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Sounds like they're getting ready to distribute it during the "Ready Launch Tour 2005"
http://www.microsoft.com/events/2005launchevents/s st.mspx

I'm guessing MSDN is going to be less swamped than FileForum, though the subscriber downloads are extremely slow at the moment as expected.

out of all the postings this one is closest to my reasons. Using windows got boring. It was also a pain find free software. after looking through 15 different video converters(as an example) and all of them either filling your machine with spyware, doing 10 seconds of conversion then stopping until you coughed up the cash, or following the link for free software to the credit card page it just wasn't fun anymore.

Linux was new and cool and new. I could try out different looks and feels. I'm sorry windows "themes" are lame. having a blue tile bar and a new background does not a theme make. That's just a blue title bar and new background. Goin from KDE to enlightenment now that's a switch.

I won't lie, I liked the price. Not having to buy the OS, the Office software, the compiler, the DB Software, and the DB management tools was very appealing. If I wanted to spend $20000+ I'd buy a car not software.

xppro 299
office 400
sql server enterprise 19,128 http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx
toad 495
visual studio 350

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/featu res/OWA_Features.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /default.mspx

The big flash animation led to my change

MS makes MS Works filters available for Office. The support for Works word processing documents is pretty good. Odds are that importing a Works document will be fine. The support for Works spreadsheets is spotty. Some versions are supported and some aren't. Works databases are pretty much completely hopeless. The following links will get you started:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=b9e11e83-f51b-4977-b572-8c042df802c1&displa ylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=9B16EB3C-6DF6-4545-89FF-05C627FBA36B&displa ylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=CF196DF0-70E5-4595-8A98-370278F40C57&displa ylang=en

Have your Office CD on hand when you install any of these or just Run All from disk when you install Office. That is much easier and drives these days are big enough for Kitchen Sink installs of Office.

There are also some commercial solutions if encounter one of the holes in Office's support for Works. I don't know how well any of them work.

MS makes MS Works filters available for Office. The support for Works word processing documents is pretty good. Odds are that importing a Works document will be fine. The support for Works spreadsheets is spotty. Some versions are supported and some aren't. Works databases are pretty much completely hopeless. The following links will get you started:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=b9e11e83-f51b-4977-b572-8c042df802c1&displa ylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=9B16EB3C-6DF6-4545-89FF-05C627FBA36B&displa ylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=CF196DF0-70E5-4595-8A98-370278F40C57&displa ylang=en

Have your Office CD on hand when you install any of these or just Run All from disk when you install Office. That is much easier and drives these days are big enough for Kitchen Sink installs of Office.

There are also some commercial solutions if encounter one of the holes in Office's support for Works. I don't know how well any of them work.

MS makes MS Works filters available for Office. The support for Works word processing documents is pretty good. Odds are that importing a Works document will be fine. The support for Works spreadsheets is spotty. Some versions are supported and some aren't. Works databases are pretty much completely hopeless. The following links will get you started:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=b9e11e83-f51b-4977-b572-8c042df802c1&displa ylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=9B16EB3C-6DF6-4545-89FF-05C627FBA36B&displa ylang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=CF196DF0-70E5-4595-8A98-370278F40C57&displa ylang=en

Have your Office CD on hand when you install any of these or just Run All from disk when you install Office. That is much easier and drives these days are big enough for Kitchen Sink installs of Office.

There are also some commercial solutions if encounter one of the holes in Office's support for Works. I don't know how well any of them work.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Finally, look at the license:

Redistribution and use of this program in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the conditions below are met. These conditions require attribution to Clever Age (Author) and to Microsoft Corporation.
1. Redistributions of source code, in whole or part and with or without modification (the "Code"), must prominently display this license text in verifiable form.
2. Redistributions of the Code in binary form must be accompanied by this license text in any documentation and, each time the resulting executable program or a program dependent thereon is launched, a prominent display (e.g., splash screen or banner text) of attribution information, which includes:
Copyright © Clever Age, Inc. and Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Permission to copy, display and distribute documentation of Microsoft XML schemas relied upon by the Author in producing this program is available at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odcXMLRef/ html/odcXMLRefLegalNotice.asp?frame=true. This product may incorporate intellectual property owned by Microsoft. The terms and conditions upon which Microsoft is licensing such intellectual property may be found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odcXMLRef/ html/odcXMLRefLegalNotice.asp.
3. Neither the name nor any trademark of the Author or Microsoft may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
4. Users are entirely responsible, to the exclusion of the Author and any other persons, for compliance with (1) regulations set by owners or administrators of employed equipment, (2) licensing terms of any other software, and (3) local regulations regarding use, including those regarding import, export, and use of encryption software.
THIS FREE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR ANY CONTRIBUTOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, EFFECTS OF UNAUTHORIZED OR MALICIOUS NETWORK ACCESS; PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

