Slashdot Mirror

Have you seen Microsoft attempt to bribe Aussies into downloading IE8:

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/default.aspx

A few days ago, if you read the page with a different browser you'd get a custom insult, like "boring Safari" or "old FireFox"... today they've toned it down. But the page still has the disclaimer on the bottom that "it's not as stupid as it sounds."

Why yes, Microsoft, it is.

Search Twitter for "@tengrand_IE8" to see just how much love Microsoft is getting out of this campaign.

Interestingly it would appear that Microsoft is only prepared to blatantly lie in the US and not the UK.

Compare:
IE US Home Page
IE UK Home Page

It seems you cannot get the "facts" in the UK.
(Perhaps Microsoft is taking a leaf out of the UK governments book?)

Interestingly it would appear that Microsoft is only prepared to blatantly lie in the US and not the UK.

Compare:
IE US Home Page
IE UK Home Page

It seems you cannot get the "facts" in the UK.
(Perhaps Microsoft is taking a leaf out of the UK governments book?)

You've gotta love it that they keep pushing the word "Fact" into their FUD.

This is pathetic and infuriating at the same time, which is common with MS propaganda. As I went over the list (as well as the mythbusting bit) I laughed in a "black humor" sort of way -- it reads like a parody, kind of like something you'd read on TheOnion.

Isn't it nice that as long as you keep things just ambiguous enough, you can use the word "FACT" in an ad to state just about anything. At some point, if the law doesn't intervene, they will start positioning Google as the "Dark Corporation that spies on you", and Apple as a religious cult. I'm pretty sure they could do that now and they'd be un-sue-able.

Not the best FF advert I've seen.

Having said that, I think it's not desperate and needy like "Okay... how much to use IE8? Ten grand?"

Just to clarify the bit about the addresses, because I forgot a couple of sections...

The whole IPv6 address is 128 bits, but in a unicast address, the first 3 are the "prefix identifier," basically saying that this is unicast. Then you have a 13 bit "TLD Identifier" and 8 reserved bits, completing the global prefix portion.

But then you have a 24 bit "NLA ID", which might specify an ISP or some other intermediate network. This provides for traffic aggregation, and they get assigned (I guess) by the national registries. This brings you to 48 bits. Exactly how they'll choose to distribute the NLA IDs, and how many each organization/ISP will get, I'm not quite clear on. I've heard some people allude to ISPs getting large blocks at this level and putting a "subscriber ID" or "customer ID" in this region, leaving 80 bits free per customer, but I don't think this is really the case.

After the NLA is a "SLA ID", which is like a very big subnet identifier. It's 16 bits long, bringing you to 64 for the address so far. This is what I think individual home routers will get from ISPs, assuming the NLA IDs get given out with enough granularity so that there isn't competition.

Beyond the SLA ID is 64 bits for the "interface ID," which a host can pretty much define however it wants. In most applications this can be easily created by padding out the Ethernet MAC, although it can also be generated randomly if that's not desired.

References:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757359(WS.10).aspx - Surprisingly good TechNet article
RFC 2462

I'm tired of this. You apparently wouldn't know a good UI if it bit you, or you're a sell out to MS, or both.

The old Office 2003 interface:
1. Gave buttons and menus
2. Both of which could be customised
3. Automatic customisation based on "most used" stats could be turned off
4. Allowed the display of multiple toolbars at the same time

The new Office 2007 interface:
1. Doesn't allow you to revert to the old interface without 3rd party addons
2. Determines what's on your toolbar for you, and as a user you don't get to customise it. Which means that if you use several functions in a workflow you have to click wildly between ribbon tabs

Take a look at this user's solution: Add everything to the Quick access Toolbar. I mean for pity sake!!!
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101996251033.aspx

You claim the tool bars don't change, but everything I'm reading says they do.

http://oit.nd.edu/helpdesk/office/office2007.shtml
"Contextual Tabs

Certain sets of commands are only relevant when objects of a particular type are being edited. For example, the commands for editing a chart are not relevant until a chart appears in a spreadsheet and the user is focusing on modifying it. Contextual tabs only appear when they are needed and make it much easier to find and use the commands needed for the operation at hand."

