So the Japanese government owns the car engines and the people just pay rent to possess them?

That totally depends on what sort of work you want to do with your coding skills in the future, now doesn't it?

Personally I find most people who know C/C++ know little to nothing of the great capabilities of C++11 (and the small improvements from there to C++14). If you have an interest in C++ coding there's no shortage you could learn and practice there, and that's all offline stuff - just get a bleeding-edge g++ and all of the docs you can find. But really, it depends totally on what sort of stuff you want to do with coding in the future.

(That said, if you're up there, why not just go herd some yaks for a year or something? If I was in a little village in the Himalayas for a year I don't think "enhancing my coding skills" would be on the top of my TODO list...)

Like others I found the headline confusing. I read it as "Researchers are predicting the use of Wikipedia as a vector for the spread of disease". This may mean that:

• Disinformation and ignorance are diseases.
• Memes and computer viruses are diseases.
• Wilipedia contains information that leads to depression.
• Instructions on Wikipedia lead to substance abuse.
• This is getting entertaining, fill in your own reason here.

One of my customers is located in Southern California, but Sun's (now Oracle's) servers refused to give them Java updates because they were geolocated as being in Iran.

A sort-of correction that reaches the same conclusion: End Software Patents (ESP) speculates that "the 2012 'in re Spansion' case in the USA and the judge ruled that a promise is the same as a licence". And since ESP mentions that Microsoft's Patent Promise has serious problems restricting its promise to those who don't add covered code to another project or those who produce something other than a "compliant implementation" of .NET, it seems that Microsoft patent promise has enough problems that it's still wise to not build dependencies on .NET (as the FSF warned).

Mono developer Miguel de Icaza has pledged to continue to add Microsoft's code to Mono saying "Like we did in the past with .NET code that Microsoft open sourced, and like we did with Roslyn, we are going to be integrating this code into Mono and Xamarin's products".

But is that wise? To your point, the Free Software Foundation's reaction to Microsoft's similar 2009 action point to exactly how changing ownership of patents render Microsoft's Patent Promise not to sue useless. This very promise could become the basis for a patent trap. In 2009 Microsoft's promise not to sue was called a "Community Promise" but today's .NET promise not to sue is risky in the same way—it's not (as the FSF rightly puts it) "an irrevocable patent license for all of its patents that Mono actually exercises" and neither is the MIT license Microsoft chose to release their code under.

Looking back at that essay from 2009, we see the FSF warn us (emphasis mine):

The Community Promise does not give you any rights to exercise the patented claims. It only says that Microsoft will not sue you over claims in patents that it owns or controls. If Microsoft sells one of those patents, there's nothing stopping the buyer from suing everyone who uses the software.

Falling into this trap will directly adversely affect your ability to run, share, and modify covered software. The FSF points to a practical way out as well:

The Solution: A Comprehensive Patent License

If Microsoft genuinely wants to reassure free software users that it does not intend to sue them for using Mono, it should grant the public an irrevocable patent license for all of its patents that Mono actually exercises. That would neatly avoid all of the existing problems with the Community Promise: it's broad enough in scope that we don't have to figure out what's covered by the specification or strictly necessary to implement it. And it would still be in force even if Microsoft sold the patents.

This isn't an unreasonable request, either. GPLv3 requires distributors to provide a similar license when they convey modified versions of covered software, and plenty of companies large and small have had no problem doing that. Certainly one with Microsoft's resources should be able to manage this, too. If they're unsure how to go about it, they should get in touch with us; we'd be happy to work with them to make sure it's satisfactory.

Until that happens, free software developers still should not write software that depends on Mono. C# implementations can still be attacked by Microsoft's patents: the Community Promise is designed to give the company several outs if it wants them. We don't want to see developers' hard work lost to the community if we lose the ability to use Mono, and until we eliminate software patents altogether, using another language is the best way to prevent that from happening.

I find it no accident that the built-to-be-business-friendly "open source" language is all over this announcement including the aforementioned blog post from a prominent endorser, while the wise warnings of falling into a patent trap come from the FSF who consistently looks out for all computer user's software freedoms—software freedom being the very thing that "open source" was designed never to bring to mind (see source 1, source 2 for the history and rationale on this point).

Because as we all know, feminists love nothing more than having women being dominant in the workforce only in traditionally-female, low-wage jobs like non-management positions in lower education.

First of all, what on Earth is a "climate denialist"? Are there people who deny that the Earth has a climate? Or is it a farcical misnomer purposely intended to ridicule anyone with the slightest bit of skepticism about something that even the experts aren't 100% certain about? (hint: 95% from IPCC != 100%)

As for your medical advice, the next time you notice your body temperature rise by 1/2 degree in an hour, best go ice bath yourself immediately or you'll soon be dead.

More like management not speccing it, or allowing it if it's brought up.

Being allowed to put that default functionality into an appliance is not within the purview of the programmers. That would absolutely have to be okayed by people higher on the food chain. Most companies won't do things like that because it increases support calls by users who want to just plug something into the wall and have it work.

There have been a number of leaks of classified documents because of stupid behavior by people who should know better.

In many cases, it is absolutely the best way to get stupid behavior stopped.

Cue all of the "Oh noes! Can't blame the victim!" Yes, you can. Stupid behavior with perfectly predictable negative results should, indeed, be blamed squarely on the victim. Fuck people who say it shouldn't.

ICMP messages are routinely filtered out by routers.