"Facebook has to allow people to access their relationships however they want through other businesses or tools that are not controlled by Facebook," Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute, said. "Having them control and mediate the structure of those relationships -- that's not right."

Why and why? If we're going to decry the existence of monocultures, the agriculture industry is a much better place to look first. There are serious potential consequences to limiting bio-diversity unlike the consequences to limiting diversity in playgrounds.

I can't tell if it works or not. The first question you have to ask is, "What's it supposed to do?"

I lost my key once when I was a student and called the campus police. They sent someone out the same day to cut through the lock.

It's not quite that simple. I've been teaching math for years and I see this happen all the time with classes that use products like MyMathLab. Students use all of the "help" tools, get the right result and think they know what they're doing. In reality, they didn't solve the problem - the computer did. Many of the students who do this stumble badly when they're presented with a problem that they have to solve without any support. That sounds like what's happening here. There's a very big cliff between drag and drop and looking at a blank page.

You can customize the Start menu quite a bit -- I've removed all the tiles, for example, so I have a menu that's quite clean and usable. Cortana is gone too. Simple and easy.

All true. That does not excuse companies from being misleading for PR reasons. If companies were up-front about WHY they have the demographics they do -- society does provide female and minority candidates -- it might provide impetuous for change. Hiding reality rarely, if ever, improves anything.

If the software is only accessing publicly available information as advertised then what specific laws do you think are being broken?

If this were a high school class, you'd have a point. In an elementary school class, I'd say it's more about teaching them basics skills and concepts.

Yes, but in 20 years, we'll have graphics cards that can run 8k monitors at reasonable speed, and software that scales properly. The screen doesn't exist in a vacuum, and right now, even 4k screens at 15.6 inches are performance dogs. And think how ridiculous the price for an 8k monitor will be...

Slashdot has fallen far in credibility if it promotes sloppy research like the referenced article.

The efficient use of limited funding. How big a tax increase would you be willing to support to fully fund their operation?

A spinal injury rendered my primary right hand useless. So I write (250k words this year) and code (30k lines C++/C#/Python) using a Logitech Wireless Touchpad and a compact tablet-style keyboard on my PC.

The question is silly. Which language to choose depends on the task at hand, not arbitrary religion. I was using C++ when it was "C with classes", wrote books and articles about it -- and my answer is to use the tool best suited to a given task and target platform. I've used Objective C when it fits my goal. I dislike questions asked only to invent false reasons for making a choice.

Well "duh". And water is wet.