Posts by Morely Dotes

Stealth bombers to get bunker-nobbling weapons

Who is the attacker? Who cares?

"It would be very surprising if Iran was not building as heavily fotified a position as possible, since an attack by Israel is almost certain should they get near a position of possesing a nuclear capability."

Frankly, I don't care if Iran's nuclear facilities are destroyed by the Smurfs, just so long as someone does it. There are enough lunatics in the world who have control of nuclear weapons already; Earth doesn't need another whacko like the President of Iran with the ability to start a nuclear war.

Project Thor makes more sense that air-launched MOABs, however: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

When 'God Machines' go back to their maker

Shame on you, Andrew!

While your remark, "The Mac UI appeared at a time of character mode interfaces where even getting the simplest job done required considerable investment and study. Computers at the time had several problems with accessibility, interoperability, and general ease-of-use - not to mention getting any kind of print-quality graphics work done - and the Mac provided an elegant interface to them all," is technically true, the *only* thing that established the Mac in business was hype - and pre-existing familiarity with the Apple brand. The Atari ST and Commodore Amiga both offered a vastly-superior UI to the IBM PC (and Atari's was even based on the same Graphics Environment Manager which underlay Apple's Mac UI), but neither of them had the brand recognition of Apple - which was brought about by Apple donating hundreds of thousands of Apple II PCs to schools - nor the budget for a media blitz.

I'm no Apple fanboi - I wouldn't have an iPhone if it were given to me gratis - but one thing Jobs does very well is hype. And, after all, the brainless yuppies need their bling; the iPhone meets that need very well, as the most expensive iPod available.

Dell paddles 'blade everything' HP

Who do you think you're kidding?

'"We think (HP's) strategy is impractical for customers looking to reduce IT cost and complexity and aiming to take maintenance and operations to 30 per cent of the IT budget and innovation to 70 per cent," Dell said.'

So you want 70 percent of my IT budget to be spent on innovation? Nuts to that! I intend to make sure that 70 percent of the IT budget is spent on IT people.

BT feels the need for 50Mb speed

UK not lagging

"UK always lags behind the rest of the world, in EVERYTHING!"

Not true! Here in the USA, there are vast areas with nothing except dialup available - and many of those don't even have local (e.g., no extra per-minute surcharge) Internet access at all. My day job offers only a maximum 33 kbps for our users on dialup. Those with BYOI are limited to 348 kbps.

Personally, I have 15 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up, which is adequate for my own small business. Having it on fibre means no interference caused by RF or electrical storms (barring what comes in over the power lines), and that's nice, too.

European court protects file sharers

Solution: Boycott music

Don't buy *any* music. Don't listen to Internet radio (the netcasters pay a royalty to the labels). Don't go to live concerts. Make exceptions *ONLY* for musicians who sell their works directly to the consumer.

One year of the loss of, say, 60% of gross revenues, and the RIAA will be out of business. Then we can discuss a fair distribution of the purchase price of music - with at least 80% of it going to the artists.

CD-meets-DVD launched

I'll have an empty one, please

The idiots still haven't figured out that CD sales have slumped because the *content* of the disks sucks raw cess. Well, that, and the fact that only a moron would pay for something that helps support the RIAA.

I buy music CDs *only* direct from the artists. Here in Portland, OR, we are blessed wit ha nubmer of very tallented solo and group musical acts, who produce and sell their CDs directly to the audience at live performances. Mind you, I don't buy many - probably a half-dozen or so in the past several years; but I won't buy *any* other audio CDs.

EU officially endorses DVB-H

Mobile Broadcast Video: As Useful As Tits on The Pope

And that's assuming there were uniform standards across the whole planet.

I own a media player with a 4-inch display (that's 10cm for you people who actually have real standards). It's OK for watching video on an airline flight, since my knees are already up my nose anyhow, and the screen has to be close enough to my face that I can lick it. Anything smaller would be much like attempting to view a rugger from a distance of 2 km, without a telescope or field glasses. Why bother? The radio coverage would give me a better idea what's happening.

Official: BlackBerry gets Wi-Fi, VoIP

The question is....

Where in North America can I buy a femtocell base station? There's nothing wrong with my existing handset, but I'm fed up with airtime charges.

Behind the Apple vs Universal breakup

No more Gordon crap on El Reg, please

"I believe Universal is right in seeking a royalty on electronics sales."

