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Upon a -fresh- install of IE8, you are -asked- what default search provider (and accelerator and a few other things) you want, and Google is in those lists.

I don't remember FireFox, Chrome, Safari -or- Opera presenting me with the option; and I should know, I installed them all just a few days ago on a desktop machine that I'm getting ready for a web designer (so he can easily test in each browser; older versions are in different VMs).

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/01/ie8-installation-the-user-is-in-control.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/09/ie-setup-experience-just-the-facts-and-the-screenshots.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/07/16/changes-to-ie8-s-first-run.aspx

Honestly, I know MS is probably just responding to industry/EU/customerbase pressure rather than doing things out of goodwill, but they -are- getting their stuff together.

Upon a -fresh- install of IE8, you are -asked- what default search provider (and accelerator and a few other things) you want, and Google is in those lists.

I don't remember FireFox, Chrome, Safari -or- Opera presenting me with the option; and I should know, I installed them all just a few days ago on a desktop machine that I'm getting ready for a web designer (so he can easily test in each browser; older versions are in different VMs).

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/01/ie8-installation-the-user-is-in-control.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/09/ie-setup-experience-just-the-facts-and-the-screenshots.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/07/16/changes-to-ie8-s-first-run.aspx

Honestly, I know MS is probably just responding to industry/EU/customerbase pressure rather than doing things out of goodwill, but they -are- getting their stuff together.

Upon a -fresh- install of IE8, you are -asked- what default search provider (and accelerator and a few other things) you want, and Google is in those lists.

I don't remember FireFox, Chrome, Safari -or- Opera presenting me with the option; and I should know, I installed them all just a few days ago on a desktop machine that I'm getting ready for a web designer (so he can easily test in each browser; older versions are in different VMs).

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/01/ie8-installation-the-user-is-in-control.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/09/ie-setup-experience-just-the-facts-and-the-screenshots.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/07/16/changes-to-ie8-s-first-run.aspx

Honestly, I know MS is probably just responding to industry/EU/customerbase pressure rather than doing things out of goodwill, but they -are- getting their stuff together.

Your link is 404. You broke it by including the period at the end. (You probably pasted it in raw and let it auto-format, rather than using HTML tags.)

http://blogs.msdn.com/robunoki/archive/2006/04/05/568737.aspx

I was previously aware that most (?) PPC (and many ARM) chips had selectable endianness, though it might depend on hardware or firmware outside the CPU, and may or may not be on a per-process basis. But since the 360 is actually running big endian (the default for PPC), everything else is kind of moot.

That's not true, actually. Both the Xenon and the PPU are PowerPC derivatives and run big-endian. http://blogs.msdn.com/robunoki/archive/2006/04/05/568737.aspx.

We're talking about a trojan that has complete access to the local machine.

If the machine is compromised, nothing you do really matters. It's closing the barn doors after the horse has bolted; fixing this is silly. It's just like this 'exploit'.

You could just record whatever comes from stereo mix? Why bother decrypting anything?

This is at least partially, but likely wholly, incorrect. This provides a very good analysis of the issue. Essentially, you can address 2GB at any given time, but you can allocate as much contiguous space as the OS is able to pull up in its virtual address space. This means you can allocated, and address, 5 gigs of memory if you desire, but you would have to be careful and work with a view window of only 2GB. Nothing in that means you are limited to addressing only 4GB (32 bit pointer limit) of memory, simply that you can only address so much at a given time.
There is no need to run multiple instance of a program in order to read and write/address more than the 2 gig system limit.

This sounds like more PAE shenanigans. Using PAE on 32 bit Windows has already been well covered by The Old New Thing.

"...but Linux is for adults " - eliteism

There's nothing wrong with equal-opportunity elitism. Anyone can learn how to use and run a computer responsibly.

"...which would be the moral equivalent of this overclocking nonsense." - applying morality to a non-moral issue,

The phrase "moral equivalent" has a long history of use in the software field to express the concept of effective equivalence or analogy. You clearly do not write much software.

just uninformed(from someone that actually uses audio software regularly)

Care to elaborate? As I understand it, Linux audio software is improving rapidly, and while it's not quite up to the level of the professional Windows (or Mac) stuff, it's getting close.

Tablet PCs have been here for a long time, but 2 things have changed since earlier. First is the introduction of low cost tablet netbooks like Gigabyte T1028 and Asus T91. Next is really Windows 7 - with its much improved support for handwriting and brand new support for touchscreens. You no longer need to buy a 2000 USD Dell tablet.

