I documented the change of control, and noted Microsoft profited from enabling that change. If that's characterized as "misrepresenting" things, so be it.

When Corporate IT provides all employees with a charge number, from the CIO's budget, to use when the IT keeps the employee from being productive, then maybe I'll have more sympathy for corporate IT. How many times, for example, has your computer been forced to reboot in the middle of the day because IT decided to roll out some change? How many times have you had to go to the HelpDesk because something that worked before, suddenly stopped working? How many policies have been instituted that are a direct response to problems that are unique to Microsoft Windows? The real problem is not the transfer of control to IT, but rather the lack of accountability on IT departments for how their policies and actions negatively impact the larger community.

One advantage I've had as a Mac user in Windows-centric organizations is that IT didn't know how to mess with my computer, keeping me much more productive. Best example was Y2K remediation where I worked back in 1999. IT budgeted an hour to do each Windows machine. No one in my department was done in less than 2 hours and the worse case was the guy who was down for 3 days. For the Macs, IT budgeted 1/2 hour, most Mac users did it themselves in 10-15 minutes, and most of those changes actually were making sure -Microsoft Office- was up-to-date.

As always, Your Mileage May Vary.

If you look at Windows NT and beyond, it was all about removing capabilities from untrusted users, and placing them in the hands of IT staff/CIOs. That was a huge success for Microsoft, CIOs -control the budget- and decide what gets purchased. So they stuck with what empowered them, regardless of whether this was good for the user community, and whether the Microsoft monoculture created more problems -and more costs- than it solved. (After all, the measure of 'power' in many organizations is the size of the budget and staff, growing the CIO budget and hiring more IT workers equated to more CIO power.

So now, with the growth of non-PCs (phones, tablets, even IoT) in companies, Microsoft once again plays to (you could say 'panders to') the CIO and ability to control the device.

This could be quite a battle, with Apple/IBM (and presumably Google/Android soon) providing business services to the user community, versus Microsoft providing control (and familiarity) to the CIO community.

This is a fascinating set of claims that have nothing to do with any autism research I've seen. I've never seen an "anti-autism drug" get any kind of approval or testing or even marketing, and I've never heard serious claims about people "growing out of" autism. I've never actually heard of "temporary" autism. There's lots you can do to mitigate the inconvenient or harmful symptoms, but the underlying neurology seems to be pretty stable.

Exactly. I never met anyone autistic as a kid. Now about half the people I regularly interact with are autistic. Actually, several of them (including me) are people I knew as kids... But what we mean by "autistic" has changed hugely over that time period.

There's a difference, though, between a preference for COTS with vendor support, and a mandate for a specific COTS product. An Open Source product without anyone providing maintenance is a risk. An Open Source product where you can -compete- for maintenance is a real benefit. A COTS product where you pay whatever the vendor charges for maintenance is at least a predictable life-cycle cost, but that vendor has you by the short-hairs. I've seen products where the sustainment contract was a lot more than the purchase/license price, and there was nothing you could do about it.

OK, this is hearsay, but I remember being told maybe 15 years ago that Congress placed language in the DoD budget mandating the use of a Commercial Mapping Toolkit, with language such that only ESRI's product would qualify. What I know is the CJMTK (Commercial Joint Mapping ToolKit) is an ESRI proprietary interface that is mandated for use in DoD systems.

Since then, it's been difficult to provide alternatives, particularly at the library/component level. Google Earth has gotten some traction, but not as an API but rather as a rendering engine.

I argue the exact opposite! C++ the programming language leaves way too many decisions to the compiler implementer. A better specified language, such as Java, Ada, Eiffel, etc, doesn't have that problem of different compiler interpretations of the standard.

Bad programmers can produce bad code in any language, including one as well/thoroughly specified as Ada. The difference, though, is that what that code actually does is less subject to interpretation by the compiler.

I've observed that two Ada programmers will argue, "Is this program legal?" If the program is legal, they both -know- what the compiler will do (modulo the rare compiler/optimizer bug, which was usually caught through the stringent compiler validation.)

Two C++ programmers will argue, 'What will my compiler do with this code?"

A better specified language, with fewer holes in its design, wouldn't have these problems between 'language' and 'compiler'.

Who said adding security and utility to current OS would be "free"?

An OS could choose to make these attributes protected, i.e requires 'sufficient privilege' (e.g. root) to change.

The file extension is not "simple and descriptive" for a file type you've never seen before. Hence the existence of sites that translate those TLAs into a description, often overloaded, of what they might mean.

The other problem is that the file extension conflates content and implicit creator/handler. A text file is a text file, there's nothing special about NotePad, SimpleText, EMACS or (shudder) vi as the creator/handler for text files.

The idea of using file name extensions as a means to denote content/application association dates to the 1970s (or even earlier). It's an idea that deserves to die, along with Disco music.

Mac OS 9 and earlier got the OS/file system mechanisms right, with two file attributes. One denoted the contents of the file, and the other denoted the default (usually creating) application.

The challenge for OS designers is how to present this information to the user in some meaningful way. Cryptic text strings at the end of file names aint' it! And the ease by which these can be changed (particularly by malicious programs) are a bug, not a feature. If there's a way to prevent these attributes from being mis-applied/forged, that would be a real accomplishment.

In honor of the WWII 79th Armoured Division, that contained all the special purpose vehicles that were so useful during D-Day and beyond.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

(And without the advantages of being part of the Borg Collective.)
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01...
Pay particular attention to the chart showing -layoffs- across the IT sector!

I'd publish a paper, "C syntax considered harmful" with roughly the same kind of rationale as the "Goto considered harmful" paper.