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This is to be expected when too much of the talent moves on to more interesting places to work, like Google, Yahoo, or IBM. It becomes increasingly difficult to do acceptable work when the number of staff who understand the core parts of the problems approaches zero.

These articles are still timely: About Microsoft brain drain from 22 months ago, Similar, from 19 months ago, or yet another, from 10 months ago. Or google "Microsoft brain drain" and browse through the 134,000 results: you'll see a long histor of MS being accused of kneecapping competitors by targetted headhunting of key staff, but that toward the end of the Vista development cycle, there have been a growing number of questions about whether the exodus of talent from Redmond would leave MS with enough brains to deliver on their promises.

Consoles are actually an excellent example of the fact that people who buy cheap systems will avoid paying for software unless they absolutely have to. If this wasn't the case, then they wouldn't have increasingly complex internal DRM systems, there wouldn't have been enough of a market for "mod chips" that bypass said DRM systems for them to exist, and the console manufacturers wouldn't have regarded those "mod chips" as enough of a threat to their licensing revenue to bother doing everything in their power to prevent them being manufactured, sold, or installed.

Here are some links which show (a) piracy flourishes when people can bypass a system's internal DRM, and (b) all three major console manufacturers take this threat very seriously indeed:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/28984/Piracy-drive-threatens-Nintendo-DS
http://www.thetanooki.com/2007/11/26/r4-chip-costing-nintendo-millions-in-ds-software-sales/
http://www.playnoevil.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/1355-Nintendos-success-is-breeding-Piracy-Problems.html
http://www.gamersevolved.com/nintendo-ds-tries-to-put-stop-to-piracy.html
http://www.gamingbits.com/content/view/2884/2/
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,39161307,00.htm
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/sony-busts-down-mod-chip-retailer-with-9-mil-lawsuit/
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/07/31/sony-wins-australian-mod-chip-case
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4407.cfm
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13847/532/
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/3401.cfm
http://www.news.com/2100-1040-962797.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=6042
http://www.geek.com/three-people-facing-charges-for-xbox-piracy/

There are countless other similar links that prove how reluctant people are to pay for software on any low-cost platform if they can find a way of not doing so.

Or am i missing something key here?

Yes. The home broadband Internet situation in Australia is atrocious. For example, Optus customers have low monthly transfer caps and pay $150/GB downloaded or uploaded past that: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15837/1085/ . Just google for australia broadband for more examples of how bad the service is in that country.

For a while, Telstra had apparently partially hidden its terrible business practices by hosting certain file downloads such as OpenOffice (so that they would not be counted towards monthly transfer caps). They are no longer doing this, once again exposing customers to huge fees and poor service.

So no, an ISP has no obligation to host file downloads and customers are free to download OpenOffice elsewhere--kind of.

There are so many TFA's. I had assumed by the /. title that the main one was this which I had read earlier:
KDE takes stand on OOXML; Gnome dithers.

But I still stand by my comments. And here, just to cut to the chase, is one of Jeff Waugh's comments from the article linked above:

The GNOME Foundation is not in bed with Microsoft or Novell on this issue. Our statement is very clear about our attitude towards OOXML and our participation in ECMA TC45-M. We're there to ensure that we have sufficient documentation for FLOSS project to implement it. We're not endorsing, contributing to or developing the OOXML specification or its standardisation. (In fact, it has had a positive contribution to my work against OOXML locally...) Whatever happens with ISO, it's important for FLOSS products to implement it such that users have the opportunity to embrace Software Freedom without cutting themselves off from their own documents, or collaboration with their friends and colleagues. We don't have to like OOXML, Microsoft or the Microsoft/Novell deal to implement it, and have an open and pragmatic approach to delivering Software Freedom to as many users as we possibly can. We fiercely compete with Microsoft, and we're not about to give their monopoly a leg up by boycotting their stupid format. We want *MORE* FLOSS users, not fewer. There is a complete valid disagreement about the *perception* of GNOME involvement in TC45-M and how Microsoft might use it (and we'll make it very clear to national bodies and BRM delegates what our position is and why we're involved in the ECMA group), but nothing deserving demonisation of GNOME or suggestions that it has "sold out" to any corporation. That is simply not the case, and it is unnecessarily divisive to suggest so.

"Now I understand why they didn't cut their losses with the Zune months ago and stop pushing it as an iPod killer."

You cite me even ONE instance of a Microsoft person pushing Zune as an "iPod killer".

I'll cite you the very opposite:
Microsoft expects Zune catchup to take five years

Microsoft has NEVER claimed Zune would kill the iPod. That's something you guys claimed in order to declare Zune a failure after it failed to meet the standard that YOU set. Last year Zune was the #2 selling hard-drive based player. We'll see how they do now that they've released their first flash players.

A rather entertaining issue - if you have the firewall enabled and run Skype then quit it, then Skype gets horribly broken, and doesn't start again. Nobody can decide if it's Leopard cryptographically signing (and modifying) the Skype executable and tripping up Skype's own excessive intrusion detection, or Skype modifying its own executable and tripping up Leopard's checks that it's the same application being allowed access to the interweb. I suspect it's the former - as older installations of Skype got killed on my two recently upgraded machines in that way.

I had to re-download and install Skype, and now I have to run it with the firewall switched off. Pending a fixed Skype in 'a few weeks'. Aaaargh...

Time Machine doesn't work on my old-fashioned partitioned external hard disk (half is an NTFS partition for Windows backups...), the Leopard installer initially wouldn't detect my MacBook Pro's own hard disk, and my iMac got nearly deaded by the upgrade (fortunately I had SSH enabled, and was able to get in and run Software Update from the command line, and thus could install the important iMac updates). Oh, and it's all a little bit crashy. It's nearly fantastic - apart from those issues... ;-)

Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, the Communications Workers of America have conducted a worldwide survey of internet access speeds. What they found is that Japan is number one with 61 Mb/s. We're didn't even place. You can read about that, here.http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13184/1066/. I guess the MPAA and the RIAA don't have very much pull in Japan.

I don't know where you're getting your figures but I haven't seen any stats regarding console sales sales figures post Halo 3 with the exception of Australia... which saw a 55% increase in hardware sales for the week it went on sale and September saw a 158% increase in sales over august in the same region http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14759/532/

So I'd say that both the price drop AND Halo 3 are quite a substantial catalyst for the 360. taking it a step further and bundling two games with the already reduced price hardware (and I should note that Forza 2 is still a full priced game, and a AAA 1st party franchise no less) will probably push sales even further for them.

After the end of cold war, America has become somewhat lethargic.

I think the term "practical" is more appropriate than "lethargic". Manned missions are a mass waste of money in my opinion and other's. The thrill of manned missions doesn't have the same kick it once did, and robotic probes are getting cheaper as better instruments and techniques such as aerobraking and gravity assist are better understood.

I for one welcome our robot explorers (as long as we remain the overlords).

http://www.itwire.com/administrator/ There should be an .htaccess at least...