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http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/oct10/10-01statement.mspx

Proprietary software only gives you the "low level of paid support included in price" and "higher level of paid support at extra cost".

Really? Where's the "pay here" button for http://support.microsoft.com?

Yep. And in case it hasn't been mentioned in this thread already, Microsoft Small Business Server is designed for this kind of scenario. Here, pricing to get you started (server + CAL packs). If it has the services you need then it's a great way to get started with user authentication, e-mail, web services, etc. And it's in line with the parent's recommendation of KISS.

There may be some Linux equivalent, which would be important depending on what your comfort zone is (do you come from a Linux or Windows background?), but that's not my forte, sorry.

Yep. And in case it hasn't been mentioned in this thread already, Microsoft Small Business Server is designed for this kind of scenario. Here, pricing to get you started (server + CAL packs). If it has the services you need then it's a great way to get started with user authentication, e-mail, web services, etc. And it's in line with the parent's recommendation of KISS.

There may be some Linux equivalent, which would be important depending on what your comfort zone is (do you come from a Linux or Windows background?), but that's not my forte, sorry.

So... why isn't there a FOSS replacement for Netware yet??

Really?

Dickie George says the way to fight the cyber cold war is by building security into technology, making it transparent to the end user

In contrast where the NSA has had the potential to hide backdoors (since Windows 95) and make everything so non-tranparent as they work on MS Windows security.

Since the work is undisclosed no one can confirm or deny these backdoors.

Makes you wonder what they're up to now.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885409
http://www.nsa.gov/ia/guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems/microsoft_windows.shtml

When I searched "Finance" in www.google.com.au for the longest time the first result was Yahoo Finance with Google Finance being 4th or 5th result down the ladder. It's only the past month where this search actually yielded Google's own service first.

The world is full of nitpicking. Just like the AV companies complaining about MS including their AV product in the windows download page, however they conveniently neglect to tell people that if you click "find antivirus software online" in the security action centre you get to this page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/antivirus-partners/windows-7.aspx which includes no mention of Microsoft's own product.

On behalf of all of us, Dear Edelman, cry me a fucking river.

`Security firms have identified a new variant of a USB-based zero-day attack that exploits a vulnerabiltiy in Microsoft Windows, including Windows 7'

Affected and Non-Affected Software

Windows Vista and 7 both run fine on older hardware

How old is older? ASUS sold the Eee PC 900 in the fourth quarter of 2008. Its Celeron 900 CPU was comparable to the PIII-866 in new desktop PCs made in the fourth quarter of 2000, and it came with 512 MB of RAM. Even when one replaces the slow 4 GB SSD with a faster and larger SSD, we're talking about a 2-year-old PC that does not meet the published system requirements of Windows 7.

You mean like the Malicious Software Removal Tool which is already offered through Windows Update as a critical update? Or Microsoft Security Essentials which either is or will shortly be available through Windows Update as a recommended update?

You mean like the Malicious Software Removal Tool which is already offered through Windows Update as a critical update? Or Microsoft Security Essentials which either is or will shortly be available through Windows Update as a recommended update?

Yeah, I don't like the pause thing too. I switched Windows 7 to classic mode (well to as much classic mode as I could manage - it still does the preview hover thing), so now I get to see the window titles.

So now it's not so bad... I do like the sorting of task buttons by app, and the ability to pin apps so as to keep the order the same (and other stuff). Would be nice if I could change the order of the task buttons.

Only recently found out that for Windows 7 search, to search just for files containing a word, you use contents:pattern
(which for some reason isn't documented here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx )

Also if you want partial match you have to use stuff like: foo* to match foobar and foobaz. foo by itself will just match foo.

Before I found that out, I was very annoyed and using grep -ir :).

But still, for some reason my start menu search doesn't do partial matches very well. e.g. I need to type resour* to find Resource Monitor, just resou or resour doesn't display _anything_.