This isn't what I would call a BSD license. For an example of a BSD license, open ftp.exe (in C:\Windows\System32) and read the license as written by the University of California.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Finally, look at the license:

Redistribution and use of this program in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the conditions below are met. These conditions require attribution to Clever Age (Author) and to Microsoft Corporation.
1. Redistributions of source code, in whole or part and with or without modification (the "Code"), must prominently display this license text in verifiable form.
2. Redistributions of the Code in binary form must be accompanied by this license text in any documentation and, each time the resulting executable program or a program dependent thereon is launched, a prominent display (e.g., splash screen or banner text) of attribution information, which includes:
Copyright © Clever Age, Inc. and Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Permission to copy, display and distribute documentation of Microsoft XML schemas relied upon by the Author in producing this program is available at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odcXMLRef/ html/odcXMLRefLegalNotice.asp?frame=true. This product may incorporate intellectual property owned by Microsoft. The terms and conditions upon which Microsoft is licensing such intellectual property may be found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odcXMLRef/ html/odcXMLRefLegalNotice.asp.
3. Neither the name nor any trademark of the Author or Microsoft may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
4. Users are entirely responsible, to the exclusion of the Author and any other persons, for compliance with (1) regulations set by owners or administrators of employed equipment, (2) licensing terms of any other software, and (3) local regulations regarding use, including those regarding import, export, and use of encryption software.
THIS FREE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR ANY CONTRIBUTOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, EFFECTS OF UNAUTHORIZED OR MALICIOUS NETWORK ACCESS; PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

This isn't what I would call a BSD license. For an example of a BSD license, open ftp.exe (in C:\Windows\System32) and read the license as written by the University of California.

Microsoft does have free readers for there Office formats (although Windows only): http://www.microsoft.com/office/000/viewers.asp

Symbian is not the easiest OS to write for. Also, Symbian is dominated by Nokia, who bought out Motorola's share a couple of years back (which allowed Motorola to work on developing Microsoft Smartphone devices). See the Wikipedia entry for Symbian OS for more. Over time, I'm sure the power management features of Linux phones will be just as sophisticated.

Eric
BlackBerry programming information (speaking of non-Symbian)

PunchMonkey, sounds like you either had a file corrupted upon installation (happens frighteningly often in XP), or the file was corrupted post-installation, such as an older pre-XP application over-writing it. Go here for more info, it'll tell you how to proceed depending on your Windows version.

sheared, you clearly have an IRQ conflict, ie. multiple devices using the same interrupt request. Reboot, go into your BIOS, and double-check all device IRQs, especially check video and sound IRQs. Most BIOSes allow you to manually set the IRQ, pick one that's not on use. Note that on some mobos, it's quite acceptable to have two devices sharing a single IRQ; consult your documentation, and also search the 'Net for help if that's the case.

I would also consider it embarassing that Google searches Microsoft's content better than they do.

Consider as a developer I'm looking for reference documentation, in this case information on System.Xml namespace for the .Net Framework. I could plunk it into MSDN's search or Google:

http://www.google.com/microsoft?hl=en&lr=&q=System .Xml+Namespace

vs

http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?vi ew=msdn&st=b&na=82&qu=System.Xml+Namespace&s=1

Google gives me the first link as the right place in MSDN and too boot the second link is the other important related namespace System.Xml.Serialization. MSDN itself doesn't come close. I do acknowledge that MSDN search isn't the same as search.msn.com (nor is the TechNet search) but that makes me wonder why they aren't just automatically using it instead?

An interesting side note: Google didn't show me ads either using the main site or the "http://www.google.com/microsoft" subsearch while MSN was more than happy to recommend Xml editing tools.

Even more so, when you consider this.

My god... I thought that page was a joke until I looked at the URL!

Microsoft's entire web site has a sort of sickeningly sweet pandering-to-the-clueless-majority feel to it, but at least it's relatively low-key pandering. This subsite ("mactopia") on the other hand, is cringe-inducingly awful -- it's like the same dull web-designers that do MS's general site were trying to mimic Apple's style, but ended up producing a rather cruel mockery of it instead.

