Not always. The "market" is short sighted: it evidently prefers to spend money on developing Viagra copies rather than a cure for malaria, even though the latter would actually save millions of lives.
And even when the market chooses correctly, the decision may not happen soon enough. Better batteries may eventually emerge without government assistance, but maybe not until long after the oil crash. Do you want to take that risk? I don't.
I assume you are referring to a possible visit of America by Zheng He, decades before Columbus. That has never been a Chinese claim; as far as I know, the originator was Gavin Menzies in his book "1421: The Year China Discovered the World" (published in 2002).
In the Chinese case, it was actually foreigners who adopted [the compass] for navigation and taught the Chinese to use it for something other than Chi lines and harmony.
My reponse: the Chinese knew what the compass was good for and did not need any pushy foreigners to teach them. If you think I was agreeing with you, you need lessons in remedial English. However, you did a 180 in your reply, which was agreeing with me. Go ahead, keep banging your head on the table.
What makes you think 1405 was the first time China used the compass?
You need to improve your geography. Zheng He visited Africa, which is thousands of miles from the China Sea.
We don't even know whether Noah was a real person. Whereas we have massive documentation, from multiple independent sources, for Zheng He and his giant fleet.
True. But 500 years is not a long time by Chinese standards.
No. You should have paid more attention to nobodylocalhost's posting. How do you think Zheng He's massive fleet managed to navigate almost half the world? Answer: with compasses.
Remember the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing? The "great ships" part of that performance ended with one man holding up a compass -- and following it. That was the whole point of that part of the ceremonies!
Considering that Microsoft actually has threatened to sue Linux, my attitude is prudent, not paranoid.
Michele Herman no longer works at Microsoft, and hasn't since 2004. Who knows if the "no fee, no royalty" policy is still in effect. Until I see a legal commitment, I will assume the worst. (Which is always good policy when dealing with Microsoft or the devil.) So you are still probably wrong.
The ECMA process requires that all patents held by member companies that are essential for implementing its standards are available under "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms" for the purpose of implementing those Standards.
(emphasis mine)
Nope. ECMA has not forced Microsoft to give up its patent claims. The only requirement with respect to patents is that they be available under "reasonable and nondiscriminitory" terms -- which basically means that Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for patent licences, as long as it's the same fee for everyone. So MS can still threaten to sue for patent violations. And any fee of significant size is of course fatal for free software. So you are wrong.
If all else fails, lower your standards.