Maybe I screwed something up? :)

The benchmark in question can be considerably optimized by dead code elimination, since a computationally expensive function in there (one that loops computing stuff) does not have any observable side effects, and does not return any values - so it can be replaced with a no-op. It is a perfectly legitimate optimization technique, but the one which tends to trip up naively written benchmark suites because they assume that "for(int i=0; i < 1000000; ++i) {}" is going to be executed exactly as written.

Thee was actually a similar case with artificial tests in the past - Haskell (GHC) scores on the Programming Language Shootout. Most tests there were also written as loops with some computations inside and no side-effects, on the presumption that compilers will leave the computations intact even though their results are never used. Well, one thing that GHC has always had is a particularly advanced dead code eliminator, and it compiled most of those tests down to what is essentially equivalent to "int main() { return 0; }" - with corresponding benchmark figures. Once they've changed the tests to print out the final values, this all went back to normal.

In this case it's not quite that simple, because seemingly trivial changes to benchmark code - changes which do not change the semantics of the code in any way - trip off the dead code elimination analyzer in IE9 JS engine. However, it is still an open question on whether it is deliberate, or due to bugs in the analyzer. One plausible explanation was that analyzer is written to deal with code which at least looks plausible, and neither of the suggested optimizer-breaking changes (inserting an extra statement consisting solely of "false;" in the middle of the function, or "return;" at the end of it) make any sense in that context. Any dead code elimination is necessarily pessimistic - i.e. it tries to guess if the code is unused, but if there are any doubts (e.g. it sees some construct that it doesn't recognize as safe) it has to assume otherwise.

The only true way to test this is to do two things:

1. Try to change the test in other ways and see if there are any significant diffs (such that they are not reasonably detectable as being the same as the original code) which will still keep the optimizer working.

2. Write some new tests specifically to test dead code elimination. Basically just check if it happens on completely different test cases.

By the way, the guy who found the discrepancy has opened a bug in MS bug tracker regarding it, in case you want to repro or track further replies.

This news item sounds fine to me in theory , but when I try to install PHP on Windows, I run into a problem.
Here is an actual Microsoft document regarding the installation.
One of the steps is to register a dll named php5activescript.dll
I get error messages from Windows when I try to do that: "The application failed to initialize properly", and "php5activescript.dll is not an executable file and no registration helper is available for this file type"

And, of course, there is nothing in that Microsoft document to tell you what to do about those errors. (Nor have I found a solution by searching the Internet, although I have found others experiencing the same problem)

Net result: I'm beginning to think Microsoft doesn't really want anything except Microsoft software running under Windows. Which is the best reason I know why everyone should eventually move to Linux.

It's always dangerous to claim you're the first.

http://buytaert.net/microsoft-and-drupal (2007): "Last week at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), Microsoft and SpikeSource announced their intention to work together to certify a number of Open Source projects on the Microsoft Windows platform. According to the press release, Drupal is the first application that has been tested and certified for Microsoft Windows ..."

See also http://www.microsoft.com/web/drupal/

I just hope people don't take these certifications too seriously. I don't have experience in an enterprise setting, but do companies not use a certain software because its not certified my Microsoft?

The point of certification is to make sure that software does certain things right - e.g. can run on 64-bit Windows, installs and uninstalls properly and in correct location, stores config files and other data in appropriate places (and not in e.g. "Program Files"), and doesn't do some things that are silly and potentially harmful (like catching and silently swallowing SIGSEGV). Best way to know what the certification actually means is to read the technical requirements and judge for yourself.

Or you learn how to troubleshoot the problems, and are willing to admit that Windows does many things better then Linux?

Name one? And 'Windows does a better job at making sure you are running Genuine Microsoft Software' doesn't count.

Mail server?

Postfix? Qmail? Exim? OpenXchange?

They all run much better than Windows. I have yet to have postfix crash on me--or simply fail to deliver e-mail for bizarre reasons since I started using it in ~2004.

