>Microsoft making some great products is a *GOOD* thing

Could you expand on this? What great products do they make?

You're not alone. I've been involved in computing technology since the 1970's, write a column on embedded engineering and recently wrote a series of four articles on embedded RTOSs, but also have never heard of it. Until now. Duh!

For those who are interested, FreeRTOS is a very interesting embedded RTOS.

>Or do you require things like justifications, business cases

This bit always makes me laugh. I work in a development department and see this far too often

IT Administrators are there to do what they are told. Admins who think they can 'demand justifications' are just jumped up losers who are envious of people doing real work that they are simply not smart enough to do.

Why the hell did this crap get on slashdot? Is this the quality of reporting we are to expect now?

>So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"

Support open hardware platforms like Neo. Buy the kit, or donate to people working on it.

Or sarcastic :o)

>Speaking of other countries - Why is the USA one of few countries where I can't just pop the SIM or UICC card out of my handset and put it into a new one? Why did it take intervention by the Chinese government to force device manufacturers to standardize chargers to minimize electronic waste?

Simple really. It's because your political system is designed to support and protect the companies that pay them. From outside, it looks like individuals in your country aren't really important.

I feel really sad for you guys.

>What do you think: what would be the best way to cooperate?"

Invade?

The entire Internet backbone is powered by C. Do you think router software is written in perl? Operating systems? BIOSes? Harddisk firmware? Data encrypters? GPS firmware? Mobile phone firmware?

Real engineers program mostly in C.

The higher level stuff is just there to enable non programmers to write banal blogging applications that enable people to publish details of their uninteresting lives.

When the world fully wakes up to the amount of energy we waste executing inefficient algorithms in inefficient programming languages, we'll see who's smug then.

>the more human readable and dummy proof

Actually those two are exclusive, not inclusive.

>The problem is that we don't train people in the fine art of bullshit detection

But it's a movie! It's a fecking movie!

>Independance from US control is the second motivator.

Primary motivator. Galileo isn't a UK department for transport initiative, you know. In fact the UK, due to it's low funding, is a bit player. ( I'm from the UK and only got to work on Galileo because I was based in another country at the time )

You're one of those people who write the Ikea assembly manuals, aren't you? :o)

>What's with the remaining 4%? How come not everyone will be covered?

That 4% will be lawyers.