

08:14 am - Crystallography in the kitchen

The Physics of Chocolate (from this post by gmcdavid.)

Includes an actual cooking tip, down in the last two paragraphs, for tempering chocolate more reliably.

07:22 pm - Books online

There are lots of places to find books online. The Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania seems to be pointing to many of them.

(Indirectly from a locked post by kshandra.)

07:54 pm - Triple squee!

This episode of BoingBoing TV, recorded this year at Consonance, features not only a great cover shot of my CD, Coffee, Computers, and Song, but a discussion of one of the songs on it (Vampire Mega-Byte), and people singing a filk of Rocket Rider's Prayer. So I'm a very happy filker.

(Via this post by hsifyppah. Thank you!)

08:30 am - Travel Tips: computer security

There's a really great post on tips for airplane travel over on sweetmusic_2 that I've been meaning to point to for a long time. Go read it, especially if you haven't traveled by air much.

This post isn't very closely related at all; it just seemed like a convenient excuse for a link. This post is more directly related to this post on Techdirt.com and related matters, which point out that customs agents on both sides of the US/Canadian border are searching and in some cases seizing laptops and cell phones.

OK, we all know that keeping sensitive data on your laptop is a bad idea. And we all know that you can encrypt your home directory -- at least on Linux and Mac. And you can use something like TrueCrypt to make a complete virtual encrypted disk. Both will protect your privacy pretty well, but if your laptop gets stolen or seized, you still lose the use of your data. Similarly, you can set a master password in Firefox, but it's probably not going to protect your login cookies, it might be breakable, and customs might be able to force you to reveal it in any case.

So here's a better idea: don't have secrets anywhere on your computer when you cross the border. This is the software equivalent of taking all the metal out of your pockets and using a piece of rope for a belt as you go through the security checkpoint.

This relies on having all of your private data accessible via the web. It has to be either encrypted, or on your home server and accessible through an encrypted tunnel like ssh. Because your connections may be slow, it also helps to minimize what you really need: basically your keychain file(s) and your ssh and gpg private keys.

The private keys will all be protected by long passphrases anyway, if you're doing it right. You can encrypt your browser password file with a master password as well. Your IM client probably keeps your account passwords around; find that file too. If you keep a separate file of website passwords, as I do, you should encrypt that. Now put them all in a directory, zip it up, and encrypt the zip file. Note: do not use your gpg private key for this: it's not going to be on your machine when you need to decrypt the secrets! Use AES and a long passphrase.

Mail the resulting zip file, as an attachment, to yourself on any convenient webmail account. Or put it on a website that you control. If you want to be really safe, use steganography to put it inside an image.

Now delete all your secrets, using a secure deletion program that overwrites all the files with random bits before actually deleting them. Clear your browser cache, history, and cookies, again with a secure deletion program. Go.

When you get to your destination, retrieve the secrets file, decrypt and unzip it, and put everything back in the directories where they belong.

I'll be doing some international traveling in a couple of weeks; by that time I'll have some scripts I can post for you.

06:24 am - This is just plain loathsome...

... in a really good way: Cthuugle.com.

(From this post by tibicina.)

Current Mood: amused

11:51 am - 18th Century tools for the 21st Century shop

18th-century Tools for Every Shop - Popular Woodworking

Eighteenth-century woodworking tools. This 20"-wide piece of mahogany will make a great tabletop when I get it flattened. My long try plane may not be the fastest tool for the job, but I sure am glad I have it. I could never justify purchasing a 24" stationary power planer because I come across stock like this infrequently. This plane allowed me to buy a piece of wood I probably couldn't work otherwise. Eighteenth-century woodworking tools can be restrictive in some ways. In this case, however, my try plane has opened up opportunities I wouldn't have had without it.

gmcdavid

09:31 am - Care and feeding

From this post by the ever-fascinating cadhla we get a link to The Nerd Handbook. While not quite an operating manual for your friendly local Mandelbear, it comes pretty close.

I'll write one specifically for me in my copious spare time.

05:28 pm - The $75 Laptop Looms

Pixel Qi - Home

What computing can be, the XO laptop was just the first step.

Pixel Qi is currently pursuing the $75 laptop, while also aiming to bring sunlight readable, low-cost and low-power screens into mainstream laptops, cellphones and digital cameras.

