Really De Icaza, posting as an AC? How's the funding going? Did Microsoft find you a new Baystar yet?

And why would that be? Seems all I hear from those Mono lovers is that those who are opposed to Mono and De Icaza's little ploy have no clue. Yet I am still waiting on what the right clue is. Why is there no patent threat in Mono? Why is it safe to use? Why will I never be sued by Microsoft when I deploy/sell Mono crap? Give me proof and nothing but proof. Thus far all I hear is a thundering silence.

De Icaza may have gotten that license and it seems to be all about Mono but if you read their plans then you can see that De Icaza, as one can expect from a good little Microsoft footsoldier, is moving towards closed, proprietary applications for iPhone and Android. With Microsoft already targeting Android phone vendors what do you think what will happen if vendors ship Mono based applications created with De Icaza's Trojan Horses or sell Mono based apps in their app stores? It's all about getting more Microsoft Intellectual Property on Android phones so Microsoft can continue & further expand their shake down or sue for (alleged) patent infringement. It's all about making sure that Microsoft can say to potential hardware partners: Android is *not* free, there is a monetary (legal/IP) cost attached and this is why we are cheaper. Microsoft provides the bullets (via Attachmate this time) and De Icaza as usual bends over for Microsoft and does as he is told. This announcement should be a wake up call to the entire Android Community that Microsoft is trying very hard to make everybody who's doing anything with Android bleed till they drop dead.

I don't know how many here fly an average of 200 times a year but that is a lot. Having flown for decades my record was 200+ European flights and about 50 (twice a week) flights from Amsterdam to the US. People I met with a lot actually thought that I lived there where "there" was e.g. London, Paris, New York etc. At some point you become the guy Up In The Air so I knew it was time to get out. That and the jet lag that never left. He did it for 29 years. That's pretty amazing.

This "oopsie" is just a small fail in a long history of epic fails. In the last 100 years the Dutch socialists have destroyed education and healthcare, have initiated massive blue collar immigration without thinking one second of the consequences if you don't do anything about integration resulting, besides increased crime, in considerable emigration of highly educated white collar knowledge workers. Furthermore Dutch socialists have subsidized ridiculous initiatives with ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money as long as it furthered their socialist cause and retained or expanded votes, spent money like there was no tomorrow (thanks for the staggering debt...) and generally lined their own pockets forcefully paid for by hard working people with a real job. The fact that politicians know next to nothing about the in-ter-nets is shameful and labor should have consulted with experts on the subject before casting their vote and making their even more stupid mistake of voting for the wrong bill. Thank $deity these socialist idiots lost the elections and are no longer part of the government. As usual the mess the Dutch socialists left can now be cleaned up by the new centre-right government which has to come up with $12 billion worth of spending cuts (about 2% of estimated 2011 GNP). This was Dutch Rant radio. Thanks for listening & have a great day!

Technology is not the issue: get your favorite OS instance from your favorite cloud provider/hoster or whatever, setup ssh and openvpn. Part 1 done. Now hop on irc.freenode.net to #asterisk or #freeswitch and ask around for a provider that offers encrypted SIP calls using TLS/SRTP or even ZRTP using non standard ports (like 80, 443, 25 etc.). If your new overlords don't block ports perhaps Skype works too. Use creditcard to throw some cash at the service, configure phone. Part 2 done.

Bottom line is that when you are in a country with scary overlords with many scare drones who like to see you in a scary basement with scary tools you want to keep your head down, do the work, grab the pot of gold (I hope) and get the hell out. If you are from the US be prepared for some serious negative sentiment towards you and the US in general. Do not comment on anything political ever. Do not comment on the pothole in the street, the food, the music, do not comment on girls/women ever. Basically do not comment on anything. Just smile, shut up, respectfully say you have work to do and back out of the discussion as fast as you can. And remember, your biggest "friend" is probably the guy that reports about you every night and gives the other scary drones the intel based on which they might decide to drag you into one of their basements. Do not confide in any person. Oh and just because some other expats say there's no problem with having a few alcoholic beverages at home does not mean that it's save for you. Just imagine the scary basement with the scary tools before you do something that is totally normal in the US but might be or is conceived as insulting and illegal in your nice new restrictive country.

I hope it's worth it.

It's nice to see that even /. will not clearly specify that this is a Microsoft Windows-only problem. The Microsoft PR drones have been "generalizing" and "de-Windowfying" the trojan/virus/malware problem for a while now. And quite successful it seems when even /. serves its articles the way Microsoft's PR drones like to see them. If you read the first sentence then it is basically unclear, to the untrained, inexperienced eyes of this world, that this is not a problem for all Operating Systems and platforms but unique to one particular vendor. Time to give the Microsoft PR drones more work and put the blame were it belongs.