Partially wrong. The portion covered by ECMA is generally safe. The Fx built on top of that could be threatened by patents, but to be honest MS is far LESS likely to go after Mono than after some other competing technology. MS has tons of patents and can just as easily go after Linux or KDE or even gcc. And frankly they have a lot more incentive to attack those other technologies.

I suspect the reason why MS doesn't extend their promise of patent safety to all of the Fx... is not because of Mono. I suspect they have no intention of ever suing Mono. It's for Java. They want to make sure that IBM doesn't implement the Fx on a Java runtime. And to be honest it makes sense. If I were Miguel I'd have not a worried cell in me.

Being a principled man and a good one aren't the same thing (not that RMS is necessarily bad). With that said, I tend to disagree with RMS on most things. It is true that I'll know where he stands -- on the opposite side of me.

My issue is that fundamentally I disagree with him on freedom. To me freedom is the ability to release software w/o code being available (although I do think we should be allowed to reverse engineer the software for personal use). Just like I can sell you a dish without the recipe. My difference is I support GPL, but I also support commercial proprietary software. I support their right to make it and my right to use it. Stallman basically believes that we should deny one group freedom, because he believes they infringe on anothers group freedom. But I disagree in that I believe that while this first group may reduce total freedom from other groups, the other groups must knowing elect to be a part of it. At the end of the day my right to limit "my own" freedom in some space has greater total freedom than Stallman's approach (and in fact I'd argue that if I can't voluntarily limit my freedom, I have no freedom). Again, Stallman's approach is that he will dicatate to you where you will have limited freedom.

The issue of credibility is a different one. I can read your philosophy and debate that w/o knowing if you're credible or not. Maybe he's great at making predictions (less good on predicting how the HURD kernel would play out), not sure how that's relevant unless you think he's like a TV oracle of sorts.

That's only one particular type of particle. But as you note, the computer (which you argue is rightfully patentable) is not made of only electrons. Nevertheless it is made up of various subatomic particles. To construct this computer is just a series of instructions in how to order these subatomic particles. Today those instructions are patentable. The actual material that constitutes the computer is in fact not patentable (it's an instance of the application of instructions, i.e., the application of a patent). That is the computer is just a program manifest of bits that aren't an interpretation of electrons, but nevertheless just the result of instructions. These instructions are really no different than the instructions that create any other program, except the constituent parts of the instructions.

There's really no difference between software patents and other non-design patents. They are all effectively declarative and/or algorithmic descriptions of an idea. The only real difference with software patents is that there is usually no physical capital required to produce, reproduce, or copy it. But the degree of non-obviousness and utility may be no less than a new fuel technology. Furthermore, one can argue that all matter is simply a program of atomic and subatomic particles. It's just that particles are a scarcer resource than bits, and less malleable. But once we have the technology to manipulate these particles as bits, the world is just a big program. I say we should be consistent. Either software is patentable, or just abolish patents altogether.

Actually it's also quality. There's pretty good research that shows that for underprivilege children they give back a significant portion of their educational gains in the summer. For middle/upper class kids the summers don't cost them much. In terms of educational benefit during the school year, both groups grow equally. There's also research that shows a correlation with number of days in school and educational gains. At the end of the day it's pretty clear that for poorer children this would be very beneficial. If your parents are professors and neurosurgeons it's probably a net loss for you. Less vacation time, and more competition.

We used to do the same thing at my job, until someone quoted the employee guide to point out that using someone elses computer without permission was against company policy and potentially a firing offense. That ended that.

While I appreciate your argument I think its harder than you may believe. Attempting to explain away pseudoscience is difficult, because you must give air time to the pushers of pseudoscience. And as you note, many (most?) scientists are horrible at explaining their ideas, pseudoscientists are often quite good. And one of the reasons why they're quite good is they latch on to common fallacies that non-scientists have.

Try it. Take a patently false position, but base it on something that might resonate with people. Here's an example... global warming. I bet you could convince most people that a possible explanation of global warming has to do with changes in our distance to the sun based on the gravitational pull of Jupiter. I know... I've done it.

