C and C++ can provide an in depth foundation of concepts used in languages such as Java and C#. Both Java and C# dictate programming targeting the core run time (CLR) not the underlying OS. Both Java and C# provide the means to bypass the run time and go native but to do so adds some complexity to maintaining the run time processes. Things like memory management, threading, and GC implementation are a few examples. Run time targeted languages support these types of functionality but they do not provide the same amount of control as C/C++. I have never spent much time in Java but I have worked with the.NET CLR often and even though the nomenclature and terminology between C/C++ and the.Net environment seems to be the same there are specific differences in what the system is actually doing under the hood. The terms of inheritance and polymorphism are used in.NET but the implementation is not the same. C/C++ should be a required class because it covers all the basic concepts used in software development. Memory handing, threading, inheritance, and polymorphism represent a few of these basic concepts used in developing software no matter what language or platform is being used.
"deliberately introducing flaws" Do you have single variable instance of this happening or do you just create your on version of reality to compensate for your stupidity. And please point out what statement is factually incorrect in my previous post.
This is a total BS comparison. It's not even an apple-orange type comparison it is more like an apple-Twinkies comparison. There is not a single operating system today that is 100%completely secure so are you willing to indict the entire industry? Software has always been a constantly and rapidly moving target. What was safe yesterday could very well be non-safe today. Hardware changes alone are frequent and require the existing software security at the OS level to be modified and re-tested. Changes from the client-server model to web based model also introduces numerous security issues. Hardware changes and computing architecture changes are required to provide backwards compatibility. You could end up making a OS so secure that it can not even run existing applications. Built-in system security is improving across the board because the main causes of security breeches now rely on social engineering, poor application development practices, and poor system administration practices.
I know in today's society it's become popular to blame the victim but don't you think the people who actually hacked the security share some of the responsibility for the time and money lost?
Space based kinetic weapon platforms are the next logical step in the arms race. Relatively cheap to build, all the required technology already exists, immune to any existing anti-missile technology, and can deliver all the destructive power of a nuke with none of the radioactive fallout to deal with. Add the X-37B launch vehicle into the mix and you have the means neutralize your opponents orbital assets and claim the ultimate high ground.
MS is in a good spot when it comes to having companies use their products. Migrating from one OS and application stack to another is expensive and time consuming and this benefits MS. I have been involved with 2 of my customers who were making attempts to move from the MS stack to the Linux stack and it ended up being a fiasco in both cases. Their IT departments lacked the development and system administrative skills to make the change over and they ran into a couple of situations where they could not migrate some of their existing custom applications to the new platform.
"NOBODY likes microsoft as a company" While this may be true in the tech world the average consumer could care less about the company they just want more games. Although today it seems that all corporations are under attack for one thing or another which is fine if they are forced to make changes in their business practices.
Dark energy and Dark Matter have always seemed like concepts devised for the sole purpose of making the existing theoretical physics and math models work. We have managed to manipulate the EM spectrum and initiate nuclear reactions to produce a crude and dangerous power source but we still have a long way to go and I imagine we will encounter many surprises along the way that will make today's knowledge seem quaint. Of course any further advances will depend on whether or not the human race ends up destroying itself using the advances we have already put to use.
I was not referring to the rape charges. Personally I don't really understand how this issue has not been dismissed. Without this issue he just comes across as an ass. The news outlets he dealt with demonstrated that he might not be the most stable person walking around. On a tangential point I have always wondered why he did not just release all of the information he had at one time. He played lip service about reviewing the data to find anything that would endanger someone but there has been no proof this has ever happened. It's much more likely he was reviewing the data to target specific countries. If his organization is really about the freedom of information he would have posted everything he had. Instead he has stage managed the data releases to bolster his political opinions. The manipulation of the famous Iraq gunship battle also showed a propensity to modify information to support certain political activist groups. The edited video included none of the context that was involved during that time period. Selective editing of the information also seems to go against the stated purpose of his organization. And why does it require millions of dollars to just post all of the files on the Internet? He received the information for free but he has given the impression of someone looking to make money.
