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It might be possible to write OS in those loanguages. MS is trying to do it in C#. The project name is Singularity. But I agree that OS in not the target domain :)

Even if he did manage to get the HP XP installed with the Promise RAID drivers, he probably wasn't ready to enable 48-bit LBA to handle ATAPI drives larger than 137GB under XP.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6EA F2B-7DDF-476B-93DC-7CF0072878E6/output_protect.doc

fud is it ?

*Virtual PC is better because...

• It doesn't take over your machine (even VM Ware player installs funky drivers)
• It has a much better workstation experience than VM Ware's free offerings (Player or Server) .. the UI is minimalist and easy to use, yet fully functional (compare to VMWare's gargantuan MDI/tabbed interface), and its tiny (<20 megs) compared to VMWare's bloated offering

Firefox has become a bloated mess, the developers are incompetent and the open source model has been proven inefficient and insecure.

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/

Microsoft MediaPlayer FAQ
Q: How do I turn off copy protection when ripping music from a CD?
A: It isn't possible to remove protection from files you have already ripped, but you can prevent files from being protected the next time you rip music from a CD. In addition, you can replace the existing protected files by ripping the CD again.

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Rip music tab.
2. Clear the Copy protect music check box. Files that you rip in the future will not be copy-protected.

I think you didn't read Guttman's article.

Scenario: Medical imaging, displaying a scan on PC which uses a year-old DVI output (no HDCP). Operator fires up image, and opens a DRM'd ebook or other DRM-encumbered content to reference some information relevant to evaluating the scan. The DVI display is degraded by the PVP-OPM constrictor, because Vista sees DRM'd visual content going out over a non-DRM display (DVI w/o HDCP). Hopefully, the operator understands this and closes the ebook/whatever before reading the scan. Cost impact? Cost of prematurely-replacing hardware (video card and monitor -- possibly more -- so they're DVI+HDCP-compliant), cost of retraining operators to ensure they're aware of the issue, cost of management time spent planning for this, cost of technical support time spent diagnosing intermittent display problems until the issue is well-understood, etc., etc. Not to mention that the new hardware will be more expensive (see ATI's PowerPoint slides from WinHEC '05).

(Guttman's example was playing DRM'd audio to drown out background noise in the office environment, but I suspect Vista's smart enough not to downgrade the video because of DRM'd audio content.)

No, the sky's not falling. And yes, FUD doesn't only flow from Redmond. But Vista genuinely is set to cause quite a lot of additional costs and loss of productivity at several levels, because a small number of large influential content providers are successfully dictating it and Microsoft, Intel, and others are going along.

Guttman says that the specs on this constitute the "longest suicide note in history". We'll see.

Why do people keep insisting that hardware-enforced DRM (like Vista's) is somehow optional, like Active Desktop or ClearType fonts? IT IS NOT.

Now, I don't expect the OP to read the technical documents behind Vista's "premium content protection" methods and I don't even expect him to read the expert analysis he references on the subject, but for God's sakes, I can't believe he's acting as if he's somehow informed on the matter when he says things like:

There's aren't evil DRM gremlins in Vista that are going to try to screw you over and mess with your media... you needn't worry about an evil gremlin applying DRM to your files while you sleep. Gutmann is just one of the many out there that dislike MS and are spreading FUD related to Vista.

This is a complete strawman argument. Nobody knowledgeable on the matter has ever claimed this. I specifically implore anyone to find me where Dr. Gutman ever claimed that DRM would be applied to non-DRM files. This mis-characterization of the opposition is academically dishonest in every sense of the phrase.

Old apps run fine,

This is not true. Not even MICROSOFT is saying that. In fact, here's what they have to say about it: "We have made tremendous investments in Windows Vista to ensure backwards compatibility, but some of the system enhancements, such as User Access Control, changes to the networking stack, and the new graphics model, may require code changes on your part. You should work hard to run as standard user." (emphasis mine)

It may indeed be true that the DRM'd media files will suck and be low quality, however if you just don't use them then you'll never have to care.