How much were you paid to believe that, Mr. Gordon?

My day job is deeply involved with setup and maintenance of computers for a business. We (the I.T. department) make it next to impossible (nothing is ever completely impossible) to copy music using the company's computers, and the penalties for even attempting to do so include termination of employment.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for our company to pay Universal - nor any other "music" (I use the term loosely, as my personal opinion would be more closely equal to "cacophonous feces") company - one single mill for the computers we have bought.

Anyone who says we should is clearly either an idiot, or a shill for the record labels.

Sony snaps Grouper shut, gives Crackle a pop

Fool me once...

"Crackle is offering up what it described as a "streaming entertainment network" that will see wannabe filmmakers go head-to-head"

Oh, _Streaming._. I thought it said _steaming_. Well, you can imagine what that made me think about filmakers going head-to-head...

Anyhow, it's Sony. It's inherently evil, and it's almost certainly chock-full of malicious software designed to prevent your PC from playing YouTube videos, DVDs, or anything else that Sony didn't get paid to allow you to view.

Antigua attorney speaks out on landmark WTO case

Misdirection? Or remote direction?

@ Will Leamon: "So we now have senators getting angry letters about interstate and foreign gambling."

Doubtful. Oh, perhaps they're getting angry letters from Southern Baptist preachers whose weekly "offering" revenues have declined, but even someone as stupid as G W Bush can see those guys aren't a voting majority.

What's much more likely is that this whole operation is under the direction of the Bush/Cheney Administration at this time, and one of the DOJ's ancient holdovers from Prohibition first took an interest in 1998.

And the whole thing is yet another Bush Administration attempt to misdirect the public's attention away from his abject failure in domestic social and economic policies.

Zune DRM stripped

Well, actually...

@ Ron: "They're doomed to create something that'll be broken!" What, again? I cite MS-DOS 4.0, Windows 3.0, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista (and a whole lot of other versions of Windows and MS-DOS), MS Office...

@ Giles Jones: "Who has one?" Obsidian, who lives in Colombia, owner of http://www.commissionedcomic.com, has one. He likes it, although he's a Microsoft fanboi, and it caused him to lose about 800 megs or more of MP3s... He's stil la good guy.

How to recover your 'unrecoverable' laptop

Downrate this article

Hardware/software review from someone who appears to understand neither hardware nor software.

This ends up looking like a sales pitch. As a review, it is unacceptable. As a sales pitch, it fails to convince me; the package is not compelling.

Ballmer talks up software as a service

All I can say is...

The response to "Ballmer knows that, and that's why he kept it straight this week" can be found at http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/90.html

And there's no way anyone could possibly convince Ballmer to disobey Bill Gates when he gives a command like that.

Court denies stay of internet radio execution

Sarcasm or cretinism? Re: Consider both sides..

"No-one considers the value the labels and majors bring - without their marketing and artist development skills we wouldn't have any of the big megastar acts that drive so many CD sales today"

Does the expression "Bullshit!" mean anything to you, buddy?

The labels and the majors bring one thing and one thing only - entry into Wal-Mart's bargain bins.

Artists can get their music showcased on Internet radio for free, and they don't have to pay the labels for "studio time" that way. Look up "Jonathan Coulton" for a little-known artist who's making his way without the "help" (aka "extortion and smothering") of a major label nor the RIAA.

Or, if they have no talent whatsoever, they can sign with a major, record a CD that sounds exactly the same as all the other talentless shites out there, and disappear from the music scene in a few weeks when the label replaces them with yet another clone of their band.

Funny: The RIAA tried raising prices, and that didn't increase CD sales. So they tried suing their customers, and that didn't increase CD sales. Now they're trying to shut down Internet radio, thus ensuring there won't be anyone listening to music without buying a pig in a poke. Want to bet that doesn't increase CD sales, either?

"Many have big mortgages and school fees, etc to cover - it must be hard for them to deal with the changes affecting their industry today and we should all be prepared to do something to help out"

I'm prepared to help them find a job hauling garbage - the guys I have talked to say the pay is great, but there's high turnover. Record company execs should be very familiar with this work already, if what's on the current crop of CDs means anything.

Geese, golden eggs, and stupid pigopolists

Apparently the music industry wants to shut down Internet radio - and thus shut down the only viable outlet for showcasing new music tracks, other than iTunes.