Spinning out from OLPC enables the development of a new machine, beyond the XO, while leveraging a larger market for new technologies, beyond just OLPC: prices for next-generation hardware can be brought down by allowing multiple uses of the key technology advances. Pixel Qi will give OLPC products at cost, while also selling the sub-systems and devices at a profit for commercial use.

05:13 pm - Wi-Fi security? Don't need it!

Security expert Bruce Schneier, in a Wired article titled Steal This Wi-Fi, writes

Whenever I talk or write about my own security setup, the one thing that surprises people -- and attracts the most criticism -- is the fact that I run an open wireless network at home. There's no password. There's no encryption. Anyone with wireless capability who can see my network can use it to access the internet.

To me, it's basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea. But to some observers, it's both wrong and dangerous.

09:25 am - ASCAP's Creative Commons FUD unfudded

Commons Misunderstandings: ASCAP on Creative Commons (Lessig Blog)

ASCAP's essay, "Common Understanding: 10 Things Every Music Creator Should Know About Creative Commons Licensing" nicely highlights some important considerations that any musician should review before using a CC license. Unfortunately, however, it also continues some common misunderstandings about Creative Commons. I've reprinted, and responded, to these in the extended entry below.

11:18 am - Google: some analysts understand it, and some don't

Techdirt: Google's Real Innovation: Recognizing The Power Of Complementary Goods

Of business pundits these days, I think the one I enjoy reading the most is Nicholas Carr -- and it's not because I agree with him, but because he's the most challenging to understand when I think he's wrong. Carr is amazingly smart, often sifting through a lot of hype to pull out some really key and important insights and making them clear and easy to understand. What's amazing, however, is that all too often, he takes all of those really great insights and jumps to a totally ridiculous and unsupported conclusion. As I've pointed out before, as you read what he says, you agree with all those really smart insights, and if you're not careful, you can accidentally agree with the conclusion he draws -- even if it's not supported by all those insights. His latest is an article where he argues that Google is not a company worth emulating when it comes to innovation because it has a unique business model that is really based on providing complementary goods (basically almost any use of the internet) to encourage more sales for its key good (ads). The fact that Google uses complementary goods to help make its core business bigger is a key insight that too few people have expressed clearly, so it's great to see Carr call that out.

10:34 pm - Any database admins reading this?

Go read this!

Don't forget to mouse over it and check out the title (mistakenly called the alt-text).

04:06 pm - Impressive video clips

I don't normally post links to video clips, but these (all found on gizmodo.com) are exceptional:

Amazing Rube Goldberg Machine Goes On and On, Does Nothing

As advertised. The most impressive I've seen -- must have taken days to set up.

Video of the Motion-Sensing Wave LED Coffee Table in Action

Surely $2500 isn't too much to pay for something this beautiful, especially when you realize it's also a cat toy...

Renault's Auto Ballet of Destruction

Slow-motion car ads are a dime a dozen, but how often do you see one designed to show off the fact that your cars are top-rated in a crash test? The finale is, um..., impressive.

08:20 am - Too shiny

MAKE: Blog: Crazed steampunk cooling solution

While checking inbound links to his Steampunk Workshop, MAKE pal Jake von Slatt stumbled on this amazing steampunk casemod on a Polish modding forum. Really amazing, with needle guages, lots of lighting F/X, a porthole with clockworks inside, and lots of old school plumbing hardware

Current Mood: impressed

01:42 pm - 3-D printing on the cheap

Desktop Factory's cheapo 3D printer is coming - Engadget

Tinkerers, schemers, makers and DIY-buffs: grab your ball-peen hammer and heaviest piggy bank, because you're about to need a loan. A company called Desktop Factory is going to make your 3D-printing dreams a serious reality with the introduction of its 125ci 3D printer, a $4,995 hunk of concept-plastic magic which could possibly represent a paradigmatic shift for the state of three-dimensional printing for the masses.

10:45 am - Just don't fold 1000 of them!

Boing Boing: Origami Cthulhu
( the horror! the horror! )

Current Mood: scared

04:49 pm - As if an actual emergency wasn't bad enough...

... imagine having to use this Hello Kitty Emergency Gadget to survive it!

(from engadget)

( the horror! )

Current Mood: enthralled

10:46 pm - While we're on the subject of copyright...

Here is an article by Cory Doctorow in Locus in praise of fanfic. (From andpuff.)

And here is Melancholy Elephants by Spider Robinson, a 25-year-old meditation on the stifling effects of perpetual copyright that is now more relevant than ever. (From wcg.)

