Funny how all his other voyages are documented.

I assume you are referring to a possible visit of America by Zheng He, decades before Columbus. That has never been a Chinese claim; as far as I know, the originator was Gavin Menzies in his book "1421: The Year China Discovered the World" (published in 2002).

No. This was your original position:

In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted [the compass] for navigation and taught the Chinese to use it for something other than Chi lines and harmony.

My reponse: the Chinese knew what the compass was good for and did not need any pushy foreigners to teach them. If you think I was agreeing with you, you need lessons in remedial English. However, you did a 180 in your reply, which was agreeing with me. Go ahead, keep banging your head on the table.

1405 was a bit late to be inventing compass navigation

What makes you think 1405 was the first time China used the compass?

I see you're agreeing with me even as you think you're disagreeing.

Not that exploring the China Sea should be considered all that great an accomplishment for China.

You need to improve your geography. Zheng He visited Africa, which is thousands of miles from the China Sea.

Zheng He's travels across the Pacific are about as proven as Noahs.

We don't even know whether Noah was a real person. Whereas we have massive documentation, from multiple independent sources, for Zheng He and his giant fleet.

You're wrong. We have massive Chinese histories of Zheng He's fleet, written by Zheng's contemporaries. They couldn't all have been faked. Then there are the letters written by the Ming bureaucrats to each other; a fleet that size needs immense logistics, which cannot be hidden. We also have corroborating documentation from the places Zheng visited, such as Thailand, India, Indonesia, Africa. The only major question remaining is whether he visited the Americas before Columbus.

The past 500 years have been an era of stagnation for China.

True. But 500 years is not a long time by Chinese standards.

In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted [the compass] for navigation

No. You should have paid more attention to nobodylocalhost's posting. How do you think Zheng He's massive fleet managed to navigate almost half the world? Answer: with compasses.

Remember the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing? The "great ships" part of that performance ended with one man holding up a compass -- and following it. That was the whole point of that part of the ceremonies!

Good job concluding that I'm "probably wrong" based on nothing but your own paranoid assumptions, though. That's classic.

Considering that Microsoft actually has threatened to sue Linux, my attitude is prudent, not paranoid.

"But," says Herman, "while RAND sometimes means there could be a financial obligation, [Microsoft] will be offering a conventional non-royalty non-fee RAND license. We've always made that clear to anyone who has asked."

Michele Herman no longer works at Microsoft, and hasn't since 2004. Who knows if the "no fee, no royalty" policy is still in effect. Until I see a legal commitment, I will assume the worst. (Which is always good policy when dealing with Microsoft or the devil.) So you are still probably wrong.

When dealing with Microsoft, as with the devil, one has to read the fine print. Very carefully. "Royalty-free" merely means no ongoing payments for a patent license; it says nothing about an initial one-time fee. Such a fee, if large, would be fatal for free software. So you are still wrong.

From the the document you linked to:

The ECMA process requires that all patents held by member companies that are essential for implementing its standards are available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms" for the purpose of implementing those Standards.
(emphasis mine)

Nope. ECMA has not forced Microsoft to give up its patent claims. The only requirement with respect to patents is that they be available under "reasonable and nondiscriminitory" terms -- which basically means that Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for patent licences, as long as it's the same fee for everyone. So MS can still threaten to sue for patent violations. And any fee of significant size is of course fatal for free software. So you are wrong.

C# and the CLR are ECMA standards, and as part of the standardization process, MS gave up the ability to make any patent claims.

Microsoft dominates ECMA and practically owns it, as show in the unbelievably corrupt ISO OOXML case. So what proof do you have that ECMA has forced MS to give up its patent claims with respect to C# ?

They wouldn't have submitted their standard to ECMA if they didn't want it to be implemented.

I can think of plenty of motives for Microsoft to simultaneously standardize C# and threaten anybody who tries to implement it.

For example, many huge organizations prefer standards. Governments are especially fond of them and constitute too large a market for MS to ignore. Hence the bad-faith standardization of C#.

In theory, with the "Free Market", these banks WOULD fail because they were badly managed. Instead, we're propping them up and rewarding their failed management.

You have slightly missed khasim's point. He wants regulations to prevent banks (and other entities) from growing so large that their failure would crash the global economy.

The "free market" if unchecked actually encourages the growth of such monster organizations. This is obvious if you realize that companies are not and cannot be all the same size: therefore, the strong will eat the weak, and over time the surviving companies will grow larger and larger. Eventually you will have gigantic companies, and this is what we have seen.

Khasim is proposing to apply some checks and balances, to stop such organizations from growing too large. It's a good idea.