I've had three Exchange servers with issues this month. One was a corrupted message store. Another was a corrupt certificate services store that prevented Exchange from requesting a new certificate which apparently causes it to die instead of using the old one, and finally mysteriously disappearing e-mail. It wasn't entirely Exchange's fault. An incoming message to my client was being rejected as spam. Turns out the remote mail server wasn't sending NDRs--but it did helpfully uncover that Exchange doesn't log rejected messages. Funny how all the Linux mail servers log mail correctly. I can grep through mail.log and find received and rejected messages.

It's very helpful to know when a message is rejected--especially when Exchanges retarded content filter rejects messages as spam and you don't know why because it's proprietary and they have decided you don't really need to know.

Centralized authentication server?

Apparently you don't know that Linux supports Kerberos just like Windows. There's also Samba to help with Windows clients. There's RADIUS which Microsoft finally got around to updating in Windows 2008--but it still sucks. Let's not forget the 'one password everywhere' awesomeness that is an SSH key or GPG key.

DNS?

Yeah--that's what all the big DNS providers do--they run Windows. Because deploying a cluster of Linux DNS servers is sooo much more expensive than licensing a cluster of Windows DNS servers. Who supported AAAA records first? It wasn't Microsoft's DNS server.

File server?

How's the new SMB 2.0 working out for you? I don't have those problems with FTP, SSH+FTP, SCP, RSYNC, TFTP, SSHFS, NFS, on Linux. What else does Microsoft support? Uh...SMB and...uh...NFS sorta?

Use the correct tool for the problem. As far as that particular problem, that one might actually require a call to Microsoft as it sounds like a failure in the logging of the error (Unknown Error)

Yeah--good idea. Call Microsoft. You can either pay $x00 dollars per-incident, or you can get into their partner or enterprise programs and get free support--but the licensing and partner programs cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.

In Linux, I can usually look at the source for the error message and figure out what's going on--or Google. Strace is handy too. If it's C (I can't read C for crap), I can fall back to Google or call Canonical or call Red Hat, or call any one of the professional linux service shops throughout the US.

if it is a persistant problem then I would call them, if not, oh well. Though I am pretty sure you made up that error message, and I have seen forum posts like that.

Yeah it's made up. It's pretty similar to a real error message I've run into. Like: this one. This one was fun back in the day...

You are not authorized to view this page
The Web server you are attempting to reach has a list of IP addresses that are not allowed to access the Web site, and the IP address of your browsing computer is on this list.

Please try the following:

• Contact the Web site administrator if you believe you should be able to view this directory or page.

HTTP Error 403.6 - Forbidden: IP address of the client has been rejected.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

Technical Information (for support personnel)

• Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title search for the words HTTP and 403.
• Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr),
    and search for topics titled About Security, Limiting Access by IP Address, IP Address Access Restrictions, and About Custom Error Messages.

Vista and 7's driver signing requirement is mainly for DRM purposes.

No, the driver signing requirement is for quality control purposes. 60% of Windows crashes used to be driver-related. Now, Microsoft actually requires a proof of correctness, using their Static Driver Verifier, before a driver is signed.

You're talking about the Windows Hardware Quality Labs signature, not the kernel-mode driver signing requirement in 64-bit Vista and 7. A WHQL signature is not required in order to have a driver load, a kernel-mode driver signature is. Microsoft only does their quality testing with drivers submitted to WHQL; an appropriate VeriSign certificate is enough to get the driver to load, without any quality checking on the part of Microsoft.

It is the kernel-mode driver signing requirement that this rootkit bypasses, not the WHQL signature.

Vista and 7's driver signing requirement is mainly for DRM purposes.

No, the driver signing requirement is for quality control purposes. 60% of Windows crashes used to be driver-related. Now, Microsoft actually requires a proof of correctness, using their Static Driver Verifier, before a driver is signed.

You're talking about the Windows Hardware Quality Labs signature, not the kernel-mode driver signing requirement in 64-bit Vista and 7. A WHQL signature is not required in order to have a driver load, a kernel-mode driver signature is. Microsoft only does their quality testing with drivers submitted to WHQL; an appropriate VeriSign certificate is enough to get the driver to load, without any quality checking on the part of Microsoft.

It is the kernel-mode driver signing requirement that this rootkit bypasses, not the WHQL signature.

