Some of those patents over CSIRO's history have helped fund the organization. As an Aussie taxpayer, I'd rather that some of the funds that are put into CSIRO come back to fund it (which was originally part of the argument in setting the organization up - that it could do research that benefitted Australian science and industry without becoming a drain on the Australian taxpayer).

Other than it being a "flagship Linux project" - the cost benefits to Microsoft of the sort of licensing used by Munich's city council aren't substantial enough that they'd make any extraordinary effort to change what was going on. The project never turned into the sort of unmitigated success that drove other municipalities to adopt Linux. "New Microsoft" even includes a version of Ubuntu on Windows 10, so probably at this stage didn't give much of a shit about what's going on in Munich. On the other hand, the reason that there is so much activity on this from the FOSS side is that it is a "flagship Linux project" and conceding defeat would make it more difficult to argue that Linux is a viable municipal desktop alternative even though, at this point, the lack of awesome success sort of suggests that conclusion anyway.

Set the Windows Update service to a disabled state. Once Patch Tuesday has come and gone, enable it when you have a moment and then manually check for updates. When updates have installed, reset Windows Update service to disabled.

The tech industry has gone from scrappy underdog to juggernaut with 4 of the 5 biggest companies by market cap being tech companies. Unsurprisingly people's attitudes have changed, so the coverage has changed.

Given that you can basically spin up Linux userland stuff with Ubuntu/Bash on Windows Services for Linux - including Compiz - on Windows 10, switching would simply allow them to keep what they have on the Linux side on the same desktop as on the Windows side without resorting to VMs. The big expense in any rollout of this type isn't licensing, it's deployment and maintenance of the environment. Nerds are always more expensive than licenses - especially the nerds with the unique skillset required to manage a Linux desktop production deployment of this complexity.

Smug Slashdot nerds chortling at the working class getting replaced by robotics won't be so smug when a great deal of their own jobs will be replaced by increasingly remarkable automation.

Depends on the conference, but at many sessions will be given by people who are prominent in whatever community the conference is about. Depending on the speaker, you can ask questions during or after the session. But what's really important to understand is that most conferences make a big thing about speakers being accessible to attendees. So if you are attending a conference where there is a speaker who is really knowledgeable about something you want to ask questions about, ping them on some form of social media and ask if you can have some time with them. Many speakers make themselves available for just this sort of thing during conferences and it's surprising how many attendees never take advantage of the opportunity.

Uber is burning through VC cash at a prodigious rate. At some point that will stop. Maybe it will stop before Uber has eradicated the incumbents. Maybe it will happen after Uber has eradicated the incumbents. But if you think that the hammer won't come down on the public at some point so that all those VCs that invested get their fat payout, you're delusional.

There was a nice comment by the writers of "Silicon Valley" about attending TechCrunch Disrupt and seeing a sea of Macbooks. The *perception* is that the majority of top startup developers are all Mac OSX users. Microsoft wants to change that. To Surface Books if possible, but wouldn't give a rats if they were running ThinkPads, Dells, HPs or whatever running Windows OS. If Microsoft can get some of that that TechCrunch Disrupt audience to shift across, they change the perception of Microsoft in a very important demographic. Maybe they get a few more of that audience using Azure over AWS. Maybe a few of them start using other Microsoft services where it makes sense, rather than the default perceived attitude of that audience being to avoid MS products like the plague.

Computers running OSX have substantial developer mindshare. Microsoft wants those developers using Windows PCs. Putting WSL/Bash on Windows so that it's a credible alternative to the 'nix tools available on OSX gives those developers one less reason to avoid using a Windows based OS.

Slashdot on manufacturing jobs being sent offshore: "Suck it up and smell the future. You are just like the buggy whip manufacturers!"
Slashdot on IT jobs being sent offshore: "This Is An Outrage!!!!!"

The films that cost a lot less to make, but eventually paid back their investors on the profits of small screening runs, video cassettes and DVDs are a dying, if not dead breed. The future is barnstorming blockbusters that make their budget back in the first week or so. The "long tail" was just a bullshit hypothesis that didn't pan out.

It's interesting that on Slashdot, when it's anyone else's non-IT job getting outsourced or automated, there is a lot of chortling and discussion of buggy whip manufacturers and how non-IT workers should just suck it up. There was a story about automated truck drivers in the last month that was full of comments denigrating these workers and that it was good for society that their job would soon be done by a robot. When it's an IT job getting outsourced, "IT'S AN OUTRAGE!!!!!" Doesn't take much insight to realize why this issue will never get political traction. Who wants to stick up for the IT people when the IT people just offered snark for everyone else that was automated/outsourced before them?

Just lock some smart people up in monasteries that only have their doors open every one year, ten years, hundred years and so on.

Windows administrators are cheaper because Microsoft pursued a strategy of ensuring that there was a training infrastructure for their products. There is a whole ecosystem of books, online material and courses created by Microsoft to facilitate people learning their product. No such infrastructure exists for open source products. It may not even be possible to create such an infrastructure.