Is there no limit to the paranoia of Slashdot readers? How is that error more intentionally incorrect than Google's top result for the search term miserable failure (it points to George W. Bush's biography page on the White House's web server).

Relevance tuning of search engines is not easy at all. Errors like these creep up all the time. If you want some background info on the inner workings of MSN Search, and why errors like these happen, see Robert Scoble's somewhat geeky but very interesting video interview with two MSN Search Guys (it's an hour long interview).

>> They can do lots of things, but still you can't talk to them...

> Actually, technically, Mr. Gates is wrong here: you can talk to them...

Honest mistake. Maybe he hasn't seen a Tablet PC. :-)

Mr. Gates writes "We have a research lab in Cambridge, we have one now in China, one in India and that is where the top problems in computer science are going to be solved."

Really ?

Here's some of the top problems in CS.

Here's the research lab in India - working on technology implementations, certainly not top CS problems.

Here are the 10 innovations that will blow you away - coming out of Beijing. Again, some very sound implementations, but not exactly top 10 CS problems.

But yes, Cambridge is looking at some of the top 10 CS problems. However, MS is no Bell Labs when it comes to taking on research problems. They end up successfully monetizing tech solutions, but that is quite different from pioneering fundamental breakthroughs like inventing a transistor or laser.

Mr. Gates writes "We have a research lab in Cambridge, we have one now in China, one in India and that is where the top problems in computer science are going to be solved."

Really ?

Here's some of the top problems in CS.

Here's the research lab in India - working on technology implementations, certainly not top CS problems.

Here are the 10 innovations that will blow you away - coming out of Beijing. Again, some very sound implementations, but not exactly top 10 CS problems.

But yes, Cambridge is looking at some of the top 10 CS problems. However, MS is no Bell Labs when it comes to taking on research problems. They end up successfully monetizing tech solutions, but that is quite different from pioneering fundamental breakthroughs like inventing a transistor or laser.

Mr. Gates writes "We have a research lab in Cambridge, we have one now in China, one in India and that is where the top problems in computer science are going to be solved."

Really ?

Here's some of the top problems in CS.

Here's the research lab in India - working on technology implementations, certainly not top CS problems.

Here are the 10 innovations that will blow you away - coming out of Beijing. Again, some very sound implementations, but not exactly top 10 CS problems.

But yes, Cambridge is looking at some of the top 10 CS problems. However, MS is no Bell Labs when it comes to taking on research problems. They end up successfully monetizing tech solutions, but that is quite different from pioneering fundamental breakthroughs like inventing a transistor or laser.

The only 'trick' I see here incompetence -- on the part of whining developers who write cross-platform code and then complain that Microsoft's platform-optimized code runs faster than theirs.

Even more so, when you consider this.

new industry uses of paladium and platinum are found every day but there is only very little to go around.

That's because Microsoft's hogging all the palladium for its Next Generation Secure Computing Base ;-)

There is a fix available here if you run Windows:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/

For those running Linux, you'll also need this:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

There is a fix available here if you run Windows:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/

For those running Linux, you'll also need this:

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/

They've been hosting this for a while. http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/online/web- hosting/hub.mspx

For 50$ a month, their service also comes with a dynamic IP.

So, is this kind of like Napster's slogan: "Own nothing, have everything?"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/27/napster_se lls_nothing/

Microsoft is going to start renting out it's software online allowing them to change things at a whim and if you are late paying, they will pull the plug on all of your applications? Somehow, this doesn't seem to make sense for many companies since they keep their computers and software for many years. Just look at the Microsoft Assurance Program:
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/sa/def ault.mspx

So far, there has been very little that has been useful from it. This program is the main reason why Vista will ship in 2006 whether it is ready or not. This program will be up for renewal starting in 2007 and no company is going to sign up again unless the OS was updated within their past term - that is a big chunk of their money. This is also the reason why I would encourage everyone to stay clear of Vista - they are going to push it out regardless of what is wrong with it because they will probably be sued otherwise by all of these companies.

This could be a lose/lose proposition for MicroSoft.

They have touted their system as being capable of "five nines" (99.999% uptime per year, or, only 315 seconds of downtime per year). As being cheaper to operate and less vulnerable than Linux.

If they run BSD/Apache as another poster suggested, they admit FOSS makes a better platform. If they run their own software they risk major loss of face if^H^Hwhen servers BSOD, hang, get infected.

It will a lot harder to blame admins for security issues when MicroSoft is the administrator.