"60 games is largely crap" This is a very subjective opinion. There is a great difference between the hardcore gaming community and the general public when it comes to rating games. As long as they manufacturer and support the xbox there will be plenty of games developed for the platform. MS introduced Kinect to the market while others had to catch up. MS's liberal stance on others using Kinect in their own products will ensure deep penetration into the market. It remains to be seen if MS is planning on using the patented technology used in Kinect to extract licensing fees from others once the market gets saturated. I don't know any details about Kinect related patents but I also have no details on the patents they are leveraging to take advantage in the Android market. The fact that companies are paying the licensing fee lends some credibility to the patents MS is invoking.
Guantanamo operates under a different set of rules which are based around the definition of an "enemy combatant" which is nothing more than an attempt to redefine POW status and POW treatment when the POW in question is not fighting for a recognized state. Under a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions the vast majority of these guys could be summarily executed when caught engaged in combat without any insignia identifying them as state supported soldiers. The US judicial system was not designed to handle these types of situations where crimes or potential crimes are committed outside of US jurisdiction and the countries where the crimes are being committed are incapable or unwilling to use their own justice systems to address the problem. The US criminal system is a separate entity and operates under an entirely different set of rules. Any laws Assange may have committed, and I am not saying he did commit any crime, would clearly fall under the normal definition of criminal acts and therefore he would not be shuttled off to Guantanamo under any circumstances. Even if he was guilty of all the things people accuse him of those offences can be properly adjudicated in the civilian justice system. Hell, Guantanamo would be closed by now if the countries where these people were captured would allow their repatriation. The US has been offering huge sums of money to any country willing to take these guys and are finding few takers. The US should just load them all up, strap on some parachutes, and then air drop them back where they were collected and be done with it. Guantanamo has already served it's main purpose which was to introduce some fear into anyone thinking of launching a terrorist attack against the US. Before Guantanamo these guys did not fear the US if they were caught. Lobbing a few cruise missiles at suspected terrorist training camps does not really provide effective deterrent and fear. All of the major intelligence services in the world have certain reputations when it comes to the treatment of anyone they get hold of. The CIA and MI5 were considered light weights when compared to the FSB or the former KGB. However, the one agency terrorists do fear is the Mossad. The Mossad has demonstrated their willingness to hunt down and kill anyone trying to harm them no matter what country they are living in. They made no secret of hunting down every person involved in the 1972 Olympic killing of the Jewish athletes. They have also been relentless in hunting down any former Nazis as well. They have shown a remarkable ability to give the entire world the finger when going after people and not one country has ever tried to stop them. Most of the other security agencies even depend on the middle east intelligence the Mossad provides.
Well since it was on Slashdot and especially since it was on the Internet it must mean the story is perfectly true. No one has offered any proof except links to other Internet sites with the same story. Well I guess if it is on more than one web page it is doubly true.
The US has not shown any real or official interest in extraditing him to the US. Radio, Print, and TV talk show pundits don't have the power to issue warrants no matter how much they shout and stomp their feet. The only possible charge they could level against him would be receiving stolen property and even that charge is weak so why bother at this point. Why give this guy a bigger bully pulpit to preach his gospel? And you can not be held in a US prison indefinitely without an indictment and the amount of time a person can be held on suspicion only is clearly defined and enforced rigorously. And please don't use Guantanamo as your basis for your BS. If he was going to Guantanamo they certainly would not let little things like warrants get in the way. If the US really wanted him they would already have him. As it is the only person being prosecuted for the Wiki leak data leak and distribution is Manning.