Vista and 7's driver signing requirement is mainly for DRM purposes.

No, the driver signing requirement is for quality control purposes. 60% of Windows crashes used to be driver-related. Now, Microsoft actually requires a proof of correctness, using their Static Driver Verifier, before a driver is signed. The prover tries to determine that the driver can't call a driver API wrong and is free of pointer errors. The goal is to eliminate damage to the rest of the kernel, not check whether the device itself will work. The prover is quite good - 97% of the time it either reaches a successful termination or reports a counterexample - a test case that will break the driver. 3% of the time, the analysis takes too long, the prover gives up, and the code has to be simplified or cleaned up.

What specifically about windows desktop is making your experience much better than the Ubuntu desktop? Have you tried the Ubuntu desktop lately?

For one, my complaint about KDE also applies to Ubuntu 10.10 (GNOME). As I said in my first post:

They sort tasks top to bottom first then only left to right. So if you have a double height taskbar and you close one button in the middle, all the buttons to the right of the closed button change position! That is so stupid.

By double height I mean double-row. Windows sorts left to right first, then top to bottom, so if you close a taskbar "button", fewer buttons are affected - only the left-most and rightmost.

Yes I could stick to a single height taskbar and use multiple desktops/workspaces to spread the windows around, or group task buttons, but that makes switching tasks slower.

Instead of multiple desktops, when I need to very quickly work and switch amongst a set of windows, I use a program I wrote (called LinkKey) that allows me to quickly assign alt+[number] to a window/task.

That way I can just click a particular bunch of windows I want to work with (in reverse order), press alt+0. Pressing that sets alt+1 = the most recent window, alt+2 = the second most recent window, alt+3 = the third most recent window and so on till alt+9. I can also press alt+shift+[number] to replace that particular "slot" with the current foreground window. To me that's still faster than assigning those "working set of windows" to a workspace, and then clicking amongst them for switching.

I find it useful when using a laptop without multiple monitors. With multiple monitors I could just spread the windows about, if they are just for reference. But even multi monitors are not so helpful if I need to copy and paste stuff amongst say 3 or 4 different windows. For that the alt+[number] stuff is better.

AFAIK it's even fewer keystrokes than "screen", and works with GUI apps ;). I also added a "bank switching" feature so that you could keep two (or more) sets of hotkey-window mappings, but I haven't found the need to use that.

Lastly, Windows 7 does have something like that, it's winkey+[number], but it's more on a per app basis, see: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Keyboard-shortcuts

The Windows 7 approach works well enough for most people. But the Windows 7 GUI seems to be a lot more cluttered for little gain in usability.

MicroSoft themselves say that. In http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dcook/archive/2010/11/08/sd-cards-in-windows-phone-7.aspx it is mentioned, as well as in the knowledgebase article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2450831 here.

The blog posting actually gives good information on how to get the SD card out of the hive. Apparently you can reset the card with a special command. It would be relatively trivial for someone to write a tool to send that command, providing the low-level drivers permit this. Otherwise, support for this command should be added to the drivers.

Actually, they didn't. Even a basic check, like reading the press release, tells you what they did.

Infoweek made at best a gaffe. They took the figures for the 3 months ended 30 Sept 2009 originally stated and compared them to the 30 Sept 2010 figures recently released, even though right beside those 2010 figures are the 30 Sept 2009 figures updated to reflect the new accounting policy.

Calculating using the figures sitting side-by-side, this change in policy does not distort growth. This what accounting rules require (at least under IFRS, I can't imagine US GAAP does differently), and why. MS also used the revised policy in the %'s given in the press release, so they are both under the same policies. Nowhere in the PR does MS refer to the faulty figures Infoweek is complaining about. Infoweek's article is all about them realising that they were using the wrong figures but not realising that it was due to their own mistake.

For Infoweek to compare against the wrong figures they had to ignore the comparatives given right there in a spreadsheet file given by MS and instead go find an old file, and ignore the prominent disclosure given to the change in the press release that provides the link to the filing:

In addition, we have recast certain prior period amounts within our Form 10-Q that conforms to the way we internally managed and monitored segment performance during the current fiscal year.