I'm going to stop finding evidence that it does because you seem incapable of admitting any kind of mistake.

Frankly whether the commands change based on context, or whether they change based on usage stats is a moot point. If they change they make documenting step by step procedures more difficult, because a reader can't read ahead - the tools just might not be displayed for subsequent steps and if they are you have to jump between toolbars.

No, this is a new UI is a huge step backward - designed by fools for fools and defended by fools. It's not good for new learners, it's not good for power users, and it is less efficient and wastes time compared to the old.

You have been misinformed. Here's a brief explanation. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc977676.aspx

What I linked to was exclusively an office 2007 knowledge base article.

Here is the same article for older versions of Office:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193006

It is nothing to do with Ribbon. Ribbon does not have personalized menus. Hell, look at the effected products in your article link, it doesn't have any of the applications that use the Ribbon listed from Microsot Office 2007.

If you had even used Office 2007 for a period of time on different machines, you would know this. Hell, if you knew the previous versions of Office well, you would know this. It has nothing to do with Ribbon, and it's part of the older Microsoft office interface which you seem to imply is superior to the Ribbon because the Ribbon changes when it infact, does not.

Even in Microsoft's documentation on how to build a Ribbon application are numerous references to not changing the layout of the ribbon - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc872782.aspx (See interaction - there is more information in their PDF files about it, which you need to agree to a license to before you can download them - but I can't be bothered to spend more than a minute looking on Google for it).

What I linked to was exclusively an office 2007 knowledge base article.

Here is the same article for older versions of Office:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193006

It is nothing to do with Ribbon. Ribbon does not have personalized menus. Hell, look at the effected products in your article link, it doesn't have any of the applications that use the Ribbon listed from Microsot Office 2007.

If you had even used Office 2007 for a period of time on different machines, you would know this. Hell, if you knew the previous versions of Office well, you would know this. It has nothing to do with Ribbon, and it's part of the older Microsoft office interface which you seem to imply is superior to the Ribbon because the Ribbon changes when it infact, does not.

Even in Microsoft's documentation on how to build a Ribbon application are numerous references to not changing the layout of the ribbon - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc872782.aspx (See interaction - there is more information in their PDF files about it, which you need to agree to a license to before you can download them - but I can't be bothered to spend more than a minute looking on Google for it).

Fortunately, at least in an AD environment, you can pull this off using GPO-based software restrictions. Unfortunately, Samba 3 doesn't support GPOs, and Samba 4 isn't quite done yet. That said, if it can be done via GPO, it can probably be done via the registry if you can figure out what keys they're munging, and once you figure that out, you can write startup batch scripts that can make the necessary changes to the registry for you.

Most definetly. CanSecWest only allows exploits of unknown flaws.

Similar to previous alternate architecture ports of Windows (Windows NT 4.0 for PowerPC, MIPS R4x00, and Alpha) Windows XP 64-Bit Edition can run lower-bit-depth (in this case standard x86 32-bit) applications through its WOW64 (Windows-on-Windows 64 bit) emulation layer. While the original Itanium processor contains an on-chip IA-32 decoder, it was deemed far too slow for serious use (running at about 400 MHz), so Microsoft and Intel wrote a software 32 to 64 bit translator dubbed the IA-32 Execution Layer. It allows real time translation of x86 32 bit instructions into IA-64 instructions, allowing 32 bit applications to run (albeit significantly slower than native code).

