Slashdot Mirror

I'm also a fan of ergonomic keyboards and I'd say Microsoft's Natural 4000 model is the best that you can buy right now.

It has a standard inverted T shaped arrow key layout and the standard arrangement for the Home/End keys as well.

The only thing missing is a built in USB hub.

*Patents*. Microsoft has patents that may cover your implementations
of the formats. Neither this notice nor Microsoft's delivery of the
documentation grants any licenses under those or any other Microsoft
patents. However, the formats may be covered by Microsoft's Open
Specification Promise (available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp
). If you would prefer
a written license, or if the formats are not covered by the OSP,
patent licenses are available by contacting iplg@microsoft.com

Are they hoping enough OSS developers will read and work off these specs then cry patent violation?

I highly recommend the Microsoft Ergonomic 4000. Everything that started going wrong with keyboards has been overturned with this model. I know I sound like a shill, but I bought two myself for both home and for work. Inverted T arrows, 3x2 home keys, number pad, and media buttons. Throw in the fact that they finally support tilting it *forward* (think of your piano teacher telling you to have a ball in the palm of your hand... tilting the keyboard so that the hands rest naturally is a good thing), and it's been heaven.
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=043

"In addition to posting this documentation, Microsoft also published a list indicating which of the published protocols built into the following products are covered by Microsoft patents or patent applications"

"Some of the Microsoft protocols include patented inventions, and others do not. You may benefit from a patent license if you are distributing implementations of these protocols commercially or if you use an implementation of any of the protocols covered by Microsoft patents"

"In addition to posting this documentation, Microsoft also published a list indicating which of the published protocols built into the following products are covered by Microsoft patents or patent applications"

"Some of the Microsoft protocols include patented inventions, and others do not. You may benefit from a patent license if you are distributing implementations of these protocols commercially or if you use an implementation of any of the protocols covered by Microsoft patents"

...to finally share proper doc of the old standards. This just means they feel confident that MS Office 2007 will take firm enough root to ensure that the old game of catch up for FOSS projects will stay the same.

I guess that whole ISO voting stuff on OOXML just passed you by?

I think the best chance they'd have at restarting would come from the Singularity team http://research.microsoft.com/os/Singularity/

The best thing that comes from this is the following:
* Written in managed C# code
* Statically verified
* Runs in software isolated processes (SIPs)
* Excellent performance due to not needing hardware protection for buffer overruns

Just a thought. You can find it on CodePlex right now at: http://codeplex.com/singularity/

From here -> You or anyone else has nothing to worry about. Microsoft has changed its tune.:

Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification (âoeCovered Implementationâ), subject to the following. This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation of the same Covered Specification made or used by you. To clarify, âoeMicrosoft Necessary Claimsâ are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not merely referenced in such Specification. âoeCovered Specificationsâ are listed below.

Just raised mine to 6 (supposedly the new preset value in IE8) ... restarted browser, and the difference is amazing!

It's not that my connection is any faster, but rather there's less latency when viewing sites / opening new windows/tabs.

Instructions for increasing it in IE...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282402

Set the values to 6 if unsure - going even higher may speed things up more, but may be poor netiquette...

Welcome thoughts on what the ideal value is? -and does an excessively high value say like 20 truly cause problems for servers? ... or are most servers configured to limit concurrent connections per client already?

Ron

Some of the Microsoft protocols include patented inventions, and others do not. You may benefit from a patent license if you are distributing implementations of these protocols commercially or if you use an implementation of any of the protocols covered by Microsoft patents. For more information, contact the Microsoft Open Protocols Team.

Check out the patent maps here

I/O redirection uses the same syntax as on Unix.

You should try the *deep breath* Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 v1.0 *pant*.

It's got the upside down T-arranged arrow keys, no normal three by two navigation keys (home/end/del etc), volume keys, five generic bindable buttons, media controls, very convenient forward & back keys (alt+left & alt+right) and a weird scroll widget in the middle the primary purpose of which seems to be for dust to lay on.