As for the deferral of income from Vista sales with W7 upgrade packs, that follows accounting rules too (well, assuming they calculated it properly). Regardless, the entire second paragraph is dedicated to explaining the impact of the accounting rule and even removing it to show the underlying performance:

Prior year results reflect the deferral of $1.47 billion of revenue, an impact of $0.12 of diluted earnings per share, relating to the Windows 7 Upgrade Option program and sales of Windows 7 to OEMs and retailers before general availability in October 2009. Without the deferral in the prior year, first-quarter growth rates for revenue and operating income were 13% and 20%, and growth in net income and earnings per share were 16% and 19%, respectively.

Oh and there's reconciliations and everything in the accompanying slides. Infoweek's "exclusive" refers to their mistake regarding policy changes that were very prominently disclosed.

I know MS isn't exactly celebrated around here, but posting this kind of thing detracts considerably from the credibility of the more valid criticisms.

They might never add it to Windows itself, but it was an optional component of Office 2007 and it's built into Office 2010 (although that information is very well hidden on the Microsoft site... maybe that was part of the deal with Adobe.)

My guess is if Adobe played hardball, Microsoft would start heavily promoting the XPS format as an alternative to PDF, so Adobe backed down.

The SD card market is chock full of dodgy cards, even from reputable manufacturers, in this case it seems Microsft is not actually pulling our chain:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918

Also, they've done a KB explaining what happens when you change cards:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2450831

Because that organisation may not have much in the way of Linux knowledgefor the setup/management/programming of the HPC cluster in-house while they have a wealth of MS experience. Microsoft has created a number of programming APIs for their HPC product that can just be called in .NET to extend existing software or to create new tools where staff members are already familiar with Microsoft programming tools/methodologies.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc853440(VS.85).aspx

In short it is a Microsoft solution to the problem written for organisations that use their platform for everything else and that makes it compelling for a variety of reasons - not the least of which being interoperability with the existing infrastrucutre and managability by the existing staff.

This may prove enlightening

In short, if you're a Microsoft executive, the profitability of your company depends primarily on Office and Windows

Some time ago a person, a little bit like you, finished his Business education in the big city and move home to his small town. He wasn't able to find good work there, but the old movie theater was for sale. Given the price, he promptly bought it and decided to figure out how to make it profitable.

After playing with the numbers for a while he discovered that while the candy store on the first floor was making a significant profit, the movies them selves were making a significant loss. Being almost as smart as you he promptly decided to stop showing movies.

So no, it's not really a "significant portion" of the Microsoft Enterprise portfolio

If you don't know what Enterprise Software is, you really should try to close your mouth. Try figuring it out. You'll see TLAs like ERP, xRM etc. Office, for example, is not Enerprise Software, used by the enterprise though it is.

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/ and find out what Microsoft is doing in that space. Try to find out what requirements Enterprise software like ERPs have. Then try to figure out why Microsoft would be using its Managed Software systems to build Enterprise Software.

We have been talking about Java around here, in the space that you so ignorantly list above, could you point to some typical Java solutions? Something above and beyond Eclipse? Something that actually would justify the enormous investment that such a huge part of the business world has done in Java? Where is all the Java software, where is the profit? Compared to most programming languages and systems, Java is gigantic. Enormous. Where is the software? Can you name any of it? Of course you can't. Compared to the investment in Java by the business world, there is no Java software out there that you have ever heard about.

Just for fun, try to do the same exercise as you just did but replace .NET or Java with COBOL. Where is all the COBOL software? Where is the profit? Compared to the enormous investment still being put into COBOL solutions, you have never heard of any software written in COBOL.

Why is it that you have never heard of these things? Because you are ignorant. A petulant child in the world of grown-up software systems and their developers.