About its replacement XP Pro 64 bit edition

Known issues There are some common issues that arise with Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. Driver compatibility; Only 64 bit kernel mode drivers are supported. This means that devices for which there are no 64 bit Windows XP drivers available cannot be used. This includes a lot of common hardware, but the amount of unsupported hardware is falling due to the proliferation of x64 Vista. Any 32 bit Windows Explorer extension fails to work with 64 bit Windows Explorer. Explorer is a 64 bit program, so it cannot load a 32 bit DLL. However, Windows XP x64 Edition also ships with the 32 bit explorer.exe, which can be used as the user's default shell with a registry change. 16 bit programs will not run, the AMD64/Intel64 architecture supports this (16-bit programs on 64-bit operating systems) but Microsoft couldn't fully support this. Unfortunately some 32 bit software have 16 bit installers, so special support for some specific installers was added (ACME Setup versions 2.6, 3.0, 3.01, and 3.1 and InstallShield versions 5.x). Command prompts will not load in full-screen. This is also true of Windows Vista in both 32 and 64 bit editions. Does not contain a Web Extender Client component for Web Folders (WebDAV). Some installers refuse to install to anything other than 32 bit XP, even though the product runs perfectly on x64.

As to compatibility problems, the internet is full of articles complaining about them: http://www.astahost.com/info.php/Windows-Xp-64-Compatibility-Problems_t13042.html http://desktop.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=25631 and on and on - just google it.

You'll probably blame the developers of the packages. I blame the entire way Microsoft approaches Windows evolution and setting clear standards, guidance and direction - at least as far as the desktop market is concerned. From the first day Windows was released until now, they have let chaos reign. Their few attempts at enforcing some order, e.g. signing and certification, were undermined because they approached more as a marketing strategy than an engineering one.

When Microsoft introduced DLL's why didn't it occur to them to require that each version be identified? Did they not know that software changes and new versions are released? Why can any installer overwrite the registry entries of other products? Why are products allowed to overwrite the operating system supplied DLLs? All of these issues and their solutions were well known in the industry save Microsoft.

At least they eventually figured out that their enterprise server operating systems should no longer be compromised by consumer based decisions like when they compromised NT 4.0 by this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc750820.aspx

Well except for the fact that the ribbon reorganises itself so you can't ever find anything.

What are you talking about?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912721

"The Personalized Menus and Toolbars feature evaluates what menu commands you use. Additionally, this feature displays only those items that you use most frequently on a shortened version of each menu. By default, when you click a menu and then rest the mouse pointer over the menu title, the menu expands and displays all the menu items.

Note The menu expands only if the Show full menus after a short delay option is selected. "

The program in question is software assurance, and the web page I just linked you to will indeed include details about where to go to get it.

Bear in mind there's some dumb rules about minimum seats and crap that might make it uneconomical for you.

actually this is a really poorly written article full of gross errors.

Volume Licensing(VL) is not the same as Software Assurance (SA).

OEM licenses die with a machine. VLs can be moved and reused as long as the new machine came with an OEM license. Think of VLs as a way to upgrade a limited and discounted OEM license.

VL customers can definitely use XP. Most enterprises have VL agreements in place. Those that don't should probably sack their IT department or switch to Linux.

Software Assurance which may or may not be included with a specific VL plan has numerous benefits including getting new versions of the software without paying anything extra i.e. you buy Vista VLs now with SA; when Win7 comes out, you get the upgrade to Win7 at no cost.

VLs can be outright purchases paid in full or you can "lease" the software as a subscription. Subscriptions are advantageous as you do not pay the full price of the software and it provides your IT and Finance department a consistent way to account for IT costs (think operational expenses vs. capital expenses).

Finally it a misconception that VLs are only good for large customers. VLs can be purchased for organizations with as little as 5 computers.

Comprehensive info on VL is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a link to small business information:
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/buy/software/buy-software.aspx#waystobuy

Here is a link outlining Software Assurance Benefits (download the SA benefits chart PDF):
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a fine print detail for specific technology licensing.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/volume-licensing-briefs.aspx

My suggestion is you consider Microsoft's Open agreements.

If you have any questions, email me via my blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/tarpara

actually this is a really poorly written article full of gross errors.

Volume Licensing(VL) is not the same as Software Assurance (SA).

