Knowledge and skill are far scarcer commodities than tangible forms of property. Intellectual property rights can provide a solution to the trade-off between fostering incentives to create new software and diffusing its benefits throughout society.
Thoughts on the advantages of syndication for content consumers and producers, and a brief comparison of IE and FireFox in regards to RSS/feed support.
Most comments I see on web logs (especially technology focused ones) are made by people who bring with them a strong technological bias. These people use (or have rejected) particular operating systems, tools, and software that has in turn shaped their perceptions when it comes to making judgments on the various merits of particular technologies. People tend to categorize or identify themselves with particular "technological cultures"; some of the most common being type of operating system they use (e.g. Linux, Windows, OS X, etc.), development platform (e.g. Java, .NET), and programming language (e.g. C#, VB.NET, Java). Participation and identification with these cultures brings with it a tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own technological culture, or technocentrism.
Microsoft leader's perceive things in primarily a revenue based/data-driven approach. This is reflected in the way they make decisions and even in there product packaging and marketing. Now if you are a big corporation, making data-driven decisions is a crucial part of being successful. You have to be able to react to the competition and emerging marketplace by analyzing information and using it to guide your decisions. Microsoft makes great products and tools, of which I am a huge fan. I even managed to work for Microsoft for a few years, and I consider myself very lucky to have had that opportunity. But like Rory, I see my stock values plummeting even as Microsoft manages to increase its revenue. If we assume that stock values can in some way be tied to public perception of a company, then we can take this as an ominous indicator.