[ale] best cross platform development evironment

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Tue, 2010-11-16 at 09:56 -0500, John Pilman wrote:
> I did like the part about "being a fan of logical argument" followed
> by a wild simile. 

I'm sorry, I must not seeing the same message that you are... I made a
contrast, to be sure, but I don't believe that there was anything "wild"
about it.  Well, unless you like our Federal government, but in that
case I'm not sure that we have any common ground on which to have a
reasonable discussion.

I am not just a user of and contributor to free software.  I am not just
an advocate for free software.  I'm an advocate of independent rational
thought, personal responsibility, choice and freedom in general---I
believe that absolutely everyone on this planet is _capable_ of having
rational thought.  Whether or not they exercise that ability is of
course another matter completely, and sadly most people do not take the
time to do so.

A hard position to hold in today's world without being perpetually
angry, to be sure.  So many people are absolutely willing to give up
their freedom in order to have a little bit of "safety" or "security".
Now, some just don't think about it.  But what is terribly worrisome is
that even when they learn what it is that they are doing, what they are
giving up, most often their response is, "well, I want what I want when
I want it, and therefore, I don't care".  Our society has turned into
this bunch of people who feel that they are entitled to anything and
everything, even if the long-term cost is the net loss of both our
individual and societal freedoms.  It matters not to such people,
because who cares about the long-term effects, anyway?  They're not
going to suffer for it, or if they do, it will be long after they have
the stamina to care about it any longer.

Call it wild if you must, but it is not unlike buying "insurance" from
the local mob so that they won't destroy your storefront.  In both
situations, the victim is giving up something which was hard-earned in
order to continue with their own goals.  The major difference is that in
today's world it is so subtle that most people do not realize that they
are victims.  They do not even seem to realize what freedom they
willingly just give up in order to have their rights to privacy and
freedom of travel.

Perhaps my contrast was not, strictly speaking, necessary.  But I do not
see it as entirely irrelevant, either.  While there are some pretty
significant differences between Microsoft and the United States Federal
government, it appears safe to say that neither of them really give a
rats' rear about their paying customers.  Surprisingly, while for many
years Microsoft's entire foundation was that of a weaker form of
terror---FUD---they appear to be slowly coming away from that.  I can't
say that I _trust_ them.  I don't trust _any_ business.  Not even Red
Hat, or Canonical.  They are businesses, for crying in the mud, not
individuals.  They cannot possess trust.  That is a quality that we hold
in people, not fictitious legal entities.  All that can be done is to
take what there is for what it is or isn't, and move on.

And if we want to talk about honestly and track records, Microsoft has a
better track record in the past five years than the United States
Federal government, and for that matter, than most individual state
governments.

In the end, it all boils down to politics.  And politics are built on
everything sans solid ground, sadly.

Shit, I would offer up my next month's salary to anyone that could offer
me a solid, logical argument _against_ using a free software
reimplementation of a proprietary system (specifically Mono), but if I
did so I would likely be accused of holding it back simply because what
people seem to think passes muster as a logical argument these days is
often nothing more than a thinly disguised emotional response.  People
seem to fail to realize two critical facts:  The past does not predict
the future (that isn't to say that patterns cannot be useful, but it is
to say that people, leadership, and such _can_ change), and an argument
ad hominem isn't a valid argument at all.  Yet every argument that I
have seen relies on prediction, argument ad hominem, or a gross
misunderstanding of patent law [in the United States].  Nobody that I
have asked has been able to find even one feature in the CLR that is
truly unique throughout computing history.  Nobody that I have asked has
been able to point out even one line of encumbered code present within
Mono.

The only conclusion to which I can arrive is that in our society,
summary judgments seem to be perfectly acceptable and nobody truly cares
enough to prove their point: they just want to be True Believers in
something, and none are able to see past the design origin of neither
the runtime nor the language.

	--- Mike
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