Or maybe their customers will simply turn a blind eye to it all. Much as they have reliability and security problems in the past.

This could be a lose/lose proposition for MicroSoft.

They have touted their system as being capable of "five nines" (99.999% uptime per year, or, only 315 seconds of downtime per year). As being cheaper to operate and less vulnerable than Linux.

If they run BSD/Apache as another poster suggested, they admit FOSS makes a better platform. If they run their own software they risk major loss of face if^H^Hwhen servers BSOD, hang, get infected.

It will a lot harder to blame admins for security issues when MicroSoft is the administrator.

Or maybe their customers will simply turn a blind eye to it all. Much as they have reliability and security problems in the past.

During comdex 1999 (the 20th anniversary of comdex btw) Bill Gates during his keynote speach spent the whole session evangelising about how we were going to see a shift in the software ownership paradigm. He was refering explicitly to ASP based activities and at the time said they were going to start providing hosted applications that would be rented to users.

The following is cut n pasted from http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/11-14c omdex.asp

MR. GATES: Now I'd like to show another great new thing that's available online, David Jaffe is going to help us take a look at what we call Office Online, and this is a new way, just one of the new choices you have, of how you want to get at any Windows application.

MR. JAFFE: As you mentioned, that's absolutely right. As you mentioned, another element of choice for users is something that we announced earlier this week called Microsoft Office Online, which delivers Office 2000 as a service over the Internet. This provides even more choice for users in accessing their software and on any device. So, let's go ahead and see how this works. You'll see here that we have a Windows 98 PC and that there's virtually nothing on this machine other than the operating system.

Now, the real excitement of Office Online is that with just a user name and a password, I can go ahead and access the Windows 2000 desktop and all my Office applications via the Internet without even a single bit residing on my local machine.

(Applause.)

MR. JAFFE: Now, one key advantage of Office Online is that users can get the most up-to-date software without having to do a single thing. So, for example, if there was an update, such as a service release, the latest anti-virus software, or even a new expense report template, it can be updated automatically without the user having to do a single thing.

So, let's go ahead and check out our Office applications. So, I'm going to go ahead into Excel 2000. As you can see, this is the full version of Excel with all the tools that I'm normally familiar with, such as the Office Assistant, which allows me to ask my questions in my own words. Now, the Office Online has a number of interesting user support scenarios.

So, for example, say I'm a new Excel user, and I have no idea how to access the expense report template that was previously added. Office Online makes it possible not only for a support engineer to watch what I'm doing with my permission, but actually take control over my machine, and show me how to solve that problem. So, we'll go ahead and have my support engineer actually show me how to find this expense report template. So, you'll see, hands-free, it's going out and showing me exactly where my expense report template is. Now, this is a pretty simple example, but you can imagine the benefits that this will show with even a more complex scenario.

So, now here that we have our expense statement, I'm going to go ahead and fill out a little bit of information, such as my name, my Social Security Number, and my department. Now, suppose we had a power outage and my machine were just shut down without warning. Now, in the past, this might have been very problematic. I would have probably lost a lot of my data. With Office Online, this is not a problem. Now, I could go ahead and reboot the same machine or, in this case, I'm just going to go over and switch to a new machine, and I'll go back and log on with Microsoft Office Online, and I'll put in my password, the same password that we used before.

In just a second you'll notice that the expense report template comes right back up, exactly where we left it. You'll see that all the data is there, and in fact, even the question that I asked the office in this thing would still be there, as well. Now, what makes this possible is that the applications are actually being run on the server instead of my local machine. So we've recently seen how Office Online h

Yes he is CEO. There is this thing called "search." It mkaes the internet alot easier. You could use it to find things like this. And then maybe you wouldn't be so smug.

I should have been more clear in my last post. When using the automatic statement completion on a regular basis people come to depend on it. For example, Joe needs to write a program in C++ that does threading in Windows. Using Visual Studio he types in

hThread = CreateThread(

and VS provides him with the details of how many parameters and what kind of types he needs. However, when Joe goes to work for another company that develops Windows software using C++ he finds that they use the Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit because it is free and has everthing they need... Except for automatic statement completion for Joe who never learned how many parameters of which types are needed to create a new thread in C++ in a Windows environment.

Google says they are going to start hosting things like databases and office applications on the web and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says the same thing.

Someone announced it first, and MS are making an attempt at keeping up. Seems sensible from a business context, although yes, it's "reactionary", however this:

Mac OS uses the graphics processor and OpenGL to provide dazzling desktop effects and *bam* suddenly Microsoft says their next version of Windows will have the same thing.