OEM licenses die with a machine. VLs can be moved and reused as long as the new machine came with an OEM license. Think of VLs as a way to upgrade a limited and discounted OEM license.

VL customers can definitely use XP. Most enterprises have VL agreements in place. Those that don't should probably sack their IT department or switch to Linux.

Software Assurance which may or may not be included with a specific VL plan has numerous benefits including getting new versions of the software without paying anything extra i.e. you buy Vista VLs now with SA; when Win7 comes out, you get the upgrade to Win7 at no cost.

VLs can be outright purchases paid in full or you can "lease" the software as a subscription. Subscriptions are advantageous as you do not pay the full price of the software and it provides your IT and Finance department a consistent way to account for IT costs (think operational expenses vs. capital expenses).

Finally it a misconception that VLs are only good for large customers. VLs can be purchased for organizations with as little as 5 computers.

Comprehensive info on VL is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a link to small business information:
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/buy/software/buy-software.aspx#waystobuy

Here is a link outlining Software Assurance Benefits (download the SA benefits chart PDF):
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a fine print detail for specific technology licensing.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/volume-licensing-briefs.aspx

My suggestion is you consider Microsoft's Open agreements.

If you have any questions, email me via my blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/tarpara

actually this is a really poorly written article full of gross errors.

Volume Licensing(VL) is not the same as Software Assurance (SA).

OEM licenses die with a machine. VLs can be moved and reused as long as the new machine came with an OEM license. Think of VLs as a way to upgrade a limited and discounted OEM license.

VL customers can definitely use XP. Most enterprises have VL agreements in place. Those that don't should probably sack their IT department or switch to Linux.

Software Assurance which may or may not be included with a specific VL plan has numerous benefits including getting new versions of the software without paying anything extra i.e. you buy Vista VLs now with SA; when Win7 comes out, you get the upgrade to Win7 at no cost.

VLs can be outright purchases paid in full or you can "lease" the software as a subscription. Subscriptions are advantageous as you do not pay the full price of the software and it provides your IT and Finance department a consistent way to account for IT costs (think operational expenses vs. capital expenses).

Finally it a misconception that VLs are only good for large customers. VLs can be purchased for organizations with as little as 5 computers.

Comprehensive info on VL is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a link to small business information:
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/buy/software/buy-software.aspx#waystobuy

Here is a link outlining Software Assurance Benefits (download the SA benefits chart PDF):
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a fine print detail for specific technology licensing.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/volume-licensing-briefs.aspx

My suggestion is you consider Microsoft's Open agreements.

If you have any questions, email me via my blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/tarpara

actually this is a really poorly written article full of gross errors.

Volume Licensing(VL) is not the same as Software Assurance (SA).

OEM licenses die with a machine. VLs can be moved and reused as long as the new machine came with an OEM license. Think of VLs as a way to upgrade a limited and discounted OEM license.

VL customers can definitely use XP. Most enterprises have VL agreements in place. Those that don't should probably sack their IT department or switch to Linux.

Software Assurance which may or may not be included with a specific VL plan has numerous benefits including getting new versions of the software without paying anything extra i.e. you buy Vista VLs now with SA; when Win7 comes out, you get the upgrade to Win7 at no cost.

VLs can be outright purchases paid in full or you can "lease" the software as a subscription. Subscriptions are advantageous as you do not pay the full price of the software and it provides your IT and Finance department a consistent way to account for IT costs (think operational expenses vs. capital expenses).

Finally it a misconception that VLs are only good for large customers. VLs can be purchased for organizations with as little as 5 computers.

Comprehensive info on VL is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a link to small business information:
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/buy/software/buy-software.aspx#waystobuy

Here is a link outlining Software Assurance Benefits (download the SA benefits chart PDF):
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/default.aspx#tab_2

Here is a fine print detail for specific technology licensing.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/volume-licensing-briefs.aspx

My suggestion is you consider Microsoft's Open agreements.