UNESCO stumbled along for 10 years without the US so let them do it again. If the UN organizations are so vital I am sure they can find other funding. All the BS about the US leaving the IAEA and the other equally worthless bodies does not make a bit of difference. What the hell has the IAEA or any of these other organizations contributed. People contend the US will be hated by defunding these organizations but the hate has existed for 30+ years no matter how much money the US has ever provided. International relations are not a fucking popularity contest any way. The only way forward is to use bilateral negotiations between the US and those countries seeking to conduct business. The UN has never contributed any thing particularly worthwhile to the world except a platform for all the shitty little Arab countries and other petty dictatorships to spread their hatred and lies. The UN is not the reason WW3 didn't happen during the cold war, it was the nuclear missiles that provided that particular deterrent. If people have humanitarian concerns they can always donate their own money instead of expecting the US government to do it. If a country wishes a military security commitment they can put it in writing and expect a down payment along with an invoice for any services rendered. The US government's number one priority is supporting things beneficial to the US. Everything and everyone else comes in a distant 2nd place. If this petty UN BS continues and they actually attempt to harm any vital US interests the US has more than enough leverage to change their minds. A good start would be eliminating the 300 million dollar aid package to the imaginary state of Palestine, the 3 billion dollar aid package to Egypt, and the 400 million dollar package still allocated to Pakistan. Who gives a shit if the Palestinians can't meet their payroll. They always seem to have enough money for missiles so why don't they re-work their budget priorities. Israel's aid package, which almost 90% of it is restricted to purchasing US military items should continue to exist. After all they are the ones surrounded by the most violent and belligerent countries on the plant who never agree or cooperate on anything except the destruction of Israel. It's also time for the US to remain silent when Israel finally gets fed up with the continuing attacks on their legitimacy and solves the whole problem in a very direct manner. No cease fires or threats of this or that, just silence as Israel does what it should have done back in 1967. There is not a single country in the world who would willingly try and stop the Israeli military. Certainly not the inept militaries of the middle east. Every Palestinian gain only results in them securing more effective artillery positions. HAMAS was against the UN bid because that would have meant recognizing the state of Israel actually existed and for some reason this little fact was never mentioned by the Palestinian supporters. HAMAS has made no secret that their one and only goal has always been the destruction of the state of Israel and the FATAH support the same goals but use more subtlety to ensure the monetary handouts continue to roll in. All the spineless liberals and progressives never mention this in any of their constant bleating either. They also have erased the Arab initiated 1973 war from thier version of history. When they do make mention of this war most of the people living in the mid-east, especially in Egypt, think they actually won that war. I know this rant is all over the place but this is the last time I am going to spend time any time on the cluster fuck created by the UN.
The article was about new desktop application implementations not gaming. Gaming was just the first beneficiary of this type of technology.
"it is a failure for the Xbox, imo, even if MS is selling loads of them". How do you reconcile this idiotic assertion? Do you consider success based only on what you personally like?
The xbox is one of Microsoft's best product outside of operating systems and the more people who use it just gives MS another revenue stream like they managed to obtain with the use of Android on smart phones. I still have no idea what patent MS is using to force others to pay licensing fees but they are probably capable of doing the same thing with their Kinect tech.
Kinect has bombed on the xbox? Have you stopped taking your meds again? The fact that others have been able to create new implementations using Kinect is a boon for MS. If MS can collect licensing fees for every Android based phone they are certainly more than capable of performing the same trick with those adopting technology derived from Kinect. The more people building apps with MS components the better it is for MS. MS created the totally crappy programming language known as VB which allowed the non-purist everyman to develop applications for the Windows ecosystem. Just compare the complexity of C++ against VB at the time. The end result was more applications, both personal and business, dependent on the MS OS platform. Even though VB was a nightmare for experienced developers it was probably the most successful piece of software MS has ever released. This effect is still continuing today with.NET. MS has a lot of short comings but leveraging developer tools to increase the reliance on the MS platform is not one of them.
The Chinese economy is tied tightly to the US economy. The US represents almost 1/3 of their export market. And other countries can not pick up the slack because the economic down turn cycle is international in nature not local. Those few countries not experiencing any problems are in no position to replace the reduction in US imports from China. China is also experiencing some difficulties with their economy. Inflation has outpaced their ability to manipulate their currency to create cheap export prices and they now have competitors that can compete using low labor costs which is the only advantage China's export market has ever had. They are certainly not known for quality. China is now posting trade deficits after years of surpluses. And the most important item is that China produces nothing the US can not buy else where or manufacture domestically. On the other hand China has increased their dependency on food imports from the US by a factor of 6 over the past 8 years. People have been predicting Chinese domination for the past 10 years and while they have grown they are still about 4 trillion dollars short on GDP and the US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world. Sort of looks like the never ending prediction of Linux taking over the desktop. China's technology is built on technology they have either bought or stolen from others. It's a smart strategy on their part because they can dispense with all of the costly R&D and start building right away. They purchased their entire space related technology turnkey from the Russian fire sale when the USSR broke up.
