http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/on_assignment/old-cattle-mutilation-stumped-feds

What's he got against us Computer Scientists? I protest this slam against hard-working people of my profession! Besides, we need phones too!

Yet another questionable assertion that OSS==GREAT && CSS==BAD. I wonder if haveing acces to the source code is all that important. Lotus was 123 great, in spite of not having access to the MS-DOS source code. Same with Turbo Pascal. How about Real Player? Yep. Visio (shapeware)? Yep. WinAmp? Again, yes. Chome browser? You bet! Again, access to the OS source code would have brought these projects next to nothing. They were/are great in spite of having no access to the windows codebase.

I don't get the statement "Microsoft could probably do a great mobile platform, if they were willing to sacrifice the desktop".

What does it mean to "sacrifice the desktop"? Stop releaseing OS for desktop computers? Seriously? Why? And who's going to fill that gap? Linux? Really? Which distribution? You can all agree on that?

Why would walking away from the destop suddenly enable MS to be able to great on great mobile platform? Are they resource constrained? Are they constrained by management? Perhaps that would free some of those Windows designers to work on this forthcoming "great mobile platform".

I hold the opinion that you can thank MS for the fact that we have a dominate desktop hardware platform, and that you can get these amazing devices at the prices you can. I believe that they enabled the commodization of personal computers, resulting in defacto standards, low prices, and phenominal increases in performance. Truly, you can be critical of MS in their failure to stay relevent in the mobile space, as well as the stagnatin of innovation of the browser. While we may dis-agree on what constitutes a "great mobile platform", I hold that the WP7 is evolving in to that even as I write this. I expect that WP7 and then WP8 will be very competative from a developer and performance standpoint. I make no predictions on market share, or app-store anti-trust issues.

Free market is a myth I read about in Econ.
Here is a definition:
Business governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy.
Let me know when you spot one of these in the wild. I think they are extinct.
A true free market would be a meritocracy, rewarding entities that can produce goods and services either better of cheaper than their competitors, and penalizing entities who produce lower quality goods and services, and commodity goods and services at a higher cost. The issue is there is no such system on the planet. Let's stop talking about this straw man, and start talking about the mixed economy that we live in. Perhaps the reason that the U.S. middle class is being destroyed is because we are being forced in to a "free trade" arrangement with countries that can produce goods and services cheaper than we can. There is no real competition here, as we "compete" with countries that have outlawed labor unions, and collective bargaining, who's workers live 8 to a room, do not enforce child labor laws, and where a 40 hour work week is a dream. How's that "free trade" working our for us? Where are those nice, clean, safe auto factories in Mexico that NAFTA promised us? The idea of protectionist or tribal economies have been demonized, so we can all buy cheap imported appliances and clothing. Never mind that without importation taxes, we export living wage jobs, and replace some of them with low pay jobs or jobs without pensions, and reduced benefits and training, while our buying power diminishes year by year. The squeeze has been in the works for about 25-30 years now. This political cartel of Republicrats along with the Democans, have conspired with business to lower costs at the expense of the middle class. The number of Americans living in poverty is growing. There has been a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to big business, governments are closing schools, and we're sitting around distracted by some congressman sending suggestive photos over twitter to a a teenager in Washington, or whatever. Well, more and more people are balking at buying the new cars, and other goods, simply because they can no longer afford it. Inflation is on it's way back, in spite of what the idiot running the FED thinks. I propose the we have a consumer strike. Let's stop buying everything not vital. Buy food, pay your bills, fix your car. Reduce your driving, vacation at home, give up cable and netflix, get a pay-as-you-go calling plan, and let's start showing these guys the future of the US economy. Perhaps they'll get the message, and start protecting US jobs, rather than exporting them. Perhaps they will not make the change, and eventually the consumer strike will be involuntary. Once that happens, perhaps we'll be rolling to a great reset. They'll rename the Great Depression to the Not-So-Bad-After-All Depression. Buy seeds while you can afford them.

