So in a little over two hours yesterday, everything changed. It's the same store with exactly the same merchandise, but the entire business is different. I've got the same prices as the big guys. Hmmm. Haggling is gone. Instead of asking why something costs so much, the initial reaction has been - how can you sell it so cheap? Uhm, because I want you to buy the friggin' thing. The only way I'm going to make any money is to sell a dozen of 'em. Nice one, cheap one... doesn't matter - as long as you let me swipe your card. Don't bother comparing prices. If the other guys have this instrument, you'll pay the same thing. If it's any of the other small stores, you'll pay a lot more. You might find it cheaper online, but you won't have a chance to actually feel it and play it. So just buy it already.

SCO sued IBM for a b-b-b-b-billion dollars and revoked their Unix license. They're blaming said company for leaking Unix source code into the Linux code base. Well, yeah ... it might look a bit questionable if Microsoft sued IBM. But now that SCO is marching to the beat of McSoft money, the stage is set for a complete entaglement of Linux in legalities; from which it is presumed it will never recover.

I'm sure glad I don't work for RedHat. Now that we know what the game is, you can bet that the Red Hatter is firmly in Ballmer's (i.e. Gate's) gunsights. They're toast. First they trace stolen code to IBM, and then file an injunction on RedHat to prevent them from selling stolen intellectual property. The Fortune 500 use RedHat Linux. The Fortune 500 caves and wipes Linux from all their disks, replacing them with (surprise?) Windows, which is then the only operating system that's legal to use. Well, OK, there's still the MacOS, but watch out - because some of that code came indirectly from (surprise?) Linux! Gates and Ballmer then rule the universe, because they have the law firmly on their side this time. They can claim that they have nothing to do with the whole mess. They just bought a Unix license for about 750,000 times the normal corporate price; which they don't intend to use for anything. Nothing wrong with that...