"what specific harm are they suffering" They are not directly suffering a lot of harm from bot nets. It's the users who get harmed when their computers get botted and used to support criminal activities. The vast majority of these bots spread using social engineering attacks to dupe the users into infecting them selves. Bot attacks also take advantage of poor system administration practices to infect a system. No OS security can totally prevent these types of attacks. MS just seems to be the only IT company sinking money and time into identifying and shutting down the bot nets. This is not the first case of them doing so. What are all the other IT companies doing to address this problem?
Have you being paying attention to the OWS protests at all? Their protests have targeted Wall Street, foreign wars of any type, police brutality while trying to keep the protests as civil as possible, and anyone considered rich. The Tea Party targeted limiting government involvement and foreign adventurism in easy to understand language. In a very short time they ended up influencing the political landscape in record time. I don't happen to agree with the Tea Party positions because they are ridiculously vague and don't even pretend to be willing to negotiate with others. The OWS protesters have not made any tangible progress. A few politicians have voiced some vague support but there are too many issues involved for them to promise full support. There is also a sizable number of regular citizens who have no idea what is actually being protested. Protest of any kind should be used to identify problems but once that is done someone needs to stand up and offer some viable solutions. The OWS movement has not did this.
Actually I had used astronomy originally but misspelled it and my spell checker caught it and offered up alternatives and I selected the wrong word. Even then I wasn't sure either word really applied to what I was trying to say since I was actually trying to refer to the universe in it's totality not just the elements like stars, plants, galaxies, and the other observable objects we have seen. All of those objects are artifacts of the underlying forces that create the universe.
They had no problem running the "Fatherland" or practicing oppressive tyranny starting back in the late 1930's and they certainly didn't need a super computer to do it. And do try to understand the difference between privacy and anonymity. If you want to participate in today's civilization you cannot avoid sacrificing a little of each.
Slashdot Mirror
C and C++ can provide an in depth foundation of concepts used in languages such as Java and C#. Both Java and C# dictate programming targeting the core run time (CLR) not the underlying OS. Both Java and C# provide the means to bypass the run time and go native but to do so adds some complexity to maintaining the run time processes. Things like memory management, threading, and GC implementation are a few examples. Run time targeted languages support these types of functionality but they do not provide the same amount of control as C/C++. I have never spent much time in Java but I have worked with the .NET CLR often and even though the nomenclature and terminology between C/C++ and the .Net environment seems to be the same there are specific differences in what the system is actually doing under the hood. The terms of inheritance and polymorphism are used in .NET but the implementation is not the same. C/C++ should be a required class because it covers all the basic concepts used in software development. Memory handing, threading, inheritance, and polymorphism represent a few of these basic concepts used in developing software no matter what language or platform is being used.
"deliberately introducing flaws" Do you have single variable instance of this happening or do you just create your on version of reality to compensate for your stupidity. And please point out what statement is factually incorrect in my previous post.
This is a total BS comparison. It's not even an apple-orange type comparison it is more like an apple-Twinkies comparison. There is not a single operating system today that is 100%completely secure so are you willing to indict the entire industry? Software has always been a constantly and rapidly moving target. What was safe yesterday could very well be non-safe today. Hardware changes alone are frequent and require the existing software security at the OS level to be modified and re-tested. Changes from the client-server model to web based model also introduces numerous security issues. Hardware changes and computing architecture changes are required to provide backwards compatibility. You could end up making a OS so secure that it can not even run existing applications. Built-in system security is improving across the board because the main causes of security breeches now rely on social engineering, poor application development practices, and poor system administration practices.
I know in today's society it's become popular to blame the victim but don't you think the people who actually hacked the security share some of the responsibility for the time and money lost?
Space based kinetic weapon platforms are the next logical step in the arms race. Relatively cheap to build, all the required technology already exists, immune to any existing anti-missile technology, and can deliver all the destructive power of a nuke with none of the radioactive fallout to deal with. Add the X-37B launch vehicle into the mix and you have the means neutralize your opponents orbital assets and claim the ultimate high ground.