Any idiot could tell you this was the way things were going to go. OSX got it out first, since they don't really have to worry about backwards hardware compatibility (since they control the hardware and software platforms).

Can Microsoft not come up with useful new technologies on their own?

Yes, they can. Just because they don't come up with all new technologies doesn't mean they don't come up with some. The wonderful thing about computer science/software engineering (and the terrible thing about software patents) is that everyone can borrow ideas from one another to advance the environment as a whole. Software patents break this, which is why we're all so pissed with them. .NET and ClearType are two technologies which, off the top of my head, are MS-led and useful. There's more, a quick look at their research area shows that they've got a huge number of world-class people working on next-generation stuff.

Microsoft do business like assholes. We know this, they have in the past and they probably will in the future. They've also made some fantastically stupid choices with software before. But, believe it or not, their technologists are not generally bad. Many of them are very, very good, and many of their technologies are very nice, useful, and so on. It's the business that kills them most of the time, and although I'm not the greatest fan of the way they conduct themselves, I do think it's unfair to claim that they're considerably less innovative than many of their competitors (although I think there's a good case for Google there).

Defending MS on Slashdot. I've lost my fucking mind.

Oh dear god, that gives me nightmares. MFC, Hungarian notation, C++ spaghetti code that makes absolutely no use of classes, and an API from hell.

But then, what do you expect from an outfit that believes a BOOL is tri-state. (one would have thought that would have been fixed by now, but nooooo....)

How does this cope with __LINE__, specifically this issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; [LN];Q199057

If you don't get why this is a problem, you're allowed to create unique variable names using the current line number of the file you're editing in C/C++ and this gets out of sync if you can edit arbitrary lines like this.

In the section, "Origins of the Designer" in the article, Charles Petzold says:

I couldn't use this Dialog Editor. I couldn't use it for the simple reason that the output of the Dialog Editor was ugly.

The code we write has to be concise but not to the point where it's obscure. It should be nicely formatted and easy to read. There should be plenty of white space. It should be airy.

And this from the guy who popularized Hungarian Notation!

MS doesn't always get everything right the first time, but they usually fix it:

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

You can now d/l the "slimline" version of VS for only the coding you will be doing. 1 .msi file to install, 1 shorcut to run.

Here's my chance to blab about the PVR I built myself. It's not pretty, but it runs great.
Here are the specs: Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 TV/FM tuner card; P4 2.8E / ASUS P4P800; onboard sound; 512MB RAM; 80GB + 120GB HD; WinXP Pro.
The software I built uses: Windows Media Encoder SDK; Visual Basic 6; PHP; FireBird; Apache.
Using VB, I wrote code that goes to Zap2It and downloads 12 days worth of TV show programming and parses it into my FireBird DB. From there I have a web front end that lets you search/sort though shows. You can choose to record one show or create a rule that would record a certain show every time it's on. It also handles scheduling conflicts by prioritizing rules and doesn't record a show if it's been previously recorded.
The back end is a VB app that runs all the time and checks the FireBird DB for the next show to be recorded. When it finds one and it's time to start recording it issues a command line request to the Windows Media Encoder to start recording on channel x for x number of seconds. The size and audio/video bitrate are set using the encoder's profile editor.
The profile settings I use consist of: Windows Media Audio 9.1/Video 9; VBR quality base of 90 (usually has a video bitrate of just over 1000kbps); Video size 320 x 240. At these settings the CPU uses about 20% and 1hr worth of video is about half a GB.
I play the shows by streaming them to the Xbox running xbmc.
I also have a command line script that runs every night and deletes any shows that are older than 15 days. If I haven't watched it by then, it's not worth watching.
This setup has worked great for me for the last year. The next step would be to replace the whole setup with MythTV. I'd have the back end on my computer and the front end on the Xbox.

Sure! Microsoft can:

For reasons, see these case studies:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/iis/eva luation/casestudies/default.mspx
- better uptime
- better TCO
- easier to maintain
- more secure
- improved leveragement of potential monetizement of business platform migration plan total cost of... (bribes)

To migrate from Linux/Apache to Windows/IIS:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo ws2000serv/technologies/iis/deploy/rollout/lapa2ii s.mspx

There!