So units are being sold, and most manufacturers plan to improve their models after Win 7 comes out in October. For example, Gigabyte is planning to upgrade T1028 to handle multitouch, and Asus will release T101 with Win 7. So the market is definitely being ignited, but whether it will cath fire or not remains to be seen.

Tablet PCs have been here for a long time, but 2 things have changed since earlier. First is the introduction of low cost tablet netbooks like Gigabyte T1028 and Asus T91. Next is really Windows 7 - with its much improved support for handwriting and brand new support for touchscreens. You no longer need to buy a 2000 USD Dell tablet.

So units are being sold, and most manufacturers plan to improve their models after Win 7 comes out in October. For example, Gigabyte is planning to upgrade T1028 to handle multitouch, and Asus will release T101 with Win 7. So the market is definitely being ignited, but whether it will cath fire or not remains to be seen.

Clearly I know nothing about computers. I've only been writing software professionally on windows for 10 years, and VAX/VMS, Alpha/VMS and PDP11 before that, and fortran on DEC UNIX at university before that.

I guess I am not going to ignore you after all. OK let's get it on...

You cannot terminate the XP graphics driver as a limited user (You may be able to crash it, and that may be a genuine security bug, but that's a different matter). Get a copy of VMware and try it, like I have. You cannot uninstall it or update it or anything as a limited user. XP home lacks some of the more advanced access control features, so I wonder if this is what you're thinking of, but XP Pro is much more secure.

No need for VM; I still have genuine, even, XP pro and have a user account still floating around. I can kill my ATI driver. Not that killing it has any value because even the latest version keeps giving me BSOD's.

On ALL operating systems device I know of device drivers MUST run (at least in part) in the Kernel in order to access hardware.

Not with open source X.org drivers. I've tried a GNU/Hurd LiveCD about a year ago...

Even in Vista only part of the graphics drivers run in user mode. There is still a core driver which runs in kernel mode, just as there is for your web cam and everything else.

Not everything else -> http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Rob-Short-and-kernel-team-Going-deep-inside-Windows-Vistas-kernel-architecture/

Do I know how Windows truly works within? Well, I've not read the source code, but I have read Mark Russinovich's excellent Windows Internals book, and Pravat's Advanced Widows Debugging (awesome when you have device driver bugs to fix).

Well me neither, but all you need to do is read the Wine documentation, coupled with interviews and other readings from (ex-)Microsoft employees. Windows 7 is now basically, in contrast to lies, lies and even more lies, except for the kernel; Windows 3.x+95+98+2000+XP+Vista = Windows 7. It's rediculous and unbelievable, yet still very true... Which is the reason why some very, very old Windows apps (like win98) can still run on Windows 7. They keep expanding and expanding on what they have and almost nothing gets rewritten, which is why each version of Windows is getting slower and slower.

The question is, do YOU know anything about windows? You keep talking about ROOT, but Windows doesn't have an exact analogue to the ROOT user.

Well there isn't really a ROOT account, which is what I was trying to say: When logged in as a user, one runs everything like one would as an admin, except eplorer doesn't display you these very options, usually

You say MS can't speed windows up, but that's precisely what they've done with Windows 7.

No they have not -> They made explorer faster and that's it. You think it's faster untill you benchmark your applications...

In many cases it's faster even than XP on the same hardware,[...]

Whoa, which cases? You mean they have done a good job by making better use of hardware that previously manufacturers had to write functionality for? Yes that is certainly the case. Also; some games were optimised for Vista and are supposed to be faster on Windows 7 than on XP simply because of bad porting. In all of my cases with Windows 7 (yes I tried it and by trying I mean installing and not on a VM) everything was slower and I have serious hardware...

[...] and it scales much better to high end enterprise machines thanks to finer grained locking in the task scheduler and memory subsystems.

Here we go again; tuning, tuning, tuning... It's like wi

There is no UK version of Windows. (Source). We get the US version, with US spelling.

"CustomXML" has a specific meaning in the OOXML spec, and there is a corresponding API in Microsoft's "Word" product that plugins can use. See here for an explanation of what it is about.

I don't think this does anything to undercut my basic assertion that Win 7 is really a service pack for Vista

Windows service packs are mostly collections of bug fixes. New features or large under-the-hood changes in service packs are extremely rare (things like the new firewall in XP SP2 are an exception rather than the rule). Something like a completely different taskbar UI would never make it into a service pack, not to mention things like a major rewrite of the scheduler, or extensive changes in the memory manager (e.g. the removal of the PFN lock).