Despite being the creator of the second most popular desktop OS, they don't compete in the "desktop OS" market because they refuse to sell their OS to other hardware OEMs (like Dell). They refuse to do this, because the desktop OS market is broken and they can't make money there and only by bundling can they make money.

Yes, Microsoft is a $14 billion / quarter believer of your broken OS market theory.

My current keyboard, and by far my favorite of all that I've used or owned, is the Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000.

I know, I know. It has a hideously long name and it's from Microsoft. Ignore these things as best you can, it's really quite a nice keyboard. Obviously it is a split design, which doesn't work for a lot of people, but it's more friendly than any other split design I've tried. It's got an interesting set of ergonomics which I won't explain here because Microsoft's product page (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=043) does a good job of explaining.

For reviews, in case you don't want to bother doing a quick search, there are the following:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,123241-page,1/article.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000400.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/keyboards/microsoft-natural-ergonomic-keyboard/4505-3134_7-31485240.html
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Natural-Ergo-Keyboard-4000/dp/B000A6PPOK

Anyway, just my little bit of input on the topic. It also should be noted that I have no experience in using this keyboard on OS X, so I suppose that this keyboard's usefulness in that context is something that those who use that OS will need to look at a bit more closely, since I can offer no input in that regard; although, it should be compatible in general as it connects via USB.

For those using Windows, don't forget AutoHotkey, and the ReMapKey.exe program that comes with Windows XP.

#1 Base Windows 7.0 on the Singularity OS project.

#2 Work with the WINE team to get 100% of the Vista and XP API calls supported under WINE, and port WINE to Singularity OS aka Windows 7.0 for legacy support.

#3 Profit.

Microsoft make sure to make royalty checks made out to Orion Blastar via Paypal to my email address for this idea. :)

The Microsoft Research site has a page on product contributions that have come from MS Research.

The Microsoft Research site has a page on product contributions that have come from MS Research.

First of all, it would be

DELETE * FROM comments WHERE poster_name="Anonymous Coward";

Actually, no, it wouldn't. The DELETE command doesn't take field names. You'd either do an ALTER TABLE or an UPDATE to do what you want.

(yes, I checked against multiple SQL references, all for different products, before opening my big mouth.)

No they won't, it's a deeply embedded corporate culture and of course MSs definition of 'open source' is different that everyone elses. What will do is continue to pollute and subvert legitimate Open Source through tactics like the Novell/MS covenant and signing patent protection deals with the others. Ultimately buying up Novell and licensing the one true IP protect open source.

Q: Is this Promise consistent with .. the GPL? And can anyone implement the specification(s) without any concerns about Microsoft patents?

A: .. We leave it to those implementing these technologies to understand the legal environments in which they operate. This includes people operating in a GPL environment "

As much fun as bashing them is (and please don't let me stop you), even MS takes security into account early (or at least gives it a nod): 8 Simple Rules For Developing More Secure Code

Do you know how to read an income statement? I suggest you check out http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY08/earn_rel_q3_08.mspx#income. If by "run Microsoft into the ground" you mean grow revenue $7 billion from March 07 to March 08 and grow net income by $2.3 billion then I guess you must have very high standards. Or maybe you can't do math.

PS. Yes, I know there is more to running a company than revenue and income but that's certainly a good start.

Learn to Love:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en

IE Application Compatibility Virtual HD - use these free downloads with the freely downloadable Virtual PC Client to test IE6, IE7 and IE8 Beta in a virtual machine.

He's the Chairman. Balmer is the CEO.

Though VirtualPC isn't the best VM by a long shot, consider that MS provide IE VMs for the purposes of comatibility testing! XP VMs that are IE6,IE7,IE8 B1, and a Vista VM IE7 respectively at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&DisplayLang=en

I'll quote the parts of the Kernel Mode Code Signing Walkthrough that I'm referring to. (Caution: It's a .doc file. Windows XP WordPad will open it after giving several dozen warnings about failure to load graphics conversion filters, and you won't see figures. I haven't tried it in OpenOffice.org.)