If you have any questions, email me via my blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/tarpara

Actually, I just heard about Popfly yesterday, after I went to Microsoft's Visual Studio Express website to recommend their free development tools to my (and I risk my credibility by mentioning her) girlfriend in response to her interest in becoming a programmer. But it kind of supports your point that I only just heard of it. For that matter, non-developers won't hear about Visual Studio regularly either.

... but none of their browsers support any of the HTML5 specs

IE8 supports bits and pieces of HTML5. It's a very far cry from full support, but your claim that "none of their browsers support any of the specs" is plain wrong.

Hey man if your are not using this you are crazy... Still don't install windows if you really have to :). Damn Autodesk.

SP3 for XP. You don't want to update with a fresh XP install over the internet. It is not very wise. Unplug your network and run the install from a usb thumbdrive. Quicker and much safer

If your software license rep doesn't know about software assurance, run, don't walk to someone else. Any authorized Microsoft license rep that manages Open, Open Value, Select, or Enterprise Licensing should know about software assurance.

For $699 you can install any Microsoft OS on as many machines as you own for one year. Then after that it's $499 per year.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/subscriptionschart.aspx (scroll down to "MSDN Operating Systems")

I wish someone would bring it back, duplicating the TY, GH, NM keys on both the left and right side.

May I present the Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000. I have them at all of my workstations now, and there's no going back.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/groove/FX100487641033.aspx

Where do you get 231MB? That's the size of the full "redistributable" installer, including compilers, debugging tools, debug versions, etc. The actual size of the 2.0 runtime is 22.4MB

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856EACB-4362-4B0D-8EDD-AAB15C5E04F5&displaylang=en

That's not 3.5, but 3.5 is a superset of 2.0, which is basically adding on stuff that the basic JRE doesn't have anyways like Workflow and WPF.

Also, why is it that Java also creates side by side installations? I have something like 15 Java versions installed because each update installs a new version. Each Java folder is about 90MB, which means it's taking up about 1.35GB.

And you are wrong. The latest version, 3.5 SP1 will run 100% of apps from 3.5, 3.0, 2.0, and about 99% of 1.1 and 1.0 apps. Side by side installations are not required except for a very tiny fraction of 1.1 and 1.0 apps that had a breaking change occur.

Runs in a safe VM
No buffer-overflows
No crashes due to uninitialized memory
No dangling pointers

Unless you use unsafe.

The Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is the only keyboard Microsoft have made that I consider to be a successor to the original Natural Keyboard. The others have glaring ergonomic flaws. The principle ones being dumb positioning of keys (Natural Keyboard Elite), sloping the keyboard the wrong way and poor "wrist-rests" that encourage or force your wrists to be more stressed than on a normal keyboard (Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro, Optical Desktop Pro).

If anybody can point to an actual patent that Mono or Tomboy violate, please file an issue report against the Mono project;

I know it is a bit old but, we'll file one once they publish which part they're going to patent, of course, that shouldn't be long. PS: The only complaint I have of .NET is the syntax of LINQ, but what'cha going do?

Besides, anyone thinking that MS would attacking Linux using patents isn't giving Microsoft any credit. I figure that they would try to kill Linux (GNOME proper, since GNOME != Linux) via contracts with Linux vendors as opposed to patents. It just seems too obvious to go that (patents) route. Linux isn't the problem with MS, it is more like the vendors pandering Linux that is.

Also I develop on OpenJDK, I was wondering if you could provide a list of patents that the OpenJDK is infringing on? I'm sure we could work out what it is that you feel is something we may have overlooked.

Mono is way ahead of languages like Java in that regard because, unlike Java, Mono is based on an open standard

Could you clear that up? I'm not sure I follow what you are talking about. Is it because .NET is a standard through an organized body? Whereas, Java is basically a community process with Sun at the head of the community? If this is your beef with Java then what exactly is different between how Java is made versus something like, Linux or GNU HURD?