I guess that I don't really get the Mono-Hate. As far as run-times go, .NET and MONO are pretty good, at least comparable to JVM, and Parrot. There are good expressive languages that provide good inter-op, such as C#, F#, and IronPython. In other words, you can probably get your requirements coded and running fine with these run-times. So your business needs are met. So the hate must be the reflection of straight-up anti-MS hate, or some fear that MS will somehow, at some unknown point in the future, decide that it's in their best interests to file some sort of patent claims against vendors of software that use this technology, in spite of a promise not to do so. Of course this would cause a disruption among many of their own customers that will do nothing to increase sales of MS technology. Is there any historic example of this specific scenario? Is this really a rational fear? Is this the fear that leads to hate?

Speaking of irrational hate, what's with the continued Anti-MS hate? What has that torch done for anybody? Just accept that there will the MS products in the data-center, just as MS accepts that there will be Linux products in the data center, and move on. Work towards inter-op, like um....Mono. Your customers can more likely use what they like, and everybody can get along, not withstanding the fanatics.

I think that the tradition is to use a poor car analogy. Wait, that's dailytech, nevermind.

Consider this: War solves problems.

Colonial oppression: War of Independence.
Slavery: Unconstitutional law, followed by Civil War.
Fascism and Imperialist expansion: WW II.

After each, a new balance is achieved. People are better off for it. Tensions will build, and War will be fought, and the world is a better place for it.

The next Korean War will solve the reunification issue. Perhaps there can be a nice big one in south west Asia that will bring defeat to the Fascists and bring that region out of the dark ages. Peace won't do it. It will take War.

So I'm guessing that much of the DRAM power budget is taken because of the requirement to Refresh. At 1 transistor per cell, DRAM has been 4x less expensive than SRAM, before taking consideration of economies of scale. So where is the SRAM market? Why do we still not see an alternative with better speed, and power, at the cost of price and storage density? Why can't I make that choice? And while we're on the subject of MIA memory technology, where are the FRAM devices? Those would be flash-based SSD killers.

Us pyros do a lot of spy checking for the engineers.

At what point do we abandon a language? What obligation does MS or Oracle have to continue to support a language or platform once better alternatives appear? What obligation doe the OSS have to continue to support a language or platform? None. Those poor CADOL and SNOBOL programmers had to port their apps to new platforms and languages, as did the dBase II, and Fortran IV guys. Some had a good upgrade path, others didn't. For some (VB Classic) it's a wash. I don't feel sorry for the losing the old platforms (Netware) because there are newer, better, more inovative platforms ahead.

Certainly big business and big government have conspired against the middle class. Unfortunatly, this industry (IT, software) has bought in to the anti-union dogma, to our collective detriment. I have not union. I have no lobby, but my employer does. We've been sold out, and I am here and now proposing a middle-class boycott. If the item or service is optional, don't buy it. Purchase only the essentials. No luxery items. If you can get off the grid, do it. If you can 86 your cell phone, do it. If you can give up broadband, cable, lattes, a new HDTV, a new dryer, a new car, DO IT Our purchasing power has been eroded, and I'm tired of the exportation of our jobs, and our standard of living. I new day has arrived, and a change in lifestyle is required. Our economic soviernty has been stolen, and I will no longer participate in this economy.

If I didn't do my job here at MS, they would hire somebody else who would. It's a paycheck, and in this economy... It's certainly not the company I first worked at in 1995, but what is? I remember that at that time you could get s--t done. We were doing things that made the PC great. Great games and technology. We did a port of Doom II to Windows for id. It ran on Win32s, and used Dispdib for window/full-screen toggling. My boss got the Autorun feature in to the OS. We could and did change the world. Anymore, it's so fragmented, mobile, web-apps, cloud, search, online, we've forgotten our core mission. The company store had great PC applications and PC games because we used to make great PC applications and PC games. Monster Truck Madness, Combat Flight Simulator, Close Combat, etc. Anymore, all there is in Windows 7 and Office and XBOX stuff. There is so much enterprisey stuff that I can't relate to. I feel like we are Oracle or IBM. It's mainframes all over again, only smaller and in shipping containers.

What GPS device? Agent Smith, where did you see it last? You know, when I lose something, I retrace my steps. I often find my keys under my dirty clothes, or a newspaper. Did you look under your dirty clothes? Perhaps you left it on another car. There are a lot of cars that look like my car.

Snake? Is that you?