MS language is potentially worse than the default. And there is room for litigation to surprise us.

Yes. The last stuff I wrote that I couldn't compile today was in "Promal" or "Paradox". My C and C++ code from 1980 still builds and runs.

All of my web development is on Ruby on Rails. That environment has had a lot of development and I've had to port to new versions. So old code for RoR would not quite run out of the box, but it's close.

Popular computing languages do not in general have only one Open Source implementation, and do not get abandoned.

Clearly I don't understand capitalism.

Clearly. Geoblocking is at least partially about market segmentation. The EU is so large that it has extremely major disparities in wealth between its member nations. Consider the difference between Sweden and Romania. If you have a movie and charge a single price to stream it across the entire EU then:

a) Some people will find it incredibly cheap and others will find it still too expensive, just pushing them back towards piracy.

b) You end up having to deal with the tax systems of every single EU country anyway due to the retarded VAT changes they introduced this year, so it doesn't help simplify your business at all, and you theoretically aren't allowed to opt out of serving particular regions due to their horrible paperwork requirements, so being able to geoblock unprofitably complicated regions whilst claiming you have some other reason is quite attractive.

Development with a proprietary language is ultimately harmful to your own interests, whether you make proprietary software for a profit or Free software.

The one thing every business needs is control. When you make it possible for another company to block your business, you lose control. Your options become limited. Solving business problems potentially becomes very costly, involving a complete rewrite.

The one thing that should be abundantly clear to everyone by now is that making your business dependent on Microsoft anything is ultimately a losing proposition. They have a long history of deprecating their own products after customers have built products upon them.

All Open Source licenses come with an implicit patent grant, it's an exhaustion doctrine in equitable law.

The problem is not patent holders who contribute to the code, you're protected from them. It's trolls who make no contribution and then sue.

Of course these same trolls sue regarding proprietary code as well.

Arguing that we should have the right not to do business with groups we dislike, which was precisely the excuse given in the 60's by people who didn't blacks in their restaurant, is not-so-thinly veiled bigotry. It's painful listening to those who don't know history trying to repeat it, desperately hoping that this time it will be different and they'll be allowed to show "those people" who's in charge.

For the record, I'm not black, gay, or liberal. But things like this are exactly the reason why I'm no longer a Republican. I just can't go along willingly with the Attempt Of The Week to make this a hyperconservative theocracy. When someone inevitably comes along and wants to deny my right to fully participate in society, I hope we'll have built the momentum to shut it down.

You mean like browsers and Javascript? In that case 99% of the population has lost already. The pwn2own competition results are rather miserable.

I don't think it's so bad. The pwn2own competition is notable primarily for the ridiculous levels of skill required to actually beat modern browser security (note: I do not include the still unsandboxed Firefox in this category).

What's been happening in recent years is that more and more bugs are being found by whitehat hackers first, with the complexity and difficulty of beating them going up radically over time. It used to be that random hackers in their bedrooms could put together browser exploit kits. Nowadays the people being whacked by clicking on "bad links" are mostly people who aren't keeping their software up to date properly or using decent browsers. Remember SQL Slammer and Code Red? It used to be that teenagers could find RCE vulns in Windows. Now it's much harder.

This trend is reflected in the rapidly escalating cost of buying exploits on the black market. There didn't even used to be a market for exploits.

Also look at the escalating difficulty of jailbreaking iPhones and Xboxes. The defenders learn from each successful attack and each time they fall, they get back up stronger than before. And that's despite the fact that there's hardly any money in writing secure software. Many customers will be happy if you simply patch holes that are reported to you, with few people choosing which product to use on the basis of a good security track record.

So it seems like things are getting better and the game is rapidly moving beyond many attackers abilities, the age of the script kiddie is largely coming to an end when it comes to attacking user endpoints. Instead a new game is starting, one where professional teams of government sponsored hackers fight against professional teams of private-sector sponsored defenders. We can claim this isn't progress of a sort, but without the previous hardening efforts, the industry would be tackling both types of attackers at once ...

I cannot keep up with the contortion of intellectual dishonesty required to type that sentence with a straight face. I don't think you're lying to me and that you really believe this, but I equally believe that you're lying to yourself. Have a nice day and best of luck in your future endeavors.

It was no less than Thomas Jefferson who said:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Next, your strawman:

Correct. Still doesn't. You're legally entitled to say "blacks are of the devil" (or whites for that matter). Go ahead! No government agency will stop you. However, you're not allowed to discriminate based on race, color, religion or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce (court-upheld interpretation: pretty much anywhere).

No one believes that any of our rights are unlimited. You can speak your opinion, but you can't yell fire in a theater. You can bear arms, but don't expect to own a nuclear bomb. You can sincerely believe that whites are a superior species to blacks, but you don't get to own, kill, intimidate, lynch, or otherwise harm a black guy, regardless of your vile beliefs. This isn't something I'm making up out of whole cloth, but well-established and widely accepted interpretation of Federal law.

Read your Constitution, son. The 14th amendment says:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This codified previous Constitutional supremacy thoughts by explicitly stating that States don't get to write laws violating the Constitution or selectively affording privileges to one group and not another.

Except we've decided as a country that there are certain ways it's not OK to be an asshole, particularly when it's because the other person is black, female, Muslim, etc. I did not advocate for restricting free speech. I'm advocating for what law already says regarding other minority classes: feel free to speak your mind, but you shouldn't get to act against gay people any more than you're allowed to act against black people.

I'm dyed-in-the-wool small-l libertarian (and a registered large-L), but I'm horrified at the idea of passing laws to explicitly protect the "right" to discriminate against minorities. "First they came ..." and all that; we shouldn't be looking for new and creative ways to crap on our neighbors.

You mean the case where the court ruled very narrowly that atheism should be afforded the same legal respect as religions when ensuring the rights of people holding those opinions? You would be hard pressed to choose a case less helpful to your viewpoint.

So you're not American and you're unfamiliar with American law, but feel compelled to comment on a case involving one particular American state. Allow me to give you a quick introduction: your opinion is explicitly opposed to American case law. Feel free to speculate as much as you'd care to, but understand that from a US point of view, you are completely wrong.

Recently, because of stupid laws like Indiana's RFRA which would prevent a minority chunk of their population from living theirs. "Opposition to bigotry" is not "bigotry".