I am still having a little trouble with "we don't need our spies to spy". Maybe we do.

I am also having trouble believing that the kind of encryption we use on the Internet actually stops the U.S. Government from finding out whatever it wishes although IETF and sysadmins might be kidding themselves that it can. Government can get to the end systems. They can subborn your staff. Etc.

MS language is potentially worse than the default. And there is room for litigation to surprise us.

Yes. The last stuff I wrote that I couldn't compile today was in "Promal" or "Paradox". My C and C++ code from 1980 still builds and runs.

All of my web development is on Ruby on Rails. That environment has had a lot of development and I've had to port to new versions. So old code for RoR would not quite run out of the box, but it's close.

Popular computing languages do not in general have only one Open Source implementation, and do not get abandoned.

Development with a proprietary language is ultimately harmful to your own interests, whether you make proprietary software for a profit or Free software.

The one thing every business needs is control. When you make it possible for another company to block your business, you lose control. Your options become limited. Solving business problems potentially becomes very costly, involving a complete rewrite.

The one thing that should be abundantly clear to everyone by now is that making your business dependent on Microsoft anything is ultimately a losing proposition. They have a long history of deprecating their own products after customers have built products upon them.

All Open Source licenses come with an implicit patent grant, it's an exhaustion doctrine in equitable law.

The problem is not patent holders who contribute to the code, you're protected from them. It's trolls who make no contribution and then sue.

Of course these same trolls sue regarding proprietary code as well.

This open source policy is open for comments. :)

Oh, I dunno; a number of fiction writers are probably going to use it as a model for some characters, and then having fun pointing out that they're a realistic interpretation of something that has in fact lived on Earth. A conventional alternate-universe plot would put their intelligent descendants in contact with us weird primates, who never developed on their world because their ancestors ate all the primates.

I'm probably the same way. Got to milk my 3 digit UID for all its worth. :)

I've never gone to a meetup. I'd be self-conscious, feel out of place, and so on. Add travel, and forget it. If there was one here in Detroit, i'd at least consider it.

I did meet one slashdotter though. He got me an interview in Toledo. Though i don't remember who it was, i remember his smile when i came through the door and feeling good about meeting someone else.

Touche!

I feel the same ways about JEs.

Or with this well-known one about the absurdities of English spelling:

Yeah; I once worked in a lab that had a bunch of those. The blazes did a lot of damage to the lab. Myself, I'd prefer a machine that runs cool, especially one that's in my hand or lap, or is left running unattended on a shelf. Sometimes those marketing slogans backfire ... ;-)

Well, I've been using both linux and Mac for 15 years or so, and I'd found that Macs are often even more frustrating than linux (or other unixoid systems). Thus, when my earlier Macbook Pro was dying, I got a new one with the fancy new "Retina" display. It supposedly had twice the resolution (4x the pixels) as my older Macbook, but it was configured to mimic a tiny screen (or one with giant pixels ;-). It took me several months of googling, tweaking, swearing, etc. to stumble across useful info for reconfiguring it so I can now get 6 usable Terminal windows on the screen, though with slightly fewer rows and columns than the old one gave. I'm sure it can do better, but I've become resigned to the idea that this is probably the best it can do with its marvelous hi-res display. Much of the frustration, of course, is that questions on Mac forums tend to get oh-so-friendly answers that might be summarized as "Don't worry your pretty little head about it; It Just Works." You do get a bit of this from the linux crowd, but there are also folks who like to show off their knowledge to noobs, so if you act like a noob, they give you useful information, and further details if you don't understand something.

The main frustration with linux systems is that it has been difficult to get them with hi-res displays. I've read a number of explanations of why this is. My pocket "smart phone" has as many pixels as the big screen on my home linux box; we should be able to get laptops with about the same resolution and thus many more pixels. OTOH, the linux laptops I've used have come out of the box with the software using the the screen's full resolution, so if you have good eyes, you don't waste time hunting down instructions on how to turn off the "accessibility" stuff.

YMMV, of course; different people have different kinds of knowledge and interests. Marketing aside, there never has been any such thing as a "general purpose computer".