True, you can install a self-signed cert onto the test computer: "the test computer must have the certificate for the CA that issued the package's test certificate installed in the computer's Trusted Root Certification Authorities certificate store." But in order to use such certificates, you must "Enable the kernel-mode test-signing boot configuration option" and that causes Windows to "Display[] a watermark with the text 'Test Mode' in all four corners of the desktop, to remind users the system has test-signing enabled." How practical is it to use a computer that has the text "Test Mode" in all four corners of the desktop as one's primary computer?

50% is the maximum acceptable load for many network architecture devices according to the Cisco CCNA courseware I studied in college. It has more to do with the CPU utilization than the theoretical throughput of the networking spec.

Here's a Microsoft-published paper on the topic entitled Impact of BGP Dynamics on Router CPU Utilization.

Hmm, why does this ring a bell?

Sourceforge ... check.
Windows-only 'open source' application ... check.
Lots of publicity ... check.

Hmm.
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/community.mspx

"SourceForge.net is the world's largest open source software development Web site, providing more than 160,000 projects and over 1,700,000 registered users with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code. With over 70,000 of those projects based on Microsoft technology, SourceForge.net and Microsoft have worked together to provide the tools, programs and resources to help developers be more successful. Learn more..."

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/infotech/view/20080624-144528/Microsoft-to-developers-Open-source-is-a-choice

"Dela Cruz noted that within the SourceForge developer community, there are more than 77,000 listed applications that support Windows, more than half the same number of apps that work on Windows alone."

http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/choice.mspx

"By embracing diverse application development and business models, Microsoft provides a world of choice in which individuals and organizations can pursue their goals based on what uniquely inspires them. Whether you are a developer who wants to learn new skills, connect with the community, or build a business-or a systems administrator dealing with complex interoperability and business demands-Microsoft participates in an ecosystem that offers you the tools, resources, and programs to help you succeed."

Coincidence? Probably.

Ahh, it's all about choice now. Choice of where you want to run your applications, so long as it runs on windows anyway.

I'm sure we'll be seeing more of that word over the next 6 months, and plenty of times on the front page of slashdot and sourceforge to boot.

Hmm, why does this ring a bell?

Sourceforge ... check.
Windows-only 'open source' application ... check.
Lots of publicity ... check.

Hmm.
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/community.mspx

"SourceForge.net is the world's largest open source software development Web site, providing more than 160,000 projects and over 1,700,000 registered users with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code. With over 70,000 of those projects based on Microsoft technology, SourceForge.net and Microsoft have worked together to provide the tools, programs and resources to help developers be more successful. Learn more..."

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/infotech/view/20080624-144528/Microsoft-to-developers-Open-source-is-a-choice

"Dela Cruz noted that within the SourceForge developer community, there are more than 77,000 listed applications that support Windows, more than half the same number of apps that work on Windows alone."

http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/choice.mspx

"By embracing diverse application development and business models, Microsoft provides a world of choice in which individuals and organizations can pursue their goals based on what uniquely inspires them. Whether you are a developer who wants to learn new skills, connect with the community, or build a business-or a systems administrator dealing with complex interoperability and business demands-Microsoft participates in an ecosystem that offers you the tools, resources, and programs to help you succeed."

Coincidence? Probably.

Ahh, it's all about choice now. Choice of where you want to run your applications, so long as it runs on windows anyway.

I'm sure we'll be seeing more of that word over the next 6 months, and plenty of times on the front page of slashdot and sourceforge to boot.

My one question is when or if Wine will include some means to configure the amount of RAM and HD sizes that are reported to running application, including Windows itself, given that legacy Windows versions can't handle more than 512 MB of reported system RAM. Pulling some memory modules or crippling the host OS don't seem to be very practical solutions to what I consider to be the one reason why I can't use Wine at the moment.

http://www.microsoft.com/sverige/athome/security/children/leetspeak.mspx

OH SHIT THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG

PARENT OVER SHOULDER!!!
PARENT OVER SHOULDER!!!