09:37 am - Filk on TV

For those on my friends list who want to know what I do on the weekends, and for the filkers on the list who just want to see a well-done segment on mainstream media, this article and video clip from Atlanta's public television station is worth a look. OK, maybe public television isn't exactly mainstream, but it's close. It was filmed at GAFilk this January; some people might recognize the old coot with a funny-looking guitar singing about robots.

(Seen on filk, quadrivium, and ladyat; Linux users may have to install some non-free codecs, but it does work.)

04:55 pm - Girl's Guide to Gadgets

Shiny Shiny -- A girl's guide to gadgets

Fun group blog; not necessarily work-safe -- if your boss is reading titles over your shoulder, the "naughty toys" tab might cause you a little trouble.

Current Mood: enthralled

04:41 pm - Good article on switching to Linux

You Can Switch to Linux! - willsmith - Maximum PC

Writing a comprehensive Linux guide is a daunting process—and largely unnecessary. The Linux community does a great job of documenting most of its software, whether it’s the developers actually writing docs or the end users figuring things out and sharing the acquired info with their pals. All the information you need to get running is out there, if you know what to search for on Google, that is.

And that’s where I come in. Books have been written with solutions for all the potential pitfalls the Linux-switcher faces. However, those books are outdated the moment a new version of Linux is released. Instead of just telling you what to do, I’m going to tell you how to do things and explain why you’re doing them. I’m going to focus on the things that are truly a challenge (and poorly documented), but still give you a head start on the easy stuff.

05:25 pm - Cheap 3D printers coming soon?

Desktop Factory to offer up $5,000 3D printer - Engadget

The New York Times article is here.

07:56 pm - Little-known marvels of 20th century engineering...

The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel

(from beamjockey by way of wcg)

09:28 am - Tea snobs take note

Full Bloom Tea -- expensive but very pretty hand-tied tea flowers. (from this post by ohiblather.)

10:45 am - Gun porn

Top 12 Guns for Geeks and Gadget Goons - Gizmodo

Seriously, the idea of everyone being armed is more fearsome than any of these weapons, but then in a specific situation where one lunatic is about to kill a lot of innocent people, we're just sayin', would you rather have a gun, or not?

Current Mood: impressed

02:07 pm - A new take on airships

The Flying Luxury Hotel - Popular Science

This is not a Blimp. It's a sort of flying Queen Mary 2 that could change the way you think about air travel. It's the Aeroscraft, and when it's completed, it will ferry pampered passengers across continents and oceans as they stroll leisurely about the one-acre cabin or relax in their well-appointed staterooms.

Unlike its dirigible ancestors, the Aeroscraft is not lighter than air. Its 14 million cubic feet of helium hoist only two thirds of the craft's weight. The rigid and surprisingly aerodynamic body—driven by huge rearward propellers—generates enough additional lift to keep the behemoth and its 400-ton payload aloft while cruising. During takeoff and landing, six turbofan jet engines push the ship up or ease its descent.

Current Mood: content

08:16 am - Robots and Girls

From BoingBoing comes a link to La erótica del robot. Some of the photos are NSFW, though just barely.

05:16 pm - Adventures in topology

The adventure starts with this post by jenkitty containing directions for knitting a Klein Bottle hat, ganked from this page on one-sided surfaces.

That, of course, immediately led me to remember this hat at the Acme Klein Bottle online store. Somewhere around here I recalled my friend Ted's amusing account of trying to commission a Klein Bottle from a glassblower in Germany. (He eventually succeeded.)

A few more links lead to the geometric topology section of the Geometry Junkyard, and an online book called Math That Makes You Go Wow: A Multi-Disciplinary Exploration of Non-Orientable Surfaces.

Finally, combining non-orientable surfaces with another of jenkitty's interests, I tracked down this appendix to The Ultimate Science Fiction Poetry Guide, which contained the correct text and attribution for a limerick I remembered reading in the December 1968 issue of Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column of Scientific American: it's by the late science fiction author Cyril Kornbluth:

 A burleycue dancer, a pip
 Named Virginia, could peel in a zip;
     But she read science fiction
     And died of constriction
 Attempting a Mobius strip.

(The icon, BTW, is a 120-cell ganked from this Wikipedia article

Current Mood: geeky

09:13 am - By His Noodly Light...

