Simple: They forgot to invest in people who can lobby their side in Washington. Microsoft had the same problem in the 90'ies. If you aren't spending 20% of your income on lobbism as a big company, you are a sitting duck. A startup don't have to, since they are mostly invisible anyway.
Yes, this sucks and I would love a world in which it was not. Being realistic, however this is the way out of it.
I don't run antivirus, instead I configured a secondary account and then removed the admin privileges on my primary one. This has the added effect of preventing Skype from installing annoying browser toolbars.
I don't mind what you do - nor do I think the parent does - but techchrunch is not a porn site, and it is not a blog about porn, when they write about porn it annoys those who come there to read tech news.
You get a job because you want to make money. Whether you write Java stuff for bigcorp a or bigcorp b doesn't matter, they are going to require the same skills so they are "commodity" work places. You get a job there because you love to code and would like to make money. In short, you love to work.
Now, there are a few exceptions, of course, such as Frog Creek or your dream job, where you get a job because you love to work there.
"Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
Epitaph on his tomb, probably self composed" -- Shakespeare
Optimizing C compilers and platform independence properly. There have been a lot of research involved in making C compilers very fast, so you get to copy that for free.
People often come up with water as an example, but it fails on many levels:
In many cities the "native" water is full of chlorine
If you travel to a foreign country, you may not be able to drink the native water at all
If you are not at home, getting water may not be possible unless you by it in bottles.
Bottles enable you to carry around water, which is useful for car trips, etc.