So, have you learned that this was an extremely stupid joke that shouldn't have been written, as opposed to "light-hearted joke" as you wrote with unbelievable naivety? What's worse is that you really mean't it, and have defended your "joke" by pointing out how you believe Apple lock-down is fascism comparable with that of "one of the plans" of the Nazis.

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Just because someone else makes a Hitler comparison, does not make it ok for you to do so.

Flash runs animations far better than SVG, and for the web is the best thing out there to do what it does (or would you prefer Silverlight?) HTML5 doesn't replace Flash, and doesn't even try to. It brings video into html, so it no longer needs to be embedded into Flash, but doesn't remotely replace it. RipCode isn't interactive, and the real value of Flash is its flexibility with interactive content.

Flash is also a platform with almost no limitations as to how you use it, closed-source, but you can run whatever you like -- just like Windows, but free to install. The iPad/iPhone is closed to non-approved applications, making it the least open platform out there. So let me rephrase what the parent posted:

I'm all for the demise of the iPhone/iPad. It is a necessary evil but let's get rid of them. This could be one way. Flash may or may not be the way to go, that is yet to be seen. However this is the open web people.

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Flash is closed-source. The iPhone/iPad are closed to running what applications you want on them, which to me is as closed as you can get. In this case, Flash may be the poster-boy for open application environments.

Flash's demise will have nothing to do with something as inconsequential as RipCode. Let's be clear on what RipCode is: a Flash video replacement. What it isn't: Flash.

You know all those websites created in Flash, with Flash menus and Flash fonts, etc? You know, the ones with something called ActionScript going on deep down where you interact with the website... well, Ripcode doesn't even begin to replace them, it only replaces Flash video.

Now, RipCode may provide a stop-gap solution for displaying video until HTML5 fully arrives, but a Flash replacement it ain't. A strange (on-demand video re-encoding at the server??) temporary solution that will be obsolete in a year, it is.

You're both wrong. It lasted so long because it was so advanced when it came out, that it took years for any competition to form, hence reason to be replaced by micro$oft. I know, I know, you don't like to hear it, but there were some real dark netscape days there for a long time, while IE6 allowed AJAX-type programming from back from back in 2001.

By its end it was long in the tooth, and lacked key features of the likes of Firefox, but back then it opened up a lot of new possibilities for a web developer. Look at the past 3 years: Windows still comes installed with IE, but a lot of people are using firefox, safari, or chrome, because they're as good or better, and offer real competition that was completely non-existant in 2003.

In a way, by taking so long with IE7, microsoft did us a favour by allowing vibrant competition in the browser market (yes, I am someone that doesn't touch IE unless I absolutely need to)

I disagree with you on the first shooting being understandable -- with the quality of vision the gunmen had, they should not have been able to call the shots they did (and they did). The video made those soldiers look trigger-happy, but far worse showed that the army doesn't seem to have a reasonable set of guidelines on confirming targets.

On the shooting of the van, though, you're bang-on. The exact words of the gunmen leading up to the actual firing on the van were:
"We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly uh, picking up bodies and weapons."
[a van arrived with children in the front seat to pick up a man who'd been gunned down, no weapons in sight]
"Let me engage", was the next request from the gunman, followed by, "Can I shoot", and topped off with a series of requests for permission and a final, "Come on! Let us shoot!"

And then, permission received, they fired on unarmed individuals coming to help a hurt man, who also had children looking out of the front window in (mangled by poor resolution) view of the helicopter.

Nothing much is understandable about these "mistakes".

I really believe you're missing a number of obvious points.

Why would Google re-implement .NET when they were already using a series of other languages and tools? Unless I'm completely mistaken, to make a third party .NET implementation would have been -difficult- to say the least. Google's a search company, not a software company. Any software it creates are merely offshoots of its core businesses, and .NET is a very comprehensive suite that does far more than Google would ever want to dedicate itself to.

More to the point, however, is that Microsoft products carry with them a philosophy that speak far louder than the legal issues that you believe are the only reason these websites avoided .NET. The closed-ness of the code-base, the top-down direction of its evolution straight from MS offices, and its fundamental business interests are all issues for Google and the other sites you mention. It's these interests that the lead to the legal issues, and even make them inherently necessary.

To look at .NET and say that legal issues are holding it back is to be completely blind to the fact that those legal issues are fundamental and necessary to Microsoft -- and many other companies use their products because of them.

As for the launch date, let's be honest: no professional would base their business on a brand new and complex suite without giving a couple years to work the bugs out.

Yes, it was this quote that made me question whether de Icaza has any clue at all.

.NET was released first in 2002. Wikipedia was released in 2001, Google in the 90's. As for Ruby on Rails -- don't you need Ruby first in order to build a framework on Ruby (incidentally, Microsoft got into IronRuby in 2007)? Facebook, meanwhile, was a classic example of a commercial website done on the cheap, and at the time it was started, LAMP was about the only practical option. Your average group of kids with an idea in college aren't going to go out and buy Window servers, software, and very pricey MSSQL licences.

Really, why would anyone bother listening to what this de Icaza guy has to say, when he spouts off nonsense like this?

Ah, and in our example at hand, the only free market is coming from the scalpers. Ticketmaster and like companies are usually monopolies over venues, not allowing for competitors to also sell tickets, nor the artists to have any say over how tickets to their shows are sold.

They use their monopolistic positions to charge exorbitant fees, that drive prices to see arts events through the roof. If venues would focus on local sales through multiple distributors online and off, they wouldn't have this problem that is of their own creation.