(alksjf;klajsldjf alskdjflasjfla sdklfajsldkfj alskdfjklasjdflakdjflkajdflkajdflkadjfalksdjf)

It isn't all that clear that Vista is stumbling terribly. See the client revenues here:

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar07/staticversion/10k_fr_not_17.html

They don't really discuss how much of those revenues are XP and how much are Vista, but they attribute a $1.46 billion increase largely to Vista licensing (read the text under the numbers for client revenue, there is a reference to $1.8 billion that is something else):

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar07/staticversion/10k_fr_dis.html

Once they stop licensing XP, they will have to report where the revenues are coming from. Until then, the idea that Vista was a massive failure (rather than a poor success) is pretty speculative.

It isn't all that clear that Vista is stumbling terribly. See the client revenues here:

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar07/staticversion/10k_fr_not_17.html

They don't really discuss how much of those revenues are XP and how much are Vista, but they attribute a $1.46 billion increase largely to Vista licensing (read the text under the numbers for client revenue, there is a reference to $1.8 billion that is something else):

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar07/staticversion/10k_fr_dis.html

Once they stop licensing XP, they will have to report where the revenues are coming from. Until then, the idea that Vista was a massive failure (rather than a poor success) is pretty speculative.

What's a Google? Around 10^100
What's a Yahoo!? A crude or boorish person.
What's a WinAmp? Some sort of political blog.
What's a Slashdot? HALTING ERROR
What's a Firefox? A group of crop circle enthusiasts.
What's an eBay? An employment agency.
What's a NewEgg? Another political forum, this one invite only.
What's a Lightwave? Some sort of fan-fic blog.
What's a Nero? Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar) was born in 37 A.D. and died in 68 A.D. (pp. 154)
What's an Outlook Express? Some sort of torture device.
What's a Visual Studio? A far more subtle tourture device.
What's an AutoCAD? An employment agency.

Really, you're on the net, there's no excuse for not knowing this stuff.

What's a Google? Around 10^100
What's a Yahoo!? A crude or boorish person.
What's a WinAmp? Some sort of political blog.
What's a Slashdot? HALTING ERROR
What's a Firefox? A group of crop circle enthusiasts.
What's an eBay? An employment agency.
What's a NewEgg? Another political forum, this one invite only.
What's a Lightwave? Some sort of fan-fic blog.
What's a Nero? Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar) was born in 37 A.D. and died in 68 A.D. (pp. 154)
What's an Outlook Express? Some sort of torture device.
What's a Visual Studio? A far more subtle tourture device.
What's an AutoCAD? An employment agency.

Really, you're on the net, there's no excuse for not knowing this stuff.

I disagree with the thought that Bill Gates does not understand that a computer needs to be rebooted to load a dll. He's actually been a big advocate if it not having to. Stuff like this shows that http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa468718.aspx. Not just apps but drivers too. With the direction that microsoft is going with a more modular NT kernel you shouldn't have to reboot short of a updates to the NT kernel. Of course they are sucking pretty hard on the whole implementation part. Minimal rebooting has been a reality for years with linux. I can update major system on linux without an update. I can even compile new kernel modules and load them without needing to reboot. Why does Moviemake need to reboot the machine, its an application, it shouldn't be touching the kernel or low level libraries. Even if it interfaces with explorer.exe that is only a shell, not the kernel.

Windows Movie Maker 2.6 description at microsoft.com:
Movie Maker 2.6 is for Windows Vista users whose computer cannot run the Vista version of Movie Maker.
Pointed in the comments to TFA.

Unless you can cite some examples of a big name company (eg a major bank) having had their certificate subverted in this way, and not having said certificate revoked almost immediately, i'll stick with what works thanks.

While not exactly the same situation, there was this story about Verisign issuing certificates that allowed code to be signed, "Microsoft Corporation", to someone not affiliated with Microsoft. I don't recall exactly how long it took Verisign to realize the mistake.