MS is in a good spot when it comes to having companies use their products. Migrating from one OS and application stack to another is expensive and time consuming and this benefits MS. I have been involved with 2 of my customers who were making attempts to move from the MS stack to the Linux stack and it ended up being a fiasco in both cases. Their IT departments lacked the development and system administrative skills to make the change over and they ran into a couple of situations where they could not migrate some of their existing custom applications to the new platform.
"NOBODY likes microsoft as a company" While this may be true in the tech world the average consumer could care less about the company they just want more games. Although today it seems that all corporations are under attack for one thing or another which is fine if they are forced to make changes in their business practices.
Dark energy and Dark Matter have always seemed like concepts devised for the sole purpose of making the existing theoretical physics and math models work. We have managed to manipulate the EM spectrum and initiate nuclear reactions to produce a crude and dangerous power source but we still have a long way to go and I imagine we will encounter many surprises along the way that will make today's knowledge seem quaint. Of course any further advances will depend on whether or not the human race ends up destroying itself using the advances we have already put to use.
I was not referring to the rape charges. Personally I don't really understand how this issue has not been dismissed. Without this issue he just comes across as an ass. The news outlets he dealt with demonstrated that he might not be the most stable person walking around. On a tangential point I have always wondered why he did not just release all of the information he had at one time. He played lip service about reviewing the data to find anything that would endanger someone but there has been no proof this has ever happened. It's much more likely he was reviewing the data to target specific countries. If his organization is really about the freedom of information he would have posted everything he had. Instead he has stage managed the data releases to bolster his political opinions. The manipulation of the famous Iraq gunship battle also showed a propensity to modify information to support certain political activist groups. The edited video included none of the context that was involved during that time period. Selective editing of the information also seems to go against the stated purpose of his organization. And why does it require millions of dollars to just post all of the files on the Internet? He received the information for free but he has given the impression of someone looking to make money.
"60 games is largely crap" This is a very subjective opinion. There is a great difference between the hardcore gaming community and the general public when it comes to rating games. As long as they manufacturer and support the xbox there will be plenty of games developed for the platform. MS introduced Kinect to the market while others had to catch up. MS's liberal stance on others using Kinect in their own products will ensure deep penetration into the market. It remains to be seen if MS is planning on using the patented technology used in Kinect to extract licensing fees from others once the market gets saturated. I don't know any details about Kinect related patents but I also have no details on the patents they are leveraging to take advantage in the Android market. The fact that companies are paying the licensing fee lends some credibility to the patents MS is invoking.
Guantanamo operates under a different set of rules which are based around the definition of an "enemy combatant" which is nothing more than an attempt to redefine POW status and POW treatment when the POW in question is not fighting for a recognized state. Under a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions the vast majority of these guys could be summarily executed when caught engaged in combat without any insignia identifying them as state supported soldiers. The US judicial system was not designed to handle these types of situations where crimes or potential crimes are committed outside of US jurisdiction and the countries where the crimes are being committed are incapable or unwilling to use their own justice systems to address the problem. The US criminal system is a separate entity and operates under an entirely different set of rules. Any laws Assange may have committed, and I am not saying he did commit any crime, would clearly fall under the normal definition of criminal acts and therefore he would not be shuttled off to Guantanamo under any circumstances. Even if he was guilty of all the things people accuse him of those offences can be properly adjudicated in the civilian justice system. Hell, Guantanamo would be closed by now if the countries where these people were captured would allow their repatriation. The US has been offering huge sums of money to any country willing to take these guys and are finding few takers. The US should just load them all up, strap on some parachutes, and then air drop them back where they were collected and be done with it. Guantanamo has already served it's main purpose which was to introduce some fear into anyone thinking of launching a terrorist attack against the US. Before Guantanamo these guys did not fear the US if they were caught. Lobbing a few cruise missiles at suspected terrorist training camps does not really provide effective deterrent and fear. All of the major intelligence services in the world have certain reputations when it comes to the treatment of anyone they get hold of. The CIA and MI5 were considered light weights when compared to the FSB or the former KGB. However, the one agency terrorists do fear is the Mossad. The Mossad has demonstrated their willingness to hunt down and kill anyone trying to harm them no matter what country they are living in. They made no secret of hunting down every person involved in the 1972 Olympic killing of the Jewish athletes. They have also been relentless in hunting down any former Nazis as well. They have shown a remarkable ability to give the entire world the finger when going after people and not one country has ever tried to stop them. Most of the other security agencies even depend on the middle east intelligence the Mossad provides.