*disclaimer* I work at MS */disclaimer* GDI locks reduced/removed Federated search Connecting monitors "just works" now. There are more, but the point is, there are "really new" things. Though it's not as if "really new" matters - being well polished and designed is more important than being new, first, etc. Google wasn't the first search engine, but they did a great job polishing up and refining previous ideas. Same with the iPod and mp3 players. "New" does not, prima facie, mean "better."

*disclaimer* I work at MS */disclaimer* GDI locks reduced/removed Federated search Connecting monitors "just works" now. There are more, but the point is, there are "really new" things. Though it's not as if "really new" matters - being well polished and designed is more important than being new, first, etc. Google wasn't the first search engine, but they did a great job polishing up and refining previous ideas. Same with the iPod and mp3 players. "New" does not, prima facie, mean "better."

For a while it was eating 100% of my RAM until I noticed that the .NET Runtime Optimization service (or something named pretty close to that - not on the Windows machine ATM) was the culprit.

.NET Runtime optimization is actually one of the neater technologies in the MS world. In short, it's compiling native language libraries for commonly used interfaces that would have to be run in a VM. All you need to do is leave the computer alone for a short while so it can chug through. You can explicitly command it to finish the queued compilation tasks per the instructions here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/davidnotario/archive/2005/04/27/412838.aspx

I'd be arguing that the statistics collected by Add/Remove programs is inaccurate. Which is actually the case

I can't find any engadget.com pages, but I did find this.

Microsoft: "dropping support for IE6 is not an option" - Ars Technica

Also, Engineering POV: IE6 - IEBlog.

Microsoft has put its Azure customers on notice that 'all applications and storage accounts in the 'USA - Northwest' region will need to move to another region in the next few months, or they will be deleted'. So much for not diverting you from your core duties). BTW, Microsoft seems to think it's entitled to a 100% sales tax exemption.

I think the goal had nothing to do with selling manuals, or greater usability, or anything practical.

The goal was to make the new version of Office seem "different" so that people would justify spending lots of cash on it.

Small, incremental, behind-the-scenes upgrades to a product, while truly valuable, just don't get the same "I got something for my money" reaction that a UI change does.

In short, the ribbon was a marketing ploy.

I was kind of inclined to think so too. But this talk by one of the guys working on the ribbon convinced me there was more to it than that.

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the-ribbon.aspx

They really were trying to solve the problem of ever-growing menus and ever-growing numbers of toolbars filling up the user's screen.

They do on Vista and Windows 7. In fact, every application has its own volume control.

See this link on MSDN

I'm extrapolating from what I hear on Slashdot, what I hear on other online sites, and what I see and hear in my own workplace and personal life.

I don't know of any scientific studies that have investigated the matter, but if you know of some proving that the ribbon is the best thing since sliced bread, please feel free to share them with us.

Dan Aris

Slashdot and likes is probably the absolutely least representative MS Office user base you could find to gauge average Office users reception to the ribbon ;) I've seen reported several studies with quite positive reception of the ribbon interface. This is one I found quickly. Anecdotal opinions are all over the place. Mine is that I didn't like it at first, but now wouldn't change back, I find it more effective than the menusystem I first missed (I'm a quite heavy daily user of almost all Office apps; Excel, Powerpoint, Word, Outlook).

If you really are interested in the usability work that lead to the ribbon, this is quite interesting.

Or maybe not. It seems that Microsoft licenses its design guidelines too so that someone can implement their own ribbon according to Microsoft's own design requirements. Still, MS doesn't have any patents on the concepts of a ribbon.

The contents of WinSxS folder are mostly hardlinks, and the Properties dialog doesn't correctly show the disk-use size on Vista. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/11/19/disk-space.aspx

Instead he points out the difference between what he meant by 'balance' and by what Rick Jelliffe meant by 'balance'.

Hint:
Rick meant balance on standards committee's representation
Matusow meant balance in demands from contributors to standards.

Take yourself a little less seriously for 5 minutes, and try to come up with a credible scenario in which MS can fuck ARM over. Remember for those 5 minutes that TFA refers to CPU architectures. Try to resist MS-bashing just long enough to stay on topic..