The result of this astronomical royalty increase will be (1) irreparable harm to Internet radio broadcasters, and (2) the end of legitimate Internet music radio.

What will take the place of legitimate Internet radio? Well, let's see... Does anyone remember ever hearing about a thing called "P2P music file sharing?" It's already gone "underground" where the RIAA can't even see it. Want to bet traffic increases by, oh, say, 1200% or more?

US judge pushes infringing YouTube clip in decision

Hmmm. Isn't the clip now officially part of the "public record?"

It would appear, prima facie, that linking to the YouTube video in his opinion would make the clip a part of the court record, and thus, if YouTube has removed the clip, they are apparently guilty of tampering with the court records after the decision.

An easy solution would be for YouTube to provide a copy of the "offending" media for attachment to the court's file.

Watching MLB scream at the court to expunge their "property" would be amusing.

Oz mayor stole cash for Darth Vader voice distorter

Ah, clearly...

This is what is meant by "political Darwinism!"

I'll just get me coat...

Datawind PocketSurfer 2 handheld web browser

Hmmm, no wifi == no sale

Put Wifi in this unit so I don't have to pay a monthly fee on top of my ISP charges, and it's a winner. As it sits, however, it looks like more yuppie bling to me - mostly useless flash, intended to impress one's equally-shallow friends. I'm sure Paris Hilton will have one as soon as she can get it.

T-Mobile in court over Truphone call blocks

An optional judgement

Allow T-Mobile to choose: either connect to *any* number dialed by T-Mobile customers (other than those identified by officially-designated law enforcement officers as fruadulent, such as the US$25/minute "hidden toll" calls to the Bahamas), or cease doing business of any kind whatsoever in any territory under the jurisdiction of Commonwealth courts. If T-Mobile chooses to withdraw from the Commonwealth, then they are required to bear all costs of converting their existing customers to other networks (of the customers' choice) in a speedy fashion, with the minimum inconvenience to customers.

It seems quite reasonable to allow the network operator a choice. After all, there is nothing that compels T-Mobile to do business in the Commonwealth, other than a desire for profits.

Whole Foods CEO went after rival as a message board troll

Looks like what the SEC calls...

"insider trading."

It's the opposite of "pump & dump," and it's certainly illegal. If Whole Foods fails to dump him, then the company is at risk for illegal insider trading.

Unfortunately (in this case; as a rule, I'd call it good luck), I am not a lawyer. I am, however, available to apply a little bit of "persuasion" for the right price. Interested parties may contact me through my associate Garret, sometimes to be found in his office in Macunado Street.

What's al-Qaeda's take on the iPhone?

El Reg is the new dictionary.com

"$PERSON is a Second Life consultant and Web 2.0 leverage advisor." A very long-winded way of saying "wanker."

Funny article. Made me smile. Please continue.

'You're a f**king moron'

Mixed feelings

While the wanker in question may well be entitled to use an @ac.uk address (because he's an alumnus, perhaps, or a professor on loan to $US_COMPUTER_CORP), I still like the concept of asking his iBoss WTF he thinks he's playing at.

After all, if *I* post a flame, I'm not pretending to represent Google while posting from $DAY_JOB, but if an employee of the company which sells a reviewed product appears to be pretending to be somewhere else, that's what we call "astroturf," and a fake grassroots critic is a reprehensible c*nt. Even if he does work for the Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Speedy evolution saves blue moon butterflies

Facts vs. Religion, or, Never Argue With An Idiiot

"Surely it's useless to point out there's a definite difference between evolution and speciation"

It certainly is pointless. The religious nutters think (and I use the term "think" in the most charitable way possible) that "intelligent design" is scientific; ergo, they wouldn't recognize real science it if jumped up and bit them on the nose.

Personally, I think all those people who think religion should rule in the real world should go live in Iran, where religion *does* rule in the real world.

Trying to explain scientific fact to the religious is about us useful as teaching kelp to drive, and about as much fun as masturbating with a cheese grater.

Microsoft pushes Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy'

Oh, great. More crapware to uninstall.

Life didn't suck enough with "preview" versions of Norton/Symantec/McAfee or whatever other crappy and ineffective AV, stupid games that surreptitiously track your Internet browsing, badly-designed music stores integrated into the Media Player, poorly-performing CD burning software, user-hostile Zip file handling... Well, you get the picture. So now Microsoft wants to try to work around the edges of the US Government's anti-trust division by calling the bundled Office package "trialware." Ugh.