Besides, what is all this seemingly bad blood between .NET and Java? I've been to many PDCs and the people behind .NET seem pretty accepting of Java much like the Samba - Microsoft love (which granted isn't awesome but it is still pretty good). Also, the Mono devs are pretty cool people on IRC. Really? Do we need to build walls?

Since .NET is an entire platform "just like Java", let's compare their bloat.
The latest version of the Java runtime is 15.50 MB big. And it will run apps written for *any* version of Java.
The latest version of the .NET framework is 231 MB big. And it will only run apps written for that version, requiring the "side by side" installation of other runtimes for other versions.

Microsoft reserves the right to update (including discontinue) the foregoing covenant pursuant to the terms of the Patent Cooperation Agreement between Novell and Microsoft that was publicly announced on November 2, 2006; however, the covenant as set forth above will continue as to specific copies of Covered Products distributed by Novell for Revenue before such update.

And this is an example of a good deal:

Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Google and its affiliates hereby grant to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this License) patent license for patents necessarily infringed by implementation of this specification. If you institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the implementation of the specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses for the specification granted to you under this License shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

Non-disclosure agreements and time-limited covenants are by their very nature exclusive and are a complete joke to free software. If Microsoft really understood FOSS, they would have offered an agreement like that right off the bat.

Microsoft purchased FAST Search and Transfer last year (here is a 'welcome page' for existing FAST customers). I had assumed that Bing is a specific implementation of the FAST technology, but I could very well be wrong. But if I'm right, then Sergey Brin doesn't have a whole lot of homework to do.

Wifi computer networks can operate in ad-hoc which allows WiFi enabled devices to communicate directly with each other without needing an access point/base station. When operating in ad-hoc mode all wireless devices within range can be discovered and communicate in peer-to-peer fashion.

All wireless adapters on the ad-hoc network must use the same SSID and the same channel number. Ad hoc networks a great when needing to build a small, all-wireless LAN quickly. You can configure "add-hoc" network mode through the network configuration in Control panel.

Read the following for detailed descriptions of what to do.

Configuring an ad-hoc Wifi network with Windows XP

Configuring an ad-hoc Wifi network with Windows Vista

Wifi computer networks can operate in ad-hoc which allows WiFi enabled devices to communicate directly with each other without needing an access point/base station. When operating in ad-hoc mode all wireless devices within range can be discovered and communicate in peer-to-peer fashion.

All wireless adapters on the ad-hoc network must use the same SSID and the same channel number. Ad hoc networks a great when needing to build a small, all-wireless LAN quickly. You can configure "add-hoc" network mode through the network configuration in Control panel.

Read the following for detailed descriptions of what to do.

Configuring an ad-hoc Wifi network with Windows XP

Configuring an ad-hoc Wifi network with Windows Vista

i was just about to say something along the same lines. that photo is huge. the thing i find most weird is so few people actually pointing this out. i've seen this story now in the local papers here (london), reddit, digg and now slashdot and a whole lot of people actually seem to believe that this is possible.

you are not printing out meter-sized prints from a photo a few hundred pixels across. you'd be lucky if it looked good at a couple of inches across: photo sizes/resolution.

http://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/hardware/Ergonomics_and_Repetitive_Strain_Injury.pdf http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Repetitive+strain+injuries+stretch+higher-a018341055 http://www.rsi-therapy.com/statistics.htm I think the UK stats are probably the best stats to go by. Most of the RSI injury rate information in the United States is based on the last clean census of injuries which was roughly 1994-1995. Unfortunately, since that time states with a large chicken processing workforce, have either stopped counting RSI statistics or have merge them into some other heading making difficult if not impossible to track down what the actual injury rates are. It's amazing the kind of government service you can purchase if your name is Tyson or Perdue. I know this sounds kind of conspiratorial but, up here in New England, the same thing happened with glass cutters and textile workers. Remember, programmers are nothing more than a clean form of blue-collar labor that can be replaced by cheaper labor in a heartbeat. As for the near 100% comment, well as we age, we lose ability. Since everybody ages, is a good chance you will spend decades being unable to use the tools and toys you use today. There's a better chance that the twentysomethings 30 years from now will be inventing all of these cool things that you will be excluded from.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Repetitive+strain+injuries+stretch+higher-a018341055 when you work through the reports, the 300k number works out to about 100k for IT. while this report is old, nothing has changed to drop the rate. uk reports are more current http://download.microsoft.com/documents/uk/hardwar/Ergonomics_and_Repetitive_Strain_Injury.pdf As for the near 100%, think arthritis, medication induced tremors, loss of flexibility as you age normally or via trauma. It all adds up to loss of hand function.

