The web delivered on Java’s broken promise: a truly compatible platform that enables applications to run on any operating system, without any need for the developer to get their hands dirty with OS-specific quirks. Write once, run anywhere.

Once upon a time, my little cousin asked my grandfather for some kind of trinket. He said no. Upset by this, my cousin told her parents about it, and they bought her one. Granddad was upset by this, but not because he didn’t want her to have the trinket. Rather, he was upset to have been robbed of the opportunity to give a thoughtful gift.

This article is in response to this one I read today. I’ll be quoting the bits I’m responding to directly, but you should read it in its entirety for yourself first.

It’s been a while since I wrote about copyright, but a video I recently watched got me thinking about it again.

All I needed to do was replace a single hard drive.

Conspiracy theorists occupy a strange place in our culture, because that class is composed of both skeptics (who distrust mainstream narratives and construct the theories) and the credulous (who believe their theories). However, I’ve made an observation that links their mindsets together and hopefully somewhat explains their common mentality.