Now this is my kind of holiday lighting

(From BoingBoing )

11:07 am - ... my work here is done

[this was supposed to have been posted about 6pm yesterday. I wasn't paying attention.]

At least for today. Introduced one coworker to ikiwiki, and another to hackaday and Fab@Home. Slowly continuing to wrap my head around the ugly but interesting internals of TiddlyWiki and TiddlyTools.

Think maybe I've spread enough hackish goodness for today?

10:03 am - Jonathan Coulton on NPR

Interview with Jonathan Coulton on NPR this morning.

Here's a link to Coulton's website.

11:52 am - Will Apple's iPhone be an iPhlop?

The Apple phone flop | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Apple, in other words, won't be competing against rather doltish, unstylish companies like the old Compaq. The handset companies move pretty quick and put out new models every few weeks.

Second, Apple has to face the issue of trust. Music players are fairly easy. Songs come out of memory and must be amplified. With cell phones, consumers care mostly about quality of service. Who, really, doesn't expect a new company to conquer all the static and connection issues with their phones? Granted, Apple will use contract manufacturers to assemble their phones, but designing these phones takes experience and talent. And the cell carriers are far deeper into it here.

So when consumers get to that counter at CompUSA, they will debate buying the Apple phone, and even hold it up for a look. But when they whip out the credit card, they'll probably opt for a Motorola.

Current Mood: geeky

04:57 pm - Current style in web design

Yet another article on web design, trying to identify sites with what the author considers good design. In many cases I agree, though he still accepts layouts that only look good if you agree with the designer's choice of font sizes and browser window size.

Current style in web design

This is where I try to sum up the current state-of-the-art in graphic design for web pages, and identify the distinctive features that make a web page look fresh, appealing and easy to use.

I'm glad to say that web design in 2006 is better than ever. And it's not just because there are more web sites out there, so more good stuff to look at. There's still an awful lot of crud too. I just think that more web designers know more about how to design than ever before.

The examples below (which I'll roll over time) show excellent modern graphic design technique. They all look good, and are clear and easy to use.

08:44 am - I'll have to remember this tactic

Ozy and Millie: Faith loophole

Warning: possibly not safe for keyboards.

( ganked comic strip image behind cut )

06:05 pm - Home cooking, Japanese style

From the ever-linkalicious kyburg comes this post linking to Yasuko-san's Home Cooking. Yes, it's also available in Japanese.

09:24 pm - Parenting 101

Parenting 101: After The Fact A recap of all the ways we have screwed up over the years (By melanie by way of kyburg and theferrett; ; also seen via jenkitty.) Good stuff. Been there. Done that. (Still got my sanity, but just barely, and the kids might argue the point.)

08:33 pm - Reverse graffiti

Neatorama » Blog Archive » Soap Not Spray Can: Reverse Graffiti Art.

So, there's this British guy who makes street art by selectively cleaning the grime off of dirty walls.

The tools are simple: A shoe brush, water and elbow grease, he says.

British authorities aren’t sure what to make of the artist who is creating graffiti by cleaning the grime of urban life. The Leeds City Council has been considering what to do with Moose. "I’m waiting for the kind of Monty Python court case where exhibit A is a pot of cleaning fluid and exhibit B is a pair of my old socks," he jokes.

Current Mood: amused

06:46 am - More commentary

Crooks and Liars » Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Bush: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you

(from filkertom)

Current Mood: irate

09:24 am - 9/11 on my friends list

I may come back and post something profound later. For now, I offer a few disjointed links:

filkertom asks

1. Do you really feel safer today than you did five years ago?
2. Do you really feel the actions taken by our government with the stated purpose of protecting us have worked?
3. Do you really feel the actions taken by our government with the stated purpose of protecting us have been worth it?

No, no, and no.

technoshaman points to this post by liz_marcs -- longish, but well worth a read. I'll wait.

interdictor points to the Able Danger article on Wikipedia, which is alarming if true. May need to be taken with a grain of salt, but wouldn't be all that surprising.

min0taur has a few thoughts about the future as we once imagined it, and what 9/11 did to that vision.

theferrett points to this post by 5tephe:

Go out today and do something tangible, that makes the world better.

I think I'll just leave it there for now. My own thoughts can wait for this evening.

Current Mood: cynical

01:09 pm - Latvians clutch sides and cry 'fowl' over Microsoft Vista

Latvians laugh at Vista -- the Inquirer

Microsoft marketers are having a hell of a job establishing the super soaraway operating system in the pecking order in Latvia.