Sure! Microsoft can:

For reasons, see these case studies:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/iis/eva luation/casestudies/default.mspx
- better uptime
- better TCO
- easier to maintain
- more secure
- improved leveragement of potential monetizement of business platform migration plan total cost of... (bribes)

To migrate from Linux/Apache to Windows/IIS:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windo ws2000serv/technologies/iis/deploy/rollout/lapa2ii s.mspx

There!

Well, actually they have their own plans.
and part of the plan is giving some for free! See SQL Server 2005 Express Edition's Pricing Policy and the same for Visual Studio Express Edition which will be free.
I don't do much open-source programming but I'd like to thank all those guys who do, cuz if it was not for their efforts, M$ would have never given something for free (at least as in beer!!)
Anyway, the point is that some small businesses might be attracted to M$'s side by giving these development tools for free and this might have an effect on Apache and as a whole LAMP's market share.

Microsoft licensing isn't that complicated

One of the most entertaining ironies about Google is that it's essentially an advertising company that devotes close to 0% of their budget to advertising. No superbowl commercials, almost no billboards, etc.

However, their continued success requires that they stay on the forefront of the minds of their potential users -- and indeed, they manage to do this astoundingly well. Not by flashy magazine ads, but by constantly rolling out new products. While some do have obvious built-in revenue potential (Gmail), some (perhaps Google Base) don't.

It doesn't matter.

Google Talk, Google Wifi, and Google Office^H^H^H^H^H^HReader were scarcely cold on our lips when Google Base came around. And that's all within the last four months!

Add to this the controversy over Google Print, endless speculation about future products, and the ongoing love triangle (quadrilateral?) between Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and AOL, and you can't open up a newspaper or visit c|net without reading all about Google, many times over.

Is it any wonder that Google is the first thing that comes to most people's minds when they want to find something online?

And good for them! When a company spends $100 million on airtime, we sometimes get clever commercials. When a company spends $100 million on developing cool new products, we (almost) all benefit. I'll take the latter.

And given Google's success, it seems like a winning strategy.

I'm very surprised with how well MSH actually is. The amount of neat things you can do with it is very neat :). a good video to see some of this in action can be found here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/8/2/e82a4 a8d-b2a0-4ae9-9160-a8e285d1b395/jeffrey_snover_200 4_demonstration_of_monad.wmv just need to get it to work in rxvt now...

Or better yet, validate all entered URLs by attempting to establish a connection to the server. If the URL is invalid then kick it back.

But you put the payload as a query string to a page that didn't care, e.g. http://www.microsoft.com/?MYPAYLOAD, to get back a valid response.

if you happen to be using windows xp, you can use the image resizing powertoy. you can just select a bunch of pictures, right click, and resize. you can change orientation too (i think that's built in) but you lose a little bit of quality since it's not using exif info. i know, shoutouts to microsoft stuff is blasphemous here but their powertoys can be nifty.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/power toys/xppowertoys.mspx

1) design a low-power-consumption high-performance PowerPC chip that would be ideal for Apple to use
2) keep the development so secret that spouses are kept in the dark
3) launch the product after Apple has already abandoned PowerPC
4) Ignore Apple because they are irrelevant. Instead, sell stuff to the many companies who consume more PPC chips than Apple ever could now or in the forseeable future.
5) PROFIT!

And so can all the malware, spyware, crippleware, middleware, trojans, worms, viruses, and anyone with even a mild desire to make life difficult for people around them.

Registry + ActiveX + a functional shell (finally) + .NET == cataclysmic user-base catastrophe waiting to happen

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no thanks, I would rather just download it.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/6/746ec 8ff-c4eb-41f3-884e-981bf39997b7/monad_b2_50215_x86 .zip
taken from
http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/CommentView,guid,8b2 6fea1-723d-4bd6-93c1-19d681af9276.aspx
(which also has the 64 bit version)

320 MB? Where in hell did you see that? The .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package Beta 2 weighs in at 22 MB. Still hefty, I grant you, but certainly not 300+ megs.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=7ABD8C8F-287E-4C7E-9A4A-A4ECFF40FC8E&displa ylang=en

Now, for a command line, I grant you, that's heavy. But a) It's still beta and b) It's the framework for all .NET 2.0 apps. The framework is this big collection of shared libraries used by all .NET apps whether they are C++, C#, yadda yadda yadda... You get the gist. No worse than getting Java, really. MSH is just implemented using .NET, basically. The 1.1 framework stuff is built into XP's Service Pack 1 and later, and I'm sure that the 2.0 framework will be built into Vista.

Microsoft's article on Monad: Getting Started Guide to Using the MSH Shell and Language.