In any case, let me address a bit of that garbage you spewed:

1. Regarding your point about Lotus. Read here to be disabused of this myth/dogma: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html Or here if you prefer: http://slashdot.org/articles/05/08/02/2219208.shtml?tid=109&tid=1
2. "Vice president of Intel, Steven McGeady..." -- whatever. It's just words..
3. You don't think Active-X was simply a plugin architecture? Why do you suppose other browsers have plugin architectures? All of them are trying to break compatibility with each other???
4. "Microsoft put pressure on AOL to make its IM networks ** interoperable ** with competing instant messaging services, an outcome that eroded AOL's market leadership." What exactly are you complaining about here???
5. Adobe Systems refused to let Microsoft implement built-in PDF support in Microsoft Office, citing fears of EEE." And this is proof that MS is evil? Adobe disallowed something, therefore MS is evil??
6. "A decade after the original Netscape-related antitrust suit, the web browser company Opera Software filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Union" Find me a 100% standards-complaint browser, I'll show you a software maker who has a right to complain. Opera and Safari do a better job than most, but nobody is 100% compliant.
7. Spreadsheet non-conformance with ODF standards" -- ODF 1.0 and 1.1 do not support formulas. The result? All ODF spreadsheet implementations are application dependant. See here for detials. Note MS's complete transparency in the implementation process.
8. "Apple Inc., Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software formed the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group to create open standards. Microsoft has so far refused to join." See here: (Chris Wilson of Microsoft was invited but did not join, citing the lack of a patent policy to ensure all specifications can be implemented on a royalty-free basis.) - What, again, was your objection?? Also note - WHATWG was formed to accelerate standards creation - not to avoid browser war incompatibilities as you claim.

That leaves you with 2 out 10. It's still pretty damning, but it's even more damning that 8 out of 10 of your accusations have no basis. So I repeat, stop taking yourself so seriously. Try seeing past the dogma for 5 mins, so you can respond with something related to the article itself rather than this off-topic drivel.

Yes, that's correct, if you're running Aero Glass. That was true for Vista as well, to a lesser degree, but Win 7 expands GPU support to GDI+ compositing, improves memory management, adds concurrency for multiple applications, etcetera.

An easy test is to open Task Manager and watch the CPU meters as you shake a decent sized window around the screen quickly. WIthout Aero Glass on you can get near to saturating one core, while with Aero Glass on it won't have much CPU impact at all.

Here's some other detailed information:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-for-graphics-performance.aspx

Sounds like the old Dancing Bunnies problem.

The user wants to see the dancing bunnies, so they click there. It doesn't matter how much you try to disuade them, if they want to see the dancing bunnies, then by gum, they're going to see the dancing bunnies. It doesn't matter how many technical hurdles you put in their way, if they stop the user from seeing the dancing bunny, then they're going to go and see the dancing bunny.

IE8 on XP does not have sandboxing. More details here http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/09/528963.aspx

Only IE7 and IE8 on Vista/7 support it and it has mitigated a lot of web based attacks on browsers(including the Flash vulnerability discussed recently that affected Windows/Linux/OS X). I was told by someone here that Firefox/Ubuntu will have it with the next release of Ubuntu in Oct 2009, but don't quote me on that.

The other reasons are the integrated search on start menu, better looking and functioning UI. One of the main reasons is that there's no real reason to stick to a 7 year OS that may not be well supported by MS in the future with functionality(USB 3.0, IE9) and security patches. So unless you absolutely need XP, there's no real to avoid 7 if you get it with a new PC. And there's always XP mode in some versions of 7.

Umm, what?

1) Unlike Unix, sockets are not a common method of IPC on windows (except in apps written by unix developers). It is a vulnerable design in the first place that two programs on the same machine would communicate in a way that allows network access by default.
2) Huh? Isn't that a good thing for the receiving app to re-validate the data? OR are you suggesting that apps should blindly accept whetever data they are given?
3/4/6) OK, ActiveX isn't exactly a secure design, but its getting better. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/05/07/ie8-security-part-ii-activex-improvements.aspx

Speed? That's the best argument to run Aero Glass. It offloads compositing from the CPU to the GPU, improving performance for apps.

Easy test to try with Glass On/Off. Open up Task mangager.

Open up a nice big JPEG image or something.

Grab the window and shake it like crazy. Watch your CPU meters

With Glass off, you can peg a whole core trying to render all that motion. But with Glass on, the GPU's doing the work and your CPU load hardly goes up.

Windows 7 improves this over Vista, as it pushes GDI-style 2D rendering to the GPU as well, and adds hardware YUV overlay support back.