It's bad enough that I have to have MS Office 2007 on one of my work computers so I can support it within the workplace; there's no way in Hell I'll ever allow it on my home network. Furthermore, OpenOffice does everything that I really need to day anyhow (OK, I have to add Thunderbird and Sunbird to get email and calendar pacakages, but the total cost is still zero).

It still baffles me that any *competent* PC user (or worse, CTO) would deliberately spend that kind of money for inferior software.

Student's suspension for IM buddy icon upheld by US court

They've done the kid a favor

After all, in 10 or 15 years, from "Weed sport" school may be sufficient grounds to arrest the former student for use and distribution of narcotics, and rendition to Guantanamo as a suspected "enemy combatant."

Now he's moved away, presumably to some school that doesn't have any obvious relation to marijuana, the Evil Weed which clearly causes all terrorist and anti-Republican activities.

Brit troops release badger plague on Basra

An entirely new meaning...

...to the name "Predator" on so-called drone aircraft. Want to bet they aren't being piloted by, or at least delivering, badgers?

One can hardly wait to see Iraqi religious militia whackos polymorphed by Alliance wizards into sheep, turtles, and pigs, and then decimated by the crack badger commando troopers.

Microsoft's software IP prophylactic

Microsoft Decepticons unleashed!

'Lindeman says developers will need to take care how they implement the SVM to avoid potential performance problems: "We will be putting out best practices and white papers on how to do this correctly. If done improperly, there could be some performance costs since the code is actually transformed."'

Such a bold admission of guilt is unlike Microsoft. Perhaps they used their own "security" software to decide what they should admit to...

Lightweight Java security app aims to pep up m-commerce

c-commerce? WTF?

I know e-commerce, and m-commerce, but what is c-commerce?

BBC Trust to hear open sourcers' iPlayer gripes

DRM? No, it's not DRM

@ Giles Jones: "DRM" stands for "digital Rights Management." that name is deliberately deceptive. The purpose of DRM is to knowingly, willfully, and maliciously deny to the consumer certain rights which are guaranteed to him by copyright law; specifically, the right to make a backup copy, the right to play the media on any device designed for such playback, and the right to enjoy the media without other restrictions, beyond the legitimate concerns of commercial (mis)use and unlicensed redistribution. DRM does not address commercial misuse, nor does it address unlicensed redistribution; anyone interested in doing those is quite capable of circumventing DRM; it's a trivial exercise.

I propose that instead of the term DRM, all knowledgeable people should in future refer to this technology by the truthful phrase, "Technology User's Rights Denial System," or "TURDS" for short. Many people will happily buy a device or a software package containing DRM, but if they knew it contained TURDS, there would be very few buyers (possibly farmers in need of fertilizer, but surely no one with a healthy mind).

And, let's be honest - the Beeb's latest player is just full of TURDS.

Experian rejects ID theft notification proposal

Privacy? No? How about publishing then?

Experian doesn't want to notify people whose data they sell that they may have been victimized by ID theft.

All right. How about this, then? It is inherently obvious that the data collected by Experian is the intellectual property of the person to whom it refers. Experian should be forced to pay standard publisher's rates (to be determined by a board composed of publishing house financial officers, said board to be paid by Experian at a rate to be betermined by the board) *by the word*. The payment must be made to the person whose file Experian wishes to sell, and any sale of that data prior to the person accepting payment should be treated as criminal copyright infringement.

MySpace succumbs to The Buttock

Suggestion for Myspace

Tell the French to come to the USA and try to enforce their silly judgment.

Ballmer charts future of online togetherness

He said WHAT?!?

"Ballmer encouraged partners to begin by reselling hosted Exchange services such as email security."

Exchange? Security? How are those related? Oh, I see. It's like "there's no such thing as a useless man; he can always serve as a bad example to others."

We've recently been forced to move to Exchange 2007 at $DAY_JOB. It's more difficult to configure than previous versions, and if my inbox is anything to judge by, even less secure.

Tories offer record industry cash for righteousness

Does *no one* read history any more?

"What if they said there are no more record companies, that it's all state owned."

It didn't work with tractors in Russia, why would it work with music in the West?

"If you really want somewhere that takes privacy seriously, has a good quality of life AND supports personal freedoms you need to look towards Norway, Sweden or Canada."

