In poor taste? Absolutely.
Nevertheless amusing? Absolutely.

Come on, admit it. The little kid inside you thought this was really cool. :D

If this doesn't bring a smile to your face, then you're not a real geek.

Mozilla should move the other direction. They should follow the W3C lead and dispense with versions altogether and simply release "Firefox" that displays "HTML".

What could possibly go wrong?

I don't know why this was modded down to 0 as a troll. The posting is opinionated, but not unreasonable.

Also, the site on which this report was published is owned by the authors.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/24/italian-scientists-claim-cold-fusion-breakthrough/?test=faces

That's probably true, but you can't program either as well or as quickly as this one.

All kidding aside, this isn't a troll. There's a shift in one's thinking that takes place after learning 5 or 6 languages; it becomes ever more profound after you've worked in a number of languages for years. At last count, I've learned at least a major portion of some 19 languages. I've actually been paid to work in something like 10 or 11 languages, depending on what you consider to be a dialect rather than a separate language.

My point isn't that learning multiple languages makes one cooler. It's that it causes one to internalize and genericise problem solving methodologies, which makes one a better and faster programmer.

Let me ask you this question: do you expect to learn nothing over the next 10 years? Do you expect to become a worse programmer? All things being equal, a good new graduate will only get better over time.

I can learn a new technology faster than any new grad. If a skill is hot, I can be better faster.

And write 3x as much **production** quality code.

The problem with both parties is that we can't keep the dumbest 2% of us off the television.

The irony of this is while the law itself is very much a 1st Amendment issue, the enforcement is almost certainly revenue related. Just as traffic enforcement is "driven" by revenue generation rather than public safety (in which there is no real interest), this situation has the feel of a localized sin tax designed to fill the coffers of the enforcing districts.

In English, it boils down to a legalized shake down.

Unfortunately, most of the politicians on both sides of the aisle ARE stupid, evil or both. Do you seriously think the US Congress could withstand a combination IQ / US constitutional history competency examination as a prior qualification to hold office?

Do you go out of your way to find the way in which you can legally give the government the most possible tax revenue?

It is absurd to suggest that any public company not do the maximum they can to minimize their tax liability. You obviously have an ax to grind with MS, and that's fine, but digging up this kind of garbage is ridiculous. The same statements that you have made about MS can probably be made about 95% of the Fortune 500.

By what means does the patent system "encourage the development of new inventions, and in particular to encourage the disclosure of those new inventions" ?

When you quote "Inventors are often hesitant to reveal the details of their invention, for fear that someone else might copy it", to what do you ascribe the fear?

My post described the lower level mechanism of the goals to which you refer.

Remember: the primary valid purpose of patents is to allow the recapture of investment capital plus additional profits in proportion to the utility of the discovery.

If making these scientific discoveries is highly capital intensive, then patentablity is both useful and desirable because it encourages initial investment; eventually the patent will expire.

So, I would argue the key question isn't the nature of the discovery, but rather the necessary investment to make the discovery. A logical corollary is that most business process patents are a sham and are economically destructive ...

In all the patent hate, don't forget they have a valid use and purpose.