Increasingly, foreign governments are objecting to some of the US-based standards. One bone of contention is ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a California non-profit corporation that manages the assignment of domain names and IP addresses on the Internet. There is widespread feeling that this task should be taken over by an international committee. Also, de facto standards imposed by the dominant MS Windows operating systems and the proprietary nature of its Office software are being challenged with a world-wide move towards Open Source software, including the Linux operating system and notable software such as the OpenOffice suite of office programs.
The latest version of Microsoft Office, version 7, uses a different proprietary format, based on the XML hypertext markup language. It is not only incompatible with earlier MS Word and Excel formats, but also with the internationally established standard Open Document Format, equally based on XML. This is regrettable since much documentation generated since computers came in use is already inaccessible in electronic form because of obsolescence. General acceptance of the Open Document Format is an essential step to avoiding further loss of documentation due to changing technology. There is a growing trend amongst private and governmental organizations to abandon proprietary document formats in favor of international standards. Microsoft may be forced to accept the open Document Format for use with its Office programs sooner or later.
The computer revolution clearly originated in the USA, and we can be proud of that. But now that the technology has spread to the rest of the world, opposition is growing to the continuing domination of American companies and standards. Globalization may have to extend to the acceptance of internationally generated and approved standards.
I downloaded the program from www.taxact.com and used it to prepare a provisional return. It worked just as I wanted, straightforward question-and-answer steps, or by directly filling in the forms as preferred. It told me about the tax credit for previously paid federal telephone taxes and otherwise took care of the calculations and printing the forms. It also offered to file electronically without charge, but I am still waiting for some 1099 forms, and the government still hasn't finalized some of the supporting forms for 2006. The only minor downside was that it didn't import my personal data from last year's Tax Cut-prepared return, but that was typed in quickly enough. If you really need more help (from J.K. Lasser) you can download the Deluxe version for 9.95, or for 15.95 if you also want it to do the state return.
If you are interested in protecting your computer with a firewall and anti-virus software you might look at the Comodo Group. They offer a completely free firewall program, Comodo.firewall 2.4 that has received good reviews for effectiveness and ease-of-use. They also have Comodo.antivirus that is still in beta, but free for the downloading. Comodo Group is an organization providing commercial security software worldwide, making it likely that they know what they are doing. They provide this free software, as well as some other free security programs, to improve their name recognition. More power to them! Find out more at http://www.comodo.com/news/
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