4:00 AM: Intrepid counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, gun drawn, kicks open the door to a small flat in a run-down apartment building. The nefarious Evil-Doer turns to face the door, clearly shocked.

Evil-Doer (played by Jerry Seinfeld): Agent Jack Bauer! How can this be? That laptop had three, maybe four minutes of battery life left on it, at most! How could you possibly have downloaded those files in time?!
Jack Bauer: Simple.

Bauer turns to face the camera, which quickly zooms in on his face.

Jack Bauer: I used Internet Explorer 8.

A giant explosion rocks the screen, and a huge Internet Explorer logo appears.

Announcer: Internet Explorer 8. Because on the Internet, seconds matter.

You make a good point, but I think open source applications will need a larger user base before the pool of user-contributed solutions grows appreciably. And per the article (and the GP's comments), that larger user base isn't likely to manifest itself for applications that require complicated and poorly-documented configuration to get them up and running.

Also, for myself at least, if I read a wiki page or a blog post that describes the complicated hoops I have to jump through to get an open-source application working, I immediately start looking for an alternative; it seems likely (to me, at least) that other aspects of the application will be just as convoluted as the one that is described, only next time I might not be able to find a resource on the Internet that tells me what to do. Like the GP, I'm thinking about current and future investments of time.

I disagree that no protection is the best protection. Plenty of people make simple typing errors all the time when they go looking for a website. Bank0fAmerica (it's a zero; could you tell?) looks an awful lot like BankOfAmerica. As phishing attacks get more and more sophisticated, eliminating any kind of protection makes less and less sense; even smart people can get taken in by an expertly-executed phishing attack that uses a URL that very closely mimics the correct URL and a website that looks nearly identical to the actual website.

Regarding your analogy with motorcycles, statistics compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggest that motorcyclists might actually drive less safely than people in air-bagged cars. In a fatal collision, when compared to passenger vehicles involved in such collisions, motorcyclists were found to be:

(1) More likely to have been speeding.
(2) More likely to have had their license suspended.
(3) More likely to have been driving with a suspended license.
(4) More likely to have been legally intoxicated.
(5) More likely to have a previous DUI on their record.

Please note: The report does not suggest that these behaviors are prevalent among motorcyclists, and it is not in any way my intention to suggest that they are. Most motorcyclists that I have seen on the road drive in a very safe manner. I am just summarizing the statistics from the NHTSA report.

Source: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/portal/nhtsa_static_file_downloader.jsp?file=/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/Traffic%20Injury%20Control/Articles/Associated%20Files/810990.pdf

I couldn't find any exceptions to the Massachusetts law, but I did find a blog post that described another case like it. A man operating a video camera at a political protest in 2006 was ordered by the police to stop recording, but he simply hid the camera in his coat and continued to record. He was arrested, ordered to pay a $500 fine, and sentenced to six months probation.

http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2007/massachusetts-wiretapping-law-strikes-again

So even though there's no exception, I would guess that the man described in the original article will receive a similar sentence. The post I linked to above also mentions a case in which a woman posted a video on the Internet that was obtained in a similar manner. The police department ordered her to take it down or face prosecution; she resisted, citing the first amendment, and the court ruled in her favor, since she did not actually make the video that she was posting. So creating the recording is a crime, but, assuming you didn't create it, you can share it with whomever you want.

I also discovered that the defense counsel for Joel Tennenbaum, who was sued by the RIAA and whose case has appeared on Slashdot before, used the wiretapping law as part of their defense:

http://blog.pff.org/archives/2009/07/print/005584.html

Oh, and this website that purports to list dumb laws that have been passed in the US and around the world. I don't know how accurate it is, but it's good for a laugh.

http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/massachusetts

Heated debate begins in three ... two ... one ...

Wow, a veiled reference to communism leveled at "current liberals," a broad brush that seems to paint just about anyone who doesn't think the current president is a dangerous socialist. How very original. Maybe your next post will describe how Obama is just like a certain fascist German leader from the 1930's and 40's.

But regardless of your next post, I'm sure you have plenty of convincing anecdotes to back up the claims in your current post. Thank you for sparing my meager young-person brain the details. Perhaps in your follow-up post, to educate us young people, you can explain which idea of the "current liberals" will radically redistribute wealth and power in a manner equivalent to the status quo in communist Russia? I'm sure you'll recall that Soviet Russia was a country where a tiny percent of the population held all the wealth and power (the political class), and the rest of the population was assigned to various communal farms and factories and spoon-fed information that was meant to reinforce their trust in the political class.

Is healthcare reform the piece of legislation that finally takes America that "extra mile" to go completely communist? I'm trying to remember where healthcare reform appeared on Lenin's and Stalin's lists, but it's just not springing to mind. Or maybe it's the new middle class tax cuts coupled with an end to the Bush tax cuts in 2010 (causing taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year to revert to their previous levels). I'm trying to remember when the Soviet political class increased their own taxes so the Soviet middle class could thrive, but it's just not coming to me.

I am willing to concede that I may be overlooking a glaringly obvious and meaningful similarity between the United States and communist Russia, but until you've pointed it out to me, I don't think your comparison holds water.

I guess, in an incredibly over-simplified way, you're right. But of course, because it's oversimplified, it misses the entire point of the article (I'm guessing you haven't bothered to read it yet, and I would encourage you to do so, since it's very well written). Allow me to explain.