The fact that the vast majority of hardware you'll be able to buy (regardless of DRM or OS) will be more expensive, less reliable, slower, and fundamentally vulnerable to DDOS attacks is of no concern to you? Well I guess as long as it looks pretty, why should you care, right?

-Grym

In hindsight, it would have been fair to mention that Microsoft is doing more and more to cooperate with the F/OSS community, both in the interests of its customers (who face the challenge of integrating Microsoft and OSS software stacks), its own public image, good old-fashioned opportunity and (I suspect anyway) a fundamental desire on behalf of some of its employees to be a part of something bigger.

When did the "Linux community" get so vitriolic and spiteful?

There is no vitriol in the parent's post. The term 'enemy' is only as emotionally charged as the listener wishes it to be. As it's easier to hate an 'enemy' than to understand and accept an opposing point of view, this is probably not the best choice of words in a constructive dialogue.

This isn't some ideological war that is being fought, and shame on you for trying to make it into one.

The parent is simply making an observation. Free Software is an ideology just as capitalism is an ideology. While not mutually exclusive (hence efforts being made to monetize Free Software both on the part of "Open Source" startups and established commercial vendors), these two ideologies do conflict in several areas.

Microsoft is [an] enemy?

<executivesummary>

While an organization as large and diverse as Microsoft will never be entirely focused on activities that impede or overtly threaten the F/OSS community, it has interests that are not and may never be compatible with those of the Free Software community. For that reason, MSFT is directly and indirectly engaged in activities that hurt and threaten the F/OSS community, not out of malice or even by choice, but in simply fulfilling obligations to its shareholders. It's just business :).

</executivesummary>

...everyone cries and moans when the server's down for ten minutes and they can't do any work.

Ever heard of Microsoft Clustering Services? Otherwise, perhaps you should patch at 3 o'clock on Sunday mornings.

Oh yeah, I'd recommend AGAINST Debian for most businesses. Stick with a corporate support model -- Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server -- if you decide to go down the Linux path.

Once again, I have to ask, how well does it integrate with SharePoint?
SharePoint is going to me Microsoft's collaboration tool of choice and not only does Linux not play with it, it doesn't have a competing offering.
Heck, this is going to affect OS X as well.
(And I'm not saying SharePoint is the answer, but a lot of CIO's seem to think so. For whatever that's worth.)

OS X is ready for the business world!

Does it integrate with SharePoint?
Didn't think so...
(BTW, this is why MicroSoft dropped IE for OS X.)

And with 32bit it's impossible to address more than 4GB.

Spoken like someone who has never had any experience with this sort of thing. 32-bit only allows you to address 2GB of RAM per process. 32-bit operating systems have been able address more than 4GB of RAM since the pPentium Pro.

At the very minimum, applications on Windows can address 3GB by building for /LARGEADDRESSAWARE and running Windows with the /3GB flag in boot.ini. Beyond that, one can write an application that uses AWE on Windows to access more RAM. On Linux, it can be done as well: Intel has had its PAE technology for years, which allows up to 64GB of RAM for OSes that work with it.

Bottom line is your deadline is false. The small percentage of people will be using 64-bit are probably already using it. Operating systems that need more RAM for all processes can do it now anyway.

Also keep in mind that creating a C++ object in the stack is 25 times faster than creating a Java object (even with the server VM) according to my benchmarks...

If there's one thing we should all know by now, it's that benchmarking the performance of Java bytecode running on a JVM with a Just in Time compiler is very, very tricky. Modern JVMs may apply optimizations to your code while it's running, based on the way the code is actually being used.

Take a look at the slides from Dr. Clifford Click's presentation Java Technology Performance Myths Exposed (PDF) and at Performance Considerations for Run-Time Technologies in the .NET Framework by Emmanuel Schanzer to get an idea of how your code is manipulated at runtime to increase performance. Also, Performance of Java versus C++ by J.P.Lewis and Ulrich Neumann discusses some of the difficulties of benchmarking Java.

