If the government using MSOffice and you have to send and receive documents from the government, the government effectively forces you to use proprietary software.
Does the Chinese government force people to send documents in a proprietary format for which is there is no free software that can create that format?
No government should be forcing its citizens into proprietary software which writes its data in proprietary ways without good, permanent ways to retrieve that data in the far future. Formats like OpenDoc are fully documented and open to public scrutiny. Not to mention the costs and risks of dealing with licensing; working with software that has no source code available.
If China wasn't conducting this probe, how would China be 'forcing' its citizens to use proprietary software? How is this probe removing the forcing of the use of proprietary software?
I'm suspecting the zeal MS is showing in challenging the US gov't has more to do with laying the groundword of "nation-states" being neutered. This is about power in the future. If they win against the US gov't this is just one more nail in the coffin of the battle to make governments useless. This goes hand in hand with the Trans Pacific and other trade agreements. These things are designed to strip power from government.
This is just one more step in the march of capitalism that will likely destroy civilization in the long run.
Do you think it'll happen by 2077?
you will need a manual break to stop the car that just may be aimlessly costing.
Yeah, aimlessly costing is pretty bad. The car gets pretty expensive in only a few minutes. One time my grandparents cars computer completely died on them when they were on the interstate. They ended up coasting to the onramp, turning off the car and restarted it.
Do not assume that source of wireless coordination is always 100% trusty.
I don't think that the cars going 50 mph+ in the opposite direction of me, about two feet to the left are 100% trusty either. But they stay in their lanes such a high percentage of time, I'm still willing to go out on the road.
If there's one lesson I learned from Star Trek it's that you always, ALWAYS, include a manual override.
You're making Gene Roddenberry cry. There are so many other good lessons in Star Trek.
If a driverless car has no manual means of steering, and if it broke down and you had to push it, how could you control it?
Hit the OnStar button (or whatever the equivalence is) and work with the drained driver on the other end.
You are giving up yet another freedom if you believe this is a good idea.
So every passenger in a car has given up freedoms?
Please, please, teach them something besides how to code in Java. A little theory would be nice. Some basic understanding of what a computer actually does with that code they type in. Some idea of how algorithms are turned into programs. Please?
I think the reason why the students are being taught Java is so that the Professors can focus on those other things. For lots of students the gotcha's of native code get in the way of learning the theories, algorithm tuning, and data structures. So by using a managed language in the classes, the classes can spend more time focusing on something else besides language implementation details.
Java seems to be in the middle ground where it's more cumbersome than the "scripting" options, yet slower than the "native" options. Leaving not much of a reason to choose it in the vast majority of cases.
Compile time type checking is a major reason to pick Java over a scripted language. It's not like performance requirements are binary either. There's a lot of distance between optimized assembly and runtime type checking scripts.
Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences of your speech, sweet cheeks.
Actually, isn't that what it's supposed to be. I'm sure pre-America British citizens were free to say whatever they wanted, they just had to deal with the consequences of their speech (imprisonment, torture, being blockaded from opportunity, etc). So the founding fathers of the US, put forth laws to prevent certain "consequences" from happening when people decided to speak their mind.
-Microsoft develops product in U.S, generating tax credit for R&D.
And paying salaries to U.S. employees who pay income tax on it and spend their money in the US, thereby also paying US sales taxes.
That is so incredibly irrelevant. We're talking about the taxing of one legal entity, don't try and push the conversation to knock on affects to other legal entities.
Oh, what the heck, let's talk about those other legal entities. If Microsoft paid all of the taxes from revenue generated in the US, those employees would have a lower tax bill, and could have better lives. As a matter of fact, perhaps all citizens of the US would have a lower tax burden. That might really help those who are just trying to find a way to eat every night.
AFAIK it's the only mobile OS doing so.
Windows RT allows for multiple accounts.
"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!" -- Buckaroo Banzai
