Er, no.

The 'why' has little to do with IP law and a lot to do with group dynamics, especially herd behaviour. Take this statement, for example:

One of my personal pet causes is developing a better alternative to HTML/CSS. This is a case where the metaphorical snowdrift is R&D on new platforms (which could at least initially compile to HTML/CSS).

The problem with the 'snowdrift' here, to abuse the metaphor, has nothing to do with IP law, and nothing to do with lack of innovation. It has everything to do with the size of the drift. You don't have any choice but to wait for someone else to come along to help shovel. But the author is trying to say, If everyone doesn't shovel, nobody gets out. And that's not always true.

A quick reminder: When HTML first came out, the very first thing virtually every proprietary software vendor of note did was publish their own website design tool. And each of those tools used proprietary extensions and/or unique behaviour in an attempt to corner the market on web development, and therefore on the web itself.

But the 'snowdrift' in this case was all the other companies. Because no single one of them was capable of establishing and holding overwhelming dominance, the 'drift' was doomed to remain more manageable by groups than by any single entity. (Microsoft came closest to achieving dominance, but ultimately their failure was such that they have in fact been weakened by the effort.)

Say what you like about the W3C, and draw what conclusions you will from the recent schism-and-reunification with WHATWG. The plain fact is that stodgy, not-too-volatile standards actually work in everybody's favour. To be clear: they provide the greatest benefit to the group, not to the enfant terrible programmer who thinks he knows better than multiple generations of his predecessors.

Yes, FOSS projects face institutional weaknesses, including a lack of funding. Especially on funding for R&D. But funded projects face significant weaknesses as well. Just look at the Node.JS / io.js fork, all because Joyent went overboard in its egalitarian zeal. Consider also that recent widely publicised bugs, despite the alarm they've caused, haven't really done much to affect the relative level of quality in funded vs proprietary vs unfunded code bases. They all have gaping holes, but the extent of their suckage seems to be dependent on factors other than funding. If not, Microsoft would be the ne plus ultra of software.

Weighed in the balance, therefore, FOSS's existential problems are real, and significant, but they're not as significant as those faced by all the other methods we've tried. So to those who have a better idea about how to balance community benefits and obligations, I can only reply as the Empress famously did when revolutionaries carried her bodily from the palace: 'I wish them well.'

I'm not sure that's really the canonical use of the term. I would think that selling said arms to one's own government at extortionate prices would be closer to the standard definition.

But niggling aside, the real problem with this article is that it equates the control of technology with control of behaviour, and assumes that it's even possible to usefully control the proliferation of technology.

Instead of advocating a software proscription list, why not seek to promote international legal standards concerning the right to privacy, and a respect for the rule of law among all nations?

Actually, don't answer that. I know why. Because building democracy is hard and even the purportedly enlightened, 'free' nations are busy backing away from individual human rights.

I've never run up against it. I activated about two dozen copies of education-licensed versions of Office 2007 a few years ago, and the auto-activation failed after the first install. After that, I had to call a 1-800 number, give an automated service the installation key and it barfed out an activation key... over and over again.

Yup. I've seen more than my fair share of people with computers stuffed to the socks. "So you say this laptop loaded with Windows 7 Ultimate, MS-Office Pro and Photoshop only cost you $300. Hmmm..."

The article puts the lie to the idea that these H-1B workers are filling jobs that there are no good American candidates for. The article, and one linked in it, talk about existing workers training their H-1B replacements. So, there are manifestly American workers who can do these jobs. They are doing them right now! The article also says they are often older workers being replaced. You know what that means; these older workers are highly compensated. As usual it's about the bottom line, with humans as resources to be exploited.

We have the world's largest prison population. How could we not be the land of the free?

You are vulnerable to Social Engineering (and almost everyone is), no security of any kind will ever work. Become a Scottish crofter, it's your only hope of a life.

You are a private individual, see all XKCD coverage. Same remedy.

You are Sony, abandon hope now. You wouldn't even make it as a crofter.

You are anyone else, encryption is not enough. You want segmentation, active NIDS, proxies and firewalls at the gateways, HIDS on the machines, role-based access controls, host-to-host IPSec, security labels on packets, total removal of all vulnerable protocols, disk encryption, strong authentication and Neuromancer's Black Ice. A platoon of extreme freediving Ninja with enhanced magnetic sensors in their eyeballs would help, too.

Science fiction isn't fiction that has elements that aren't science but might appeal to geeks who like science.

Science fiction isn't science fantasy.

Science fiction isn't pure fantasy with stuff science geeks like.

Science fiction isn't biologically improbable females fulfilling spotty teen fantasies.

Science fiction is science that is fictional. Very different animal and naturally restrictive.

That's life. Or will be.

Absolutely wrong on all accounts.

People are the least important part of a story, they exist solely to represent something. What they represent is almost never another person. In fact, it is never another person.

Science fiction is about the universe, about meaning, about the nature of reality. There are perfectly good science fiction stories that don't include people, or indeed any living thing. And that is fine.

Stories that are people-centric are no more science fiction than vampire stories are history, or Microsoft manuals are about learning.

This isn't up for discussion, it is the way the ontology is. Don't like it? Fine, don't call your crap science fiction. It's very simple.

...It's Cheers in Space, or Eastenders on Mars, then no it is not science fiction. It is Cheers in Space or Eastenders on Mars. There is no science and there is precious little fiction.

> Anyways, I don't understand why "dwarf planet" was not made a subclass of "planets" along with "major planets" (where the others go). But no, it is "planets" and "minor planets", which are by definition not a "planet".

The purpose of technical terminology is to be as clear and efficient as possible. Imagine having to say 'major planet' every time you wanted to talk about Earth or Mars or Jupiter. "Earth is the third major planet from the Sun." It's tedious.

But in informal speech you can say that Pluto is a 'dwarf planet, which is a kind of planet'. Nothing wrong with that. I think that's what a lot of people don't understand about technical vs. informal communication.

I'd say Frank Herbert did. The Dune series laysa out a culture wildly different in key respects from ours. Even the march of technological innovation we are so used to has been arrested and certain humans (Guild navigators, Bene Gesseret, Mentats) have taken on the roles of "thinking machines." But then again Herbert did put a lot of work into background; history, philosophy, ecology, economics and politics.

Well, you need to define 'best' under these circumstances. The Linux kernel became 'best' when it was found that it supported and sustained the involvement of the widest developer/manufacturer constituency at a reasonable level of quality. That's hardly a glowing endorsement of the quality of the code or the operation of the kernel in real-world scenarios.

Remember that the abiding challenge for technologists is not so much 'best' as 'good enough'.

So yes, GP is wrong to see the free market as one in which the best ideas win. They don't. But the most workable available solutions do tend to get the most support. In Commodore's case, their sin was failing to market it in a way that made it readily accessible (i.e. price, distribution and support) and usable (developer support and software market). So you can praise the quality of the device, but from the buyer's perspective, it wasn't the 'best' solution after all, was it?

Mono is available on more platforms that those listed, so they will presumably do the same for .NET Core. From Wikipedia:

Mono can be run on many software systems including Android, most Linux distributions, BSD, OS X, Windows, Solaris, and even some game consoles such as PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360.

It also later list iOS as a targeted platform (I don't know why the summary didn't mention it).

Whatever the merits of the .NET API, the fact is that if you want maximum number of platforms, even after this project reaches fruition, supported platforms will still be a fraction of Java's.

Java has no lack of flaws, but it's out there and has been for fifteen years now, and is the bedrock of some very large open source and proprietary solutions.