Well since it was on Slashdot and especially since it was on the Internet it must mean the story is perfectly true. No one has offered any proof except links to other Internet sites with the same story. Well I guess if it is on more than one web page it is doubly true.
Didn't you get the memo? The US is responsible for every decision made in the world regardless of the country.
The messenger in this case has did a better job harming himself by his own actions and behavior than any 3rd party could possibly do.
The US has not shown any real or official interest in extraditing him to the US. Radio, Print, and TV talk show pundits don't have the power to issue warrants no matter how much they shout and stomp their feet. The only possible charge they could level against him would be receiving stolen property and even that charge is weak so why bother at this point. Why give this guy a bigger bully pulpit to preach his gospel? And you can not be held in a US prison indefinitely without an indictment and the amount of time a person can be held on suspicion only is clearly defined and enforced rigorously. And please don't use Guantanamo as your basis for your BS. If he was going to Guantanamo they certainly would not let little things like warrants get in the way. If the US really wanted him they would already have him. As it is the only person being prosecuted for the Wiki leak data leak and distribution is Manning.
UNESCO stumbled along for 10 years without the US so let them do it again. If the UN organizations are so vital I am sure they can find other funding. All the BS about the US leaving the IAEA and the other equally worthless bodies does not make a bit of difference. What the hell has the IAEA or any of these other organizations contributed. People contend the US will be hated by defunding these organizations but the hate has existed for 30+ years no matter how much money the US has ever provided. International relations are not a fucking popularity contest any way. The only way forward is to use bilateral negotiations between the US and those countries seeking to conduct business. The UN has never contributed any thing particularly worthwhile to the world except a platform for all the shitty little Arab countries and other petty dictatorships to spread their hatred and lies. The UN is not the reason WW3 didn't happen during the cold war, it was the nuclear missiles that provided that particular deterrent. If people have humanitarian concerns they can always donate their own money instead of expecting the US government to do it. If a country wishes a military security commitment they can put it in writing and expect a down payment along with an invoice for any services rendered. The US government's number one priority is supporting things beneficial to the US. Everything and everyone else comes in a distant 2nd place. If this petty UN BS continues and they actually attempt to harm any vital US interests the US has more than enough leverage to change their minds. A good start would be eliminating the 300 million dollar aid package to the imaginary state of Palestine, the 3 billion dollar aid package to Egypt, and the 400 million dollar package still allocated to Pakistan. Who gives a shit if the Palestinians can't meet their payroll. They always seem to have enough money for missiles so why don't they re-work their budget priorities. Israel's aid package, which almost 90% of it is restricted to purchasing US military items should continue to exist. After all they are the ones surrounded by the most violent and belligerent countries on the plant who never agree or cooperate on anything except the destruction of Israel. It's also time for the US to remain silent when Israel finally gets fed up with the continuing attacks on their legitimacy and solves the whole problem in a very direct manner. No cease fires or threats of this or that, just silence as Israel does what it should have done back in 1967. There is not a single country in the world who would willingly try and stop the Israeli military. Certainly not the inept militaries of the middle east. Every Palestinian gain only results in them securing more effective artillery positions. HAMAS was against the UN bid because that would have meant recognizing the state of Israel actually existed and for some reason this little fact was never mentioned by the Palestinian supporters. HAMAS has made no secret that their one and only goal has always been the destruction of the state of Israel and the FATAH support the same goals but use more subtlety to ensure the monetary handouts continue to roll in. All the spineless liberals and progressives never mention this in any of their constant bleating either. They also have erased the Arab initiated 1973 war from thier version of history. When they do make mention of this war most of the people living in the mid-east, especially in Egypt, think they actually won that war. I know this rant is all over the place but this is the last time I am going to spend time any time on the cluster fuck created by the UN.