They were thinking that when you attempt to open a .doc file, Explorer automatically suggests downloading the substantially more capable FREE Word Viewer

As long as Windows architecture exists, it will always be prone to ownership by malware.

You obviously have no clue about the "Windows architecture" and Windows security. Here is a starter.

Windows architecture is secure, in many places like file security it even surpasses Linux. Yes, secure. Just because some clueless users run everything as administrator doesn't make Windows less secure. The problem with Windows security is not Windows, it's the people who use it. Run (insert random OS here) as root/Administrator and it's like putting a big "hack me" sign on your back.

Don't get me wrong, I hate Micro$oft as the next guy here, but let's cut back on the bullshit that Windows is not secure. It's false. For the record, I've been running on a Windows box since Windows 2000 without ever using an anti malware program. Never caught anything. Router, Windows with non root user and common sense = free from malware.

On my laptop I'm currently dual booting XPsp2/VistaRC1. While I've not worked with the release version, I was quite impressed with RC1 & 2. Not had any driver issues except a slight PM issue(doesn't recover from standby or do screen brightness control). But, on the plus side, on a 1.7GHz Celeron w/ 512MB RAM I'm running(not walking as Beta 2 did) Aero, and have seen graphics card improvements (the ATI 200M is still a POS, but its slightly better under Vista. Try the POS out under Linux w/ OpenGL to get find out why I refer to it that way). On better systems, I've not noticed game decrements, using CS-Source, HL-2, and FEAR as the test games. The device manager is finally available under the Control Panel, and I no longer push Start to shut down the comp. The Start menu itself has improved, for the first time since Win95 - no more pages of expanding menus. The touchpad driver has improved, and now I can use the scroll functions under FF. My only complaint is my virtual cdrom driver no longer works, and I'm using the MS one (download located here)! And aside from the OS using more RAM (which XP builds up to anyway...), I am quite happy with the preformance (guess that's from when I used to "crawl" KDE 3.0 on a P1 box w/ 49MB ram...). As far as the DRM issues go, don't do anything that would cause such a problem under Vista! Keep an XP box up and running for that problem, or, as I do, use Linux for torrenting and ripping CD's/DVD's. No Vista DRM there! I will also add that I am quite happy with WMP11, my previous choice was to just run the system under linux or VMWare Linux to use amaroK or XMMS. So, I fail to see what all of the grief about Vista is from. I did not like Windows XP, and will be quite happy to not have to carry XP disks and CD keys for fixing people's computers, so I don't have to look at the welcome screen after an HD format. I hope that most people will opt to upgrade to Vista, or switch to Linux.

As much as it pains me to admit this, Microsoft provides a nice solution to this problem.

For example, Keeping secrets in ASP.NET 2.0 or Wrap the Data Protection API

The trick is that they use the user's password to encrypt the data. Tight integration with the operating system has the occasional benefit.

To clarify a couple of things which are close, but not quite right above...

From http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/cap able.mspx :

"To get an even better Windows Vista experience, including the Windows Aero user experience, ask for a Windows Vista Capable PC that is designated Premium Ready, or choose a PC that meets or exceeds the Premium Ready requirements"

This would suggest that, to get the Aero User Experience(TM), one needs a Premium Ready PC. You might ask "What's a Premium-ready PC?" Well, on the same page:

"A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:

1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor1.
1 GB of system memory.
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)2, Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel."

That 1GB RAM is more than the motherboard supports on two of my machines which support 1GHz processors. 512MB will work, but even with the video card (which will run $50 or so in most retail establishments I've seen), that means no Aero for me. Well, my desire to run Linux also means no Aero for me, but that's not the point...

Also worth noting, the "bit locker" drive encryption thing requires one to buy a "TPM" USB 2.0 key or have a system with the "trusted" chip integrated. So, no drive encryption for your machine with only USB 1 support.

