I honestly disagree. There are conventions used in programming, but there is ALWAYS a way to structure a program for modularity and interoperability. Those who don't write like this do so because of a lack time or motivation.

I can't believe that in 2012 we STILL doesn't have direct comparability of software between operating systems. Wasn't this something we were going to fix in the 80s? Writing a program shouldn't be writing it for a particular OS, it should be writing it for computers in general. This is the kind of thing the government needs to mandate. (yes, I'm aware of the open source movement and have not been burying my head in the sand, I just think its bullshit that none of the big players can come together and agree on a damn standard of interoperability. Its like we've completely lost sight of that goal.

"settling for a more modest goal – building an elevator on the Moon"
Did someone just use the words "settle" and "building on the moon" in the same sentence? Who are these people?
Where are the billions of dollars this is going to take? How the hell are they going to prototype it?
Do they realize that 2020 isn't some lofty far off time these days? That's a bit more than 7 years.

If NASA, Russia, or China (or Elon Musk) said they were going to try this, I'd be excited. But this shit is not going to happen like this, lets just be honest.

-Apple now more valueable than microsoft
-Apple patent trolling samsung like a champ
-Apple stores being reported as corrupt

Apple has taken microsoft's place as dominant bully in the pc market, and microsoft seems to be fading quickly into a still important but not exciting company, like IBM.
So who is the new apple? We need a rebel alliance, right? Well, maybe this will finally be the year of the linux desktop.
But.... probably not.
Unless we get something radically new, we're going to keep up this trend of pc design stagnation that we established around the turn of the millenium for many years to come.

Understanding of human interaction? Programmers?

If you're not trolling, in comparison to what?

I suppose I just don't get excited by phones anymore. Either IOS or Droid does everything that you could really need from a phone. I'm not saying that its perfect, but it seems like we've got to the point where its good enough for 99.99999999% of the situations that will arise.

We already have IOS, and better yet android. We all know that android will be the only game in town in a few years, why not just code for it?

I didn't tell anyone about the chaos monkey.... Oh. Its just some program. Carry on then.

All software that is intended as a permanent architecture should be open source. That is- if you're writing something that isn't just going to be abandoned at a specific point, it should probably be open source, because you have no idea how people in the future will use it. Things like operating systems, drivers, utilities like video players, bittorrent clients, network scanners, etc. But for something like a game, where it really only has one purpose, the only benefit of making it open source is to allow for mods, and most games can do that without releasing the source of their binaries, because there is some internal scripting language. Either way- at one point or another in the future, the game will shut down- and no one will be playing it anymore, so I don't think it makes a big difference if its open soruce or not. But regardless- valve owns the code, and its up to them whether they want it to be open source or not. This doesn't change whether its on windows, linux, or mac. You can't ban closed source programs from an OS, it just doesn't work and isn't realistic to expect all companies to be down with releasing all of their code when there are a lot of companies out there who sell primarily CODE. This situation is analogous to a three ring binder company that expressly forbids manufacturers from putting whole printed books, instead of individual pages, inside their binder. Good luck with that, and why again do you care?

I have stuff to work on that doesn't involve sitting around discussing how Steve Jobs is my personal hero. You're just going to have to find someone else to argue with.

http://www.pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/1970s-xerox-alto-280.jpg This is a picture of the xerox alto, released in 1973. http://oldcomputers.net/pics/lisa2.jpg This is a picture of an apple lisa, released in 1983, 10 years later. I know, 10 years brought a LOT of progress, huh? You're such a clueless fanboy.

So you're saying that because apple worked on it, they didn't copy it? Wouldn't that basic line of logic make all patent suits immediately invalid?

I'm an engineer myself. I'm not going to make light of the process of making an idea function. But the simple truth is- Xerox DID make it work. The palo alto research center had an entire network of what were essentially modern computers in 1979. They created the GUI, ethernet, network printers, object oriented programming, bitmaps, and many other important advances. Have whatever opinion you want, but we're arguing over historical fact here.