I'd love to believe that like Sun's dramatic turnaround after years of being the enemy of open source, Microsoft was doing the same thing. And, to be sure, Sun did their turnaround, and IBM in the early 90s as well, out of desperation to get back on course when they were clearly headed in the wrong direction and losing out on new things because of it.

But, in Microsoft's case, all I see is case-by-case desperation that lacks the overall cultural change that IBM and Sun went through. Their browser was losing market share, hated by many, and stood a high chance of losing out on new things like HTML 5. So, yes, they have BEGUN to embrace open standards here. Yet, Silverlight appears to have all but died, not because of a change in Microsoft's morale stance on open standards, but simply because it could not gain critical market share with it. They could not overcome Adobe, and HTML 5 puts both Flash and Silverlight at risk.

Then there are moves like this that open source a part of .NET. Have they, like Sun, completely turned around and become a huge friend of the open source community? Or, are they trying to save something that currently has little chance of survival in the Cloud, which is being primarily built on Linux and languages that run on it, notably Java.

So far, all I see is case-by-case moves of desperation rather than the wholehearted change that turns them into true friends of open standards and open source. Statements they have made to support open standards and open source have been by an individual here, or there, and not official representation of the core values or culture of the organization as a whole. Thus, I consider these statements to be even weaker indicators of change than moves like a change to use an Apache license.

At best, I am cautiously optimistic. The fact that they would even consider the Apache license is a miracle when contrasted to their historical vehemence towards open standards licenses. Clearly, they are not AS EVIL as they were. But, are they the new IBM and Sun? I don't think so. Are they headed in that direction? I hope so. But, they still have a long way to go before that happens.

When Best Buy can sell a computer with Linux on it without violating a contract with Microsoft because Microsoft saw the error in their monopolous anti-Linux contracts, then I'll reconsider whether or not they are evil. When Microsoft completely opens up .NET, putting all its parts under an open source license and permitting all stakeholders to play a role in its evolution, permitting it to run equally well on Linux as it does on Windows, I'll reconsider their place in our ecosystem. We'll know when this has happened when I can watch Netflix on Linux, and not because Netflix was able to replace Silverlight.

"with no evidence for"? How would you know, being unwilling to hear the controversy? You're presuming to completely understand the counter-argument without hearing it. I find it interesting that so many people here are presuming it will be a religious discussion, and consider the assertions in the theories of evolution to be unquestionable, with any attempt to scrutinize to be coming from a lower intelligence (which is a purely arrogant assumption.)

There are purely scientific discussions about the weaknesses of the theories of evolution, such as discussion of the unproven assumptions our conclusions are often based on.

I've learned that as a species, our brains are not only prone to believe assumptions, we practically require them to do tasks like drive a car in the night in a blizzard. I suspect the average person makes a minimum of 100-1000 false assumptions per day.

This nature of ours is part of the reason we've have been very wrong about scientific claims in the past. It baffles me how many people claim to be scientific, yet consider the assumptions used to draw scientific conclusions to be unquestionably holy, clearly directing their need to possess faith into what they believe to be scientific conclusions of a higher intelligence (arrogance).

For example, how do you know that radioactive decay rates have been constant throughout time, one of the presumptions built into the dating of fossils? Remember when we were taught that all the oil and gas had to be created by plants because hydrocarbons could only come from living organisms? Is that mathematically possible? Have you measured the quantity of plants required for this assumption to be true? These assumptions have been taught in our schools very recently as unquestionable truths.

http://io9.com/5619954/the-sun-is-changing-the-rate-of-radioactive-decay-and-breaking-the-rules-of-chemistry

... May the force be... uh... ummmm... so, sorry!"

I'm pretty sure the letter to Nigerians, written from someone trying get their money back, promised trillions of dollars in bonds to be paid as soon as a small deposit of plutonium was deposited to help pay a lawyer who could sign over the bonds.

correction: the bigger issue is the STARS are staggered

Not sure which image you are looking at, but the photo I see has 13 stripes: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/01/Chicago_Bonds_4_0.jpg

Don't forget, these are raised stripes, not alternating colors. And the flag is in a box, so don't count the upper and lower thin lines.

That said, the bigger issue is the stripes are staggered, which is very uncommon for the 48 state period. That alone convinces me that the box in this photo is probably counterfeit.

I just find it interesting that there is a history of these boxes, particularly in the Philippines, dating back to at least the 1990s. In online discussions, there is a consensus that there are a lot of "fakes" out there. But, it is not clear whether or not these were copies of real originals, or just an incredibly elaborate fraud of unprecedented scale. Either way, I'd love to know the truth behind the origin of the boxes.

I only count 13 stripes: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/01/Chicago_Bonds_4_0.jpg

But, the staggered stars does not coincide with the common 48 state pattern of that time.

Based on what I've read, there are either lot of counterfeits of a real thing, or this was one incredibly engineered large scale counterfeit. These boxes have been found from all over the world recently, with highest concentrations in the Philippines, with people digging them up in the 1990s. There are quite a few stories to go with them, some more plausible than others. Yet, I cannot find any solid scientific evidence placing the origin of these boxes in history, other than when they were dug up or acquired and the condition they were in.

Given how interesting this could be even if it all the boxes are fraudulent due to its large scale and long history, I think this is worth trying to understand better.

That's what I thought. But, the more I dig on the boxes, the more historical they appear to be. Here is an interesting thread discussing them: http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php?action=printpage;topic=2598.0

The conspiracy theory is not what is interesting. It is the photos of these boxes and their contents that have been on the Internet for years now. The question Zero Hedge raises is why would they go through the trouble of creating counterfeit boxes? You can't cash the boxes, only the bonds.

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It would be interesting to have independent scientific authentication on the boxes and their contents. Then, if they happen to originate in 1934, try to discover the story around them. Otherwise, if science proves they were created recently, we can quickly dismiss them as fraud. Right now, we have no idea how they determined they are fraudulent. There is also no evidence they were being used in a transaction, only conspiracy theory purported by the Italian authorities who admitted they found them in storage.

Zerohedge highlights interesting photos: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-were-trillions-fake-bonds-held-chicago-fed-crates