The minimum, no-Aero requirement is an 800MHz processor (not 1GHz), 512MB RAM, and the same (basically) video card, which suggests that you'll probably want a lot more than a 1GHz processor if 800 is the bare minimum to run at all...

I believe this is the page you were looking for. Business edition was available in late November.

I just bought a laptop. It came with XP, not Vista. Why is that?

Because Vista isn't out yet.

http://www.microsoft.com/Windowsvista/

January 30, 2007 is when Vista will be available. You can not buy it now. You can buy XP and get a free upgrade to Vista at select retailers, such as NewEgg http://promotions.newegg.com/microsoft/vista/index .html but you can not buy Vista.

You really should have left Microsoft out of this: http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-US &mkt=en-US&q=Linux&x=177&y=22

Microsoft is pushing on having at least some of this work cross platform (horribly flawed at the moment, but it is a start): WPF/E

I agree it's a problem that it is proprietary, but there's no reason an open source effort can't take the ideas behind it and run with it. Mono is a pretty darn good CLR/C# implementation for Linux. It doesn't cover the entire .NET Framework, but the language features are there. IronPython runs on it, etc. Many OSS people can't comprehend the idea of taking Microsoft's APIs and running with them, but it seems like taking XAML to the next level on OSS would be a worthwhile effort.

It isn't that the DoD is blocking HTML email, it is that outlook is automatically displaying all incoming mail as plain text (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307594) a good step in the right direction? sure, but since everyone just clicks the gray "display as html" bar at the top anyway, somewhat pointless. as far as attachments, I have yet to see any file be blocked for any reason (although I havn't tried emailing any executables)

Ok, how big are your registry hives really? The machine's hives are the extensionless files in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\config. Your user's registry hive is in your profile: %USERPROFILE%. I really don't think that installing a new piece of software will contribute megabytes to the registry's size.

Furthermore, the registry has never used non-paged memory to load its hives, and since XP mounted hives are only loaded in 64k pages as needed.

"50727 REG_SZ 50727-50727"

[...] cryptic keys such as: "{874aa5f2-3745-9e23-8a39-8972bcb1455e}" - care to tell me what that means???

Instead of having to hand-compute bitmasks, you use words.

While you CAN use regedt32 (regedit) to partially "manage" settings, the majority of the contents are useless as the registry is first and foremost designed to ONLY be managed via the various applications via the API it and Not by humans.

From http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output _protect.mspx

From the doc

"By contrast, the Windows-based PC is designed to be an open platform. Anyone can load software on it; it is easy to write software for it, because all the interfaces are well defined and published; and there are many good software tools available."

Open platform? By who's definition?

LOL!

I read the article with the preconception that this was probably a paranoid nutter, just couldnt believe what he was saying. I was wrong

if you want a unbiased view read
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6EA F2B-7DDF-476B-93DC-7CF0072878E6/output_protect.doc
its microsoft detailing how they are going to do it.
Once you have read that you will see how little the author is biased.
further sources are given at the end of the article feel free to evaluate them yourself.

There seems to be a number of flaws to this content protection plans, any PC implimenting them is going to take a performance hit and while the individual PC is locked down other systems will not be and once protection is removed all this security is useless.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6EA F2B-7DDF-476B-93DC-7CF0072878E6/output_protect.doc

http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/defa ult.aspx
this is a microsoft hosted page that you can pull up any EULA you want (MS products only of course)

Microsoft requires the right to DISABLE YOUR COMPUTER if it fails a validation check (WGA BOFH style anyone?)

We sure know the priority isn't security either

In fact, if they only wasted the half of the time they wasted in DRM in security improvements...

I mean, if you read the DRM protection work...they completely redid everything that could break DRM, they break compatibility, they're even planning systems that need to re-do the hardware to require encryption on the *system*bus* just to keep hardware hackers from stealing contents at that place and hence making the DRM useless.....