(most of whom aren't even using 2Gb of RAM in XP, so I doubt the 32bit RAM limit will be a problem)

And even if it did become an issue, you can use up to 4Gb of RAM in XP, provided that no one application needs more than 2Gb (or 3Gb if you mess around with the boot settings...)

Correction to your latest statement, not even Silverlight 2 is multi-O/S.

Silverlight 2 seems to have a Windows and OS X version.

Correction to your latest statement, not even Silverlight 2 is multi-O/S.

Silverlight 2 seems to have a Windows and OS X version.

Mount St. Helens is close enough to Seattle WAC USA that I used to watch eruptions from the shores of Green Lake in North Seattle. A superuption from a supervolcano could take out the Microsoft campus in Redmond WA USA and the Mentifex AI Project in Seattle. Then maybe the world would be better off without either of them.

In order to really get an idea of how fast (or slow) Java is, I tried the following on my outdated machine, a 1600 MHz AMD Turion. First, I tried to measure the dreaded JVM cold startup time by running Apache Rhino:

peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar /usr/share/java/js-1.7R2.jar -help
[...]
real 0m1.444s
user 0m0.232s
sys 0m0.084s

Then I’ve done it a second time to see what the delay becomes on a hot start:

peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar /usr/share/java/js-1.7R2.jar -help
[...]
real 0m0.358s
user 0m0.252s
sys 0m0.036s

...that’s a little more than a third of a second. So there is a one-time delay to pay if you write your app in java, but it’s not so user-noticeable as many believe.

So far for the startup time. Then I tested the run time.
Probably the JVM cannot compete with native code as a byte-pusher. But how well does it fare when it comes to support high-level languages? I wrote two small nonsense programs, that aim to exercise some random high-level functions I expect to be common in today’s software. The two programs try to do exactly the same thing, the first in C, and the latter Java.
Link to the C source
Link to the Java source
(sorry, slashdot didn’t let me put the snippets inline without making them unreadable)

I compiled and timed the C implementation:

peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: x86_64-linux-gnu
[...]
gcc version 4.4.0 (Ubuntu 4.4.0-6ubuntu2)
peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -O3 -march=athlon64 cperf.c -Wall -o cperf.exe
cperf.c: In function `main':
cperf.c:18: warning: ignoring return value of `asprintf', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
peppe@tikal:~$ time ./cperf.exe

real 0m43.429s
user 0m43.351s
sys 0m0.028s

...then I did the same with the Java version:

peppe@tikal:~$ javac -version
javac 1.6.0_14
peppe@tikal:~$ javac JavaPerf.java
peppe@tikal:~$ time java JavaPerf

real 0m28.300s
user 0m27.770s
sys 0m0.464s

Not only Java performance was comparable to native, but Java was even faster in this case. And that included the JVM startup penalty.

Finally, about the JVM size versus the .NET framework size, the latest win32 version of the JRE weighs 15.50 MB (link), while the latest win32 version of the .NET framework weighs 231 MB (link).

Surely you jest? The Silverlight tools are an installable plug-in to either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer Express, which is Microsoft's free IDE.

Or you can get the Silverlight(TM) 2 SDK without the extra tools to use it without any IDE at all.

Microsoft have also provide support to open source projects like Eclipse4SL to add support to the Eclipse IDE to "enable Java developers to use the Eclipse platform to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform".

