Whenever you see a science headline that says something retarded, you should assume bad science journalism, rather than bad science.

Law of truly large numbers is the applicable law here, but the mistake is understandable.

Maybe you're thinking of the Outer Space Treaty? Wikipedia says it forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, but doesn't say much about private entities AFAIK.

And no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

Because certain death from suffocation is worse than potential death from head trauma.

Frankly, the ability to withdraw from the treaty is irrelevant. The stern words and looks would just come when they withdrew from the treaty, instead of when they claimed their bit of the moon (actually, they'd probably receive some of the words and looks then, too).

Never said it did.

We wouldn't need to touch the equipment, just implement trade sanctions on whatever they mined out (or the resulting products made from them).

I said mild.

Considering that China has signed and ratified the Outer Space Treaty (which explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet), they'd probably get a few stern words and looks. On the other hand, if they actually manage to mine and transport something back, then there might be some mild repercussions.

They didn't release it, per se. The code was there, but it was only accessible with third party tools. Not saying disabling access to it was the right choice, but it isn't as nasty as it sounds.

No notification in that case either.

No you didn't, because when someone posts anonymously, they don't get notifications about replies, so they will most likely never know that you replied. Remember, only reply to ACs if you think it will help some other reader. Replying to them in the hopes that they will read your reply is delusional.

No, it's because Microsoft is better at running legacy software (or at least that's how businesses see it). And business computing is all about legacy software.

and you carry the cost, whether it be in the form of actual money, or increased amount and obnoxity of ads.

Because some syntaxes are better at expressing some concepts while others are better at expressing other concepts.