If they had wasted all those efforts in improving security...vista would be the most secure consumer os available

Try repagination (sorry, only available for Firefox, IE users will have to suggest [if you can find the link] Microsoft add this to IE 8). It doesn't help with everything, but no matter how boned up the pages are, at least you can eventually generate a single page site out of it.

If you want to see the next step, look at the USAF's SDC program. They are using WinXP with some sort of Trusted Computing module. Unless an executable is digitally signed by the USAF, it will not run.

Those are NOT wild guesses. They have been documented by Microsoft itself:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D/6/5D6EA F2B-7DDF-476B-93DC-7CF0072878E6/output_protect.doc

Netcraft.com rankings: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/topsites?s=2629A F9E8226E9D5E21D0E6F8945#89"

1 http://www.google.com/ November 1998 Google Inc. Go US
2 http://www.yahoo.com/ August 1995 Inktomi Corporation Go US
3 http://www.google.de/ April 1999 Google Inc. Go US
4 https://www.google.com/ May 2002 Google Inc. Go US
5 http://www.google.co.uk/ April 1999 Google Inc. Go US
6 http://www.google.fr/ November 2001 Google Inc. Go US
7 http://www.microsoft.com/ August 1995 Microsoft Corp Go US
8 http://mail.google.com/ June 2004 Google Inc. Go US
9 http://news.bbc.co.uk/ December 1997 BBC News Online Go UK
10 http://www.bbc.co.uk/ August 1995 BBC Internet Services, Docklands. Go UK

Slashdot is some 89 today.
Looks like the rank depends on who does the counting.

Its always time to build Linux, but not into a fortress, into a Free Marketplace. No point waiting for Microsoft to come around to our way of thinking. We can do it with or without them. I am not interested in making Linux work with Windows anymore. I'm interested in making Linux work well with itself and my hardware.

If Microsoft were more open minded about cooperation then the efforts to make Linux and Windows interoperable over the years would have been a huge success. But obviously, they are not. Who is the only one to blame for this mess here? Microsoft.

I mean, just look at what interoperability means to Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/02-0 3interoperability.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/default.mspx

"Making software interoperable by design", according to Microsoft they will be designing new software the is capable of interoperating with the alternatives because it uses OpenXML(tm).

However, the community has already built OpenOffice (a complete office suite, designed to be interoperable with Microsoft's Office document formats, OpenXML not necessary). Any help from Microsoft here? Nope. None. And take a look at Mono and Samba and all the IP conflicts Microsoft gives them. And now Microsoft threatens to sue anyone who doesn't sign their interoperability deal. Brilliant! That's a good way to make new friends, NOT!

The ONLY weapon Microsoft has to assault Linux is their patent portfolio. They would have to be willing to launch a full scale nuclear assault, and I know the amount of PR fallout from such an attack would destroy them.

So, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, i.e. propoganda.

Its always time to build Linux, but not into a fortress, into a Free Marketplace. No point waiting for Microsoft to come around to our way of thinking. We can do it with or without them. I am not interested in making Linux work with Windows anymore. I'm interested in making Linux work well with itself and my hardware.

If Microsoft were more open minded about cooperation then the efforts to make Linux and Windows interoperable over the years would have been a huge success. But obviously, they are not. Who is the only one to blame for this mess here? Microsoft.

I mean, just look at what interoperability means to Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/02-0 3interoperability.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/default.mspx

"Making software interoperable by design", according to Microsoft they will be designing new software the is capable of interoperating with the alternatives because it uses OpenXML(tm).

However, the community has already built OpenOffice (a complete office suite, designed to be interoperable with Microsoft's Office document formats, OpenXML not necessary). Any help from Microsoft here? Nope. None. And take a look at Mono and Samba and all the IP conflicts Microsoft gives them. And now Microsoft threatens to sue anyone who doesn't sign their interoperability deal. Brilliant! That's a good way to make new friends, NOT!