I have never installed Silverlight (my web is rich enough without that or Flash), but all of the above was found with the first few matches of a Google search. But hey, feel free to jump to the anti-competitive conclusions.

Surely you jest? The Silverlight tools are an installable plug-in to either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer Express, which is Microsoft's free IDE.

Or you can get the Silverlight(TM) 2 SDK without the extra tools to use it without any IDE at all.

Microsoft have also provide support to open source projects like Eclipse4SL to add support to the Eclipse IDE to "enable Java developers to use the Eclipse platform to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform".

I have never installed Silverlight (my web is rich enough without that or Flash), but all of the above was found with the first few matches of a Google search. But hey, feel free to jump to the anti-competitive conclusions.

Surely you jest? The Silverlight tools are an installable plug-in to either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer Express, which is Microsoft's free IDE.

Or you can get the Silverlight(TM) 2 SDK without the extra tools to use it without any IDE at all.

Microsoft have also provide support to open source projects like Eclipse4SL to add support to the Eclipse IDE to "enable Java developers to use the Eclipse platform to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform".

I have never installed Silverlight (my web is rich enough without that or Flash), but all of the above was found with the first few matches of a Google search. But hey, feel free to jump to the anti-competitive conclusions.

Surely you jest? The Silverlight tools are an installable plug-in to either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer Express, which is Microsoft's free IDE.

Or you can get the Silverlight(TM) 2 SDK without the extra tools to use it without any IDE at all.

Microsoft have also provide support to open source projects like Eclipse4SL to add support to the Eclipse IDE to "enable Java developers to use the Eclipse platform to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform".

I have never installed Silverlight (my web is rich enough without that or Flash), but all of the above was found with the first few matches of a Google search. But hey, feel free to jump to the anti-competitive conclusions.

If my web browser can't -- because of restrictions enforced by the OS based on permissions it requested at installation -- write to anything but the local storage space it uses for web applications and its bookmarks and history files, and if it can't read arbitrary data on the hard disk, then there are pretty firm boundaries to what damage that can be done if it is compromised.

What you describe is precisely how IE7+ works on Vista and Win7.

But if the OS doesn't support that kind of isolation, any compromised application is equivalent to hijacking the user account that would normally run the application. It may be impractical to make most consumer applications uncompromisable, but it certainly isn't impractical to make available the tools to limit the damage that compromise to one application can do, and there is nowhere to do that but in the OS.

Windows does provide this kind of isolation (as do all other modern OSes). It's up to the application writers to use that, however.

Microsoft has, for years, maintained three separate tools in this space (that I know of, there might be others). They change the names of them periodically, to confuse their hapless victims.

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool
You gotta read this page. They release a new version every month. It apparently cannot remove viruses which are not actively running. Why is this tool not built in to Microsoft Windows Defender?

Windows Live One Care
This link shows a forum moderator, chastising a poor infested user for asking a question about a different Microsoft antivirus product -- Microsoft Windows Defender. Why are these separate products, again?

Microsoft Windows Defender
Formerly known as Microsoft AntiSpyware.

These should be one product. The fact that Microsoft maintains three separate products to deal with this problem is, itself, an indication of a very serious ongoing problem at Microsoft. As a company, they still don't take this seriously.

Microsoft has, for years, maintained three separate tools in this space (that I know of, there might be others). They change the names of them periodically, to confuse their hapless victims.

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool
You gotta read this page. They release a new version every month. It apparently cannot remove viruses which are not actively running. Why is this tool not built in to Microsoft Windows Defender?

Windows Live One Care
This link shows a forum moderator, chastising a poor infested user for asking a question about a different Microsoft antivirus product -- Microsoft Windows Defender. Why are these separate products, again?

Microsoft Windows Defender
Formerly known as Microsoft AntiSpyware.

These should be one product. The fact that Microsoft maintains three separate products to deal with this problem is, itself, an indication of a very serious ongoing problem at Microsoft. As a company, they still don't take this seriously.