Note that all three of those countries also suffer amazingly horrid weather in Winter, and (as one should expect) low populations, and high suicide rates. Well, perhaps Canada doesn't have high suicide rates. It's hard to tell: "Did this bloke off himself, or just fall over shoveling his front walk, and freeze to death before anyone noticed?"

Microsoft points robots toward point upgrade

Now if only the Lizard Army would adopt this kit...

"Microsoft says the update will allow developers to more easily create advanced scenarios and software applications for robots on a wider variety of platforms at a lower cost."

Microsoft says a lot of things. Anyone gullible enough to swallow their hype *deserves* to lose the human-machine war.

Let's hope the machines are buying it; I'm certainly not. Ask any software developer - there's only one logical way to pronounce "wince."

US claims top spam spot

This puts paid to the "Vista is secure" drivel

Microsoft made huge claims about the security of Vista, and has likewise crowed about the "amazing" rollout rate of their latest attempt at making an operating system.

Since the USA is the first place such high-priced fluffery rolls out, it follows that most of their Vista sales have been in the US. And, since most third-party security software doesn't work on Vista, the only security most Vista users have is whatever was built-in at Redmond.

You can see the results: Massive new botnets in the USA.

Time to blacklist blacklists

Lack of experience? Or a vested initerest?

"Moving on to blacklists of known spam-generating IPs and malware-serving sites, we start to see significant problems emerge with this particular approach to protection."

The only "problems" it has is for the well-known spam- and malware-source ISPs, such as the Turkish state ISP, the largest Israeli ISPs, China's State-sponsored malicious attack network (the whole country, as fasr as I can see), Korea, Thailand, the Philippines...

If you are not expecting email or other legitimate traffic from a well-known "problem" IP range, then the best possible way to prevent attacks from that range is to drop their traffic.

But to expect *only* one solution to fix *all* problems is, frankly, stupid.

Turing test challenges spam filters

It's irrelevant here

We block the ISP sending the spam (or a /24 if it's a huge ISP), so spammers have to keep infesting more zombies. The same ISPs - a group of about a dozen - are responsible for 99% of the spam not coming from Asia. Of course, Asian IP space is block-on-sight.

Vista aligned with good IT practice

This is the second time I've seen this "survey"

The first time was in _Computerworld_ magazine.

The overall tone and much of the phrasing was so similar as to make me suspicious that both writers took their "data" from a Microsoft press release.

My day job *is* pretty much the IT Department, and we do enough monitoring to know what's what (when there are only two people in IT, a lot of formal monitoring isn't really necessary). We plan to deploy Vista *only* when we are forced to do so because we can't get XP any more. We do have several Vista machines in the IT Department - for testing, and familiarization. Our overall impression is that it's slow, clunky, looks and operates like it's designed for use by unprofessional 4-year-old children, and has more annoyances that XP did at initial rollout.

When a corporation pays bloggers to start a fake grassroots movement, we call it "astroturf." What should we call a fake wave of favorable reviews?

Google slapped with libel claim

Well, here's the *opinion* of a US reader

IT is my opinion (which is "protected speech" under US Federal law) that Brian Retkin is a gormless git who is being manipulated by his legal representation.

Of course, it's also possible that his legal representation are the gormless gits, and that Brian Retkin is manipulating them.

But my opinion is that Retkin is the idiot.

Saudi hackers scalp MS UK

And they wonder why they can't keep it secure?

"Microsoft.co.uk is run using IIS6"

Let's see, build a server on an unsecure OS, then throw a pile of security holes on top, add an open invitation to "heck me," sit back and wait 15 seconds...

Microsoft's Silverlight gets Linux treatment

Let's see... A Microsoft "competitor" for Adobe's crapware...

Silverlight... Flash... Who frackin' cares? They're both proprietary, both trash, and both serve a single purpose - filling the coffers of greedy bastards who fliut standards and try to push their own shite on the Internet.

Robot brains? Can't make 'em, can't sell 'em

Blue Screen of Death again?

"We make autonomous mars rovers and autonomous cars nowadays. We are solving problems like dynamic balance (walking), scene analysis and route planning. Yeah, there's no Windows API for it..."