Oh, and also take a look at the concept of "mission critical" and see how many of the Microsoft Apps you have heard about that fit that description (you have mentioned two above).

get back to me when Microsoft are actually building something they really care about on .Net

If you really think Microsoft is stupid enough to not care about their enterprise solutions, solutions that give Microsoft more or less unbreakable tie-ins with their customers, you are dumber than I thought, and believe you me, that would be hard.

How easy is it to move from Office to Open Office? Not that difficult, leaning towards easy. How difficult is it to move from a fully integrated solution consisting of Dynamics xRM, Share Point, Exchange and Office? Close to impossible.

If Microsoft stops caring about their enterprise customers, their Office sales will plummet. For every Share Point license Microsoft sells they guarantee years and years of continues Office sales. For every Dynamics CRM installation Microsoft sells they tie their customers to Exchange for years years. For every dollar some of these big enterprise invest in the Office software, they invest thousands of dollars in enterprise solutions, lots of them in-house. Here is a small example involving SAP. This is where Microsoft needs to play, or they will die, they know that.

You view of the world is quite limited. Broaden it.

Seeing as libreoffice is just a fork of openoffice (they're probably almost identical in code right now), you can probably rely on it just as much as openoffice now, and possibly even more in the future.

The LibreOffice website is itself a work in progress.

There are no links to external resources of any kind: Templates, tutorials, clip art and so on.

Office.com does this sort of thing very, very well - and I don't think the geek has ever quite understood the importance of getting this right.

"This beta release is not intended for production use!"

The Windows build is an International build - you can choose the user interface language that is suitable for you, but the help is always English. The Linux and MacOSX builds are English builds with the possibility to install language packs. LibreOffice Productivity Suite"

Maybe they didn't feel the need to take the phone apart, remove warranty stickers and mess with the cards that according to Microsoft are only to be touched by OEMs.

So if we follow your link and find out what is "really happening," we find out that some blokes plugged a card into a phone and that it seemed to kill the card.

Of course if you read the second link I posted you'd see that Microsoft itself spells it out a bit more clearly:

When the operating system integrates the SD card with your phone:

1. It reformats the SD card.
2. It creates a single file system that spans the internal storage and the SD card.
3. It locks the card to the phone with an automatically generated key.

From this point on, the phone's operating system uses all of the available memory as a single storage space for storing applications and data. The phone will stop working properly if you remove the SD card, and the SD card cannot be read by another phone, device, or PC.

It's not just one data point from some casual observer. The manufacturer of the operating system states quite clearly that this is the expected behavior.

If this is even possible there is something really wrong with the SD card in question

You have to dig further into the links in the article to find out what is really happening. Apparently the Windows Phone 7 devices are stressing the SD cards in a manner which is not in-spec for a normal SD card. This means that a SD card which is perfectly fine by the normal spec might be ruined by the way the Windows Phone 7 OS uses the card.

This means that you will need a SD card which is certified under more stringent requirements in order to not be destroyed by the Windows Phone 7 OS.

On top of that the OS also completely reformats the card so that it is a "permanent" part of the device. It probably sets up special space for swap space and other OS-specific data structures so that they can be accessed quickly and easily by the OS but this results in the card not having a normal disk layout that other devices can read using default software.

From Microsoft's KB2450831 support article:

Windows Phone 7 Secure Digital Card Limitations

[...]

Some Windows Phone 7 devices include a Secure Digital (SD) card slot underneath the battery cover. If you buy a Windows Phone 7 device that includes an SD card slot, you should be aware of several important differences from other devices that use SD cards:

• The SD card slot in your phone is intended to be used only by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) that built your phone and your Mobile Operator (MO). These partners can add an SD card to this slot to expand the amount of storage on your phone.
• To help ensure a great user experience, Microsoft has performed exhaustive testing to determine which SD cards perform well with Windows Phone 7 devices. Microsoft has worked closely with OEMs and MOs to ensure that they only add these cards to Windows Phone 7 devices.
• You should not remove the SD card in your phone or add a new one because your Windows Phone 7 device might not work properly. Existing data on the phone will be lost, and the SD card in your phone can't be used in other Windows Phones, PCs, or other devices.

[...]