1. Red Octane, creator of many (excellent) DDR peripherals, approached Harmonix about making a game wherein you used a guitar-like controller (manufactured by Red Octane, of course) to play music. Harmonix agreed, and Guitar Hero was the result. So I guess you're right, they "copied" DDR ... by relying on Red Octane's cumulative experience creating peripherals for DDR to create a similar, but nonetheless novel, gaming experience using a guitar.

2. Harmonix developed Guitar Hero for Red Octane. Red Octane was acquired by Activision, who gained the rights to Guitar Hero through the acquisition. Harmonix was acquired by MTV, who wanted a game like Guitar Hero that they could sell themselves. The result was Rock Band, which is like Guitar Hero (it has guitars, and you play musical notes in a sequence displayed on the screen), but also includes a drum set and a microphone. So I guess you're right again, Harmonix "copied" Guitar Hero ... by using their cumulative experience developing Guitar Hero to create a new game that improved upon the experience of the old game.

You may not have noticed, but the kind of copying you describe is rampant in other industries, too. A lot of computer hardware seems suspiciously similar to older hardware. Newer car models bear a striking resemblance to older car models. Modern operating systems look a lot like their predecessors, not to mention their counterparts.

The point is, the "copying" you are so ready to dismiss is kind of an important way in which innovation proceeds. In fact, if you substitute the word "copying" with the words "building upon," you're much closer to the truth. A lot of innovation proceeds by incrementally improving upon what's already there. So your comment should have read:

"Guitar Hero built upon DDR and Rock Band built upon Guitar Hero."

There, fixed that for you.

Let's mine the rich vein of hypocrisy. All that hot air could meet our energy needs for years.

Whoops, that should read "some of the same operators such as ">" and "" for comparisons and "=" for assignment.

You mean another implementation of *everything* for Microsoft's .NET framework:

http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython (Python!)
http://www.codeplex.com/IronScheme (Scheme!)
http://nua.codeplex.com/ (Lua!)
http://www.ironruby.net/ (Ruby!)
(Perl conspicuously absent ...)

Now, let's discuss your allegation than Python and VB are re-inventions of COBOL. Let's look first at what is shared: some syntax. As far as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong), they share little else. For example, boolean expressions are composed with "and," "or," and "not." They also use some of the same operators, such as ">" and "
(Aside: I had to read up on COBOL to write this post, and frankly, COBOL reads a lot more like SQL to me than it does like either VB or Python).

I think that Python has far more in common with LISP than with COBOL. Lexical scoping? Functions as first-class data? Built-in "map" and "apply" methods? Smells like functional programming to me. From what I've read about COBOL, it has none of these things. Also, though they both have OO features, COBOL had to *add* those features in 2002. So even COBOL is "re-inventing" the features of other languages.

I think if you replaced "re-invent" with "learn from" in your statement, you would be closer to the truth. After all, that is in my mind what COBOL did: they saw that object-oriented features could be powerful additions to their language, so they added them. Language designers are taking what they like or what works (or perhaps sometimes, what is most popular) from existing languages, and putting together languages that meet their needs.

For example, look at the Boo programming language. It takes the features the author loved about the .NET framework and the Python programming language and puts them together into a new language that has developed a strong following (it even has language macros a la LISP ... totally sweet). For its devotees, Boo meets their needs, and it was able to do so by fusing together what the author deemed the best features of existing languages and then building upon them.

Compiled languages (dynamic languages can also be statically-typed) have been (and still are) the preferred development languages for software projects. You can get a sense of this by scanning job listing websites and open-source project hosting websites; C, C++, C#, and Java predominate. Thus, there is enormous incentive to develop exceptional tools for engineers who develop software in these languages. However, all of the features you describe could be available for dynamic languages. A compiler program performs all of the same steps that an interpreter program (such as the Perl interpreter) performs except for one: it does not execute the code that it is evaluating. Both lex and parse a source code file into an expression tree, and both compile the expressions they find into computer code. One does this exclusively; one does this in addition to executing the code that it evaluates. One could write a compiler for a dynamic language (this has been done for many such languages) and execute it to see if any problems occur. One could also develop a refactoring program for dynamic languages (this has also been done; see the Ropeide for an example of a Python refactoring IDE). So to say that you have not been able to "replicate" the properties of compiled languages with dynamic languages simply says to me that such tools aren't as convenient to you as those provided for compiled languages, and I would have to agree for the reasons that I cited above: there is less of an incentive to develop such tools to the degree that exists for compiled languages.

Here is why I think parts of your list are unreasonable.

1. "No unnecessary overhead" and "sensible error messages": I'm not sure these are concrete enough to qualify as features. No language will probably ever satisfy everyone's opinion of "necessary overhead," or "sensible error messages." Some error messages are admittedly worse than others, but what may seem sensible to some will frustrate others. The same is true of language overhead.
2. "No dependency on a virtual machine": as the performance of virtual machines begins to rival that of "bare iron" execution for high-level languages, the advantages of the one over the other diminish accordingly.
3. "everything an object" and reflection: this is nitpicking, but it seems that what you really want is some method of treating data objects uniformly and inspecting or coercing their type later on. As the authors of "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html) demonstrate, you can do this in LISP by treating everything as a list, a native type of that language, and providing the appropriate constructors, accessors, and predicates for working with lists that represent different types of data (in the book, they use integer, rational, real, and complex numbers as their type hierarchy).