Of course there's no Windows API for it. Can you imagine the chaos that would result from releasing robots which used Windows as their "brain kernel?" Would you want a Windows robot performing surgery on you or a loved one, or "fixing" a nearby nuclear reactor, or piloting an orbital reentry vehicle above your home?

But the basic "ability to learn" *has* been built, and the pilot "brain" is under study; Google for it. Of course, the problem right now is that it takes as long to train the robot as it does to train a human baby...

Paris Hilton says jail term has changed her

Who is Paris Hilton? And it's buffalo.

Who is this drunken slut bimbo you mention called "Paris Hilton?" Other than having been born wealthy, what has she ever done that is worthy of being mentioned in the news?

An the "mystery meat" she got in the pokey is called "buffalo" because that's the critter who grew it.

The decline of antivirus and the rise of whitelisting

It's not that hard to find out

@ Dillon Pyron: "I have one domain that is blacklisted by Spamhaus. And they won't tell us why."

Tell me the domain, and I bet I can find out why in less than 5 minutes - without asking Spamhaus, most probably.

BBC iPlayer finally hits the streets

Protest in response

"The BBC will press ahead with its Windows-only on-demand service when it launches the iPlayer on July 27, the broadcaster announced today."

In response to the BBC's decision to implement their "pay Microsoft to watch our content" plan, I have firewalled the BBC's IP space so that my users are unable to view anything whatsoever at the BBC's Web site. Effectively, my customers will be told that the BBC *has* no presence on the Web; instead they will get an error page stating "site is unreachable."

TorrentSpy filters pirated videos

A very, very BAD idea

@ Alex Barlow: "They told you the restrictions in advance"

Really? Such as the Sony/BMG rootkit which was "announced" so loudly in advance of Sony publishing millions of CDs that infected computers with malicious software?

FACT: The RIAA and MPAA exist for the sole purpose of *preventing* consumers from exercising their rights under copyright law. They may have once served other purposes, but that's all in the past now.

Lies, lies, and damned falsified statistics

@ Robert: "The millions of dollars a year companies lose to pirated copyrighted material" don't exist, at least not losses to users sharing files. Those people were never going to buy the DVDs or CDs anyway (or, for those who might, they are going to go do that *in addition* to downloading the files; sharing is used by that sort of people as a "sampling" service, to help them decide which to buy and which to ignore).

The only *real* losses sustained are due to high-volume disk-duplication operations, selling pirated knock-offs of the "real" DVDs/CDs (usually in the Far East). It is arguable whether the losses in this case are the retail price of the number of disks sold (had they been legitimate), or the actual amount spent by consumers on knock-offs. I'd vote towards the latter.

Microsoft finds good facts to sell Windows Vista

You're out of touch, Mike!

"Mike Nash, Windows product management corporate vice president, conceded a problem existed while also trying to downplay the issue. He attributed 80 per cent of user complaints to 4,000 drivers."

No, Mike, drivers are not the biggest issue. You've released *yet another* version of Windows that:

(1) Hides controls that the users are accustomed to in new and frequently obscure places;

(2) Has yet another annoying user interface that's different to the one that all Windows users have chosen (when they could) since 1995;

(3) Runs like a 1-legged dog on any machine that isn't top-of-the-line and outrageously expensive;

(4) Is touted as "secure" and yet still suffers from many of the same old vulnerabilities in the tacked-on-and-nailed-in applications like Internet Explorer;

(5) And is priced like gold, but made of manure.

People aren't buying Vista because it's not good enough for business, and too sloppy and resource-hungry for gamers. Duh!

Buy a clue, Mike. Surely Microsoft can afford one or two small clues. After all, you've got that war chest that you set aside to prosecute the Linux developers that are "infringing" on 235 patents which you refuse to name (probably because they either don't exist, or won't stand up to scrutiny in court).

Open source 'leaving Asia behind'

Wrong, wrong, wrong, from beginning to end!

"He suggested that while Asian cultures are evolving and opening up to constructive criticism, one option for now might be for open source companies to create less free-wheeling and more protected environments for would-be developers to collaborate in."

No! Absolutely not! The basis of open-source software quality is peer review. I don't care a fig what culture the developer came from; the culture of open source is "we're going to look at your code, and we're going to tell you *and everyone else* where it needs fixing."

If you want to immigrate to the open source community from wherever you happen to have been spawned, learn the culture and embrace it.

If you can't adapt to making quality software that stands up to peer review, go work for Microsoft.