XKCD's "Time" is ending?

You know what this means...

Only one thing!

RAGNAROK!

That is the pro-MS spin, on the publicly produced history - written up by Helen Custer as history and accolade. Like all lies and cover stories, it has verifiable elements of veracity.

She was paid on MS dime, and published by MS press.

Victors write the history, YMMV, etc.

PRISM was the "VMS.next" Cutler was working on. Three aims separated it from earlier VMS, from which it was strongly derived/forked:
- 64 Bit
- Portability for RISC
- Posix

All of these are targets for which DEC released various "OpenVMS" versions, beginning in 1990.

"'Simply put, I don't think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.'"

He really doesn't follow the implications far enough...

FIFY

"Simply put, I don't think a free society is compatible with an organisation like Google or Facebook in its current form."

Right you really are on most of this.

You cite imitation, derivation, improvement and tribute as the way that progress is made, in the arts and sciences. I actually advocate that.

But in the instance of Microsoft as a company, there are endless back-room rip-offs, double crosses and secret handshakes. They extend from (at least) QDOS through VMS and VINES to SGI (Rick Belluzzo, look closely) - right to the present day: Nokia and Win7 stink to heaven. This was a weird deal in the back room, if ever their were one.

Nokia is essentially a subsidiary of MS, without the legal tripwires. They ditched a successful if future challenged business, to sell devices by the folks behind Zune and Kin.

I know of at least TWO Sr. Execs at MS, who were dismissed because of flagrant sexual harassment, who each went to "penitence" jobs at minor MS partners, only to surface 6-9 months later in Sr Exec jobs at Nokia - where their function relates to Microsoft, corollary partner to their former roles.

Gates stole BASIC, in the beginning. Everything thereafter followed this pattern.

He stalked an innocent unarmed man, down the street, then shot him.

Those are the relevant facts.

Both of them are rabid, hard-right supporting Zionists.

Spitzer isn't a "human rights" kind of guy. He just cares about "dollar rights".

And duplicated work belonging to DEC, and went through losses in court because of it. Yes.

Citation?

You really defend the Mall Cop?

Cornel is a real good human being. The other two are media clowns, promoted in the mainstream to remove black voices as a part of serious discourse. They'll never risk another Dr. King.

Now, To be an "Industrial Complex", one must already possess an elite imbalance of wealth, influence and actual power. The "Industrial Complex" tag implies a large scale, anti-republicanism that seeks cartel/conspiratorial influence over public policy, promoting the participants narrow self-interest and financial rewards - at the expense of the society's greater god. It was coined by Eisenhower about the cold-war profiteering which had it's roots as early as the Gen. Smedley Butler revelations.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/huma-and-the-perils-of-marrying-a-narcissist.html

Crazy to ask the question... ;-)