As far as self-signed certificates go, there's really no issue using them so long as you understand how they work. They're pretty common on private networks, but it's poor form to use them for servers on the Internet.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS01-017.mspx

I find it interesting that there's worry about whether Microsoft will implement JavaScript 2, when they've already done a large chunk of the enhancements in anticipation of the new standard. They call it JScript 8.0 and it runs on the CLR (.NET).

The OS was Vista, and the program was written in .Net to use the function PrivateMemorySize64. MSDN says it returns "the amount of memory which cannot be shared with other processes". It also says it's the same as the "Private Bytes" value in taskmon. Probably it means that it's the amount of memory the process received from mallocs (or rather GlobalAllocs/LocalAllocs/HeapAllocs), and which can't be assigned to some other process.

It's worth noticing that the guy bothered with a GUI and an interactive filtering option for such a simple program. I wonder whether he ever heard of CLI, because it looks like a perfect fit for this kind of program.

By the way, why not post CoralCDN links (append .nyud.net to hostname) instead of direct links when the site in question is small and likely to be Slashdotted?

Here's the list of Windows' trusted Root CAs: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995347.aspx. Only third-parties are on that list -- not Microsoft.

What's sad is the number of people on /. that crucify MS without realizing that their implementation has already addressed all the things they are complaining about (and has done so from day 1).

Screw that. Mandatory driver signing is unacceptable, as it's no longer a general purpose computer strictly under my control.

It is if you have a signing key for that computer.

The answer to your question is that NO, you can't sign your own drivers for Vista and/or distribute them to other people to use.

Of course you can sign your own drivers and give them to other people. You have to buy a certificate for that, but lots of companies have manged it, including some very small ones.

The more interesting scenario to me is the 'test signatures' mechanisms, by which you can freely self-sign drivers for use on your own hardware. Designed for driver developers, and drivers signed this way can't be re-distributed, but if it lets you compile a driver from source, or download an unsigned driver, and self-sign it, and run it on your own hardware, then you basically have the tools to run anything you like on your own hardware and your entire rant about the vender keeping the keys is nullified.

For more info:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906247.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906249.aspx

My question about self signing isn't 'can you do it'; I already know you can. Its more a case of 'how exactly', and 'can it easily be applied to downloaded source or unsigned binaries acquired over the internet'?

I don't mind jumping through a couple hoops to sign something I've downloaded, if it means stuff I don't jump through hoops for can't attack me.

The day Apple moves to protect the Mac OS from its owner despite their wishes is the day I begin my Linux migration.

There is no reason Linux won't have signed drivers as well one day. There is nothing 'anti-freedom' about driver signing provided the computer owners have the necessary tools to generate keys, sign with them, and revoke them for their own hardware.

Indeed such a thing might protect me from malicious opensource mirrors hosting 'modified' binaries and other such threats. I would setup my system to trust the Ubuntu or Fedora key, the Apache key, the Mozilla Key, and my own key. If I wanted to install a package that wasn't signed by any of the above, as part of the installation I would sign it myself. And of course I could sign my own software.

And if I distributed it and didn't have a widely recognized/trusted signature and/or distributed it unsigned or as source, the recipients could each sign it themselves for their own pc.

Bottom line: Driver Signing isn't inherently evil.

Screw that. Mandatory driver signing is unacceptable, as it's no longer a general purpose computer strictly under my control.

It is if you have a signing key for that computer.

The answer to your question is that NO, you can't sign your own drivers for Vista and/or distribute them to other people to use.

Of course you can sign your own drivers and give them to other people. You have to buy a certificate for that, but lots of companies have manged it, including some very small ones.

The more interesting scenario to me is the 'test signatures' mechanisms, by which you can freely self-sign drivers for use on your own hardware. Designed for driver developers, and drivers signed this way can't be re-distributed, but if it lets you compile a driver from source, or download an unsigned driver, and self-sign it, and run it on your own hardware, then you basically have the tools to run anything you like on your own hardware and your entire rant about the vender keeping the keys is nullified.

For more info:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906247.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906249.aspx

My question about self signing isn't 'can you do it'; I already know you can. Its more a case of 'how exactly', and 'can it easily be applied to downloaded source or unsigned binaries acquired over the internet'?

