They ruled unanimously against the NFL in their antitrust suit. This SCOTUS is very business friendly, but they aren't monolithic.

The original Palm devices were definitely tough as nails. My original Palm Pilot Pro was put through the ringer and anded up looking like my dog had chewed it, but it still worked like a charm. Unfortunately, I traded it in for $50 on a Palm Zire 31 color. That unit's digitizer failed within a couple of years. Very disappointing.

Yeah, if I recall there was a similar uproar about the post office using zip codes around that time, too...

Yes, I know. .NET is big, yet Microsoft has made it clear that they are going in a different direction. They haven't abandoned .NET yet, but they aren't going to be devoting a lot of resources to it either as they are pushing the RT and Azure stuff now.

Visual Basic developers didn't like going to .NET, either, but Microsoft left them out in the cold, too.

I think we're in agreement here. I was trying to object to the original author's argument that the BSD license was more "free" than the GPL. If I miscommunicated, I apologize.

Their whole .NET strategy seems to have been, "Well, Java's popular now, so I guess we better do bytecode, too," even though there was no compelling reason to do so. Non-Intel Windows machines were long gone, so there was no reason for Windows application portability. Now that they have a good reason to make applications hardware independent, they abandon the .NET thing that they pushed so hard on everyone. It's simply bizarre.

.NET was cross platform--at least cross hardware. Yes, it was Windows-only, but a .NET application could run on an ARM machine or any other hardware that might run windows, since .NET was hardware independent byte code. Yes, you were still stuck on some form of Windows OS to use it, but now that they are selling windows on both ARM and Intel, it would seem to behoove them to support a portable hardware application strategy, yet they have essentially abandoned it.

By "even more liberal", you mean less free, since BSD allows anyone to essentially take code for their own personal use without giving anything back to the project (like Apple using the BSD kernel to make lots of money, but not allowing the BSD folk any access to the Apple code that interacted with it).

Windows was cheap. For most people it appeared to be "free". A lot of their stuff seemed pricey at the time, but they were always cheaper than their competition. SQL Server cost less than Oracle. IIS cost less than Netscape Web Server. Windows Mobile cost less than Palm. Visual C cost less than Borland. Office cost less than Word Perfect. Mcrtosoft's pricing is what drove a lot of these guys out of business. Microsoft's products were cheaper quality-wise, too, which is why they have such a terrible reputation.

.NET seems to live in a zombie state, not really dead, but not really alive, either. They haven't killed it, but they aren't going to expand on it, either. Who knows where things really stand. The RT strategy seems to be in constant flux, too.

Their motto of "Developers, Developers, Developers" also disappeared with Ballmer's exit. Everything is now getting locked down to the max in their attempt to be like Apple. What makes it worse is that they don't seem to have a direction as far as application development goes. They were strongly pushing portable .NET when there was no need for cross platform applications, but as soon as ARM gets into their mix of products, they drop that strategy and go with a native code strategy. It's all mixed up and extremely confusing. Their complete lack of direction is certainly not welcoming to developers trying to figure out how they should target the Windows platform, and that doesn't even take into account their confusion on user interfaces as well.

Microsoft's previous success was based on offering very cheap products that were friendly to developers. Yeah, their products were buggy and unfinished, but they were a bargain, and you could always "embrace and extend" them as you saw fit. Now, they are trying to market themselves as a premium luxury product like Apple (at least the consumer end) and walling the garden as much as possible. They're locking down the hardware, too, and alienating their hardware partners, who were the greatest drivers of their previous success. It's a big change. Can they do it? Hyundai managed to convert themselves from being a discount car manufacturer to a more upscale brand, but Hyundai didn't have the problem with their brand reputation that Microsoft has. Microsoft has made cheap crap for so long, I don't see how they manage to convince everyone that they are now an "upscale" high quality manufacturer of products and services.

But maybe you want to be using your tablet for something else while watching.

Chromecast needed a "source" to transfer video from, like a tablet, smartphone or computer. This set top box will be all in one. I wonder if it will be able to run unmodified Android apps like Ouya. If it can do that and sideload, too, I'm in!

The big question is do games for the Fire TV require some special API or can any game from the Amazon game store work with it. Can regular Android apps be sideloaded onto it. If the answer is yes to both, then I could be interested...