The article was about new desktop application implementations not gaming. Gaming was just the first beneficiary of this type of technology. "it is a failure for the Xbox, imo, even if MS is selling loads of them". How do you reconcile this idiotic assertion? Do you consider success based only on what you personally like? The xbox is one of Microsoft's best product outside of operating systems and the more people who use it just gives MS another revenue stream like they managed to obtain with the use of Android on smart phones. I still have no idea what patent MS is using to force others to pay licensing fees but they are probably capable of doing the same thing with their Kinect tech.
Kinect has bombed on the xbox? Have you stopped taking your meds again? The fact that others have been able to create new implementations using Kinect is a boon for MS. If MS can collect licensing fees for every Android based phone they are certainly more than capable of performing the same trick with those adopting technology derived from Kinect. The more people building apps with MS components the better it is for MS. MS created the totally crappy programming language known as VB which allowed the non-purist everyman to develop applications for the Windows ecosystem. Just compare the complexity of C++ against VB at the time. The end result was more applications, both personal and business, dependent on the MS OS platform. Even though VB was a nightmare for experienced developers it was probably the most successful piece of software MS has ever released. This effect is still continuing today with .NET. MS has a lot of short comings but leveraging developer tools to increase the reliance on the MS platform is not one of them.
The Chinese economy is tied tightly to the US economy. The US represents almost 1/3 of their export market. And other countries can not pick up the slack because the economic down turn cycle is international in nature not local. Those few countries not experiencing any problems are in no position to replace the reduction in US imports from China. China is also experiencing some difficulties with their economy. Inflation has outpaced their ability to manipulate their currency to create cheap export prices and they now have competitors that can compete using low labor costs which is the only advantage China's export market has ever had. They are certainly not known for quality. China is now posting trade deficits after years of surpluses. And the most important item is that China produces nothing the US can not buy else where or manufacture domestically. On the other hand China has increased their dependency on food imports from the US by a factor of 6 over the past 8 years. People have been predicting Chinese domination for the past 10 years and while they have grown they are still about 4 trillion dollars short on GDP and the US is still ranked the #1 manufacturer in the world. Sort of looks like the never ending prediction of Linux taking over the desktop. China's technology is built on technology they have either bought or stolen from others. It's a smart strategy on their part because they can dispense with all of the costly R&D and start building right away. They purchased their entire space related technology turnkey from the Russian fire sale when the USSR broke up.
"what specific harm are they suffering" They are not directly suffering a lot of harm from bot nets. It's the users who get harmed when their computers get botted and used to support criminal activities. The vast majority of these bots spread using social engineering attacks to dupe the users into infecting them selves. Bot attacks also take advantage of poor system administration practices to infect a system. No OS security can totally prevent these types of attacks. MS just seems to be the only IT company sinking money and time into identifying and shutting down the bot nets. This is not the first case of them doing so. What are all the other IT companies doing to address this problem?
Have you being paying attention to the OWS protests at all? Their protests have targeted Wall Street, foreign wars of any type, police brutality while trying to keep the protests as civil as possible, and anyone considered rich. The Tea Party targeted limiting government involvement and foreign adventurism in easy to understand language. In a very short time they ended up influencing the political landscape in record time. I don't happen to agree with the Tea Party positions because they are ridiculously vague and don't even pretend to be willing to negotiate with others. The OWS protesters have not made any tangible progress. A few politicians have voiced some vague support but there are too many issues involved for them to promise full support. There is also a sizable number of regular citizens who have no idea what is actually being protested. Protest of any kind should be used to identify problems but once that is done someone needs to stand up and offer some viable solutions. The OWS movement has not did this.
Actually I had used astronomy originally but misspelled it and my spell checker caught it and offered up alternatives and I selected the wrong word. Even then I wasn't sure either word really applied to what I was trying to say since I was actually trying to refer to the universe in it's totality not just the elements like stars, plants, galaxies, and the other observable objects we have seen. All of those objects are artifacts of the underlying forces that create the universe.
I have never thought my credibility was any thing to brag about but what exactly did I say in my post that prompted your comment?
No, I didn't come to my opinion by reading it some where else. I just thought it was a better strategy to obtain real changes.
They had no problem running the "Fatherland" or practicing oppressive tyranny starting back in the late 1930's and they certainly didn't need a super computer to do it. And do try to understand the difference between privacy and anonymity. If you want to participate in today's civilization you cannot avoid sacrificing a little of each.