If you do not understand how to make clean, efficient code in Language X, you should consider learning Language X.

The Microsoft antitrust suits were more about them bundling IE with their OS, which forces the user to use it, even if it's only to download another browser.

And for many people, even if they wanted to get to a different mapping service or place ratings service (see Yelp) they would have to find it through Google search. Or are you going to argue that Google is not dominant in Internet Search, and capable of using that dominance to push their products? Yes, there are clear similarities in the cases.

Why should Google let MSFT advertise in the first place?

So you would be okay with Microsoft preventing other vendors from being able to run software on Windows that competes with other software that Microsoft makes? Although the bundling of IE was an important part of the case against Microsoft, the core allegations were that Microsoft inappropriately used their ability to control Windows APIs to generate artificial advantage for their other software by using undocumented APIs. That is the reason the initial ruling required the company to be broken up. IE bundling was just the foot-in-the-door the Justice department used to get the case into court.

And all those Polio treatments.

Consider taking a look at Open Specification Promise.

(Note: IANAL) Since the core .NET framework, as well as the CLR specification and the base C# language are covered under this. As long as does not use things like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and WinForms or other non-ECMA-covered parts of the language/framework (and why would they, since those are essentially Windows/MicrosoftStack specific), there should be no patent problem here.

Because "Free as in S(oftware/)peech" = "Free as in Beer", right? Conflating the two arguments is illogical. There is nothing stopping you from implementing a C# compiler that would mirror what IL2CPU does will the base C# code, rather than with compiled IL, and bootstrap an implementation of the base framework types in mscorlib - then you would not be encumbered by the "proprietary software stack." In fact, it is that this project is Open Source (Free as in Speech) that you can do this.

The worst thing that ever happened to OSD/FreeSoftware is the wave of imbeciles that think that if it is not "free as in beer" it is not free. As long as you can distribute the source, modify it, and distribute the modified version freely, it is free software.

You are welcome to disagree, but RSM specifically calls out the difference.

In fact, once you implement the base runtime services, and a custom version of ngen.exe (and the assembly loader) you can implement the rest of the runtime in real IL, and ngen it, rather than using a custom compiler that gets rid of the common type system.

Consider reading a bit deeper into the project papers - in Singularity/Midori the drivers are implemented in Sing#/Spec#.

Most of driver-crash bluescreens in Vista, IIRC, were due to driver problems in storage and chipset drivers. The only time a video driver bug can bring down the system (Vista/7) is if it fails to restart and stay in good state several times, at which point the OS gives up, and bugchecks. It was XP (and before) that kept on being brought down by the video drivers.

If I remember correctly, one can compile a .NET project without taking a dependency on mscorlib, though you would have severe limitations in the types you have available until you implement it. You have access to pointer arithmetic inside unsafe {} blocks; I would not consider boostrapping from the bootloader into the kmain() method via assembly too big a deal, since you essentially have that problem with all higher-level languages (and inline assembly is still assembly).

If I remember correctly, the only reason the Singularity team extended C# into Sing# was to add hard contracts and invariants to the language so that their goal of software isolation of processes could be met (with extended static verification), which is similar to what Google seems to be doing with NaCl. This feels a lot more like Java Desktop, in that I am not entirely sure what the purpose of this is beyond an intellectual exercise; maybe once they get to the point where they can propose an application model it may begin to make sense.

Until he explains why he made whitespace into a control character, I refuse to accept him as anythying remotely divine.

Or, select the image, go to the contextual "Picture Tools > Format" tab, and hit the big button labeled crop. Not entirely sure what is difficult about this that someone on Slashdot is incapable of figuring this out.

Hit alt, and the shortcut keys get highlighted.

Given that the ribbon replaces the menu and toolbars in Office, and the TopBar/BottomBar in explorer, you are not actually losing vertical real-estate. If you had at least three rows of toolbar in Outlook, you would actually be gaining a few pixels in the transition to ribbon. Moreover, since you can collapse the ribbon to the height of the menubar, I am not entirely sure where the real loss of space is.