Visual Studio Express is now free as well: http://www.microsoft.com/express/

So if you don't want the full professional thingy (which I just bought as an upgrade: you can upgrade from Eclipse if you have that installed - which was a pretty good reason to install Eclipse for the first time, actually :) ) you can get a lightweight free version. You only miss out on multiple languages in one IDE, on Project Templates, and a few other minor items.

Great post, and I'd like to add a couple of other points.

Instead of just downloading the compiler, download Visual C# Express. It's a great way to get introduced to Visual Studio and it has a lot of tools and features that make it better than hand typing it into Notepad. I'd still recommend learning what's going on under the covers (use ILdasm, Reflector, and check out the x.Designer.cs files), but if you're going to do any .NET programming in the enterprise setting Visual Studio is going to be used.

It's good to be a jack of all languages, but you also need to master at least one. I've learned assembly, C, C++, Java, VB 6, VB.NET, C#, ASP.NET (WebForms and MVC), SQL, Ruby, Perl, Python, and PHP, but I still picked my favorite (C#) and mastered it and it has given me most of my paid jobs.

Whatever you decide to do, don't tie yourself down. Learn as much as you can about different languages and what's going on behind the abstractions. Pick your favorites and any that you need for work and master them, but don't get too hung up on a particular language.

Facebook:
http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/
http://www.joindiaspora.com/
http://www.myspace.com/

Amazon:
http://www.bookfinder.com/about/booksellers/

Skype:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VoIP_software

Twitter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr
http://www.plurk.com/

Apple:
http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx
http://www.ubuntu.com/

eBay:
http://online-auction-sites.toptenreviews.com/

Google:
http://www.thesearchenginelist.com/

You're just plain wrong. Outlook 2007 and 2010 have Instant Search, which integrates with the Microsoft desktop search service, availble for XP and installed by default on Vista and Win7. I search for "bunny", and it finds all emails with "bunny" and "bunnies" in the headers, content, or even inside most file attachments. Operators like "from:", "subject:", etc. are also available.

AFAIK they are packaged with every major linux distro out there, and I can't but presume that Windows ships with microcode patches as well.

Microcode updates for Windows machines are distributed through Microsoft Update and are downloaded and installed automatically if automatic updates is enabled (and it is enabled by default). No BIOS update required.

An example of such an update can be found by looking at Microsoft KB936357

What you are talking about is ACLs. Group Policies are made up of thousands of windows and application settings that are applied to computers and users on login that configure and/or restrict their environment in a multitude of ways. See here for details - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742376.aspx

I'm sorry, your defending MS because 800 MHz processor and 1 GB of ram isn't enough computer to run their OS? (MS minimum requirements) I ran OS 10.4 (a contemporary) on a 400 MHz processor with 512 MB ram and it was fine. And you don't even want to get slashdot started on the ancient boxes linux will run (well) on.

I can see good reasons to migrate to Windows 7. It is actually a better OS then XP and performs well on old machines. The math is pretty simple. You will need to migrate sooner or later.. It is foolish to bring in new machines with XP unless you have some mission critical XP only software. If so you are just waiting for a world of pain. Start looking for a replacement.

I agree with the above, but will also point out that if you have Windows 7 Professional or Enterprise editions you can use XP Mode to run that mission-critical XP-only software. It will even put an icon in your Windows 7 programs menu and run the window beside your other apps.

At least things have improved from what they were like in Win2k days...

1. Wikipedia: "Kinect is based on software technology developed internally by Microsoft and range camera technology by Israeli developer PrimeSense, which interprets 3D scene information from a continuously-projected infrared pattern." So, half credit. Maybe 1/3 credit--the Wii came out a year earlier, so the first steps of "control a game with body motion" were already in place. "Jumping on the bandwagon a year later" doesn't really count as "innovation" in my book. Plus there have been webcam-based games that come with cheap laptops for years. All it is, really, is a nice refinement of the idea.
2. Sure, I'll give them that, though I don't think it's a really big deal.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering -- "Originally invented by IBM in 1988..."
4. Are you fucking kidding me? MS got Halo by buying Bungie outright AFTER Halo had already been developed.