I don't mind jumping through a couple hoops to sign something I've downloaded, if it means stuff I don't jump through hoops for can't attack me.

The day Apple moves to protect the Mac OS from its owner despite their wishes is the day I begin my Linux migration.

There is no reason Linux won't have signed drivers as well one day. There is nothing 'anti-freedom' about driver signing provided the computer owners have the necessary tools to generate keys, sign with them, and revoke them for their own hardware.

Indeed such a thing might protect me from malicious opensource mirrors hosting 'modified' binaries and other such threats. I would setup my system to trust the Ubuntu or Fedora key, the Apache key, the Mozilla Key, and my own key. If I wanted to install a package that wasn't signed by any of the above, as part of the installation I would sign it myself. And of course I could sign my own software.

And if I distributed it and didn't have a widely recognized/trusted signature and/or distributed it unsigned or as source, the recipients could each sign it themselves for their own pc.

Bottom line: Driver Signing isn't inherently evil.

Sandboxie
Filemon

Perfect for stopping applications from doing such things (or with Filemon, logging it). While I'm definitely not an uneducated user when it comes to computers, those tools are excellent.

While I don't agree that Microsoft Windows HPC Server is the best software to manage a supercomputer, the linux diehards out there should pay attention to a problem that Microsoft is trying to tackle: accessible supercomputing. See one of their case studies as an example.

The bottom line is, these days pretty much anyone has access to a few TFlops of compute power, but the learning curve for getting something running on these machines is pretty intimidating, especially for non-CS based disciplines. I've had to take a 1-2 day class, plus futz around with the clunky command-line tools for a few days or so, on every supercomputer I've used, just to get simple jobs running. In my experience, people learn to game the various batching and queuing systems such that their jobs run faster than everyone else's, further shutting out the newcomers.

HPC vendors would be wise to focus more attention on the tools and interfaces so that Joe-researcher can set the number of nodes and go, rather than having to manually edit loadleveler text files, sending them to the queue, and then coming back next day to find the job failed due to a typo in the startup script.

On multi-TFLOP systems, not everyone needs 99.5% efficiency with all the implementation details that requires. These days, many people just want their job to run reasonably quickly, with no fuss.

The same thing happened several years ago with the move to high level languages like Python and Ruby. Sure, they're slower than C++ and FORTRAN. But for the vast majority of applications, you wouldn't know the difference on modern processors. And the turn around time and user-friendliness on these languages is so much better, using them is a no-brainer.

Hopefully Microsoft can spur the industry in this direction.

http://www.microsoft.com/HPC/

I'm no MS fanboy but I think someone should make a few points.

"I run several Windows Clusters"
and I have a very hard time believing most of the claims of fact in this story.

I think you might be confusing Windows clustering with MS Compute Cluster (appears to be called HPC now). Windows clustering is used to provide fault tolerant applications where if one fails another node will fire up an instance to replace it. Compute Cluster is for spreading out computations across many active nodes. The HPC nodes do some calculations and return the results back. I guess like SETI.

Hmmm. And what installer was this? Is it available commercially? How much is the license for the version with this mythical four-hour installer?

I think the article said this was all done with HPC 2008 beta. You can find out pricing info here: http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/

"The performance of Windows HPC Server 2008 has yielded efficiencies that are among the highest we've seen for this class of machine," Pennington said.

What "class" would that be? I imagine it would explicitly exclude Free clusters.

PC class, not big iron or whatever you want to call those expensive IBM thingys.

One should question whether the efficacy of any institution/research project using their grant money wisely given the amount of money required to fulfill Microsoft's licensing requirements.

Furthermore, If research projects are actually considering wasting their grant dollars on Microsoft licenses, then the outlook for American R&D is grim.

In general I agree. However, I would be surprised if this cost them much at all besides time. They are probably a large enough customer that they get many MS products and services for free. In addition, the publicity for MS makes it worth it to MS to offer tons of incentives. I work at an EDU org and MS pricing is a lot less than retail ... a lot less.