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-for-graphics-performance.aspx

Also, Microsoft changed the way hardware acceleration works for GDI as well:

http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/03/10/549310.aspx

So while NT6/7 may appear faster when you drag a solid-outline window around (Booyeah! It has AmigaDOS 2.0 features (smart windows) in it! those were CUTTING EDGE in 1989!), actual window redraws are slower. Well, on equivalent hardware. Admittedly my T7500 laptop with 2 gigs of RAM and an underclocked 8600GS with XP/NT5.1 is the same speed as my i7 with 12 gigs of RAM and GTS250 running RC1 of NT7, but that's hardly equivalent hardware.

Granted not many games use GDI...

VC2010 already supports a C++0x subset - see http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2008/10/28/visual-studio-2010-ctp-released.aspx

I suggest you read up a bit more about the AARD code before jumping to conspiracy theory conclusions. There were technical reasons for including it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/08/12/213681.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/08/13/214338.aspx

I suggest you read up a bit more about the AARD code before jumping to conspiracy theory conclusions. There were technical reasons for including it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/08/12/213681.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/08/13/214338.aspx

Under the "Use Express Settings" header it listed everything that would be set. One of the items was "Default Browser: Internet Explorer" (note that it only had this text if IE wasn't already the default). The IE blog has screenshots of this behavior: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/01/ie8-installation-the-user-is-in-control.aspx

Since that post was written, they've decided to move the default browser page out of the express settings and require users to make a choice (unless IE is already their default browser). You'll notice that the user really does have to make a choice as no option is selected by default (the 'Next' button is disabled until they choose 'Yes' or 'No'). Here's the IE blog post with screenshots of the new behavior, since Slashdot didn't link to it directly: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/07/16/changes-to-ie8-s-first-run.aspx

Under the "Use Express Settings" header it listed everything that would be set. One of the items was "Default Browser: Internet Explorer" (note that it only had this text if IE wasn't already the default). The IE blog has screenshots of this behavior: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/05/01/ie8-installation-the-user-is-in-control.aspx

Since that post was written, they've decided to move the default browser page out of the express settings and require users to make a choice (unless IE is already their default browser). You'll notice that the user really does have to make a choice as no option is selected by default (the 'Next' button is disabled until they choose 'Yes' or 'No'). Here's the IE blog post with screenshots of the new behavior, since Slashdot didn't link to it directly: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/07/16/changes-to-ie8-s-first-run.aspx

people that dislike the ribbon interface are more likely to be "power users" that tinker and customize everything

In this interesting talk, the program manager of the Office UI group mentioned that fewer than 2% of users customize office. And of those, 80% change two or fewer buttons. Power users are really quite scarce.

Microsoft themselves actually have a presentation describing their process of designing and refining the Ribbon, by Jenson Harris ('Group Porgam Manager of the Office UX Team'). They talk a little bit about the user feedback stats and how they made some decisions regarding the ribbon... it's an interesting video if you have some time and are interested in that sort of thing.

This is utterly and completely wrong. The installer won't allow you upgrade from pre-RTM versions unless you manually bypass the check, which is not supported. Just read the linked blog post.

* You might be able to burn ISOs, but you still can't mount them. Loopback device anyone? Do I really need to pay $XX, or install some spyware-infested freeware crap, just to mount ISOs?

Just for reference, Microsoft offers the Virtual CD Control Panel which will let you mount ISOs. I started using it sometime in late 2k5, not sure when it actually came out, and appearently it can be made to work in Vista at least.

http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling/archive/2007/05/14/virtual-cd-rom-control-panel-on-vista.aspx

I did some quick Googling and could find the main link to the MS product page for it. Prolly should have used bing, but I refuse to use a search engine that has changed names to get market share.

Anyway, if you actually use the MS Virtual CD control panel you'll quickly understand why they didn't include it. The management interface is some basic windows app that would have been accepted during the win95 internal builds, before the betas, not any time after that. But it does indeed work, after you figure out the sequence of button clicks required to get you going since it doesn't do anything other than what the button says, such as loading the driver automatically rather than requiring you to go to a different dialog first to enable the drive than come back and add a drive. Its just not end-user friendly. Geeks will figure it out quick enough though.

Interestingly enough, my Ubuntu install doesn't just let me double click on an ISO to mount it out of the box. Do any distros work this way? I'll fully accept it may be due to my futzing. I'm a FreeBSD user mostly, just play with Ubuntu so I have a general idea whats going on in the Linux desktop arena, and I've done some weird crap to it so it wouldn't surprise me if I pissed off some automounter gods or something.