Thanks for helping prove the GP's point.

I disagree, I don't believe 40,000 is a "okay" day. I don't know anything about the number of these phones that are out there, but I what I could find briefly is for distributors so far are AT&T, the same company that is providing service for the iphone, amazon, the world's largest on-line distributor, AND Best Buy a huge brick-and-mortar chain of stores. Between them, they sold 40,000 units whereas the iphone sold 270,000 for the same period, almost SEVEN times as many and just from Apple and AT&T stores/on-line.

You can argue that sales will pick up after Verizon starts carrying it next year and once natural turnover will force people to buy new phones, but I'd put it as 50-50 that this is the highest rate of sales that they'll ever see with this OS and that from here on out it's downhill. While I don't think this will be another Kin that will get pulled from the shelves in a few months, they haven't made nearly the impression they need to in order to get any sort of widespread awareness of the public that this is a useful thing to buy.

For the record, I don't own an iphone, nor do I text, nor to I patronize the apple store with any regular frequency.

If they'd just looked at pretty much any similar example in history to see that the open driver was inevitable, they could've played it in such a manner that they distanced themselves from supporting or condoning it, but congratulated the community for their innovation.

Four words: Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

Microsoft should have realised the immense usefulness of this product in computer vision and robotics and just released an open source driver themselves. Even if they increased the shelf price of the device from US$150 to US$250, it's still way cheaper than any other commercial vision system out there.

Instead, their marketing department saw red and decided to threaten everybody. Idiots.

The chart you link to is pretend to support the article. They don't have the divisions right - there is no "Office" division at MS. Even though they don't have it right, it still supports my argument - it shows Server and Tools doing more business than Windows. The "Business" division includes Office (with Project and Visio) and the ERP products - Dynamics and CRM. Here is a better breakdown of revenue by division.
 
My point was, Windows and Office do not represent anywhere near 95% of revenue, as the post I was responding to claimed. If you tease all these data sources, it looks like Server and Tools and the ERP/CRM portion of "Business" division represnts over a third of MS revenue.

And who is to do this? Can you call Microsoft to get help with your problems, without being IT head of a big company having big contracts?

Yes, you can.

Need the number?

Find it here: http://support.microsoft.com/selectassist

Does that mean there aren't cheaper or more comprehensive options available? No, but that actually accentuates the problem with Linux not having any such options (unless you paid for your red hat or canonical server, that is). Hell the computer OEMs all have their own support as well.

Admittedly I have never really dived into Windows documentation, but the "trouble shooting" wizards have never been helpful for me.

The documentation available for free online is extensive and complete. Usually when I search for info on a Microsoft problem I find the answer in MS's documentation. The "help" guides on the machine vary from very good to next to useless. It's like reading a friggin man page.

The are a couple problems with this theory.

The EU demanded that Microsoft open several of their standards and protocols, or else. The EU can stop the sale of Microsoft products in the EU and levy more fines.

And Microsoft has made an open patent pledge.

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/osspatentpledge.mspx

If they go back on that pledge and tell the EU they refuse to cooperate with their demands on interoperability, then the EU hammer drops again.

Microsoft isn't going to do that. It makes zero sense.

which is why you just use Junction points to other disks.

Sorry i've been doing this on desktops since NT5 Beta..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point [wikipedia.org]

sure it takes a little work - and you can't do it right at install - but it isn't that much work, and you have the added benefit that you don't have to care if devs are stupid and hard code paths in their software.

Actually you can instruct the installers for Vista and Windows 7 to put the Users folder which holds all of the user profiles on any drive you choose. It may work on Server 2008 and 2008 R2 as well but I have only used it on Vista and Windows 7.

The easiest way to do this is to use the Windows Automated Installation Kit to set the path and then copy the resulting XML file to a flash drive. The installer will automatically read the XML file and create the Users folder on the appropriate drive.

This method ensures that all of the permissions are properly set for the user profiles and eliminates the need to manually create a junction for the user profiles.