The ONLY weapon Microsoft has to assault Linux is their patent portfolio. They would have to be willing to launch a full scale nuclear assault, and I know the amount of PR fallout from such an attack would destroy them.

So, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, i.e. propoganda.

I wonder if Micro$loth is also including hits to windowsupdate.microsoft.com? Certainly, with all the windows PCs constantly hitting that server looking for updates, many of them automatically and without the user's active knowledge, it would rank quite highly.

Moreover, note that xbox is the only game out there to release a game programming API for the people (XNA) . I believe that player-created games will allow xbox to dominate in the same way that people find themselves attracted to player-contributed "societies" like Second Life.

The openness of the hardware platform is essential to a vibrant PC ecosystem. In the current world, however, the industry is also working to prevent hackers from using that openness to pirate copyrighted content. The goal is to make the Windows-based PC a safer place for premium content, so that content providers will be happy to allow Windows-based PCs to play their content.

The term "premium content" is used in this paper to refer to valuable content that needs to be protected from stealing. Each content type has its own particular policy that defines what the user can and cannot do with it. The term "high-level premium content" is used to refer to the most valuable content types, such as High Definition (HD) DVD and Blu-Ray DVD.

The content industry may introduce robustness rules and testing that would effectively lock out PCs from premium content, by not allowing PCs a license key for the encryption used by conditional-access systems or HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD. These protection schemes will be very strong in the future, based on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), and so on. Under these future rules, a PC would only be granted a licensed to play the content if it is at least as secure as a CE appliance.

To make the PC safer for premium content, Microsoft has been working with members of the PC industry to solve the technical issues in hardware and software. Our key partners in this work have been Intel, ATI, NVidia, S3, and Matrox.

So essentially, they need to do something about the trustability of the PC from the point of view of the content providers, otherwise they won't get the keys they need to decrypt. It's worth pointing out that with DVD, the DVD Alliance (representing the studios, RIAA etc) didn't want to allow any software players at all. Eventually they relented and allowed it, and it was the Xing software player which leaked the keys originally. So it's not too surprising that the studios want more trustability in the successor formats.

The alternative is to leave Windows the way it is, and not support HD-DVD and BlueRay. This is drastic, since third parties would not be able to write players either, if the OS and hardware are untrusted. It would be the end of the Media Centre editions of Windows for example. Strangely enough, Apple would benefit from this. Since the software and hardware in Macs are much less open, they could probably convince the Content Industry to allow software players much more easily.

Which makes Intel's courting of them seem much smarter actually - they're a way to use Intel chips essentially in closed Multimedia appliances, rather than Open Architecture PCs.

and from (page 41)

The PCIe bus may be defined in some Content Industry Agreements as a user-accessible bus. It is further defined in some Content Industry Agreements that premium audio is not allowed to pass over a user-accessible bus in unprotected form. In spite of PC industry push-back on this requirement, it is not certain which way the decision will fall. Realistically, any concession in this area would only be valid for a small number of years, so the PC industry needs to address this issue in the not-too-distant future. Microsoft plans to address this as part of the PAP project that will be a number of years after the initial release of Windows Vista.

When the PC industry does PAP, there will be a way of encrypting audio over the PCIe bus. For discrete graphics manufacturers, the easiest mechanism to use would be PVP, because their graphics chip hardware will already be able to decrypt this. The encryption would be don

For a good public source look at :
"Output Content Protection and Windows Vista" http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output _protect.mspx
A lot of what he says is in this "Spec" ...

This so-called analysis was written by thinking of a conclusion first, then filling in the blanks. There are no citing of references to support his claims.

Google has an html version of Vista Content Crippling Spec. and points to an obfuscated version I don't care to download. More can be fond here.

The author's opinion and interpretation of the document look solid to me. There really are "tilt bits" and other concepts I checked are there. It goes a long way to explaining Vista's reported bugs, bloat and lack of drivers for existing equipment. None of it changes the bottom line, M$ is the only thing that's going to fall down the "analog hole".