I seem to recall it being more than a single mount command to do it in FBSD although I know it can be done with just a couple.

This does indicate it may be the RTM build, but not because it has a new build number... but because it has a build number ending in 00.

Larry Osterman's post Thinking about Windows Build numbers goes into this in more depth.

This BTW reminds me of this comment from the Old New Thing: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/07/09/9825126.aspx#9828703 And I also dug out this on FreeDOS 1.0 compatiblity with XT clones: http://www.mail-archive.com/freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg05434.html

Windows itself is actually pretty good at handling high DPI these days (Vista and Win7), but there are far too many apps (including Microsoft apps) that are not high DPI aware, so actually trying to run in high DPI mode can be frustrating.

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/yochay/Windows-7-Graphics--High-DPI/

..I still think that Microsoft did not understand what the Internet is about: interoperability. You can create whatever nice framework you want - as long as it is not supported by many systems the adoption rate will be slim. If they would make the API a public standard (that is not restricted) then people might adapt, if it is any good.

You mean like Moonlight? The free implementation of Silverlight? Silverlight runs in IE, Firefox on Windows, Safari, Firefox on Mac, and Firefox in Linux (x86 and x64) through Moonlight. It's coming to mobile soon, too.

Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed BS to the later group of people, you are going nowhere.

What? Why does this matter? It's a cross platform and browser dynamic content plugin, not unlike Flash.

Another thing is I see is that the Silverlight frameworks seems to have some severe design issues as it is necessary to bring out a new version seemingly every half year. A well designed platform would try to get the basics right in the first few iterations and then add libraries to it that provide more functionality without having to do a 180 on the whole basic coding.

What the Hell are you talking about? This is a new feature release, not a bugfix. Silverlight 1.1 code will run fine in Silverlight 3, etc. This is simply a newer expanded version of the last framework, as Flash 10 was to Flash 9, or 8. Your "well designed platform" model is exactly what Silverlight is doing. It's specifically a "well designed platform."

Guess this will even turn down Microsoft sympathising developers as they can't keep up with the change that's happening continuously. I mean many people are fed up that everything Microsoft does is obsolete in three years time and you can start anew with learning and development (see VB, classic ASP and so forth).

You can write silverlight apps in vim and run them in a fully opensourced plugin in firefox on linux... it's fully documented publicly unlike Flash. I have linux hacker friends who do just this because silverlight/moonlight can be developed without expensive tools and flash can't. You can even play theora videos natively in IE, Safari/Mac, and Firefox/Linux with it TODAY. I would say the technology is quite freeing.

Another thing is, that though the feature list sounds impressive, there are a lot of undressed issues like security that is a very important one with this kind of networked technology.

http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnfa/archive/2007/05/09/the-silverlight-security-model.aspx

Friend, I _wrote_ a JVM implementation.

I know how garbage collector works in Sun JVM to the level of assembly language generated for write barriers, I know how HotSpot compiles byte-code, etc.

Well, the current C# is not very much like Java. It's actively moving towards functional languages (while Java is not moving anywhere) to the point where you can write purely-functional lazy-evaluated functions as LINQ expressions, something crazy like this: http://blogs.msdn.com/lukeh/archive/2007/10/01/taking-linq-to-objects-to-extremes-a-fully-linqified-raytracer.aspx

VB is not a bastardized Java, it's a separate language (quite powerful in its VB.NET form), related to C#. It even has a few features not accessible from C#.

Like it or not, Windows 7 is just Vista with a new Taskbar, a major video display bugfix, a few new control panel applets (at least one of which (ClearType Tuner) used to be a Windows XP PowerToy), some new fonts and the first upgrade to the Font Control Panel Applet in 15 years, and some other misc bugfixes.

Seriously, you're still using the same Vista you all decided to hate on before; you've just fallen victim to the marketing hype.

The only problem with Vista was based on falling for derogatory marketing hype. 7 has a few nice UI features that could mostly be added to Vista with 3rd party programs, and for people with 2 or more GB of RAM, the smaller memory footprint doesn't bring much either. Vista failed solely on marketing, so I think it was the right decision to focus on the presentation of 7.

Like it or not, Windows 7 is just Vista with a new Taskbar, a major video display bugfix, a few new control panel applets (at least one of which (ClearType Tuner) used to be a Windows XP PowerToy), some new fonts and the first upgrade to the Font Control Panel Applet in 15 years, and some other misc bugfixes.

Seriously, you're still using the same Vista you all decided to hate on before; you've just fallen victim to the marketing hype.