Apparently, whenever they ring up peddling Vista, Latvians burst out laughing because the name means "chicken" or "frumpy woman" in the local lingo.

"Sure, the Microsoft people in the US cant be expected to understand all languages, but this really is funny," he said.

Arvis, an IT manager of a chain of casinos in Riga, was also chuckling about Microsoft Frump. Or Fowl. No, make that Vista.

Current Mood: vastly amused

09:34 pm - cadhla's Concert Advice

cadhla recently posted this excellent set of notes on filk (and other) concerts: the etiquette of requesting one, how to plan your concert, how to prepare for the inevitable goofs and glitches. Kind of hard to describe, so if you ever think you might someday find yourself giving a filk concert, go read it. I'll wait.

Anyone who saw one of cadhla's recent concerts, at OVFF in 2005 or Consonance in 2006, or heard rumors about them, should have a pretty good idea of how qualified she is to give advice of this sort. Many of the comments are worth a read, too.

07:53 am

We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore -- In These Times -- a well-written tirade against the current Republican party, by Garrison Keillor. (From filkerdave)

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

Current Mood: angry

09:27 pm - A false sense of insecurity

Boing Boing: Only traitors try to make us afraid of terrorists

In this mind-blowing, exhaustively researched Cato institute paper by Ohio State University's John Mueller, the case against being afraid of terrorism is laid out in irrefutable logic, backed with credible, documented statistics about terrorism's risks. From the number of fatalities produced by terrorism to the trends in terrorism death to the fact that almost no one has ever died from a military biological agent to the fact that poison gas and dirty bombs in the field do only minor damage -- this paper is the most reassuring and infuriating piece of analysis I've read since September 11th, 2001.

The bottom line is, terrorism doesn't kill many people. Even in Israel, you're four times more likely to die in a car wreck than as a result of a terrorist attack. In the USA, you need to be more worried about lightning strikes than terrorism. The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified.

(PDF link)

This is something I've been saying for a long time. You're much more likely to be killed in a drive-by shooting than in a terrorist attack.

Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any group- ing of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the Sep- tember 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.

And, let's face it, folks: nobody is going to hijack a plane and fly it into a building, ever again. Even unarmed, a planeful of enraged passengers is going to be more than a match for a handful of terrorists. The only thing gained by the "increased" airport security is to make people think the politicians are doing something about the terrorist threat, and to make that threat seem greater than it actually is. Their reasons for doing this are left as an exercise for the reader.

Current Mood: angry

04:54 pm

Jon Udell: Sausage, traffic, and clueless users

Yesterday, as I listened to a podcast about the future of publishing, media, information systems, and social software, I made a list of troublesome words and phrases:

content
consumer
user experience
platform
rich interface
monetization

What's in a name? A lot. The podcasting and AJAX revolutions were mainly linguistic phenomena. Suddenly there were words that crystallized ideas and patterns of behavior that had been evolving for years. We won't solve our problems by coining new buzzwords. But awareness of what our words condition us to think, and not think, has never mattered more.

01:19 pm - Wireless technology: hype and reality

InformationWeek | Wireless Technologies | Bursting The Hype Bubble Of Wireless Technologies | April 10, 2006

The world loves all things wireless--kind of like when the Internet could do no wrong. Like then, hype and hope can drown out reality.

Wireless networks and devices will bring dramatic flexibility and productivity gains to the workplace, though there will be bumps along the way. Employees are going to want to quickly sign up for third-generation cellular, but building the apps to use it is going to be IT's headache. Wireless USB connections are genius--too bad vendor infighting will create buyer confusion. Tracking people and goods by Wi-Fi? Not so fast.

10:39 am - The economics of open source

The Emerging Economics of Open Source Software

Many people have trouble understanding how Open Source could be self-sustaining if it does not operate according to the retail development paradigm. What pays for such software? It is funded directly or indirectly as a cost-center item by the companies that need it. Those companies need a great deal of cost-center, non-differentiating software. They are willing to invest in its creation through the Open Source paradigm because it allows them to spend less on their cost centers by distributing the cost and risk among many collaborators, and makes more efficient use of their software dollar than the retail paradigm. This is essentially the same source of funding that pays for proprietary software. It's important to remember that the software manufacturer isn't the ultimate source of funds: the customer is.