You won't like the answer but don't convince, VB.NET is much easier to learn your younger crowd, .NET has more job opportunities and switching to F#, C# from VB.NET is much easier.
What you write is totally different from what article says. That article states that Blizzard also bans people who plays offline/single player games, I'm sure everyone is fine with banning online cheaters.
switch in C syntax is terrible implemented, VB done this one so much better. That's one of the reasons why switch is not that popular in C languages (people tend to do crazy if-then-else stuff) and so popular in VB, most devs tries to use select where possible.
Does it? Since when? Do you think 37Signals potential customers feel good about feel-scammy-website? Maybe casual average-joe might like it (Only God knows why) but I don't think their potential clients would
I think spotting, for example lookout outlook plugin acquired by MS, which seems clearly to me MS needed such solution and lookout already solved it nicely. So why re-invent the wheel and spend more money when you got a safe choice.
Focusing one specific problem and solving it in the best way possible (this doesn't mean hardcore-awesome-superb-crazy coding) is still a pretty killer thing to have. That's why it's worthy to Google, do your rainy weekend work and sell to Google, then pleas submit to HN.