Another example is autism and MMR vaccination. The arguments for it sound pretty good, especially to those that have children with autism. The problem with the argument against it is that it is simply that, an argument against the vaccination theory. The next question you get is, "So if it's not that then what is it...". Of course the anwer is that we don't fully know yet. To many people this hole effects the credibility of your original refutation.

I just say this to say that the road is tricky, and giving air time to people who push pseudoscience I think can (and usually will) do more harm than good, given the state of the world today.

That's absurd. The main knock against MS has historically been that they undercut the prices of their competitors. Even their Office suite originally was cheaper than WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Pretty much the only products that are cheaper than Microsoft products are the free (as in beer) open source products. But if you look in areas where there are commercial products, Microsoft is competitive with the top competitors. Look at database pricing (SQL Server vs DB2 vs Oracle), or compilers (Intel C vs Visual C++), or servers (Windows Server vs Solaris/AIX historically), etc... Of course now companies like IBM have given up selling a lot of software and want to make money by selling you a lifelong team of consultants.

The issue with this though is that the PC market and the Mac market are really two different things. Like the PC market and the mainframe market are two different markets. Windows is the dominant OS in the PC market, but Apple is even the more dominant in the Mac market. People who want a Mac have no choice but to go to Apple (for the most part). With that said, I think the notion of a monopoly in the PC world is absurd to begin with.

Mod parent up. All the emulator is doing is using data to dictate the control flow of the program (emulator). This is exactly what virtually every program on the iPhone (or any computer does). If Apple's fear is security then their restriction is braindead (which is consistent with Apple's naive stance on security in general). I suspect their bigger concern is loss of the AppStore (a Flash or Silverlight appstore, sitting in an iPhone app could make their store irrelevant). It's unfortunate Apple never gets taken to task for their behavior. I get that they're not a "monopoly", but ethically (monopoly or not) they seem to have some of the worst practices in software. I shudder to think what would happen if they became as big as Google or MS. Well I think we're getting glimpses of it. BillG and Sergey will probably end up looking like saints.

There's a few problems with the thesis that XP will be the safe platform to write applications to. First, many applications are just downright harder to write with XP. For example, look at the Task Scheduler API for XP vs post-XP. There are thousands of APIs like this. No developer in their right mind would choose to target XP. In terms of market penentration, since XP mode won't be on Home Premium, it won't make sense to build ISV apps for XP. And given that early indications are that Win7 will have pretty good uptake, it probably makes just as much sense to target Win7. Plus the improved Windows API will make your development generally more productive.

Not only that, most MCPs in the US (maybe it's different in Iceland) don't buy the licenses upfront like this. They get the licenses on demand as partners. They shouldn't be out anything except for the small window where they were installing a product for a customer and the customer goes belly up before paying for it.

This is just absurd. Tons of people can see and use the R&D that Microsoft produces. Go into virtually any CS conference, from PLDI to SIGGRAPH, and you'll see tons of papers that build on and cite research published by Microsoft. And where was some of the most important research on quantum computing done... well another industry lab, Bell Labs. BTW, Microsoft has also done some great work in quantum computing as well. Here's an example of some of their interesting work in topological quantum computing: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0802/0802.0279v2.pdf

Now what you probably mean is why can't I just copy their research and sell it as my own product. Well like many colleges and universities (and other research groups like HP, IBM, and Sun's) Microsoft will patent ideas that they think have commercial viability. That is really no different than the hundred+ patents that MIT or Caltech does each year. Or the 500+ patents done by the UC system.

I get that slashdot people are supposed to be gung ho about "freedom", but don't be naive about how the real world works.

Open source doesn't do what you suggest. First open source doesn't imply standards compliant. Open source doesn't imply access to government websites (that has more to do with permissions and open networks than it does anything about the source).

The _only_ thing open source ensures is that everyone has access to the source code. No guarantee it is well written, understandable, useful, or correct. With that said I'm not sure that everyone having access to the source code is all that important for government. No more so than the recipe for all foods we eat be available to everyone. It would be nice, but an audit trail (ie., the government has access to all source code, but not every guy on the stret) can probably gets you 99% of the value and doesn't bias against any vendors.