"Microsoft says it not only wants to connect with those foreign operating systems, but by bringing over functionality from Windows 10 (along with content) it hopes to "make those other devices better,""

No, please... please don't "bring over 'functionality' from Win10... no, please, those foreign OS's are working *just fine*, they don't neeed WinFunc... (ie. code written by Sir Nose).

If in 15 years they can't improve the "functionality" of such core tools as the Services.exe or Performance monitor, and they keep fucking rearranging the goddamn interface *with every release*... causing UNTOLD HOURS of wasted time while poor sodding workers around the globe have to relearn basic tasks again and again... Then there's little they can "make better" on other systems.

Gawd help us.

If THIS is what happens to one's mind when they spend too much time (& $) soaked in computer technology --imaginary crazy unsubstantiatable theories that *everything* is a computer-- then I'd better get our of this biz fast! o_O

"21st century security threats"... I wonder if those threats would even exist if the US hadn't invaded and weren't still occupying & regularly bombing Iraq and A'stan.

...because who wants to bet Verizon is/has been doing it too?

Why the F does everything have to be about "innovation" all the time? No change is not a de facto negative.
Some things don't need new bells and whistles... can we really improve on forks? Or cast iron pans? for example?
As mcmonkey points out in "No innovation? I wish!", constant change for the sake of some fantasy-land of "innovation!" can lead to a New Terrible.
The constant full-court press of "Growth!" is a cancerous convolution of profit-driven economies. Stability is a welcome and necessary trait.

Are these men actually watching the shows seriously, with interest, finding them irksome, and then downvoting?
Or are they just downvoting w/o giving two shits about the show in the first place...

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
  Bill Bullard

... So the "technology" takes over the reins of government... but in reality, it's a bunch of semi-autistic social-introvert SysAdmins who are calling the shots and tweaking the machines with their su password privileges.

  Great.

A realistic Technocracy. It'll be like Microsoft, but even worse.

For all Outlook's faults, well enumerated here, some of us are simply stuck with it, Exchange, and AD.
So please Microsoft, for the sake of all the users' sanity out there DON'T FRIGGING CHANGE THE COLOR OF OUTLOOK'S ICON! KEEP IT YELLOW!
Users know what to look for, and that level of stability is helpful to them, and to use IT admins... ESPECIALLY when the damn Windows GUI changes dramatically *with every version*. We have enough to think about in this crazy internet world, don't make us do extra POINTLESS effort of learning how to find the GD email program icon again. Why you made it Blue --confusing it with the icon for Word-- is beyond me. It has only annoyed people, and for ZERO gain.
Please do us a favor and stop torturing the vast user-base with "shakey-uppey" changes that reduce usability.

Fear doesn't respond to evidence.
Fear is an emotion.
Fear directs one to do what one has been (more/less) brainwashed to do, reflexively.

I would change intellectual property laws so that we can get an actual *evolution* of device and UI design.
Forcing companies to poorly ape better design features only gives us half-baked products with confusing interfaces as R&D departments dance around IP rules preventing them from simply using a superior design.

  E.g. The continued awful design of Windows making a kludge of Macintosh's far better UI. The above-mentioned 7-8" e-ink reader being superior to the Kindle and Kindle kopy-kats. Android vs. iPhone. The list is nearly endless.

The second thing I would change is: Adding basic html formatting to Slashdot, ...like Reddit has. It ain't that hard..

The Nature Conservancy is doing truly positive work, globally, for conservation. Having seen their mechanisms from the inside, I support them wholeheartedly to this day.

EFF, SPLC are both good.
You could consider Sea Shepard also.

Isn't Space *always* a villian? I mean, it'll kill ya the instant you step outside...

"Pens and paper have no place in the modern classroom, according to Lia De Cicco Remu,"

Poppycock. One expresses themselves differently via pen, pencil, paint brush, computer keyboard, thumb-type, mechanical typewriter, or electronic dictation... each are notably distinct. Remove any one and you limit the modes of expression available. At our collective, expressive peril.

What's in a name?
So a lot of great comments here, I too do not look forward to a forced-march subscription model that's being floated here. I can't imagine what that means for our enterprise, quarterly patches for servers are already a day of pain. Now we'll get constant rolling updates of servers AND workstations? Great.

But the name: Oh Microsoft, why do you have to make the naming *WORSE*? It's not like the path was convoluted enough...
(Windows 3.1, 95, NT, 2000, XP, 7, 8.1, 10)
But now the new version is simply called "Windows", making it considerably more difficult for techies to discuss which version they are running.

Now when someone asks "What systems are you running?" it will require /more/ exchanges to discern that you are just running the "Windows" version of Windows. "Windows 'Windows'" perhaps. ... WinSquared.

It's not like they could have chosen "Windows Infinity", or "Windows Silver", or "Windows Rolling Update", or "Window Terminal", or "Windows FuckYou We Own Your Ass Now", or "Windows Sprawl", or "Windows Sauron" or something *specific* with which we could actually refer to it. They have to call it the one sole word that is common to ALL Windows releases since 1993... thereby forcing techies to have a longer conversation about which fucking version they are talking about. No more shorthand ("W2008"), now always ever more will you have to have a a multi-lined conversation as you try to discern /exactly/ which version you are running.

Thanks Microsoft. You autistic jerks.

(eom)