Debating the details is pointless because the results are already in. The specifics of the "secure path" implementations can only provide amusement. Everyone said it was going to fail and it has already in Windows Media Center and other equipment critics have panned and no one is buying. Vista has much the same in store, it's not going to work and people are not going to buy it.

People are going to avoid Vista and are going to be very pissed as M$ "updates" remove functionality from XP, which will never be allowed to view "premium" content.

The only winners will be content providers that avoid the whole mess. Movie and music publishers who provide DRM free media are going make a lot of money while the majors continue to insult and sue their shrinking fan base.

This so-called analysis was written by thinking of a conclusion first, then filling in the blanks. There are no citing of references to support his claims.

Google has an html version of Vista Content Crippling Spec. and points to an obfuscated version I don't care to download. More can be fond here.

The author's opinion and interpretation of the document look solid to me. There really are "tilt bits" and other concepts I checked are there. It goes a long way to explaining Vista's reported bugs, bloat and lack of drivers for existing equipment. None of it changes the bottom line, M$ is the only thing that's going to fall down the "analog hole".

Debating the details is pointless because the results are already in. The specifics of the "secure path" implementations can only provide amusement. Everyone said it was going to fail and it has already in Windows Media Center and other equipment critics have panned and no one is buying. Vista has much the same in store, it's not going to work and people are not going to buy it.

People are going to avoid Vista and are going to be very pissed as M$ "updates" remove functionality from XP, which will never be allowed to view "premium" content.

The only winners will be content providers that avoid the whole mess. Movie and music publishers who provide DRM free media are going make a lot of money while the majors continue to insult and sue their shrinking fan base.

Which is ironic, because they actually have a page on handling strings safely. So are they lazy, stupid, or both? Lemme guess-- they couldn't use their own API because someone wrote the MessageBox API in assembly...?

The IT geeks always complain about this, and the non-IT people will always do it because it is the easiest way they have. It is not the job of everybody in the company to be up to date on the latest "computer junk". That is what all of us on Slashdot are for. We handle the computers, they handle the legal, financial, sales, administrative, etc tasks. That is why we designed 2007 to handle this. Move to Exchange/Outlook 2007 and you can *easily* create a sharepoint site (stored in Exchange) for a specific email thread. A link gets sent in the email instead of the attachment and your documents are automatically version controlled and available for all parties to edit. We (yes I do work for MS) even went beyond that, the sharepoint can be accessed from any location (OWA/OWA light) or any device that supports Active Sync. If someone posts a document in a format that isn't supported on the device you are accessing it from Exchange will automatically translate it into HTML and deliver that to you instead. No buttons to push. No settings to find. Just what 99% of the world wants. Remember, users haven't heard of CVS or Subversion. They don't care if their mail is stored in a DB or mbox or maildir. They don't care if we deliver it over fiber or wifi, or use semaphore flags. They just want it to be easy and not interupt their work and not require them to spend extra time/energy on a job they probably don't enjoy.
Find the rest of the features here.

Not today. Outlook 2003 supports a newer PST format that has full support for Unicode, and raises the total size to 20GB:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830336

Not "fixed" (as in removed), but apparently you can turn it off in IE4 through IE6.

There is nothing about interoperability in that agreement.

Microsoft, on behalf of itself and its Subsidiaries (collectively "Microsoft"), hereby covenants not to sue Novell's Customers and Novell's Subsidiaries' Customers for infringement under Covered Patents of Microsoft on account of a such Customers' use of specific copies of a Covered Product as distributed by Novell or its Subsidiaries (collectively "Novell") for which Novell has received Revenue (directly or indirectly) for such specific copies; provided the foregoing covenant is limited to use by a Customer of Novell (i) of such specific copies that are authorized by Novell in consideration for such Revenue, and (ii) within the scope authorized by Novell in consideration for such Revenue.